Vetulonia, Tuscany

I just spent ten days in Vetulonia, an ancient Etruscan village tucked into the Tuscan hillside.

Time moved differently there.

Each day began and ended with the walk—up and down the mountainside trails between the cottage, La Pesca, and the studio. Gravel underfoot, olive trees, sun-warmed earth… the kind of quiet that lets you hear yourself again. We made that climb more times than I can count—each trip wearing us in, and opening us up.

We came together for clay, but it became something more.

We fired a wood kiln, tending it like something alive—feeding it, watching it, waiting. We pulled pieces from a raku firing, still glowing, the air sharp with heat and smoke. Fire doing what it does best—transforming everything it touches.

Working with your hands in a place that has held human hands for thousands of years shifts something. The Etruscans shaped this land long before us. You can feel it—not in a grand way, but in a steady, grounding way. Like you’re part of something continuous.

The connections came just as naturally.

Strangers at first, then not. People from all over the world, brought together in this small village, finding common ground in clay, in conversation, in shared experience. Conversations unfolded over shared tools, long meals, and tired legs at the end of the climb back to the cottage.

And somewhere along the way, those connections deepened into something lasting—relationships that will carry beyond the village, beyond these ten days, into whatever comes next.

Food lovingly prepared from generations-long recipes of the region—simple, honest, deeply rooted. Meals that weren’t rushed, but experienced. Another kind of craft. Another way of carrying history forward.

And at the end of the day, we soaked it all in—literally. Hot tub under the stars, bodies tired, minds quiet, the kind of stillness you don’t find, you arrive at.

By the end, it wasn’t just about what we made.

It was about what softened. What opened. What slowed down enough to be felt.

Ten days of clay, connection, fire, and walking the same path—until it no longer felt like a path, but a part of you.