Funny to think that this is our third Lunedì Pasqueta since coming here to change our lives. The first two we spent at Charlie’s house in the hills above Parona, but this year there will be no festa. Easter fell early and the weather will be too cold for outdoor events.

We had rented a car on Saturday to run errands, thought to spend our Lunedì Pasqueta on a giro. We are both a little groggy from the festa, with that heavy, day-after-wine hunger. We drive up into the hills looking for an incredible artiginiale food store Roberta introduced us to last year, Corrado Benedetti, Via Croce Del Schioppo. It’s a kind of savory mecca, everything hand-made in the regional tradition, meats and cheeses and wines and bread; they have this lardo spread that just kills us. It is what it sounds like- lard, but not that stuff they use to grease the grills of U.S. diners. This is top-shelf lard, rendered smooth, blended with herbs and so purely meaty you could swoon.

There’s a huge crowd, everybody stocking up for the festa day, and we must wait our turn. It’s a torture watching them slice the salami; we follow the little tastes of cheese passed to the customers in front of us (who of course have to sample everything before making up their minds) with eager eyes, drool at the thump of the lead pounder flattening out perfect veal cutlets. Finally it’s our turn. We get sorpressa, an awesome kind of fatty salami, stracchino which is a spreadable cow’s milk cheese typical of the Lombardy region, several fresh rolls, and, of course, a jar of that killer lard.

Back in the car, under Mary’s watchful eyes, we split the bread with our fingers and spread on the cheese. Two slices of meat is enough to fill the sandwich out to perfection. This is how you best appreciate the food of Italy. They don’t whip up incredible sauces, don’t play games with flavor and consistency. There is no fusion here, no desire to explode the palette. It’s just simple, hearty food, made right where you stand, and totally satisfying- especially if you’re a carnivore.

The day is lovely, clear and bright after a period of rain. It’s still quite cold up on the heights and we see patches of snow among the evergreen trees. We had come this way back in 2001, that magical day where we just drove around in a dream. I remember how we bought gas at an auto-pump with those crazy lire. Today we pass and immediately recognize the same little station, clinging to it’s lonely curve of the two-lane mountain road.

We end up in Trentino Alto-Adige, a lovely, mountainous region, disembarking in the small city of Rovereto. There is a castle and a centro storico, a museum of the Italian army, a cold and sparkling branch of the Leno River which runs on to join the Adige. Just outside of town, we go on a steep hike to view dinosaur footprints. In Dante’s time, there was a massive avalanche in these mountains which is mentioned in The Inferno. He’s describing the descent into Hell as similar to the scene of rock-slide and ruin along this great flank of the mountain, a scene still vivid today as you climb along a path to the area where the footprints were discovered. Dante says, in Canto XII-”…qual è quella ruina che nel fianco di qua da Trento l’Adice percosse, o per tremoto o per sostegno manco” which roughly translates as “…which is like the ruin that struck the side of Trento Alto Adige, either by earthquake or landslide”.

The footprints are awesome, pressed deeply into a flat slab of what is now rock. Nutty to think this stretch of rock was once the muddy floor of a steaming pre-historic jungle, somehow covered and sealed whole by the earth, hardened over millennia, and spit back into the sun by the great avalanche of Dante’s day. In my mind, I can place that twenty foot track of prints back into the moment of their impression. I can picture the land entirely altered, darkened, dropped down to sea level, filled with strange cries and the creakings of the giant lizard as he lumbered by, living his instinct life ages before the human imagination recreated him from bones.

One gross thing. Along the river walk in Rovereto, where they have campaign posters arrayed for the upcoming elections in April, there is a Lega Nord announcement, a referendum to ban the establishment of mosques in Trentino Alto-Adige. The posters are plastered all over and many have been angrily ripped down. We see a family of Middle-Eastern or perhaps North-African folks walking past a bank of them. There is a father and mother, a teenage boy, and a daughter of maybe nine or ten years. Quite possibly they are Muslim, though the mother has no head-scarf. They are nicely dressed in Western style and seem happy together as they come upon a swath of these ugly, hateful, dumb-headed announcements. One of the posters has been ripped down and a piece of it rests, crumpled, on the sidewalk. Lawren and I notice, as they pass, the little girl take a strong kick at that piece of poster, sending it flying into the grass. Brava! Remember that the Lega wants to ban Mosques for legal immigrants to this country, those who follow the rules and pay the taxes, who contribute to this dwindling Italian society where the birthrate lags behind the death-rate, those who have every right to worship however they see fit in what is supposed to be an open, Democratic society. And The Lega is one of the fastest growing political movements in Italy today.