After the dishes were gathered and washed and dried and stacked, everyone dispersed, going off to find their favorite place to take their pisolino. Sleep came easily as I lay on the lounge chair underneath the olive trees. A full belly, and a little bit of wine, added to the heat of the day will do that.

My curiosity about these people and this place was put to rest for awhile.

* * * * *

Don M., me, and my friend H.S posing for a snapshot in between meals.

Salad made. Pasta drained. Cheese grated. Table set. Wine glasses out. Bell rung.

Everyone sat around the long table which had been transformed from a work table into a dining table. The gathered faces were all young men, all studenti except for me and the two Signore and the older Don. Vino di tavola was poured into the wine tumblers, one set at each plate, and then the empty wine bottle was added to the pile of empty wine bottles against the wall. Because I was the guest, the food started with me. As I filled half of my plate with the fettuccine noodles bathed in olive oil and garlic, one of the Signore stood across the table from me with a bowl of roughly grated Parmesan formaggio. She dipped her fingers into the bowl, taking a large pinch of cheese and sprinkled it on my pasta. “Ancora?”, she asked laughingly, and without waiting for my answer she repeatedly tossed Parmesan on my plate until she felt I had enough.

I reached for the salad bowl and began to fill the other half of my plate with the fresh greens and tomatoes from the camp garden. This immediately caused a stir among the group as the person next to me put his hand on my arm and explained that “the salad does not go on the plate with the pasta. It is eaten by itself, after the pasta and not before.” Explaining that I wanted color on my plate next to the lovely monochromatic colors of the glistening fettuccine, a jovial argument about the order of things ensued between me and the young Italian. I was proving myself to be a true cretina at my first group meal in Italy.

The kitchen was more than a camp kitchen and less than a home kitchen. It was a room, but not a room, with two sides of it carved out of the hillside. The other two sides were made from glass and wooden doors that had been nailed and tacked together to form walls. The roof was simply made from corrugated tin. There was a fireplace carved out of one of the dirt walls, its chimney also carved up through the hill, to open as a hole on the floor of the slope above. With all of the windows in the doors that were walls, the kitchen had the feeling of being outside in.

A long wooden table ran down the center of the kitchen and it was surrounded by old wooden, mismatched, farm chairs. This room contained everything a cook would need to make a simple meal for ten or so people, and one guest.

There were two women in the kitchen, and although introductions were made by name, I can only remember calling each of them Signora. The women had made little piles of flour on the surface of the table. They were making pasta. From scratch. While camping. They had already made and cut one batch for lunch and had strung what seemed like hundreds of handmade, flat, fettuccine noodles on the drying rack while waiting for the two large stock pots of water to boil on the stove. But before that was to happen, they were making the pasta for the later evening meal.

Water was dribbled and salt sprinkled onto each of the piles of hard wheat flour and gently worked by hand to make a dough. After kneading the flour, water, and salt mixture on the surface of the table and making each pile into individual dough mounds, one of the Signore cut them into slices. The slices were then rolled into long thick ropes of pasta dough. The ropes sat and rested for a moment, taking up a good portion of the table’s surface.

While one Signora took over the cooking of the lunch pasta, the other one set to making orecchiette by pressing her thumb into the end of a rope and ripping it from the roll. She worked steadily and fast until all of the ropes of dough had been transformed into little ears of fresh pasta. The whole process was meditative and fascinating to watch. Thumb, press, rip, scoot to the pile forming on the right. Up until that day, I thought that pasta, of any kind, came out of a box.

Charging me and my friend with cutting a pile of small Roma tomatoes into quarters for the lunch salad, the other Signora handed each of us a knife and pointed to the cutting boards. Happy to help, I set myself up at the counter and began to slice. Looking around I noticed how the light from the sun came in through the windows, filtered by leaves on the trees outside. The kitchen was warm at mid-day, made more so by the large pots beginning to boil on the stove. Some of the other guys wandered in and started to clean off the table, setting it with plates and silverware.

As we cut the tomatoes, standing side by side at the counter, I looked over my shoulder and watched everyone at their chores. I still wondered about this place, what it was, who these people were, and more than anything why I was here. It seemed to be pure happenstance. I had literally come out of nowhere and slipped into the lives of these people for an afternoon. My French and English were not serving me very well and language was now my limitation. Even so, we made do with everyone’s limited French and English, and their Italian, sometimes using all three in a sentence, or hand signals and pointing to things to get our thoughts across the border of communication. I had been warmly welcomed and accepted by this entire group of strangers upon my arrival, no questions asked. No one thought it was weird that my friend had brought me to this place. Yes, my friend, even though he was still a bit of a stranger to me. But I was comfortable and I didn’t feel out of place, which was completely the opposite of how I had felt during my last few months in France.

We had driven seven kilometers outside of the town on a winding country road into the hills, the horn blaring a warning at every curve. Fully expecting to arrive at my idea of a what a campground is – at the very least a roundabout road with multi-colored tents lining the circle – I found that I had been woefully misinformed by my internal dictionary.

Pulling into the gravel yard I was stunned. This was not a campground. There were a few tents, and a few caravans, hidden amongst the old olive grove and vineyard that were terraced up the hill. It was a rustic place, a beautiful, green, tree filled place. Both quaint and serene, it was a landscape out of an Italian picture book. This old estate, with its villa long gone, was a private place called Camping.

My friend, for my stalker had come to be my friend after another two days of hanging out together on the beach before I consented to having lunch at Camping, took my hand and led me across the graveled yard to a path. “Come. I want to show you around,” he smiled.

During those past few days I had found out that my new friend was studying architecture at the University in Torino. The man driving the car was a Don from the university, and served as a kind of chaperone for the students on this trip. This trip was a break for them from their studies.

My friend walked me up the hill, on the path through the olive trees. First taking me to show me his little caravan, where introductions were made to the three other young men with whom he shared this space under the trees. Then we made our way down another path to the camp kitchen.

The car pulled up at the bottom of the stairs leading down from the castello. Waiting as I had been asked to do, I watched as the old tin-can of a tiny Italian car came to a stop at my feet. It was already over flowing with people. All young men, bright-eyed and laughing in the late morning heat. Looking quizzically at the car, I wondered where they expected me to sit? There was some jumbling and squirming and finally all the boys were piled into the back seat. The driver, a much older man well into his fifties, looked like he was taking a break from his day job as the subject of a Renaissance painting. He sat at the wheel and while patting the now empty seat next to him, he cheerfully yelled “Andiamo!”

Knowing full well that I was taking my life into my own hands, or putting it into the hands of this band of dark-haired laughing misfits in the back seat, I slid into the passenger’s seat and hoped for the best. It had been difficult to resist the beggings of that angelic face, and today I had finally given in.

I had been invited to go to a place called Camping.