day 36, i think!

It’s been quite some time since I’ve been able to write—sorry to those who have been following, but apparently, internet access is harder in Rome than in Sicily. Who’d have thought it! Since last checking in we’ve been to Ribera, Agrigento, and Calamonici—the ancestral home of Denise’s father, and then overnight on the train to Rome.

What have I learned? How much time have you got? Let’s start with some basics. The best of travel plans don’t always work out. We knew that one of the challenges was going to be getting Lisa to the various places we were going to be along the way, while getting her back to Aix in time for her exams. What you cannot control for are late planes, train strikes, and what I’ve come to think about as the human aspects of travel. There are many things you could say about the process, but most are not appropriate for a blog that’s rated “G”! Once the steam settles, and you get over the frustration, however, you come to realize how often while traveling you are dependent on the kindness of strangers—maybe the ticket agent who listens to your story and sympathizes, or the veteran train traveler who assures you that those seats are, indeed, your seats, and the people in them will have to move! It’s harder to be assertive when you don’t speak the language!

So, Agrigento, and some of the finest ancient ruins in the world was one of our first stops. Huge temple ruins mark a place where Greek civilizations thrived at about the same time as the late Kingdoms of Israel. Massive structures were built without the aid of our modern building equipment (though you do see the remains of a rudimentary crane). All of it, eventually, came to naught, stones from magnificent temples were carried away to make homes for people who looked upon the former gods as oddities.

From the time of those “old rocks” as Gabi affectionately called them, three or four other major civilizations have influenced the Sicilian culture—Arabs, Spanish, Roman, and North African. There are memorials to those who died in WWII, and still traces of the bombing that even a place as remote as Southern Sicily was subject to. One thinks of the preacher in Ecclesiastes---vanity of vanities, all is vanity!

Then, if you’re looking down as you make your way along the path, you notice colony after colony of ants, toiling away as, I have to assume, they have since those ancient Greeks gathered in the dawn’s light to offer their sacrifices within the great temples, and then when the Moors and Muslims, and Christians traded blows. I thought of standing at the foot of the great Sequoias in California—trees that had stood in the same place since the time of Jesus—and wondering just who this world “belongs” to. Maybe more than anything, that we are most certainly sojourners at best on this good earth. We may build things we think will endure for al the ages, but it’s the ants who will be there when everything is said and done!

Take a breath, go to the tap and draw a cold, clean glass of water, and ponder that!