Woods

The further you climb up into the woods the further sound recedes. The comforting sound of the Arezzo train; the thrum of a diesel engine; the traffic on the Consuma road fade and fade; are wrapped and silenced by trees upon trees until there are just the nuthatch and a robin singing away on the edge of a sunny clearing.

The only noise of movement is the noise you yourself make and you grow more and more mindful to make no noise at all. It almost feels obligatory as if countless generations have said: This is the way it is done.

You become wrapped up in your own journey; the search for the elusive funghi that must be crept up on least they escape; each move planned in this difficult, close knit, scratchy put-your-eye-out terrain.

And then suddenly, as if by magic, there is another you, just metres away, intent too on their search.

This time an 85 year-old man with few teeth, two shirts, a green plastic carrier bag, a wee hazel wand and the ubiquitous red baseball cap so you don’t get your bonce blown off by hunters.

We get to chatting. He chuckles at our new king. He lived through the last years of Italy’s last king, Vittorio Emmanuele. He’s known these woods all his life. They change, he says. One needs to take care. I have my mobile.

And he tells me that in two days the most esteemed white porcini may push up through the soil and leaf mould.

I saw some small ones starting, he says. Two days and not before. Come sooner and you’ll waste your time.

And he spots a yellow gallinello in the bramble brush behind me. We part, he going up, me going down. And in moments we are lost to each other, taken in by the woods.