As we circled up into the mountains of Abruzzo the air thinned and the November sun streamed unabated through the passes and over the rock laid bare by passing time and the elements. Occasional villages of damp stone homes with tile roofs clung miserably to hillsides; along the valley floors tight flocks of sheep tracked sheperds to corrals unseen. The mountains' sense of permance made even more ephemeral all that was human in the region: humankind seemed a burden the mountains would bear grudgingly while never actually succumbing to the intrusion. In a world where modern society had made little progress since the Middle Ages, my clock ran backwards like an inverse altimeter, taking me back to a simpler time.