Hotel Supramonte

If ever I was kidnapped thirty years ago, like Fabrizio De Andre, and forced to spend my nights inside a cave, put for ransom by desperate Sardinian mountain men from the bloody village of Orgosolo, long before the tourists came, I would have asked these men to drag me away to one of those other-worldly open air caves that are hollowed from the cliffs north of the northern tip of the empty Cala Luna-the lonesome 'moon beach' lapped by the similarly crescent-shaped Golfo di Orosei. A hideout found only by boat or by hours-long hike along inland mountain trails, down to a silent river mouth that enjoys an unlikely refuge beneath the Supramonte's grey limestone mass: a strip of sand and driftwood just fifteen paces wide which separates the still freshwater reeds from the searching sea. There I'd wait for rescue in a cave beside the bay, as the sun sets hours early behind cliffs that plunge like a guillotine into dark blue-green waters.

My captors might not be cruel while they awaited their pay, driven by hunger more than malice and aware that the beauty that clung them to this barren land would captivate me too, and they would let me wade in the river in the morning, where hundreds of minnows would chase my feet, so that my footfalls would overturn enough dirt to feed them too. I would maybe try to carve a flute from the driftwood to play a sorry tune, and make a joke about scaling the sheer rock face of the cliffs when they looked away, how I would spirit away to Tiscali, the 6000-year-old hideout in the high part of the mountains where ancient peoples hid from bandits too.

And when we finally parted ways I would forgive my kidnappers too, the way De Andre did in 1980, not begrudging the price you pay living at the Hotel Supramonte.