Not Falling Off the Mountain - Monterosso in March

Pulling into the train station at Monterosso, one of the five villages of Cinque Terre, with my mom in tow. My mom was asking an American retiree on the train about the hiking trails - the worn dirt paths that threaded their way between the villages. A decade earlier I had traveled around Italy, and these trails were what I remembered most. My mom is in her 60s, and I wanted to share with her the view of the sea, the lemon groves built on farms stepped into the mountainside, and the multi-colored towns nestled into the crooked coast, so I had jumped at the opportunity to bring her here when I found some discount tickets. But the notion of trails on a mountainside spooked her.

Despite having told her about my past travels, and how exhilarating, yet safe, the trails were, she wanted reassurance, “Could you fall off the mountain?”

“If you don’t look where you’re going,” the retiree shrugged.

My mom looked at me with her what-have-you-gotten-us-into eyes.

Monterosso was as I remembered. Part old-world cobblestones, part resort. At the water’s edge, you can see the stones beneath the iridescent green-water. Jutting out of a rock formation is Il Gigante, a century-old sculpture of Neptune hunched forward, bracing the weight of the coast on his shoulders, protecting Monterosso from the waves and the pirates.

We headed to the trail with a cartoon-map. We walked the road, winding up from the center of the village to the surrounding farms, looking for an entrance to the path, but we couldn’t find it. The town became smaller behind us, and I wondered if we should turn back. My mom seemed relieved that she might not have to go on the trail after all.

Just then, a man with a white beard wearing a black-knit cap came walking up behind us. He walked with purpose and ease, the walk of a fisherman who was used to climbing these mountains after work. “Scusi,” I said, and asked him in my bad Italian if he could help us find the entrance, and he motioned for us to follow him. Up we went, his gait much faster than our own, but whenever he was out of sight he stopped and waited for us. In this way we continued, until he pointed at some steps going down through a lemon grove. We thanked him, and left.

The trails were as passable as I remembered, and my mom began to relax. Later, as we looked out at the sea, my mom said, “I’m so happy I have you, nobody else could have gotten me here,” and I thought of our fisherman guide, so thankful to have had the help.