Apennine Mountains: Italy

It’s peaceful up here in the mountains. I didn’t realise how it would actually feel to be up here, but it’s just that... Silent. Quiet. So all-consuming that I haven’t even been able to muster the energy to write because I am able only to be.

Of course, settling into the new routines of a wwoofer also takes time and my energies have been focused on finding my feet, establishing my place, and ensuring that my daughter is happy and fulfilled by this experience of farm life.

I have stood looking out at the view raking cut grass and clearing terraces, and with them, my mind. I have been mesmerised by the sheep as they pass by my window each morning and I have marvelled at the new birds and flowers I have seen and found.

And yet, all the time, I am wordless.

Stunned into silence.

Sentences come to me: about the beauty, the magic, the feeling. But nothing knits together as it should. I guess I am still settling myself into a new rhythm.
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I know only that I am glad for the opportunity to escape the noise of life, that I love to be near sheep and horses because they make me feel everything that is good, that I don’t care if my arms are scratched and embedded with thorns, or that my limbs ache from throwing hay bales into the loft until the sky has turned inky and the moon is so close I can almost touch it… because in the mountains I feel alive.