The Road to Sparta

  14

  VILLAGE IN THE HILLS

  The next morning we all met for breakfast. Akis, Mark, and I sat drinking coffee when Peter came walking up. He looked a bit ashen and disheveled.

  “I just had the weirdest experience,” he said.

  We all looked at him, like: And??

  “Well, I was taking a shower when a maid walked in.”

  “Did she take one look at you and slam the door?” Mark joked.

  “No, that was the weird thing. She started cleaning my room.”

  “Did you say something?” Now I was curious.

  “Yeah, I asked her what she was doing.”

  “Did she answer?”

  “Yes, she told me she was cleaning my room.”

  “‘But I’m taking a shower!’ I yelled at her.”

  “‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ she assured me. ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ve got a son. Besides, you look fine.’”

  “So I’m standing there completely naked having a conversation with this woman like we’re old friends.”

  “Did she leave, then?” Mark asked.

  “No, she started vacuuming.”

  Wow . . . welcome to Greece. I made a mental note to deadbolt my hotel room door the next time I was taking a shower, unless I wanted to meet some new friends.

  Over breakfast we discussed our schedule for the next several days. We’d be heading deep into the mountainsides for some running and exploration. It was early October, but temperatures were still rather balmy, and we’d need to plan our food and gear accordingly. After breakfast we’d be driving to the little village of Silimna, near Tripoli, where my grandfather, Gus Gibbs (i.e., Constantine Karnazes), hailed from. Vans were packed and away we went.

  We traveled along the coastline of the Southern Ionian Sea, which was a warmer and more saline body of water than the Adriatic to the north, which serves as a collection basin for a third of the fresh water flowing into the Mediterranean from Central Europe. These differences in temperature and water salinity create the unique microclimates found along this region of Messenia. A southern-facing hillside could be windless and 25 degrees warmer than its blustery northern counterpart.

  The region’s topography also plays a big role in influencing the climate, as the great mountain chains along the central part of the country create tremendous atmospheric pressure gradients which serve to direct and accelerate air masses moving north from the moister central Mediterranean Sea or south from the cooler European continental landmass. Local winds are often compressed by surrounding mountain ranges and intensify as they get squeezed through narrow valleys and canyons (referred to as the Venturi effect). These gusts are quite capable of blowing a man over, while outside of the gorge it may be entirely windless. All of these local, regional, and continental factors come together to create weather that is sometimes predictable and other times completely erratic and unexpected, not entirely unlike Greece itself.

  In today’s world I can use my smartphone to pinpoint the weather down to the very movement of individual cloud formations using real-time Doppler radar. At least in the United States this is possible. In Greece, things are different. Weather.com is a bit less specific with its forecast, and local news sources are generally unreliable as they consolidate broader weather trends over Southern Europe as a whole, more so than offering specific climatic conditions in the local region.

  Hemerodromoi must have been highly attuned to the weather. They didn’t have hydration packs and stash pockets to store large quantities of extra supplies and clothing. They likely developed an acute sense for forecasting weather through years of close observation. When your life depends on the weather and climate, you tend to pay better attention to it.

  We humans have moved increasingly away from our ancestral roots in this regard. Most people are clueless about the weather unless they reference their phone, tablet, or TV. We’ve all but lost our innate sense for detecting and forecasting the weather and have become increasingly disconnected from Mother Earth in the process. Many people in the developed world spend almost no appreciable time outdoors. We shuffle from subways or automobiles to office buildings, eat our meals inside covered structures, and then return at night to the sanctity of our protected homes. This man-made environment is far removed from our origin.

  Many people rarely, if ever, spend an entire day in the outdoors, from sunup to sundown. Yet the outdoors is where we came from. We haven’t lost the primordial ability to connect with the earth’s rhythms, and those people who spend a significant amount of time outside have largely retained these ancient instincts to detect and predict weather. Ultramarathoners fall into this category, as do surfers, mountain climbers, sailors, backcountry skiers, hunters, and fishermen.

  Having once run across America—from Los Angeles to New York City—I spent the better part of each day outside for 21⁄2 months straight. In doing so, my body learned to detect subtle nuances in humidity, wind speed, cloud formation, refraction of sunlight, temperature variations, and barometric pressure changes. Remarkably, I was able to fairly accurately predict the weather each day without ever looking at a screen. It wasn’t like I consciously tried to catalog and quantify each of these telltale elements and then crunch the data to come up with a prediction. Instead, it was done more through an innate feel, a sixth sense, if you will, by unconsciously detecting the way the air felt on my skin, the way tension built or dissipated in my joints, how dryness or moisture condensed in my nose, and the way various smells and aromas wafted through the air. I won’t take credit for having some special or unique talent in this regard; these are nothing more than the evolutionary gifts all of us possess, though few of us engage them these days.

  Hemerodromoi wouldn’t necessarily think anything was extraordinary or superhuman about their abilities to read the weather. To say they would take such capabilities for granted is overreaching, because they wouldn’t have thought twice about it. Knowing what the day’s forecast entailed was an autonomic response that just happened, like breathing or laughing.

  The drive to Silimna, high in the hills above Tripoli, was soporific, rendering me sedated and in a groggy trancelike state. The car was warm and cozy, like a mother’s womb, and once we’d arrived, I didn’t want to get out at first. But the moment I did, miracles happened. My senses immediately sprang to life.

  From the instant the car door opened and I left the vehicle, I was swept over by a providential enchantment. The air was pleasantly perfumed with the aromas of wild rosemary and tangy, vine-ripe lemons hanging from the trees. The sky shone a lustrous sapphire blue the likes of which I had never seen. My pulse sharpened and my body tingled with life. Though I was in a foreign land, I felt an immediate attachment to the place.

  There were a few structures around, though most were fairly dilapidated or in a state of disrepair. There was also a bell tower and a church, and plenty of trees. Trees were everywhere, of every imaginable height, age, variety, and fullness. Young trees, old trees, fig trees, walnut trees, blossoming trees and leafless trees, pine trees, citrus trees, pomegranate trees whose branches bent to the ground with fruit, olive trees of every height, stalk, and maturity, red apple trees and green apple trees, miniature pear trees and gargantuan peach trees; trees sprang from every available inch of soil and most of them bore some kind of fruit, nut, or berry. Some were tiring and their limbs hung frail and low, while others were youthful and perky, stretching skyward with rambunctious energy. Rosemary, basil, sage, thyme, and lavender grew abundantly, along with other native herbs and wildflowers. Vines twisted and entwined around fence posts and over old rock terraces. Some were laden with berries, while others produced gourds or small, hanging melons. There were also spiraling threads of vines resting on the ground bearing massive ripe watermelons. And, of course, there were groves of wild grapevines, most being entirely overloaded with plump red fistfuls of fruit. In any patch of unoccupied earth sprang great bushels of horta; it covered the nearby hillsides and valleys, bl
anketing them in a lush carpet of green. These fields emitted a pungent, earthy odor as the sharp rays of sunlight penetrated the damp, dark soil, steaming the moist green leaves into a bubbling cauldron of aromatic vapor that wafted sweetly upward.

  There were also bees. Honeybees. Everywhere there were honeybees. So fat and happy were these bees that they had no interest in us and seemed perfectly content zigzagging around drunkenly suckling the syrupy and swollen blossoms that abounded so plentifully. The place was teeming with life, wild life, natural and raw, the way it was supposed to be, unadulterated by the meddling hands of humans and our mechanized agricultural machines. What little gardening that had been done had been done many years before.

  The official census lists the population of Silimna at 119, up from 118 in 1980. It didn’t feel like there were even that many people in town on this day. In fact, it didn’t feel like there was anyone else there—it was as though we were alone. Perhaps some of the town’s inhabitants lived in the nearby hills, or maybe they only lived part-time in Silimna. It was a dreamy place, a place the world had long since passed over.

  And that was its magic.

  Places like this didn’t exist anymore. Not for most of us, at least. Maybe you needed to be submersed and drowned in the cataclysm of Western society to appreciate dawdling old Silimna. That, I don’t know. And maybe if this were your birthplace, you’d want nothing more than to escape from it and move far away. I don’t know that, either. All I know is that right then, at that moment in time, it felt pretty doggone perfect to me.

  Then relatives began mysteriously appearing out of nowhere. Theías and theíos (aunts and uncles), dressed as though it were 1950 yet somehow looking quite dignified, were suddenly walking next to me. The women wore dark wool dresses and shawls, some with scarves pulled tightly across their heads. Some of the men were in suits, and many were adorned with long, thin mustaches sculpted into fine pencil tips at their ends. These people weren’t athletes, but they still had calves that looked like hulking, inverted papayas. Some said our family had located here from nearby Laconia, by Sparta, seeking more fertile land and settling in Silimna for the richness of its soil. They led me down a dirt path to my grandfather’s house, feeding me freshly cracked walnuts and ripe, tree-picked pears and apples as we made our way down the earthen trail.

  I bit into one of these apples; it was exceptionally flavorful. Juice ran down my chin. “Wow, this is delicious. Who planted all these trees?” I gurgled.

  One of the older men looked at me in amazement. “Planted? What planted? Spit out a few seeds and you have trees, no planted.”

  When we arrived at my grandfather’s house, there wasn’t much to it. An aging, white, single-story stone structure with splintering timber girders and cracking support joists barely holding things together, it was simply constructed and primitive by today’s standards, and it was showing its years. Still, I wanted to go in.

  The townspeople cautioned me against it, advising me that it was unsafe to enter. But I was determined to see the inside, to experience the place in which my grandfather and Aunt Helen had grown up. Against their warning, I made my way in. It was the wrong thing to do, but I did it anyway.

  Of course, they were right. The roof was bowing downward so badly it looked as though it might collapse at any moment. The floor, composed mostly of dirt and hay, was uneven and rocky, and there were just two simple rooms with a crumbling dividing wall between them. It was clear that no one had lived in the house for many years, nor had anyone been inside for quite some time. The back side of the house was opened to the air and spilled out onto an elevated outdoor porch. I looked around briefly—now a bit concerned that the roof might indeed cave in—when all of a sudden, near the far corner of the house, I spotted an old, rusted bell sitting on the floor. I carefully made my way over and fetched up this antiquated chime, placing it over the outside ledge onto the floorboard of the back porch.

  I watchfully crept back across the room and out through the small exterior passageway of the front door. It was a relief to see daylight when I exited the structure, though it had been quite exhilarating viewing the interior of the house and imagining what it must have been like living there in my grandfather’s time. The group waiting outside welcomed me back to safety and asked me what I saw.

  “Here, come take a look.”

  I walked them around the back of the building to the porch and picked up the bell I’d found inside. Its metal was decaying and thinning along the edges, but it still had life. I jiggled it several times, and it let out a rickety clank that made everyone smile and laugh. “Opa!” someone called out.

  Ksádelfi Vasiliki, a cousin, speculated that this could have been the very same bell my great grandmother had used to summon my grandfather to dinner. “That Kostas, he was an adventurous one, always up to some sort of mischief,” she told me.

  One could only imagine the fun and frolicking a young boy could get up to in this endless playfield of fruit trees and wild berry thickets that stretched to the horizon. This was a time before paved roads and automobiles, and children could laugh and play and wander as freely and as far as their imaginations would carry them. Part of me was from this place, and I could feel the connection deep within, real and eternal. My great grandmother had held this very bell eons ago, just as I had held it on this day, and I could sense her pride and her loneliness in knowing that her only son was leaving to seek a better life, probably never to be seen or held again.

  I thought about bringing the bell home with me, perhaps displaying it on my mantel as a prized keepsake. But it didn’t belong in America. Its lineage was in Silimna, in its hills with the memories and the bones of my ancestors. So I returned the bell to the place where I found it, setting it back gently upon the ground. I made my cross and touched my hand to my chest. Perhaps one day I would reunite with this bell, perhaps not. It really didn’t matter, for the memory was engraved upon my heart for time immemorial.

  When we got back to the center of town (if you can call it that), there were a number of other runners gathered for the day’s event, along with a cadre of press. It was the opening day of the 3-day Navarino Challenge, and we would be running a 10-K from Silimna to Tripoli, not a great distance by my standards, but challenging nonetheless, certainly, for many of the others. As I have mentioned, the Navarino Challenge wasn’t designed to be a competitive race, but rather to encourage people to get outside and participate in sport, just as the original Olympic Games had been conceived thousands of years earlier. In this regard the event appeared to have succeeded wildly, as there were soon hundreds of runners gathering at the start, of all ages and abilities. The town probably hadn’t seen such a crowd in years.

  Off we went.

  The road to Tripoli twisted and turned as it wound its way down the mountainside. The afternoon sun cast lengthening shadows across the roadway, and although the route was not closed to traffic, not a single car passed us for the entire duration. We runners tended to clump together in groups based on pace, everyone seemingly finding their groove as the miles accumulated.

  Entering into the township of Tripoli, we were greeted by hordes of children who had just gotten out of school. At first they just stared at us curiously, but kids being kids, they naturally loved to run (or at least loved to chase and to be chased), and in no time there were hundreds of kids running alongside us through the cobbled backstreets of Tripoli. People sitting in outside cafés yelled and cheered as we ran by. “Opa!” they shouted. Shopkeepers clapped, and people stopped what they were doing to come take in the spectacle making its way through their town, inevitably getting swept up in our collective passion and contributing hoots of encouragements and praise as we passed, “Bravo! Bravo su!” It was another cinematic moment, as though we were on set at Universal Studios. But this was no scene from a movie; this was a little rural village in the Peloponnese on a random weekday.

  The main square was filled with people. The mayor was there, along with many local
leaders and representatives of the church diocese. How so many of them knew about this run was puzzling, but all were present and all seemed to be having a good time. When we reached the agora (town center), so much enthusiasm and energy had built up that it couldn’t simply dissipate peaceably. That’s when the music started and the Greek dancing spontaneously ignited. We runners interlocked arms and formed a huge semicircle, swinging our feet to the rhythm and swaying our hips. Kids chased each other all around, laughing and screaming; butchers came out of their shops, stripped off their aprons, and joined in the dancing. Tavern owners emerged with towering bottles of ouzo. Young and old danced together and sang and laughed. Food appeared, great platters of savory dishes and homemade Greek pastries, baklava, loukoumades, finikia, and other Hellenic delicacies, all dripping with honey and nuts. It was a regular fall Friday during just another ho-hum week, in a place that was struggling with economic hardship and facing an uncertain future, yet those were hardly sufficient reasons to forgo celebration. These people were all willing to put aside what they were doing and join together, rejoicing in the moment. For better or for worse, the Greek spirit lived large in each of us that day.

  Someone handed me a shot glass filled with ouzo. I usually don’t drink, but that day I did.

  “Opa!” I chortled.

  Welcome to Greece.

  If we always made decisions with our heads instead of our hearts, we’d probably live much more orderly lives, but they would be much less joyous. I learned a lot in Greece, mostly about myself. It fundamentally changed the person I was. Sure, life was to be taken seriously, but not too seriously. No matter how dire things become, no matter how bleak the situation appears, we should never be beyond a shot of ouzo and some Greek dancing.

  How many people spend their entire lives striving for something with their nose to the grindstone, only to wake up one day and realize they haven’t really lived at all? You can never surf the same wave twice; you only get one shot at it. Yesterday is not coming back. Sure, I had my goals and aspirations, but I wasn’t going to let tunnel vision prevent me from celebrating the struggles and tribulations I encountered along the way. Reaching a finish line can be gratifying, but it’s the journey where life is lived. And today had been a wonderful journey.