Calabria, and My Garden of Eden

My mother's village, Santa Caterina dello Ionio, was perched high up on a mountain top. Each day at 5am I begged my aunts to take me with them to my grandfather's orto (vegetable garden) he had named 'Giangi', which was a good half hour's hike downhill into the gorge... We came across people who got to their farms way before we even got out of bed. The aroma of baking bread made my stomach growl and I could see the tiny flames glowing inside their brick and stone ovens as we continued down the path. I knew we had arrived at nonno's orto when I saw the rivulet, more like a brook, gently meandering through the bottom of his property. One of my aunts lifted hefty boulders to block the water's flow and create a pool where she would wash our clothes, beating them on the rocks before drying them on a branch of the nearby gigantic fig tree that looked hundreds of years old. We were deep in a revine, and as I looked up I saw the most wonderful garden built on...