Postcard from a lunch in the woods

I’m at the Antica Farmacia dei Monaci Camaldolesi and it is lunchtime and I am hungry. I have just driven through miles of lonely, misty forest to get to the monastery and I’m surprised to see a restaurant opposite that’s open. I cross a little bridge over a rushing stream in a gorge in the forest and go in. I am the only person there and am shown to a table near a small wood burning stove.

The menu features lots of wild boar, freshly made focaccia, and sausages cooked over a fire. I order and another woman comes in wearing a forestry uniform and packing a gun. The owner follows her to the table carrying a large, freshly peeled carrot on a plate and puts in in front of her as soon as she sits. She quickly eats the carrot. The owner than asks her how the health routine is going and if she’d like her usual salad for lunch. With cheese. And her usual quarter litre of white wine. She agrees.

Two men enter, both dressed in a similar uniform, and also carrying guns. They look over at the woman, and she looks back at them, and the most restrained greeting I’ve ever seen in Italy is exchanged. They are then seated at the other side of the otherwise empty restaurant.

She leaves soon after. I wonder what the real story is. I think of how lonely it would be to work with people in the middle of nowhere that you wouldn’t want to have lunch with.