Trees two ways: leaving a snowy Sault Ste. Marie yesterday at 0 Celsius, and walking this afternoon in sunny Rome at 24 Celsius. So starts a new leg of my Via Francigena pilgrimage, this time from Rome south to Naples and then east to Brindisi and Lecce. My friend Theresa is accompanying me for the first two weeks, after which I will be solo again. On our way from the train station to our first accommodation, in a warm, clean but spartan convent, we stopped in at Santa Maria Maggiore. I had used a photo of the interior of this church for a presentation this past Sunday. Seeing it again in person made me acutely - and somewhat miserably- aware of the limitations of photos. The sensory impact of the layering of Roman columns, medieval art, Renaissance coffered ceiling, baroque dome, all glittering with gold, luminous, opulent - as nearly impossible to capture in a photo as the immense expanse of Lake Superior or the towering rock faces along the North West Territories’ Nahanni River...