The medieval village of Murlo

The overpriced hair supplies I bought are all worthless.  As I was getting ready for the day I kept thinking, “I brought something for that,” then remembered, “but it’s in my suitcase.”

In my morning devotions I read the story of the man born blind (John 9).  After he healed the blind man, Jesus heard that they’d thrown the man out of the synagogue.  Jesus sought out the man, approached him with compassion and gave him something much better than synagogue membership:  a relationship with himself forever.  We haven’t seen our luggage since we checked in four days ago in Washington, and we’ve managed, but now we’ve had enough of it.  Jesus says, “You’ve still got me.”  Yes.  Jesus is better than luggage.  He is providing for us and I will keep trusting him.

Murlo is a tiny hilltop ring of stone houses around a sloping piazza bisected by the Palazzone and Palazzina, now the Etruscan museum.  The village is populated by two dozen residents and a coterie of cats.  It was a beautiful and quiet place for the painters.

The painters doing a quick painting of the scene behind them from memory

Artists at work:  Maurice and Penny

The lovely smiling Elise was pleased to sell me the over-sixty-priced ticket for the museum, though she could hardly believe I was really that old (lovely young lady).  The museum holds finds from the excavation of the 2600-year-old Etruscan settlements on the next hill over, Poggia Civitate, which have revealed much about Etruscan life.  The seventh century BC settlement included a long open-sided building divided into workshops.  When the whole place was destroyed by fire, fleeing people and animals left footprints on clay roof tiles set down to dry.  The sixth century BC settlement included four buildings around a courtyard.  The famous find of a terra cotta bust of a guy with a tall hat (looking like he came from the Andes) was one of a line of roof decorations from this building.  When the residents departed, they carefully dismantled some of the settlement and buried the materials in long ditches.

Pedro the Etruscan

Murlo street scene (above) and art in the one ladies’ room of the village’s one restaurant

After a nap and lunch in my study (the car), and in the heat of the day (so typical), it was time for my hike to Poggio Civitate.  There were ups and downs with a few steep spots.  I could’ve used my poles…which are in my suitcase.  I tried not to get burned in the mix of shade and sun; my sunscreen is—you guessed it.  There were rosemary bushes at the beginning of the walk, wildflowers along the way, occasional whiffs of ginestra, and interesting descriptive signs, but there was absolutely nothing at the archeological site except tall grass that made me itch.  “It’s all the rain,” Elise told me later.

View of Murlo from the woods

We decided to check out some signed points of interest on our way home.  We never did find any but kept twisting deeper into back country on ever narrower and dustier roads.  Following one sign that appeared after miles of nothing led us up a steep, deeply rutted mountain road where we couldn’t turn around until we got to the Communita Nuovo Mondo…whatever that creepily is (I looked it up later and I think they’re a utopian group).  From the top of the mountain Maurice surveyed the countryside for roads and saw none.  Back down, we followed a few more signs until the lane became a hiking trail.  Maurice carefully turned around and redrove through all the twisting gravel roads until we were back where we took the turnoff, then drove the real way home.  I will do my best not to suggest any more points of interest—well, I will try.

The sign outside Buonconvento pointed to Montalcino and Maurice himself said, “Let’s try it,” thinking it might cut the corner, or not wanting to admit defeat, or maybe wondering if it would be more scenic than the Tuscany we’re already in.  It was a bad idea again right from the start—white gravel, ups and downs, circling in the wrong direction until we came into Montalcino on the high side, weaving through town, and down and around the mountain because the direct road down to our place is too steep and dangerous.  We got home at 6:45, a one-and-a-half-hour unnecessary adventure.  And what should greet us in our living room but our suitcases!  Nice—yet not the be-all and end-all it might once have been, especially after my morning’s Bible meditation.  If our luggage hadn’t arrived I had decided all I really needed for the next day was some sunscreen.

Maurice made bruschetta and I sat outside gazing at Montalcino’s sunlit mountain and the full cherry trees in front of the vineyard.  I fixed ravioli alla panna for supper, reminding me of when we used to live in Italy, then Maurice washed the dishes again.