L'Italo-Americano

L'Italo-Americano THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2017 www.italoamericano.org 4 on our table and I could eat a wagon of those. Thinking of it, I still can. And of course, memories of vendemmia. My grandparents from my mother's side came from the Acqui area of Piedmont, known all over the world for its wines. My beloved grandfather, class 1913, a man of long-gone times, had a small vineyard he cared for with love and expertise, and whose grapes were used to make the most amazing dolcetto. One of the most beautiful pictures I own of myself is of the two of us standing one beside the other in that vineyard, he with a ciga- rette is his mouth and his arm around my shoulders and I, not more than four or five, squinting my eyes against the sun. Both happy. Both smiling. Grandad's small vineyard no longer exists today and he's been gone for twenty years, yet there isn't a moment - and not only during the Fall, alas - I fail to count those distant days of September among the most serene and happy of my existence. Thinking about it, though, the Italian Fall brings even more to our eyes and minds. Think about the ever changing colors of the season: I have memories of those, too, of course, and of the count- less drawings our primary school teacher made us do of the hills around town, with all those yel- lows and reds, purples and orange. Fast forwards some twen- ty years, and you'll find me in college, spending most of my time with people from New England and finding out that there traveling around and go check out the mesmerizing colors of nature is, this time of the year, a real thing. It's foliage time. Oh well, we have beautiful colors in Italy, too, but we don't do that, I thought. But I was wrong because we Italians did find our American friends' idea quite cool and exported it. Now, even the Touring Club Italiano, the ultimate source if you want to know what to see, eat and drink in Italy, created its own list of foliage locations to visit. We have breathtaking beechwoods in the Parco Regionale of Monte Beigua, near Genoa, the deep yel- lows of chestnut trees sitting next the pines' evergreen coolness in Roero, in Piedmont and, while there, go take a look also at the miles and miles of crimson red, yellows and light greens of its vineyards. Mont Blanc's Val Ferret offers thousands of larches, in all nature's own nuances of orange, yellow and green and Trentino, another fertile dollop of beautiful land embraced by the Alps, has the enchanting Valle dei Mocheni. I could go on for hours, really, because as the Touring Club says, in the end, every cor- ner of Italy where nature reigns undisputed is a place to see dur- ing the Fall. A bit like America. You know, during those very same years in university, when I became vicariously American through the love and friendship of my US classmates, I kept close to my Italian roots by sharing the house with a girl from Alto- Adige. Tall, blonde and austere she looked, but she was friendly, gentle and immensely funny. It was during one of our endless conversations while drinking espresso from an old, cherished caffettiera she confessed the very same playful memories I had about vendemmia, she had about apple picking. Yes, apple picking, yet another popular Fall thing in some areas of the US - or so those very same friends of above told me. Beside being an important moment in the agricultural calen- dar of the region and source of income for many seasonal work- ers, apple picking season in Trentino and Alto-Adige's val- leys is a moment of traditional celebrations, and joyful gathering, just like vendemmia is in my Piedmont: in Trentino's Val di Non, the apple festival Pomaria keeps people busy the second weekend of October and in Alto- Adige, indeed not far from my friend's home, it's to Naz-Sciaves in the Val d'Isarco one needs to go to breath in the purest of Alpine air, while enjoying the crispiest of apples and traditional harvest time celebrations. I read through these few para- graphs and I cannot help but notice two themes run through- out: memories and colors. And when you think about it, what's Fall if not the season of just that, memories and colors? Fall colors are a gift of nature: they're deep, rich and endlessly varied, just like that dream box of crayons all kids really want for Christmas at least once in their lifetime, and that's why the Fall never struck me as the season of sadness, even if that's how many see it. It is certainly, however, a sea- son made to reminisce: it's the light of shorter days and the chiaroscuro it creates with those colors that does it. And reminisc- ing, sometimes, make us all a bit nostalgic, but there's no reason and no time to be: this is a season too beautiful not to be lived to its full. And if you happen to spend part of it in Italy, this year, you've just discovered there is even more to do, see and enjoy than what you thought. There's more to Italian Fall than you think NEWS & FEATURES TOP STORIES PEOPLE EVENTS Continued from page 1 Apple picking: a traditional activity in Trentino-Alto Adige: did you know it? The Italian grape harvest, locally known as "La Vendemmia", is an age-old tradition dating back to the Roman Empire

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