Sicily 2009--Excerpts from My Travel Journal

I am so irresponsible these days! But I am living and experiencing adventure. Libby is not far off from me…just down the hill where we shared the lunch purchased in Cefalu. The scene is pastoral. Plowed soil darkened by the recent three days rain; rain which is unseasonal for this time of year in Sicily. Dogs are barking and sharing stories of our foreign scent--their clarions from the East with report from the West. Bells clang from a slowly migrating sheep herd and a rooster crows, probably announcing to his hens that it is time for the afternoon Sicilian siesta. Colors of Kelly Green and beige fields also adorn the hillsides and olive groves cascade down the smaller hills and stop at small roads with adjacent farm houses.

Lunch is prosciutto that is so good a westerner like me would consider cutting off both hands for it and paying someone to feed it to him. Locally grown olives, apples, peaches, cheese, and grapes—the fruit purchased from a street vendor that I could hear singing his entrance into the medieval village of Cefalu as he stopped to sell his goods at each arched doorway. A nonna came halfway out of her doorway to exchange her Euros for a sack of produce.

So here I sit upon a lichen covered coral rock, the wind gently gives me long Italian kisses on my ears. Wild daisies, white and yellow, and small purple sage blossoms are the gemstones nestled in and around clumps of grass. Sicily is more beautiful than I had imagined.