I dropped out of college after my sophomore year. Long story.

Then through a series of accidents (including a broken leg, a broken heart, and -- no lie -- meeting two strangers on a train) I emerged on a late summer afternoon from the train station in a little town in Italy that I'd never heard of before and had never intended to go to: Pietrasanta.

The town walls dated back centuries and built into them, just next to the arched gateway opening into the main piazza was Bar Igea. (You can just see it's awning in the drawing below.)

It was tiny inside and the tables out front were in the shade of the ancient trees. I tacked a notice up by the bar saying -- in English, because my Italian then was minimal and mostly incorrect -- that I was looking for a place to live.

In this half-assed way, the next day I rented -- for the equivalent of $35/month -- a two-story, five-room house in the hills above the town. There was no heat except a fireplace, but there was a fig tree growing right by the front door and a view of the sea from the tiny balcony. At night, I could hear the surf from my bed. On clear days, I could sometimes see the coastline of France.

The marble mountains come up very abruptly from the narrow ocean plain and the climb up to my house was steep. There was a bus that zigzagged up the switchbacks from town and I rode it when I was going up. But when I was going down, I walked on the footpath through the olive groves that covered the mountainside. Sometimes I met a herd of goats along the way. People who have ever had much to do with goats know that this is not necessarily as charming as it sounds.

The olive groves are terraced by low stone walls, centuries old. This is a goat-free picture I took one day on the path.

At harvest time, the olive growers hang gossamer white nets under the trees to catch the falling olives before they hit the ground. The olive harvest lasted for weeks and, during it, the mountainside seemed misty all the time, like clouds had taken up permanent residence there among the trees.

You can't eat an olive straight off the trees. Before they are cured, they taste like wood and have the same consistency. I found that out the hard way.