Cinigiano, Tuscany — August 17, 2024

August 17, 2024. Cinigiano, Tuscany. I'm watching the country through a car window — a soft reflection in the upper corner, olive shrubs blurring past in the foreground. On the ridge ahead, a row of cypress trees stands in that familiar Tuscan line, dark green exclamation points against a sky stacked with cumulus. One thing I keep coming back to is the cypresses. They weren't planted for shade or fruit. For centuries, Tuscans lined them along ridges and driveways as living signposts — narrow enough not to steal the field, tall enough to mark a home from a valley away. So when you see that row on a hill, you're not just looking at trees. You're reading a map someone drew with roots.