And, oh, what delightful treats I've sampled these past few weeks in the haunting tranquility of southeast Italy's sparsely-populated lands--again, a place I hadn''t originally intended to walk through. Before reaching Italy, I had planned to head up the more direct, warmer Mediterranean coast to Rome, but along the way a range of wispy mountains to my right had proved to be irresistable. And so, up and up and up I was to go, for over 25 kilometers, completely undisturbed, save for the sweet notes of innumerable songbirds and spring-fed brooks, and an old hermit who waved me into his goat-filled hut for a few hours of homemade wine and hunter's sausage.

To my surprise, but perhaps not to the spirit of the worldwalk, my size 12 boots were to lead me down, down, down the other side of the mountain range, the eastern side, from which I was to never return to the honking traffic and peeling, sterile condominiums that characterized the road to Rome. What I was to descend into, on the Adriatic side of Italy, was the Italy I'd been searching for all along: a kindly, peaceful land of gray stone-walled olive groves, breeze-kissed meadows of margarine-tinted daisies and blood-red poppies, oceans of deep wavy grass, and misty cool beaches of glistening dark rocks.

Thanks to the greater wisdom of the walk's spirits, I now had something far better...something called magic. For how else can I describe the excitement that rushed through me one overcast afternoon, when I ventured upon the cliff top shell of a lonesome castle ruin guarding an abandoned earthquake-shattered seaside lane? Or what of later that evening, when I huddled very close to a driftwood campfire on the tiny beach that hugged the castle ruin's foundation. I was so sure that more than mere enchantment was peering down at me from the darkening castle's hulk.

Then several nights later, there was to be the Sassi. When I first gazed wide-eyed into the enormous spotlighted bowl of low hills near Matera that contained the abandoned ancient city called the sassi (rock), I could not believe what I was seeing. It was as if I was gazing into Time's window. Glaring back at me were the ashen walls and hollowed windows of not one ruined building but those of an entire city! I stared at the mortared ghosts like some mesmerized Huck Finn, impatient for the light of dawn so that I could begin my exploration of the 500-year-old relics.

The next thing to betwitch my senses was the Adriatic Sea. Across one vineyard, then another, then another I would walk to reach the distant surf where I could just make out groups of fishermen tossing long nets into the waves. What creatures might those fishermen be trapping, I had wondered excitedly. The sea is a place of endless fascination to me. Having been raised in a land of cornfields and maple forests, I can't help marveling child-like at the squiggly, scaly, saucer-eyed things that that liquid universe of the sea is always divving up.

When, at long last, I reached the sea and watched as the men, after several minutes of grunting and straining, pulled their nets onto the beach pebbles, and the nets' cords were pulled apart, piles of shimmering glass-like fish the size of my fingers spilled out.

"What are these?" I asked the red faces smiling above the glittering sea jewels.

"Sardines!" one of the men shouted, as he scooped a handful into his bearded mouth.

He offered me a handful, as he chewed the live fish heartily I hestitated, for the fish looked too precious to eat. And yet the adventurous part of me couldn't resist the temptation. I tossed three or four of the fish past my lips. A smile creased my face: Like everything else in southeast Italy that was meant for the stomach, or the soul, the fish tasted...heavenly.

Steven