The farmer wanted to pour us some more but Dad said, “No, grazie,” and motioned we had a long way to go. So the farmer laughed and imitated how we would walk, all staggering and swerving, if we had more, and he and Dad laughed as if they had been drinking wine together for years. Dad clapped him on the back and said thank you and “Arrivederci!”Then we walked out of the yard and when the dog growled at us again, the farmer kicked him as if he had just insulted his best friend. Before we turned the corner on the Roman road, we glanced back and waved to the farmer, and he waved back and called something we couldn’t understand. It was all very friendly.

When we walked around the corner, the view suddenly opened up, and we could look down to the sea below. It was “at least one thousand vertical feet down,” said Dad. He said we could go home to Paraggi by way of the bay of San Fruttuoso or by way of Santa Margherita. The hike by way of San Fruttuoso was two hours longer than the one to Santa Margherita. I could choose, he said. I decided we should go by way of San Fruttuoso. Dad said it was a good choice because that was the most “spectacular walk in these parts with a stunning view.”

As the path wound along the hilltop between the pine and cypress trees, you could look down into one little inlet after another far below. Between them the rock cliffs fell sheer to the water. From the cliffs grew huge, misshapen, long-needled Scotch pines. They hung out over the water at odd angles and made you want to climb out on their long gnarled limbs and drop down into the blue-green water below.

One bay we looked into had a sailboat anchored in it. We could look almost straight down on the deck. We saw a man and woman lying there stark naked.

“I bet they don’t think any one is up on the cliff watching them!” Dad said, and he laughed.

“Let’s shout at them and see what they do,” I said.

Dad said that would not be kind, but he let me do it anyway. At first the two people looked out to sea, thinking it was a voice from another boat. But when they realized it was from above them and there were people up there who could see them, they scrambled around as if the deck of their boat had suddenly gotten very hot. They snatched up towels and covered themselves. The man shouted things at us, but Dad didn’t answer back.

He said to me, “Just because most people are too lazy to hike nowadays doesn’t mean everyone is. They should have remembered that somebody might hike down the path above them before they took their clothes off.”