Goats On the Mule Road to Renaio

A distant clanking noise. A herd of goats is coming up the mule road behind Chiesetta. I dash for my camera and as I emerge from the green gate there they are, a foraging platoon coming over a rise in the path, hesitantly trotting forward, stopping to eat foliage, then darting forward again. The leader, an old billy with a curling beard is condemned to live his life with the clank of that black bell below his throat.

The goat herd in black baggy trousers held by a thick leather belt with an enormous brass buckle emerges through the back-lit silvery dust raised from days of aridity. He wears a striped, collarless shirt and his face is weather worn with black-tufted, rouge-pink cheeks. I hold my camera up and call out to him above the goats.

 ‘Okay?’.

He points at the camera and himself ‘Me?’.

‘Si, si, okay?’ I ask again.

His face breaks into a gappy grin as he nods his permission. I photograph him and his goats as they approach to fill the frame, then surround me, then move beyond me towards Renaio and summer grazing on the Appenine slopes. I’ve shot 36 exposures; delighted. Now that’s something you’d never see in New Zealand.

From ‘Antipasto’ random samplings from various writings made over a few years of visits to a ‘New Zealander’s Italy’

© DON DONOVAN
 donovan@ihug.co.nz
.

The Art Critic

I wander along the Barga-Renaio road and sit with my feet in the long grass of the downward side of the road doing a painting of the houses that teeter over the bluff above the town, with the very misty, almost obscured at times, Apuane Alps in the distance. Although absorbed, I hear a faint shuffle behind me and some laboured breathing. I look around to see an old, stooped man leaning on a stick watching me. ‘Buon giorno’ I wish him; he replies with a grunt. I continue my work while he wheezes. He seems content to be ignored. I, not at all put off, work quickly with oil pastel and watercolour and as the lighter colours emerge from the wash he grunts, ‘Buon lavoro…’ and totters away. 

When I realize that he has just congratulated me I call after him, ‘Grazie, signor’ and he waves his stick at me without looking round. ‘Good work!’ Indeed, I must be good if he has said so.

It’s pleasant sitting in the summer grasses looking out into the silvery mists across the olive groves that dive away from my feet. The tortuous trees - they look saurian with lizard limbs of wood - are fruiting with hard little olive, modest looking treasures.

The weather seems to be changing.


From ‘Antipasto’ random samplings from various writings made over a few years of visits to a ‘New Zealander’s Italy’

© DON DONOVAN
 donovan@ihug.co.nz
.