This is the website for the Park: http://www.parcoabruzzo.it/ If anyone gets a chance to go there, I highly suggest it. The park has some small mountain towns inside it that have been there since before the Romans conquered the area. So the towns remain, but there are rules about keeping livestock, fishing, and hunting in the park.
The national park is home to all sorts of wildlife (though we didn't see anything large). The park has Marsican Bears, Alpine Wolves, mountain goats, deer, foxes, porcupines, squirrels, elk, lynx, and birds. We were concerned about the bears because they are very common in this park and the area we were in, but Marsican bears are very shy and not as large as grizzlies.
We got to Pescasseroli by bus, and were staying in a refuge (a hostel in the mountains) called The Red Fox. We had called the hostel the previous day, and talked with the owner. It was immediately apparent that this man was a character. He joked about our Italian skills, and then made sure we knew how to reach the town. He told us to call him when we got there.
When we called, he told us that he would come and pick us up. I had the impression that we were the only people staying in this hostel, and I was correct. The owner named Gerardo picked us up in his car. Gerardo is a short, 70 years old Italian dressed in winter gear. He had a short white beard, and he laughed a lot. He especially liked to laugh at us, but in a good hearted way. He said that he would improve out Italian while we stayed with him. he called us "ragazzi" which means "young people". We were the first people to have stayed in the hostel since the summer. Most people go to Pescasseroli in the winter for the skiing and snowboarding, but I think more people should go in the fall. That is when the leaves are changing colors, and the mountain landscape is not as hostile as it is in the winter.
Gerardo invited us to the common room to see the fire and kitchen. He offered us some wine and cookies. He explained that he had already drunk a little too much wine because he thought we weren't coming (our bus was a bit late); but now that we were there, he said he was happy. He then said that he was just going to go out to feed the chickens and would return. He came back with cheese and bread, saying he went to the store to buy it because he thought we were hungry and weren't prepared to not have food at the hostel. We tried to explain that we knew we would have to buy food in town, but Gerardo didn't seem to understand. He showed us how to cook the cheese (which was a local kind of smoked mozzarella) over the fire to make a cheese sandwiches, which were amazing.
We did some hiking that first day to see the ruins of a castle that had been there since the middle ages. From the hill, you could look down and see the whole town.
The is the view from the hostel we stayed at.
That night, we cooked a dinner of pasta with peppers and zucchini.
The next day, we went on a trail suggested to us by Gerardo. We went a little farther than he expected though. We climbed up a mountain, walked along the ridge-line to another mountain, and then walked down. We made it out of the woods before it got dark.
The forests were bright yellow, orange, and red. They were also quiet. We seemed to be the only humans around for miles and miles. We never came across another person that day.
The mountains are high. Some are treacherous. The peaks reach far over the tree line, and are littered with large boulders and rock cliffs. The mountains are cold and windy.
As we walked along the ridge-line, humid air from the valley below was being pushed by the mountains by the wind. As the air rose, it condensed to form clouds right below the edge where we were walking. So as we walked south, we were walking in a perpetual cloud that was being created right there. The huge grey mass was ominous and disorienting as we approached it, and then walking through it was a struggle. The clouds tumbled over the ridge into the valley below. Visibility was low. We came upon a herd of horses in this cloud, but we heard them before we saw them. Why they decided to graze from the sparse plants on this mountain top was beyond me.
When we started our decent out of the clouds, we were in a grassland area. We found another heard of horses on the trail.
"The mountains belong to everyone. Everyone can put their animals in the mountains", Gerardo said later to us, when we told him about all the livestock we saw. The townspeople will leave small herds of horses, cows, and sheep in the mountains to graze. The horses stay there by themselves all year long. Sheepdogs guard the herds of cows in the mountains. I assume the owners feed the dogs. The animals wander wherever they want. We saw this herd in the valley before we started our trek.
That evening, we had dinner with two Italian families who came to stay in the hostel that night. They were very insistent that we join them. We had good time trying to communicate with them, and they had lots of questions for us.
On the last day, we hiked to an area called Pratto Rosso which means Red Field. The field was dotted with tufts of red grasses and bushes. The hillside overlooked Mount Marsicano. The Marsicano people were the people who lived in the area before the Romans took over.
To reach the field, we walked through this area called The Mozzone Grottoes. There were trees here covered in thick moss.
Before we left, Gerardo drove us to town and bought us a coffee at the local bar. We met his friend there, who has unsuccessfully run for left-wing mayor of the town for many consecutive years. Gerardo explained the history of Pescasseroli. At one time, most of the people living there were shepherds. He said there were 50,000 sheep in the surrounding mountains. They stayed there in the warm months, and then were herded to a warmer town in the winter. When the park was made, sheep were no longer allowed to be transported across a border because of the fear that they could spread diseases. This meant that the people could no longer keep many sheep in Pescasseroli because they would have to be housed indoors in the winter. Instead of herding sheep, the people now make most of their money from tourists and people who come to ski in the winter. Gerardo told us to encourage our friends to travel to Pescasseroli and stay in his hostel. He dropped us off at the bus stop and said goodbye. I will miss him, and miss Pescasseroli, and miss the landscape.
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