The Beigua looms over the seaside. At 1,300 meters, it’s 4,000 feet above sea level but it’s right there, you can almost touch it.
It’s not a peak, it’s the high point of a longer mountaintop, but it’s easily identifiable by the TV antennas on the summit—when it’s not shrouded in clouds.
This morning we have planned to go up there. It’s a beautiful sunny day, dazzling… and the TV antennas are shrouded in clouds. My aunt is worried, she would prefer we didn’t go, but I tell her gently I’m sure the clouds will lift, and if it turns out they don’t we’ll turn back. She accepts this graciously though I don’t believe she believes it. Nor do I believe it.
To get the Beigua we have to drive through the Alpicella, halfway up the mountain, with a view down to the sea and woods all around. We stop at the Alpicella to give the clouds a chance to dissipate, though we can see the clouds still there from there. The Alpicella consists of a few houses clustered along the main road, a small parking area with a war memorial, a church, a bar, an elementary school, and a stray dog. There is also a museum, the Esposizione Archeologica Permamente, that we don’t visit.
I point out to George that if we lived here he would have gone to school in this school building. He looks at it but has no comment. It may be too far fetched for him to envision. I wonder what it would be like to live here your whole life. I can’t envision. Do any of the young people still live here their whole life? I’ve been fortunate to see so much of the world, and I often wonder if the opposite would have been better, to stay in one place always. Not the Alpicella necessarily, but why not? How did I end up in New Jersey and someone else spent his whole life in the Alpicella? I can’t explain that.
The little bar is very crowded with men busy chattering. Like all other Italian bars, this is not a dark room but rather an airy place that spills out onto the street. I would like a cappucciono but I’m intimidated by the crowd, I feel too blatantly like someone who has not lived here her whole life, so I pass on the cappuccino for now. It will have to wait.
The clouds still linger over the Beigua but we resume our journey. My aunt had said, “After the Alpicella, turn left.” This was counter intuitive because from the Alpicella the Beigua is to the right, but the road has to wind along the mountain to gain the altitude not all at once, so off to the left we go. This stretch of road is very narrow and very twisty and it feels really long. I make with the horn at every turn, one hand on the wheel, one hand on the horn. George is a little embarrassed by my noise making. He wishes we would climb quietly but I can’t. It’s a scary road. Lovely but scary.
The woods change from conifers, to chestnuts, to beech, patches of one type succeeded by patches of another type. Interestingly, while I expect and fear to suddenly find myself immersed in clouds, there are no clouds here.
There are cars parked along the sides of the road, wherever there’s a little flat space. They look perilously close often to falling off the edge. I would not dare to try to park in these spots, but I suspect those that do know what they’re doing, they’ve probably parked in the same spot for years, possibly even for generations. They know exactly where they need to place the wheels.
They probably tell each other, “I park under the chestnut tree, the one by the rock.”
“The one by the round rock or the chipped rock?”
“The round rock.”
“That’s a good position.”
These are the cars of mushroom pickers, it’s mushroom picking season in the late, late summer going into September.
We reach the top. We know we’re at the top because the road is flat, the scenery is more open, less wooded, and the TV antennas are these, gigantic up close. They have a certain beauty, unexpectedly. They’re sculptural, like a modern David, proclaiming the grandeur of our culture.
The air and ambiance of the top are alpine. This is Liguria, the Riviera, but it snows up here in the winter. My aunt will tell my mother on the phone, “C’e’ la neve sul Beigua,” to announce that winter has arrived. There’s snow on the Beigua.
And funny enough, now the clouds are below us. We can’t see the sea. We skirted the clouds on the way up but they are still there.
There is a lone large building that looks like an alpine refuge, with a restaurant. A little farther there’s a little alpine church. We walk towards the restaurant for my delayed cappuccino. As we approach we are barked at vigorously by a little dog unleashed. George is wary of dogs, he’s a little afraid, and I try to keep myself between him and the little barking creature. There’s no owner around to restrain him, to coax him back, to quiet him, he is alone atop the big mountain with the big TV towers, defending from attack of mamma and bambino.
We get inside the restaurant and I’m a bit intimidated by the fact that we are the only people there, and it’s now late morning and past milk frothing time. Not enough though to recounce cappuccino again. The owner is courteous but not friendly, as you would expect from an alpine man. George gets a can of Coke and a packaged brioche.
We leave the restaurant and walk around. We encounter two hikers, two men in hiking attire, not flashy but hardcore. George is still holding his soda can and one of them says, in Italian, “I’m so thirsty, can I have a sip?”
George looks at him. I can’t tell if he is processing, trying to understand, or if he understood and does not want to part with his soda.
I laugh and ask the two men where they hiked from. They came up from the Giovo, it’s the pass coming up from the coast to go to Sassello. They plan to hike down to Sassello next. The Giovo to the Beigua on foot, all uphill, is a long hike. Then to Sassello, at least it’s downhill, but it’s also long.
“When did you leave?” I ask.
“Around 7:30.”
It’s now late morning. They’re a little apologetic, that it took them so long, that they took it easy.
I say something gracious, required by form, but sincerely.
We talk a bit more. They ask where I’m coming from. George hasn’t said a word so I don’t have to explain that I’m from America but rather I tell them I’ve come up from the coast.
“In macchina,” by car, I hasten to explain, and then I realize that they knew that.
I ask about the road ahead and they tell me it’s a good road, that it was improved for a bicycle race. Good to know. We part company wishing each other well.
George and I stroll off and, as we had already noticed, we have to watch where we step because the entire top of the Beigua is dotted with sheep poopy. By the by, we see the sheep. And suddenly they are coming right at us. I suspect and fear that sheep stampedes are grossly underreported in the media, that they occur tens of times a year, but because they happen in places like up here no one writes about them. I urge someone to take that up, to take up the story of the worldwide problem of sheep stampedes.
I urge George to move off perpendicularly from the moving sheep, and we are safe. There is a grown man shepherd and he looks at us. I’m sure he thinks we’re idiots.
