This was a day on the mountain. I hiked with friends up to the Eremo delle Carceri, a hidden retreat on Mount Subasio dating back to early Christian times. This is where Francis and some of his closest followers used to go to pray in simple, primitive caves. While the Eremo has expanded some over the centuries, it remains a beautiful, peaceful place. After visiting here in the 1930's, Simone Weil wrote, "Little had I dreamt that such a marvellous place existed. I would have stayed for the rest of my life - if only women were accepted - at the tiny monastery of the Carceri, an hour and fourteen minutes walk up the mountainside from Assisi. No more heavenly and tranquilizing sight exists than Umbria as seen from up there. St. Francis certainly knew how to choose the most ravishing spots in which to practice poverty: He was far from being an ascetic...."
From there we continued up to the summit of the mountain. We were rewarded with magnificent Umbrian views. But the tiny signs of spring were just as wonderful.
On the way back down, we stopped at a secluded place I discovered a couple of years ago off on a rise named Colle San Rufino, higher up than the Eremo delle Carceri. Here among abandoned ruins, over many years, visitors had created a kind of shrine, just by leaving small icons or pictures or words.
One example:
The words mean, I think, "Who gives, gives to God."
As it is late, I'll leave you with a cute if not existential sign from a path at the Eremo.
Ciao.
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