Wine heals blisters

I went hiking today, for almost the first time all year! I say almost only because I'm embarrassed to admit that I haven't done anything outdoorsy or sportsy in 6 months, and also because I sort of went hiking a little bit last week in Matera.... since the whole city is a giant rock, it's hard to keep from doing a bit of rock scaling here and there. So see, I have gone hiking since I've been here!

Viterbo has a mountain, a solitary mountain which I imagine gets lonely after a couple millennia, but which is absolutely gorgeous. At the moment all the trees are stripped bare for the winter, so the hillside is blanketed as far as you can see with that toothbrushy pattern of tall, thin, leafless trees. You can see buds beginning to appear on the branches, however, so in maybe even a few weeks the entire mountain will be green and springy! Oh, you can't even begin to imagine what a beautiful day today was, though! I woke up about 20 minutes before my alarm went off, so the day started off well; and I opened the curtains to the clearest blue sky I've seen since October. Not only clear, but warm! Definitely a bit crisp in the morning, but once we got to the mountain it was warm and I stripped down to my t-shirt for the first time in what feels like years. And there was a stream!! It ran down the path for maybe a quarter mile or so, so we all took off our shoes and waded through the mud, which was perfectly slimy and gloppy, so that you could squish your toes in it just so.

The highlight of the day, though, was definitely me falling off a giant mossy boulder and landing on my butt, which was bright green for the rest of the hike. I'm graceful like that.