Future Nostalgia

Wild pigs, twinning couples, and the sweet, slow life.

There was a moment on our hike to paradise, when the rain began to lash us in diagonal torrents and a family of 12 wild pigs hustled and squealed their muscly asses away from us down the jagged granite trail (that now more closely resembled a fierce little river), when I wondered if we might have made a potentially disastrous decision in deciding to brave the weather in search of the perfect swimming beach.

Only 250 people are allowed to visit the pristine Sardinian beach of Cala Goloritzé each day. There are no access roads to the otherworldly turquoise cove; only a steep and somewhat challenging 8 km roundtrip hike or a chartered boat will get you there.

It’s one of those places made infamous by Instagram: dramatic limestone cliffs contrasted against a white pebble beach and a cove so unapologetically blue and so perfectly carved into the landscape that it seems to have sprung from an algorithm rather than a landslide in 1962. If you search “Baunei” you’ll find a treasure trove of images of women with windswept hair and gem-toned bikinis teetering on the edges of the cliffs, faces turned toward the expanse of the Tyrrhenian Sea in a sort of aesthetic ecstasy.

Quite simply: we needed to go.

In an attempt to preserve the natural beauty of the coastline and the surrounding wilderness area, the municipality of Baunei limits the number of visitors per day, requiring reservations and the purchase of tickets before descending into the canyon. We felt lucky to get three of the last spots, and to be visiting on the 31st of May, one day before the official boat season began and one day after Cleo’s 12th birthday.

It was supposed to rain which meant that we’d probably get wet but also that eventually the sun would most likely come out. As we zipped up our rain jackets and packed our bags we made snarky jokes about mother nature thwarting the photo ops of fair-weather influencers. We’d lucked out! There would be no boats full of people descending on the beach, and the less intrepid hikers might be deterred by the weather. We high-fived each other for nailing the timing, and set off with our sunscreen, bottles of water, cookies, cheese and bread packed dutifully in our packs.

The rain was consistently gentle for the first 40 or so minutes of our hike, but things took a turn for the dramatic as we neared the saddle of the mountains. As the scrub transitioned to a more sparse granite landscape, the birds went quiet and the rain began in earnest. Like, fill the pockets of your rain jacket earnest. And, then there were the wild pigs.

Run-ins with wild pigs are not always benign affairs, and so we grabbed rocks in our hands and jumped on to the sides of the path, pretending to be statues and allowing them to pass. The fact that they showed so little interest in us, fleeing in such focused cohesion, should have been a loud and clear message that things were about to turn dicey. But, we’re outdoorsy people from the Pacific Northwest — we’re experienced hikers and we were determined to swim. And so we proceeded.

The rocky trail, formerly a bit slippery and treacherous, suddenly became a swiftly moving stream. And then lighting started to strike around us. The thunderclaps and violent wind made it impossible to hear one another, but I could see Andy’s grimace of urgency and fear as he looked back at me from further down the trail. This look from a self-professed thrill-seeking adrenaline junkie confirmed my terror. We were stuck at the top of a mountain on exposed granite, potentially the worst place to be in the middle of a thunder and lighting storm.

Andy went from navigating the trail quickly to running, searching out a safe place —a rock outcropping or cave —to huddle under. As we scrambled to find cover we encountered a few groups of people crouched underneath trees— a terrible place to find yourself while lightning strikes. At one point one of my shoelaces came untied and I knew that if I didn’t stop to tie it I’d slip and fall. Cleo, not wanting to leave me behind, stopped to wait for me, and I yelled as loudly as I could for her to keep moving no matter what. Her face crumpled in distress as she looked away from me, racing over the rocks to catch up to Andy. It was not a great moment.

We finally found a safe spot tucked away under the rocks, and huddled together wide-eyed and silent, watching the storm as it battered the mountains around us. Cold, dripping, and wrung out with adrenaline, the story of a childhood acquaintance who had been struck by lightning and killed on a backpacking trip in the High Sierras, his horrible fate a cautionary tale for all of us as we learned to navigate the backcountry, surfaced from a dark corner of my memory. What the fuck were we doing?

Life is full of these moments, the narrowly missed tragedies, not all of them obvious or dramatic. Risk is everywhere all the time. It’s in the mundanity of climbing in your car and driving to work as well as in the decision to get pregnant or go for a hike with your family. Still, what a tragic and awful parenting fail it would have been if we’d killed our daughter the day after her 12th birthday. It’s just sometimes so hard to know where to draw the line between manageable risk, adventure and outright danger. And sometimes, you don’t really get to choose. A situation that you’d assessed as safe and well-within the scope of your abilities is suddenly not-so-safe. All you have at your disposal is your instinct and the way you respond to the crisis in front of you. Thankfully, none of us panicked. And we did find shelter. And we were ok. And, spoiler, we did get to swim. But also, it was scary.

As fast as it had descended, the storm moved on. We climbed back towards the trail and within a few hundred meters we ran into one of the rangers who had sequestered a group of hikers in a stone and wood sheep fold built into the mouth of a cave. He told us that we could proceed to the beach, still at least an hour’s hike away, but that we might be alone in doing so. Everyone else was hiking out.

Cleo made a valiant case for joining the group and leaving. She was cold and miserable and she’d lost interest in paradise. But, it was clear to us that the storm had abated, and the opportunity to keep going and have the beach alone was too much to pass up. We decided to proceed slowly and cautiously. Cleo stomped off down the trail, too angry to engage, pissed off and refusing to talk.

By the time we made it down to the sea it was sunny and warm. We discarded our layers of sodden clothing on the rocks and and took the full measure of the of the scene in front of us: a few people scattered across a pristine beach, puffy white thunderheads moving swiftly across the water (this time away from us), and the famous limestone pinnacle jutting dramatically out over our heads. We ate lunch, jumped off rocks and swam. Floating in the crystal clear sea, staring back at the formidable mountains, I said a prayer of gratitude to our earth, held my breath, and let my body sink heavily into the water.

In one of the first months of lockdown we watched The Black Stallion together as a family. The film looms large from my childhood—I’ve watched it many times—but this particular viewing I was captivated by the stark beauty of the scenery. Something about the surreality of being sequestered at home for an indeterminate amount of time, wondering if we’d ever travel again, inspired me to track down specific shooting locations for the film in Sardinia. I spent hours pouring over satellite images of the coastline, promising myself that if we made it through the pandemic we’d travel there some day. And we did.

We spent 10 glorious days exploring and falling deeply in love with the island. The sheep, the rocky terrain, the wild cistus in pink, white and yellow blooming across mountain plateaus, the sea, the food, the people, the pace of life. All of it. Usually by the end of a trip I am ready to go home; to sleep in my own bed, cook meals that feature vegetables and resume my regular day-to-day routines. This time it felt really hard to leave, as if we needed at least a month, or maybe the rest of our lives (?) to really dig in.

Both Andy and I were both a little teary as our plane departed from Olbia, acknowledging that our time in this part of the world is drawing to a close and neither one of us is ready or excited to go. As we flew back into Venice, locating the campanile next to our apartment building and Cleo’s school from a vantage point thousands of feet in the air, I felt pure uncomplicated love for this place, and a healthy dose of what we in our family refer to as future nostalgia (thanks Dua Lipa); a longing for something we haven’t yet lost.

Orosei, Sardegna

My favorite place to people watch in Venice is at the tables in front of Bar Milan in Campo San Cazian. The bar is a divey, no-frills, local establishment with simple food, cheap drinks and comfy chairs. It’s the place I land at the end of the day before I pick Cleo up from school at 5, plopping my bags laden with groceries, computer, wet swimsuit and towel on the chair beside me, and settling in with a small glass of Prosecco to watch the fashion and dog parade go by.

There are two streams of traffic that crisscross in front of the bar: one that leads from the center of the city (the Rialto) out towards Fondamenta Nove (a hub for vaporetto traffic), and one that locals use to avoid the busier calle. Venetians are usually easy to spot because (huge generalization) they usually have nice shoes, bold statement glasses, quality bags and purses and tailored suits/jackets. The tourists are a pretty mixed bag in terms of fashion choices (Japanese and French women BRING it) with Americans —with notable exceptions— deserving of the reputation we have for dressing poorly.

Because Venice is one of those places where you get to see a huge cross section of people from around the world, it is pretty fascinating to pinpoint specific worldwide sartorial trends. Last summer it was what we coined “The Outfit,” small floral prints and chunky white running shoes, during the winter it was pleather pants (thank god that trend burned out quickly), and now I’m noticing this:

Couples who dress alike and hold hands.

Which leads me to some HUGE existential questions, like:

1. Do they collaborate on the outfits in the morning kind of like I did with my best friend in 4th grade? (And if so, do they call each other on Swatch phones to make their plan?)

2. Have their sartorial preferences evolved synchronously with their relationships, or did their aesthetic bent draw them towards one another (classic chicken/egg scenario)?

3. And for realsies: How do they still like one another this much, even after the pandemic?

Is it a little weird and creepy that I surreptitiously take pictures of these couples when they are walking in front of me? Yes? Does it embarrass my child that I do it? Yes. But also, almost everything I do these days embarrasses her. Do I justify it in the service of sociological/anthropological study? Also, yes.

Unlike the other trends which so clearly spring from the bowels of the internet, this one seems to be an inevitable outcome of longterm partnership. Which is kind of sweet and lovely and also kind of terrifying.

An older Venetian couple neither holding hands nor dressed alike.

The sheer joy that I derive from simply sitting and casually observing—of not doing but simply being—is something I am anxious about losing when we return to Portland. The ancient Romans had a word for this state of being, otium, which means a sort of freedom, ease, peace and repose. The best definition of the word that I found is a “freedom from business.” Amen.

The modern Italians describe this way of resisting productivity as il dolce far niente, the sweetness of doing nothing. “Nothing” being spending time chatting with family, friends or neighbors, a long lingering meal, a nap, or simply, just existing in the world in a non-transactional way. I’ve always excelled at hanging out (we call it “maxxing and relaxxing” in our family), but I’ve also felt deep guilt about it. I’ve overcompensated by being hyper-organized, perfectionistic and working when I should be resting in order to somehow justify appeasing the parts of myself that just want (and need) to slow the fuck down.

I’ve spent a lot of time here unwinding the toxic tendrils of the American ethos of hustle, feeling both immensely privileged to have the opportunity to rest and recover, and absolutely terrified of the prospect of being sucked back in to the undertow of busyness and work that dominates our life in in the States. Because there is a terror underlying it all, a justifiable fear that if you resist grinding, hustling and constantly working, the repercussions could be dire.

I think that one of the most upsetting and ultimately radicalizing aspects of working in public schools for so many years was seeing almost every possible permutation of the way we allow people to fall through the cracks in our society. The true savagery of our priorities plays out right in front of you through the lives of the children you come to know and sometimes even love. I’ve written about all of this extensively, and I won’t dip too far into this well of sadness, anger and frustration, but I feel that there is a unique cruelty built into the structure of our society. It’s what makes me want to hide here forever, despite knowing that I have an incredible community of family and friends half a world away.

Palette cleanser: Paradise in Capo Testa, Sardinia. Our earth is so fucking AMAZING!

Note to self, don’t forget to remember:

A period of rough chop on the journey from the train station back to Murano; water from the lagoon unceremoniously splashing into the open windows of the vaporetto eliciting a yelp of surprise from the woman sitting in the seat in front of me watching cooking videos on her phone.

Eating caramello salato gelato in a chocolate dipped cone on the first truly hot day of the year, gelato melting so quickly that I was forced to consume it with alarming speed and gracelessness; managing to get it in my hair, on my shirt and skirt, and between each of the fingers of my right hand.

Old men in speedos, the smell of artichokes lightly fried; children streaking through the low tidal waters and mud of Sant'Erasmo, clouds of mosquitoes terrorizing ankles and tender wrists; Cleo starfishing on the bow of Tiane’s boat on the way back from the sagra.

Most importantly, don’t forget this afternoon, a regular Sunday spent hanging out in the apartment with Cleo. Eating popcorn, shooting the shit, listening to music. How you bribed her to go on a walk with you by promising gelato (limone basilico — the BEST) and ended up wandering to the back of the island to say hi to Chiara who grows flowers in an unruly and beautiful garden. How you took pictures of Cleo in the soccer field making daisy chains, and she took this picture of you, holding the tulips you bought from Chiara, and how truly calm and content you look.

And that’s all I’ve got for now. Please feel free to share if you’re feeling it.

xoxo, Belle

Hot Links:

I made a road trip mix for our trip to Sardinia. It’s a real mash-up. Enjoy.

I had the immense pleasure of reading poet Ross Gay’s exquisite collection of essays The Book of Delights. He somehow manages to strike a balance between tender, funny and incisive while dealing with everything from relationships to nature to race. It’s a fierce and beautiful book, a must-read in my humble opinion.

This conversation between Julia Louis Dreyfus and Isabel Allende was moving on so many levels. Their frank discussion of death, sex and parenthood feels revolutionary and familiar, comforting and profound. I’m on my third listen.

It took me a few days to finish the film Aftersun. It requires your full attention, as it’s a verrrry slow burn of a film, the power of which didn’t truly hit me until the last 20 minutes. On the surface it’s the story of a father and daughter on a trip to Turkey, but somehow the director, Charlotte Wells, very quietly, through spare and understated imagery and dialogue, manages to capture the nostalgia of childhood as well as the complexity of being a parent. By the end I was overwhelmed with emotion. I’m still thinking about it.

This article by Evan Osnos about the uber rich hiring pop stars for private events is another disturbing and also so-compelling-you-can’t-look-away deep dive into the excesses of the ruling class.

We’ve been playing a lot of card games recently. Our go-to game right now is Deuces (also called “Big Two”) with hands of Gin Rummy thrown in.

And, an epilogue of sorts: Succession is over. Long live Succession. Good bye to my favorite terrible, horrible very, very bad tv friends. Ted Lasso is also over and I have some thoughts, mainly that the 3rd season was a hot mess. About three episodes in I had a realization that it had become Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood for adults. Each episode seemed to include a tidy little morality tale. They tried to do too much, say too much and be too much in the last season. The sweet earnestness that somehow worked in the first two seasons landed as false and treacly in the 3rd. It’s crazy that in the end I felt more emotionally connected to the sociopaths of the Roy family than I did to this show full of truly good people trying to being kind and compassionate. That right there is the power of masterful writing.