A POEM A DAY - GENERATIONS


It feels like a long time since I was in the campo taking this photograph. In reality I have often spent weeks at home due to ill health but the idea I can not go out makes this time seem different to my general winter self isolation. 


The hills around the village are striped with terraces, many now abandoned with ancient olive and carob trees wilding amongst pine and holm oak. Others are still worked, cars now replacing the donkeys and men climbing the steep paths on foot to their land. These walls were raised by hand from the stones picked from this rough land to make the terrace strips capable of growing essential crops. Olive oil is still made in our area from the olives grown in the valley and its hillsides. 


I find the continuity of this way of life reassuring. This land has lived through war, drought, hunger, enforced exodus and poverty but the oil, honey, wine and crops grown here have nurtured life, flavoured food, cured ills as families found love and fun together despite hardship. 



© 2020 Jacqueline Knight Cotterill.  All rights reserved. 




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