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Even today there remain some wild places in Italy, hard of access, savagely beautiful, and assured of a privacy never to be violated by the intrusion of man's all too often clumsily fashioned contrivances -- a rocky bluff, a generously wide shelf of mountain grown all over with thick-girthed trees, the loud anger of a waterfall heard from a distance and the undertones of an unseen rill, some twisting steep path ending at the edge of a surprising patch of even, emerald-green ground, encircled by juniper and tamarisk, suggesting a plate of rare majolica offered on the palm of Atlas -- narrow ribbons of tracks running up and down, pine needles for their carpet and skies for their roof -- not a single evidence of any human habitation but the pulse of life beating richly in tree and water, in birdsong and the unseen footfall of animals, and the majesty of mountain peaks most surprisingly in accord with the tiny pink and blue flowers edging the track.
In such places, recorded history becomes less than a crumb of a loaf. The earth does not so much belong to man as man to earth. Whether he will or no, he stands subject to the natural law and may, if he so chooses, come to a sense of curious release by virtue of the subjection. However wild the landscape, it is informed by a truth seldom found elsewhere. Also, it promises an enlargement of horizons other than the visible one....
-- John R. H. Moorman
