immersion.

Let me just go ahead and state for the record that I don't think I've ever been anywhere as relentlessly beautiful and unspoiled as Ogliastra, where most of our story takes place. The beauty just didn't stop, or stop changing the ways in which it revealed itself.

I could compare it to places like Napa or Mendocino, or stretches of the French or Italian Alps, but...this was older. And wilder. And, no matter how ear-pressurizingly high up in the mountains you got, you were never more than 45 minutes away from dramatic beaches with incredible turquoise water. And, this being the least populated province of Italy's least populated region, there were no people. But there were donkeys roaming the streets. And etc.

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I've never really seriously blogged about a vacation in 100% retrospect, and it's proving difficult. Or maybe just proving completely different.

For me right now the biggest difference seems to be this: by the time you've been somewhere a week, you know all kinds of angles from which you could approach the thing as a whole, whereas if you're writing while it's happening, you don't really know what you're into, you can't see the big picture yet: you're still discovering things constantly and your writing is naturally shaped by this process of discovery.

I can already tell that I'm going to edit the shit out of this post. It might seem like it would be easier to just let it all sit for a while, but I'm afraid of forgetting things. So I'll just start, and I guess we'll see what the shape starts to look like.

If I try to ignore the overwhelming number of possible angles and just embrace what seems to be natural for someone with not a lot of time to blog, I end up at one of two positions: Sardinian history, or our immediate surroundings.

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We stayed in what the guidebooks would call a "private apartment", but that description doesn't really do it justice. It's basically one wing of a family farm, located 5 minutes from the beach. They grow tomatoes, grapes, eggplant, lemons, figs, zucchini, basil, prezzemolo, and, yes, more.