broad brush strokes of a place loved

The ascent to Tomino is not for the faint of heart – or of stomach. Viscious switch-backs fold the road upon itself in a zigzag reaching ever higher towards the summit. The terrain is unforgiving, and unforgivingly beautiful, and your eyes are drawn ever to the view that lurches and swoops beyond the windows. Everywhere you look the ground is terraced with low, rambling walls of shale climbing the hillsides, shaded by groves of old, twisted olive trees or abundantly draped with grape vines. There is no bright green to greet the eye with gladness; a fine powder of thin soil covers the rocks, brushes the leaves, dulls what the sun would polish to a high shine.

The village: piled willy nilly on top of one another, tiny villas wedged into every available space, stacked on the hillside like a pile of suitcases waiting to be filled. The sunlight leaves no doubt as to shadow and light, edges slashed clean and clear, no hazy middle ground.

Children scattering before you, intent on their sun and stone games, running wild through avenues so close that two outstretched arms brush the villas on either side, dancing through the inscrutable politics of childhood played out on the streets of summertime.

Everyone complains about le mistral, a force of nature recently descended upon the mountainside, fury whipping the Mediterranean into a whitecapped frenzy, the flowering laurels bending to the ground, a flaxen-haired gamine playing with her tati’s pashmina, arms raised, exhilaration in a makeshift sail on the wind, flying along the ground that feet barely touch. The habituants of Tomino trade easy stories back and forth about these mighty winds that come and go in a matter of days, but leave an indelible imprint on the old timers’ memories. They complain about le mistral in the same even-mannered tone with which they lamented the heat the wind had vanquished: weather bashing as the village sport.

tomino. cap corse. starving eyes and wild heart to drink them in.