While Maurice set up near the top of Spello’s old town to paint, I went down the hill to visit Pintoricchio in Santa Maria Maggiore. Two small paintings of Mary and Jesus, and a faded angel, were hidden in a back chapel, but the main attraction was the Baglioni chapel off the nave. Richly-colored scenes of great beauty and captivating detail displayed gospel personages and stories: the annunciation by a Renaissance angel to Mary in her Renaissance bedroom, the nativity with everyone arrayed on the green grass under a floating platform of brightly-robed angels singing from the same songsheet, and more, all with backdrops of dreamy Italian hill towns. No pictures allowed, and the bureaucrat collecting money was keeping a keen eye on all of us suspicious characters who wandered in.

On the other side of the gate from the little pizza place where we ate lunch was a CAI sign pointing to the Via degli Ulivi, the Olive Tree Path, only minutes away. When Maurice went to paint, I set off to find it. Soon I was on my way, beginning 10.4 kilometers and 3 hours to Assisi’s Porta Nuova. The route wound gently along a hillside with occasional views of Assisi ahead.

Down below I spotted a majestic Romanesque church between the highway and an industrial complex.

I walked among the silvered dusky green of thousands of olive trees. The sky was summer blue with piles of fluffy white clouds skipping along in the wind. Under the trees and along the path were clumps and strews of bright poppies, blankets of daisies and oodles of LYFs (little yellow flowers), plus blooms of blue and pink and purple and white. The ground around me truly was, as Ralph Waldo Emerson says, laughing in flowers, and so was I, proclaiming with the psalmist, “The valleys are so thick with grain that they shout for joy and sing” (Psalm 65:13).

An elaborate shrine, the Madonna Della Speranza, rose at a fork in the road and a CAI sign clearly marked the uphill path. Even with all my picture-taking I was ten minutes ahead of schedule. Up and up I went, looking for hidden trail markers at intersections, my best-guess choices confirmed a short way down the path. I entered a corridor of ginestra, picking up the heavenly aroma before I even neared the yellow-blossomed bushes. More official CAI signs told me it was now only two hours to the Porta Nuova. The path twisted through the delightful olive groves, past a casa rotta and a newer house with a vegetable garden, then stopped at a T intersection. There were no signs, CAI or otherwise. I walked down the path in both directions searching for signs, painted poles, colored rocks, faded markings on broken walls, but found nothing. I really should have had a genuine map. Finally I turned left, the direction to Assisi. It was so hot. The shade was sporadic now and I started rationing my remaining water. I ate my two sweet apricots in hopes of absorbing liquid. After a while I realized I wasn’t on the trail any more. Since the T intersection there had been no more trail markers, then no more olive trees. The path had become a real road. I was so thirsty. I passed a yard with a spigot just on the other side of the fence–a spigot and a barking dog. I texted Maurice to alert him that he might need to come get me…if only I knew where I was. I plodded on in the heat. Finally the road entered the edge of a town. All was quiet. No cafes in sight. No fountains like we had seen in some other towns. A little farther on I came to a supermercato–closed, of course. (I will not panic, I will not panic….) I continued walking. And then, at last, it was Conad to the rescue! I tracked down somebody inside the deserted store to help me, bought two cold half-liter bottles of water, asked the name of the town (it had two names, San Vitale or Viole), sat on a stone bench attached to a house across the street (right next to an archway in the town wall with faded designs painted on its curved ceiling), and drank the whole frizzante bottle while being serenaded by an upupa.

Hydrated again, I arranged for Maurice to pick me up once he finished painting. He found the town without too much trouble. I’m a bit disappointed I didn’t make it all the way to Assisi, which was only two or three kilometers away, and especially that I didn’t make it all the way there through the olive groves.