Spello - morning of June 6, 2010

Crack of Dawn - The alarm goes off at 4 a.m. - insanely early given our previous long day and late night. The powdered cappuccino (Nescafe) we bought last night at the COOP supermarket is a reasonable beverage to help get us going. We are out the door at 5 a.m. Antonio, who has the night shift at the Palazzo, stumbles out of the staff room, "You are up very early!" There is no easy way out of the heavy front door and involves unlocking things in a specific way. We tell him we are off to Spello and he tells us to have a good time - in perfect English. Later, we find out that Antonio grew up in New Jersey and has since come back to his roots - thus explaining both his accent and English.

The scenic route through Umbria on the 4-lane SS675 autostrada to Spello is a good road with no traffic. The blue-green hills of Umbria's heartland are reminiscent of the Pacific Northwest in that there are forested hills on either side of the road. Sometimes the view breaks into open rolling farmland similar to the Willamette Valley. As we meander toward Spello, the road still is reasonable but goes down to two lanes on the S3 complete with all the normal bumps and ruts of the standard Italian pavement. Spello is an easy exit right off the road and we quickly find convenient parking on a side street. Nevertheless, at 7 a.m., the streets are filling up with cars.

The Meaning of Le'Infiorate Corpus Domini - Luckily, we are very close to the entrance of town and walk right up to where floral mosaics are being crafted in celebration of Corpus Domini. Not being Catholic (and thus, hopefully forgiven by gracious Catholics) , as near as I can tell, Le'Infiorata di Spello (the flower festival of Spello) is an exercise/reminder about tangible goods or beauty. The moral of the story is that these are temporary "earthly objects" (in the form of floral mosaics) are temporary but God and spirituality is forever. In the case of the floral carpets - over which people have labored for 24 straight hours - the priests walk through the middle of them in a ceremony at 11 a.m., damaging the creations. (Apologies to all Catholics for my clumsy explanation.)

Paint-by-Number with Flowers - What I remember most is stumbling up and down the narrow streets of Spello, drunk with the perfume of thousands of flowers. The whole town was carpeted in flowers. We could scarcely believe our eyes. How could those Kandinsky-esque abstracts and vast allegorical tapestries a la Giotto be painted with nothing but petals? When we arrive, most of the mosaic teams are still working on the mural creations.

It has been a long back-breaking, knee-knashing time for the artist-volunteers who are carefully placing a riot of colored flower petals according to a complex pattern that is outlined on a full size sheet of paper. Work began early Saturday morning and continues up until about 9 a.m. on Sunday. Long, curved, white vinyl tents are erected to keep any elements (wind, rain, sun) off the "paint by number" teams. The curved awnings have side flaps that are open for onlookers like us to view the progress.

Design, Composition and Materials - A colored paper version of the design is displayed on an easel adjacent to the project. The designs are complex, detailed, and likely took months to complete prior to this day. There are contests for different age groups. Most of them have religious or humankind symbolic messages.  Topics such as the holy family, the crucifixion, good vs. evil, and children are popular, but many simply have pretty patterns.

The flower petals are fresh, having been recently been plucked from the stem and sorted into containers by color. The design nuances created by the variety of flowers and petal colors are amazing. No paints or nonvegetable materials are allowed, no chemical treatments; even dried flowers are frowned upon. The judges place the highest value on fresh-picked blooms. The petals must be plucked off by hand. The floral carpets are kept moist via water misters throughout the morning by other volunteers.

Up, Down, All Over Town - As the tents come down around 9 a.m., it's amazing that these mosaics, which wind throughout the streets of the hill town, don't get trampled. Some have ropes around them, but many do not. Pictures galore are being snapped and some of the murals have ladders at the end of them for people to climb up on and cantilever out for a birds-eye, full-scale perspective. Sometimes the line for these is long and for others, only a few minutes wait. It depends how long some annoying photographer spends up there taking more than their fair share of time. The crowds - brought in by countless tour buses parking outside town - are continuously building. We're glad we got there early in order to get a sense of the town when it was quieter.

Good Consumers - At the festival headquarters and Bob gives in to my pleas to buy a commemorative baseball hat. It is very colorful and he is reluctant to buy one as "it's not my kind of hat." Gamely, he wears it throughout the festival. The only food available was from the local bars and trattorias. It makes perfect sense that these businesses get the benefit of the additional customers. So we stop for a cappuccino and pastry to fortify ourselves.

Assault of the Senses - Residents have also decorated their windows, side streets, balconies, and mini piazzas - just about anything that will hold a pot of flowers. It truly adds up to an adorable, colorful, historic, cobblestoned town. Even the elderly are out hobbling around with their canes. How they negotiate the hills is something to behold. Most of them do so with the help of family.

As the morning wears on, we're sure we've seen every design at least once and our senses feel almost numb after being hit with an onslaught of colorful overstimulation. We wonder when the priests will begin their ceremonial walk and which way they will walk. I find a program and determine that they will head out at 11 a.m. from a specific church, but we still don't know which direction they will come. We want to be at the beginning for this so that we can finally head out and on to Assisi.

Priestly Procession - The bells of Chiesa di Santa Maria Maggiore proclaim the start of the solemn procession. Bob is the designated the photographer of the ceremony because the crowds are so thick and he has a couple of inches and bulk over Kay. He tries to position himself in a couple of opportune spots only to be told to move. At last! We hear music in the distance, and the ropes are coming down from around the mosaic where we are hanging out. What luck - or blessing! We have chosen correctly which way the priests will proceed - us and a million other people.

We hold fast to our positions despite the jostling and Bob plants himself at the top end of the mosaic. His timing is perfect as he captures photos of the procession leaders - lots of special people (we're not sure if they belong to religious orders or are simply VIP members of the church) in uniforms carrying banners. Musicians playing a mournful-sounding religious piece file through. They all walk on the side of the floral carpet. At last appears the priest carrying the "Host" shaded by a gold-embroidered canopy. He is accompanied likely by the most important people next to himself. Bob hops out of the way at the last moment and gets chided by a signora (lady) volunteer who, besides rapid Italian, cries out, "mamma mia!" What she is really saying - in so many words is: "get the blank out of the way you blanket blank tourist! Show a little respect!"

The musicians are followed by a contingent of priests, one of which is the head honcho who tromps through the middle of the mosaic. Thus, the lesson that "things" can be taken; faith remains. We later observe that the priests actually walk carefully and lightly through the mosaics so that they hold up a little longer during the day for viewing pleasure.

Back to the Car - The streets are so narrow and so packed with people that we are actually stuck and immobile for a good 10 minutes. The majority of people are headed down the hill out of the town but there are a few crazies still trying to head up the hill. We squished by so many bodies and strollers it was no wonder that it took forever to move just one step. Finally, we pop out, browse by a few vendor tents selling pots of lavender, orchids, and some tacky crafts for which we have no desire.

We can almost recapture Le' Infiorate by looking at our pictures. But it is the fragrance of thousands of flowers, the snap of carnations and sweetness of rose petals and swoon of jasmine that will stay with us. We quickly find the car and gratefully sit for the 20-minute drive to our next adventure in Assisi.