CAMERANO (part VII): Too beautiful to take for granted

EDITOR'S NOTE: This feature comes from special contributor Chas Davis, a graduate assistant who is currently working in the Camerano Project. He was also a graduate assistant in the Cagli Projects of 2005 and 2006.

WHEN LE MARCHE has been your home for a month and a half, it can be easy to let the extraordinary become mundane.

The quilted, gently undulating landscape seamlessly flowing into the Adriatic below your horse almost seems ordinary. However, the cascading rows of grape vines, the towns perched stoically atop their hills in the distance and the distant chatter from our Italian cowboy guides are reminders that we are no where near the commonplace.

We have traveled halfway across the world to do something many of us could do halfway across our hometowns.

Italy usually brings to mind visions of late-night wine sipping after a day spent touring the marvels of antiquity, not horseback riding. But that’s where we are, high on the hills over the Adriatic Sea.

Our horses still respond to the sharp, inexperienced tugs we send down the reigns with head-jerks and indifferent whinnies. The conversations among the Americans still concern trivialities from home.

However, the unfamiliar setting and subtle differences in atmosphere are a constant reminder of how far away from home we really were.

Then, the crises of the moment brings us crashing back to home: I bare the heavy burden of breaking it to my travel companions that Facebook.com is temporarily down.

I hear a cry of shock and disbelief but it’s not from our group. It comes from another one of our equestrian voyagers, another young American college student. It was a girl, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, who could have previously blended in as any other nationality immediately identified herself as one of our countrymen.

“Oh no! Do you have any idea for how long?” she says with a very concerned tone.

I assure her it will probably be short-lived. According to my last visit to our favorite online social network, the system administrators are doing maintenance work while the sun is on our current side of the globe.

We all share in a collective sigh of relief: our link to home won’t be permanently severed.

Our thoughts again are focused on riding unfamiliar horses with guides we can’t understand, through Italian vineyards, an ocean away from home.

- Chas Davis
chas@creighton.edu