Reportage week 1

Sliding accidentally through mud and shit. The stick in my right hand is half cane half Shillelagh. Chosen because of the R burned into the handle that felt personal. A dog runs ahead, hunting truffles, though it's not the season, and we find only horses. The guide's name is Lucas. The fifth Lucas we've met since arriving in Spoleto. He isn't as nice as as the Lucas from Bar Duella, but the constant treats and prise given to his dog, who is destined to fail, plus the way he wields his cane, always close to his right leg until nudged past the dog's nose, soon wins me over. A round of "Be a Man" from Disney's Mulan soon begins and though I only know half the lines, most in the chorus, I join when I can and try to pick over and remember the first lines of The Hobbit with our American Lucas. The path then became a muddy slope for three meters and since I was second to last in a group of seventeen people it had become gauged with boot prints. Past this the path, which was the shape of a large teardrop, slowly closed and the seventeenth century farm came back into view of the fourteen stick fighting college students, the two laughing professors, the guide Lucas, his dog, and three horses, two black and one white, who had silently followed us.