It was a warm Saturday in late summer. As I drove across a pancake-flat coastal agrarian landscape, about 50 miles southwest of Rome, a shape materialized out of the haze above the sea. A mountain: greenish-black, sudden, surprising. It gained substance with every bumpy mile my Fiat Panda put behind me, looming over fields stippled with umbrella pines, drained marshes, and grassy dunes that seemed to slide gently into the mirror-smooth Tyrrhenian Sea. 

As the road began to ribbon up and around the southern slope of the mountain, everything subtly shifted. A freshness replaced the humidity of the plain; green scents gave way to the tang of salt. I was suddenly aware of the verticality of things: sinewy oaks leaning out from the steep slope to the right of me, scrubby bush clinging to the even steeper drop on my left. I went around and around, hugging the wide curve of the mountain.