Paradise lost and found

‘A volte dai tutto, ma non basta’ Sometimes you give everything but it is not enough.

Hugo had mended the puncture in my bike, the helmets were charged. Time for a bike ride. We had been promised days of glorious sunshine, albeit with a bit of a blow, and then thunderstorms.

After a quick coffee and cornetto in our local bar we set off. Some wispy clouds, thin as cobwebs, floated in the crevices where the river plains meet the Pisan mountains.

It was an idyllic late April day in our corner of Tuscany -china blue skies, jasmine and roses in full bloom, all the wild birds at maximum tweet, with a gusty cold wind.

We headed off on a gravel road which flanked the Serchio. It was wonderful, fields of poppies in the wild meadows, nightingales in the trees hiding the river, the fava beans are in full production, globe artichokes rose on stalks, washing was flapping outside the little houses. I tried to catch a picture looking back at the mountains. A plume of white smoke arose in the corner. It looked rather a big plume.

We turned off a tiny side shoot. Entangled weeds knitted together so we passed through a tunnel to the river Serchio, luminous and almost jade was on its last stretch to the sea. Clumps of pollen floated through the air catching the light, dandelion stars spinning in the air. Tiny shoals of fish fry picked around at a small launching jetty.

‘Paradise Found’ I said to Hugo.

Little did we know that behind us Dante’s inferno was taking root.

We cycled on another bar, the 1912 bar, in an old Tenuta, an off-shoot up a no entry road far from the crowd. Swifts, fast as arrows, dived back and forth to mud nests under the eves. There was the smell of coffee and Jasmin with perhaps the faintest hint of wood smoke. There we met Sandro, a lovely man who told us proudly that he wasn’t there all day as he swapped with his daughter so she could take over and he look after his grandchildren. What a lovely thing to have your children so close that you can see them every day and gather up grandchildren as they spill from arms and toddle towards childhood.

We pointed the bikes in the direction of home cycling away from the sea and back towards the Pisan mountains. Now we can look at the hills and know the villages. We know which hill harbours our favourite coffee bars, where to go for a summer night wine tasting lit by strings of fairy lights. The white smoke looked more billowy and powerful. But we thought nothing of it. It is too early in the year for a bush fire.

The padded shorts had stopped functioning and my little legs were starting to tingle with tiredness.

‘Artichokes’ said Hugo through the static on the intercom

‘What? Yes I saw the artichoke’s on the way’ I said

‘Not artichokes’ bellowed Hugo the intercom suddenly working properly ‘my arse hurts!’

By the time we got home, the blue skies were obscured by a blanket of white that stretched out to the coast. Yes, but it is too early and cold for a bush fire.

The next day we went for a lunch with friends in the mountains in the Garfagnana. On the way back, a good half an hour from home, we suddenly saw that there was an enormous cloud of smoke. It looked like a volcano. Getting back the smoke was belching out, and somehow stained with orange. It was blowing a hoolie, so blowy that my washing had been clean blown off the line.

Our friends, veterans of the Camaiore inferno of the few years ago called.

‘Is it safe?’

‘It’s fine, it can’t jump the river Serchio’ I said. But the smoke did seem awfully close from the window and there was a lot of it.

The next day, day three of the fire, we retraced our route this time cycling with our Camaiore friends. We stopped to talk to other cyclists as we watched the Canadairs fly by.

The firemen and pilots that go into fight fires are rightly considered the bravest of heroes. One cyclists told us of a Canadair accident above Forte di Marmi. The smoke had obscured electrical cables strung between pylons. The pilots hit a cable causing damage to the plane and a fire. Despite losing control they almost made it back to the sea where they have could landed, but tragicaly crashed into a house.

Lines of Canadair planes filled the sky dropping water over the fire. Helicopters circled.

We got back to find that villages had been evacuated. We could only guess at the horrors up there in the hillside crematorium. Mont Faeta, Fairy Mountain, was an inferno. 800 hectares burnt. 3000 people evacuated. Houses lost. Apparently from windows in Lucca the trees were silhouetted in red flames. One of the fires had jumped the River Serchio to our side.

The absolute ban on open fires starts in July and ends in August. The time for cutting the olive branches is in winter. I now know that a typical May day celebration is to burn off the twigs reducing the risk of a bush fire in the hot dry summers. Even as the clouds of smoke hung in the sky, as Canadairs flew back and forth, trying to tame the jumping flames we cycled past people setting up BBQs in the open as part of this tradition.

The next day we went for coffee in quaint San Guiliano Terme. Everything was eerily normal and picturesque. Not even a hint of the smoke that still lingered near us.

Today the fourth day we think the fire is out. Thin tendrils of smoke curl up from charred hillsides but the Canadair heros and the firefighters can rest. The thunderstorms will do the rest and then it will take years for the forest to recover.

Facebook is full of emotion. The people who used to greet the day opening window to Monte Faeta, topped with snow, capped with a black cloud for rain, dressed in autumn or spring colours, lament. The red dancing flames at night have stopped. The skies have returned to blue, neither the sun nor moon are veiled with the guaze of smoke. The smell of woodfire has lifted. Instead there are the charred smoking ruins of a magical mountain.

Two men have come forward. This was no arson. The fire got away from them. They have been told to instruct lawyers.

I feel so sorry for them. They were just doing their job, tidying up an olive grove and woof, the fire has torn away from them blown by a cold, eager wind.

I feel sorry for all the wildlife, the wolves, the boars, the deer, the porcupines, the lizards, the snakes, the birds, the insects, the farm animals everything consumed by the fire.

I feel sorry for those who went out and found themselves evacuated, unable to go home, hoping for the best for house and animals. They are being allowed back now.

On the news a man, a fireman himself, stands in tears, choked with emotion, barely able to speak describing what parts of his house were burnt.

‘A volte dai tutto, ma non basta’ Sometimes you give everything but it is not enough.