Details

I am trying to remember details.

Like the smell of Fiesole with its tress, clean air and wildlife. Or the feel of walking through its cemetery on Saturday, and feeling haunted by it being so different than cemeteries I had ever been to. Being moved by the ancient Etruscan amphitheatre and the fact that those people settled this area 2500 years ago. 

I think of the emotion I feel when I walk such ancient tracks of lands, streets and their trillions of people's feet that have touched them. I am amazed that cultures thrived on steep hills and rocky lands so long ago, without trains, cars, bikes but instead animal and human power. I think about what these people ate, and wore, how they loved, married, slept, breathed, talked, hugged, kissed, cried. I think they were so much like me that if I fell into their world we could get along just fine. I think that there is plenty to show us that people are mostly good.

I reflect on the taste of wines I tried yesterday in tuscany, and how unique they all were, the flavor, the way they melted down the throat, the smell and our host how he spoke, and presented himself. How he, being a retired veterinarian, teared up when he mentioned losing his truffle hunting dog a few days previous to cancer. How I then teared up thinking about losing dogs through my life and how it always makes you cry.

I remember how things connect in my mind, a smell, a feel of the air, a word, a way the sun glows. Yesterday we stood in a medieval town, much unchanged over the centuries, Monteriggioni. From somewhere a smell of campfire mixed delicately with the humid tuscan sky, the late afternoon sun made the stone glow with the rolling hills. Reminding me of summers camping, reenacting, in Wyoming on the family ranch. Those sun-baked sand stone castles of rural Wyoming and how for some reason they hit me in Tuscany with a fondness, a memory, a longing for something. 

The little things hit home, how a hill or road is angled to remind you of a drive you took in the Black Hills. 

Maybe someone's face will look slightly like a lost friend, or a relative.

Half a planet away and things will send you back home.