BUCEGI

THE WHITE MOUNTAINS. There is not much to say about these mountains, little brother. I visited them twice over twenty years. They have changed. Once, they were a beautiful south Carpathian range – the first I ever laid eyes on – blazing white with cliffs and rare plants to make one’s heart glow. We arrived there by train, passengers sitting atop wagons like birds on the yardarms of ancient ships. The smell of flea powder – olden day Romania. We climbed through forests and over bluffs, ever upward to grassy prairies. There we frisked about like playful goats with only a thin blanket between us. At the foot of a cliff, an old shepherd lived with his two donkeys. On and on we climbed, stopping to milk some half-wild cows, alas to no avail. The sun sank rosy in the sky, and the scarlet rosebay bloomed bloody in its light. Limestone as far as the eye could see, rocky spires, chasms, precipices. The grasslands were bestrewn with flowers, and across a high rock, sphinx-like, skull-like, a blustery wind blew, making us giddy and wild.

Even then, the mountains were not wholly deserted, but we didn’t mind. We passed through Howling Valley and arrived at an ancient monastery that stood before a cavern’s mouth. Upon the white butterfly-like cliff, a wallcreeper flitted and climbed, feeding its young. Such a beautiful bird. I saw it again years later at Popovo Lake in the Pirin Mountains. Icons hung before the cave, along with wood paintings depicting all the horrors of hell. Monks, black and bearded, took charge of us, and we spent an anxious night in the Bucegi mountain monastery.

I returned to Bucegi years later but should have saved myself the journey. Cable cars, ski tows, roads, and power lines led up and down the mountains, a hotel and playing field stood where a pasture had once been. Cars and people wherever you looked. I never saw the old man from the cliff again.

The Bucegi are beautiful mountains abounding in rare flowers and great climbing opportunities, but if it’s solitude you yearn for, plan your trip for the spring or autumn.

THE GAME OF WOLF BREATHS AND GAZELLE LEAPS

The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills. My beloved is like a roe or a young hart.

Song of Songs 2: 8-9

There will come a day when your world turns dark. A day when your only wish is to stare into the dark gaping barrel of a machine gun.  Ta-ta-ta! You hear no more. Swiftly, sweetly, contentedly, you crumple. Another bad day, another wish: to smash the crooked face of anyone who comes near you. For no good reason. Randomly. Those are not good days or good intentions. But you brought them on yourself, forgetting to breathe like a wolf and fly like a gazelle.

So run through the forests like a wolf, leap o’er the plains like a gazelle. You will smile, my chubby, lazy little brother. Without knowing why. You know nothing of the run! A forest sprint reinvigorates the spirit and makes the body fleet of foot! Hardest is to start. Pay no heed to weariness or ridicule. The worse things get, the better – the best of all principals. Just half an hour a day. You’d dawdle that away drowsily at home anyway. Morning or evening, winter or summer, rain or shine. King of the day is the run. And often the only proper thing you do.

Start in spring, early in the evening, lightly dressed and healthy. Run through forests or meadows. Or anywhere else, though forests are most beautiful: fresh honey air pours off their hillsides. Run lightly without panting, and you will hear the robin’s quiet song. When short of breath, slow your pace but do not stop. To start, run but a few hundred meters, each time farther and longer. Soon you’ll find it no good to run less than five kilometers. Try it three or four times, if you’ve done it right, you’ll never quit. After such exercise, even the thought of tobacco smoke repulses the body – that deathly, sooty air. We suddenly realize what poison we voluntarily put in our lungs. If it was forced on us, we’d sue. Draw near a smoker and smell the bane and death of plague pits. But that isn’t essential to the run. A beginner’s sore legs soon grow strong, bringing with them an ever greater desire for fresh air, pure deep breaths, blissful, soul-cleansing exhaustion, power born of the run. Anger vanishes, envy flees, headaches disappear, and where have all ill wishes gone? Run to diamond realms, to Transylvania if you wish. But start, my lazy little brother! Running is beautiful, healthy, and accessible to all. You can be as poor as a church mouse and still partake of it. It is good in and of itself, as a means and an aim. In time you’ll learn to breathe like a wolf and leap like a gazelle, and nothing will serve you better on your journeys. That is why I write this. But you must begin.

Let me describe, however imperfectly, one such forest jog. The most Mongolian of days: October sunshine on a dry and frosty late afternoon, first snow in north-facing gullies, paths softly blanketed in larch needles, otherwise bare, breezes in a cloudless sky. The most Mongolian of days. I run lightly, solitarily, joyfully. Paths and forest aisles lead uphill and down. At crossings, I take whichever track seems to beckon me on. I run incessantly onward, neither swiftly nor slowly, like a lone wolf in the mountains of Sikhote-Alin. The trivialities of the day melt away, I see how artificial and irrelevant were the cares that troubled my soul. Throb, throb, throb. After three kilometers, October mountains are all I notice. The body is warm, its core fills with delicious air, and dry frost gently stings the nostrils. Quagmires stiffen with a light crust of evening ice. There is nothing more beautiful than running. Silverlike. Up a slight incline. I run lightly, and my thoughts are light and long. I forgive those who have trespassed against me (though they have usually done nothing wrong). I forgive myself for what I haven’t done (and what I have failed to do). My thoughts are ever sweeter, soon I will think only of the run. Forest opium, perhaps it is a good thing.

Steep climbs are delightful. Why do people fear exhaustion so? There is nothing better than to fall wearily to the ground, little brother, entirely deserving of the day! Thud, thud, from its very being the body toils. The hill is steep, you pace your breath – every three steps, two, one. Your neck feels cool, and your back goes soft as if struck by an ax. Higher, higher! If the aim is distant, the body instinctively stretches its will to endure, it is more powerful than you had ever thought. But woe if you choose an aim too near, deciding then to run on. The body feels betrayed. Better indeed to set distant goals!

Summit claimed: oh, joy! Breathing slows. The forest is empty, the beech trees fiery. I raise my voice to shout gleefully across distant woodlands the only word I know. IMBARAHHNA!!! A word that means nothing.

Down from the peak and back to the valley. Feet flying, stride straining, rocks ricocheting, breeze blowing. After five kilometers you catch your stride, now you can run on and on. I’ve heard of Indians on Andean plains that run five hundred kilometers kicking a wooden ball. But ten is enough for me, even without a ball. I wish to find the balance between absolute rest and total exertion. For a life of running or sitting doubtless leads to the same end: a dying off or wearing down of limbs and joints. Therefore, run only as much as you enjoy, my silky little brother!

Back to the valley. Forest yellows no longer glow, they have gone out. Blackbird hour of evening. Black wings flit o’er fields to forests. Birds that waste their days in yards and city streets. At night they return to their birthplaces, like people before death, to woods they abandoned years ago for cities and an easier life. The first star appears and suddenly a tumult of bird calls. Sweat cools my back, and home is near, the best of all resting places. I lay completely still, absolutely limp, totally fulfilled. Euphoria of the forest runner. I melt with benevolence for humankind, with indifference to trivial problems. The deepest of wolf breaths – aaaaaahhhhh! With night’s hour comes sleep, swift and healthy as a black bear.

And with morning’s light? Most delightful of all! Yesterday’s run and sweet exhaustion, absorbed during the night, have turned to jubilant vivacity. Assuredness, exuberance. I leap on high! I walk down the street, and it belongs to me. I smile nonchalantly at a beautiful girl I wouldn’t have dared look at the day before. Yesterday, all I could have mustered was a weary, pitiful croak for which I would have gleaned but humiliating laughter. Today, I call to the dark-haired beauty with indifferent certainty, naturally, easily, merrily – and just like that, she’s mine. Because girls love indifference, my timid little brother. It is our most powerful weapon. Indifference to rejection = self-assuredness. Indifference to illness = health. Indifference to humiliation = humility.

In a street nearby, a honey-haired girl gazes at a shop window. She stands confidently, regally as a queen. But today I step in close and kiss her on the back of her neck, right where the hair meets the head. I wouldn’t have dared without my wolf-strength. She turns, her confidence vanishing. She was in the palm of my hand, but I fly onward swiftly as a gazelle. Hand over head, I wave to her, then spin round, crying gleefully the only word I know. IMBARAHHNA!!! A word that means everything.

IEZER-PᾸPUŞA

THE STONEY MOUNTAINS. It is well worth cutting across this range to get from towering Prince’s Stone to Romania’s tallest summits. Winding, westering peaks, craggy grasslands, grassy crags stretching nearly two and a half thousand meters into the air: Iezer and Păpuşa are as inseparable as their rains and mists. We climb out of the Dâmbovița River valley into eastern Păpuşa, pitching camp on a steep hillside at forest-fringe and pasture-brink. Our fire flickers upon the only flat ground, and a three-legged dog limps about its flames. I can only guess who took its leg: bear, or shepherd: to put an end to its hunting. Timidly, it eats any leftovers it finds.

A new day and a new dog follows us across white, wandering plains. In the company of fog and wind, we stray together, Iezer-Păpuşa does not have the thickest network of tracks and paths. Mists disperse with evening, and a pale sun sets behind southern slopes. We descend near the mountain of Piscanu and settle upon the most beautiful, windswept, alpine campsite. Tents stand among dry lake grasses and silver-flowering marshes. The quiet sound of falling water can be heard somewhere in the distance as mountains dim in the solitude. Dry rhododendrons crackling in the fire fill the air with smoky fragrance; there is no other wood to be found. 

Early morning: most beautiful time of day. Two slender, snowy, flute-like clouds stretch across an azure sky. Gaze now, long and silent, into the red and rising sun. Amidst a softly wafting breeze, the Leaota Mountains climb above a southeasterly horizon. Few have been mornings as beautiful as in the Iezer-Păpuşa Mountains!

The view northward from Roşu Peak, highest mountain of the range, is striking too. There, the eastern Făgăraş stretch into the distance like engravings of ancient Asia, the only link between us and them: a narrow ridge, long and parched, which must be crossed. We rest near adders in the grass and drink from murky sheep pools, and at evening’s fall, we find ourselves amid the peaks of the windy Făgăraş.

FᾸGᾸRAŞ

THE WINDY MOUNTAINS. Swirling mists roll up to the crests of northern Transylvanian scarps, dark and craggy. But gales from gently sloping green Wallachia thwart their passage over the ridge, sending them whirling down into the devil’s kitchen, whence they came. Mist to the north, grass and craggy slopes to the south, a sharp boundary in their midst. The south-facing hillsides are abrupt too. A fallen bread loaf rolls and bounces wildly hundreds of meters down into the valley below before finding rest on the banks of Lake Valea Rea.

The days above Urlea waterfall: blissful, solitary, stormy – eleven tempests in a single day. Below us, wind, rain, and waves on the lonely waters of cliff-skirted Urlea Lake. Exquisite mountain plants grow wherever sheep cannot reach. All of the eastward lying Făgăraş are uninhabited, after departing Bratilei Saddle, we hardly meet a soul. Endless marching days, up mountains, and down again. Crosses for the lost and frozen stand upon Făgăraş ridges where one had best not venture unequipped. To the west, boisterous foreigners appear in droves. Most of them see no more of Romania’s mountains than the Făgăraş. Their numbers grow thickest at Bâlea Lake near a road that passes beneath the main ridge. Better to stay away from there, little brother! Descend instead to the deserted Carpathian valleys below Podragu Lake, hike through forests long into the night. Drizzle drips lightly among giant beech trees, rain falls upon old fir thickets. Though they emanate safety, finding a flat place to rest among them is nearly impossible. Somewhere far below, wild water thunders, unseen, only heard. You must push on, ever deeper into the valley. Light soil slips underfoot, sliding down steep slopes into muddy forest streams that rush forth from the mountains. Walking along Podragu valley at night without a light is foolhardy. But all the sweeter midnight’s rest on the valley floor, all the sweeter morning’s awakening.

THE GAME OF THE GRASS-SEEKER’S DELIGHT

The most exquisit collection? An empty wall!

           I Moi The Old, Chinese traveler

I Moi lived half a century before I was born and sister China was far too distant. My journeys had different aims: seeking out every species of grass. The most exquisite collection? All the world’s grasses! As I traveled, I played the collector’s game. Nearly everyone plays this game, for they wish to return home with souvenirs of their distant journeys. For girls, small things usually suffice: a feather, a picture, a leaf from a tree where they spent a magical night, a smooth river stone. The well of feminine joy has a different spring. Men are more thorough in collecting their souvenirs, poor souls! They do not realize what senseless burdens they bear upon their shoulders. They collect plants, animals, and stones; write in journals about caves, rivers, and castles; systematically explore mountains, valleys, and cliffs; photograph landscapes, buildings, and waterfalls; beg for brass spoons, cups, and flutes; sketch each lake, tree, and sheepfold; buy postcards, stickers, and walking stick tags; steal holy pictures from wayside chapels, pub signs, and sheep bells. There are a thousand different things people collect, but they all share one attribute: once the tiger has been mounted, there is no jumping off. For me, it was Carpathian mountain grasses, a collection no worse than any other. It might have been far worse. Friends of mine collected trickier items: bats, traditional folk costumes, moldavite, firebugs, Gothic Madonnas – all heavier, larger, more expensive, more punishable things. But not even a fox barks for grass. Without knowing why, I fell in love with the different species. From one day to the next, from one night to another. Perhaps it was for their verdant simplicity, or because people can’t distinguish between them and merely trample them underfoot, or because not even a fox barks for them. Or perhaps because everyone has to fall in love with something. As with all games of love, the beginning was the most beautiful. My haversack may have been 894 grams heavier – my botanical key wasn’t light –  it simply could not be helped. The magnifying glass, on the other hand, weighed only 18 grams. I needed to find, recognize, pick, dry and bring home several hundred species and subspecies of grass – enough for a beautiful collection, enough to provide me years of traveling. All it took was a bit of grass, an assortment of hay, and a foolish aim to open Czechoslovakia, and later Romania, to my wandering feet. I felt compelled to hike, crawl, wade and squelch through those lands, end to end. Festuca rhaetica: three-thirty in the morning on the steepest, rugged, grass-covered slopes of the Belianské Tatras. Predawn mists in restricted territory. Hidden from Mountain Rescue by fog and early hour, protected from precipitous plunge by untold yearnings for alpine grasses that grow there alone. Having an aim leaves no time for fear, you will not fall. And if you do, the plunge is sweet. But how long and difficult the search! Slimstem Reedgrass: June, soft mud squelches between the toes of sedge-sliced feet in Hrabanovksá Černava Nature Reserve. The smell of flatlands. There, by the Elbe River, the narrow grass’s only habitat. Koeleria tristis: Branisko, amid eastern Slovak mountains of fir, field maple, and pasturelands. A single limestone cliff is its home; the journey there is long and arduous. Danthonia alpina:  sunbaked slopes of the South Slovak Karst, white rocks, fragrant nights. There and nowhere else. Melica altissima: a day’s march through the Inovce Mountains – beech forests, eagles, disused, overgrown paths, forest gullies. At the ridge’s outmost edge, there is a place called Bezovce where grows the remarkable, enormous species of grass. Poa riphaea grows only in the Jeseniky Mountains, high above the valleys. With heavy heart, I pick one – in all the world, in all the universe, it grows only in Petrovy Kameny. Pholiurus pannonicus: strange habitat. I spent hours searching for the inconspicuous grass. First step, seek out a salt marsh, a few square meters of hard white soil amid the endless flatlands of Potisí. Hamsters dart about here and there. And it is boiling hot. I searched for hours before I came upon some white earth – no more hunting for Potisí salt marshes! I crawled about on hands and knees, no sign of the salt-loving grass anywhere. Three times I gave it up for lost, three times returned to the hunt. Then as dusk fell, I found a tuft of the strange grass in a horse’s damp hoof-print, perhaps the last in Potisí, the only one in all of Czechoslovakia. Salt marshes grow fewer, cornfields more numerous. There are many other grasses, but I’ll spare you, little brother. Countless journeys, countless joys. Chrysopogon gryllus: king of southern grasses.

What noble joy to stumble upon an unknown plant in wastelands on the opposite side of the world! If it’s never happened to you, you can’t understand. Such delight in winter to gaze at the world’s beauty, pinned to white pages. A sweet-scented collection, proof those distant journeys were indeed meaningful. It is but foolish consolation, but collectors are fools who play foolish games. Play them too, little brother, each one so wonderful and silly, meaningful only unto itself. When the traveler opens his herbarium he sees not only Trisetum fuscum, but Seven Spring Valley and steep Holuby mine mottled white and green. He feels anew the closeness of past summer storms, the wonder of nights under Skalné Vrata – Cliff Gates. He turns the page. Stipa borysthenica brings back the softly flowering beauty of Danubian Lowlands, sandy prairies on the banks of a mighty river, the laughter of a black-haired girl. In broken Hungarian, he had asked her the way as she stood outside her homestead. Pointing somewhere into the darkening flatlands, she spoke slowly, yet for him incomprehensibly. He looked at her lips but heard not what she said: barefoot she stood, a shirt and skirt over her bare body. Her sudden sensuality nearly brought him to his knees. The deserted, dusky yard smelled of warm rain, sandy dust, and straw. The stable doors were open wide. He stood silently, overwhelmed with desire. He knew how to ask the way, but asking to stay the night in Hungarian was beyond his skills. He asked in Slovak if she would let him stay the night, but she pretended not to understand. She laughed, it must have been written on his face. Captivated, she looked him over, said something, and gave another curious laugh. He walked away awkwardly, blinded with desire.

Today the traveler is much older. He knows there was no need to timidly take his leave of the solitary homestead. A realization now worth precious little. Gazing at the dry Stipa borysthenica, he would like to know, do the Hungarian girls still laugh so curiously in those parts?

Stop when you’re ahead. There are two sides to the collector’s coin, my insatiable little brother. Hear me out. Collections are a wonderful thing, they exact hard work and sacrifice, bring us joy, help us overcome misery on long journeys, and awaken sleeping memories. They are the first step to realizing there are better things than material momentos. But there is little worth in hoarding the world’s treasures. If for too long one plays the collector’s game with insectile exanimation and tedium, it goes rancid. It begins to stink and rot. It loses its original sense and becomes a burden, a tormenting ball and chain. Unable to survive, joy vanishes instantly. There can be too much of a good thing – a truth of the ages. This can happen imperceptibly. As the collection grows, it devours. The collector becomes its slave. No longer does he see the happy children that skipped among the grasses, but mere items for his herbarium. Distant are the winter evenings, distant the Hungarian girls! The collector has changed. He travels the countryside not because he is happy there, but merely to be there. Constantly cramming and stuffing. He writes journal entries he will never read, takes pictures he holds dearer than the journey itself. If he runs out of film, he can no longer enjoy himself, the journey has lost its sense.  No longer does he seek rare plants among cliffs, he has them in his garden. A collection of purchased or bartered alpine rock plants is more precious to him than mountain wildflowers. Perverse desire indeed to wish for the greatest number of plants in the smallest area. An Imperial flower state, pruned squadrons at attention. He fears burglars and poisons moles. How different it was those years ago when he returned from the Carpathians with his first saffron plant! Then, the spring rains still tidied up last year’s grass and leaves, helped by little soil-dwelling creatures – bacteria. What is worse, he begins to believe in the uniqueness of his collection. No longer does he nurture it for pleasure or reminiscence. It must serve higher aims. To cease collecting and hoarding means to rob humanity of science. He must press on, make his sacrifices. Ring ye heavenly bells, sound the alarm! When he utters these words, throw his entire collection into the blaze. Burn it. As the old fairytale says – Fire, fire, burn and rage, dark hearts to salvage. His saving grace. Strong characters will prevail. Nothing will ever enslave them again. Weak characters will not. Better they give their collection to a museum, for they satiate mankind’s desire to hoard. To feel fulfilled. To endure, to abolish time’s reign. Ancient balm, this human desire to amass the greatest number of things in the smallest space. To possess a book that contains the universe, a house that holds everything, where wafting wind remains without. True, the universe is the grandest of museums, it contains all. But it is too vast for people, they cannot see its entirety, their souls cannot comprehend it.  

You will be neither the first nor the last to liberate yourself of bloated collections. There is nothing else to do anyhow. All travelers bring home souvenirs, it behooves them, it is what’s expected. To be deserving of their journey, olden day explorers, with their pith helmets and manly features, sent home entire ships laden with stuffed and mounted beasts, bison, insects, spears and shields. If they returned empty-handed, they would be considered poor explorers, idlers. Even today’s travelers with their climate-controlled trucks, national funding, and sensitive mouths return with boxes of ethnographic volumes, aphids, and stones as they pour cosmic earth-matter from one pile to another.

I should not say this, but most collections sooner or later come to naught. People might care for them, sometimes conscientiously, other times not, but they have lost their sense. Resting in chests and boxes for decades on end, only a small portion is ever used. And the oblivious crowd streams by, ignorant of the collector’s joy and suffering. Item after item without end, chests of worries fill museum basements, the mouse’s jewel box. A single picture on the wall – how beautiful. You could look for hours. A corridor of a thousand pictures – a graveyard. Painters should scream in terror at such fate, and give away all their pictures to children. The final secret, my avaricious little brother. Museums are beautiful, oh so beautiful. I have spent so much time in them. And that is why I can say that sometimes it is even more beautiful to blow them up with dynamite. To let the sunlight into the grave. To illuminate chambers of mice. That is what you should do with your collection in old age. Liberate yourself. Don’t turn to stone. Leap lightly on high! 

My situation – I foolishly console myself – is not so bad. I still have years of hiking and collecting in front of me. Somewhere in the clayey fallows near the Krupinská plateau, Aira elegantissima awaits me. Where this grass stood one year, it stands not the next. For years I have sought it vainly along the banks of the Ipeľ River, trudging through arid wastelands. Does it even exist? Yes, but it is hiding. It evades me as if knowing that something must remain for next year too. Crypsis, rare grass of southeastern salt marshes, awaits me somewhere, as does Leersia oryzoides in the marshes of South Bohemia, a grass which only flowers once in many years. Joy to journeys’ end.

I, too, knowingly delay my gratification. Long have I put off my journey to the southern Carpathians, to the mountains of Banat.  There is still time for that. One day, somewhere amid steep ivory bluffs above the Nera River, Sesleria filifolia will blossom for me. Once in my collection, I will gaze at my grasses one last time, recall all those beautiful Hungarian girls, and ask the plants’ forgiveness for taking them from their home, for taking their life. Then I will light a fire in the stove. Collections should live and die with those who lovingly created them. Knowing when to stop, when to dispose of material possessions, leaving nothing behind that could cause others pain – that is an art. And being honest with oneself, for whatever we do as people, whether the evilest act or the noblest deed, we do for our own satisfaction. Best at the end to have nothing at all. Naked from the womb, naked to the tomb.

I see in my mind’s eye a picture from an old book. A wizened old Chinese man at the end of his days sits within an empty, whitewashed room somewhere among the mountains of Szechuan. Gazing at an empty white wall, his only worldly possession, he plays the quietest game of all. There is nothing more he needs. The caravans he once led march across it, the rivers from which he drank flow over it, the flowers he once collected blossom upon it, the stones he gathered for emperors on the banks of wild lakes glitter upon it, the books he wrote about his travels open on it. The old man stares and smiles, all is complete. The cooling warmth of inland summer permeates the room. A wind wafts through an open window and a brilliant square of sunlight moves across the wall hour by hour. Memories are the best intangible collection of all, succumbing not to time, encompassing the entire world. Superfluities pass, forgotten. Only the essential remains. Once that passes, the old man will pass too. None of his voyages were futile, never did he cause anyone any harm. I Moi The Old.

An empty white wall in the mountains of Szechuan – the most exquisite collection of all, little brother, but the road there is long and winding!

CINDREL

THE SHEEP MOUNTAINS. Rolling ridges on all sides, the Cindrel Mountains, the Cibin peaks, the summits of Sibiu rise more than twenty-two hundred meters into the sky. Years ago, they were deserted, nowadays you can catch a bus from Sibiu up to the Păltiniş Resort. Beyond that lies a nearly impenetrable windfall of trees followed by lonely grassy mountainsides – the first stair to the Lotru, Parîng and Şurean Mountains. Cindrel Ridge is deserted – Cînaia, the only refuge, contains a single rickety old table. Below the highest peak, fog. We wander across Devil’s Plain above glacial lakes, one of few places in Romania the rare Eurasian dotterel calls home; I encounter him next on plains amid the Ciucaş mountains. On tallest Cindrel Peak, dark garnets fall from their sockets into waving grass. We gather them, not knowing why, but they do not bring good weather. Wet to the bone, we forge our way down from the summit to Ştefleşti Pass, empty and desolate, which divides the Cindrel and Lotru ranges. The miserable path descends on both sides to the waters of the Frumoasa and the Sadu. A sheepfold, sunk in mud, lies deserted in the dusk. The shepherds must have remained on the misty hillsides whooping, calling, playing their flutes. Above scrubby forests, grass, grass, grass.

Evening falls above the Ştefleşti sheepfold, foggy and dismal. Everything is soaked and soggy: mountains, grass, forests, us. We build our shelter in a mossy pine grove – fresh, beautiful – like nothing you’d see at home. In such hearty habitat, tree branches hang with hoary likens, thick and unburning. Vain our attempts at drying, vain our breath on smoldering flames. The fire languishes, wet wood smoke blends with billowing brume. The frontier between Cindrel and Lotru: the very edge of the world, little brother.

COZIA

THE BIRCHWOOD MOUNTAINS. Small and steep, the southernmost tip of the Făgăraş rises thirteen hundred meters above the Olt River valley. Below, barefoot locals dwell in solitary homesteads. The air smells of summer hay, and rows of plum trees climb the mountainsides. Beyond them lie beech groves, pinewood forests, fir thickets, scree slopes, birch woodlands, plains, pasturelands, and craggy cliffs, dark and dangerous. Mountain huts are hemmed by nettle thickets so dense one was christened Stinging Nettle Shanty. Our descent from the summit – a mix of luck and misfortune. We find ourselves in a parched and wild ravine where water must roar in spring.  Now dusty and dry, white rocks crumble underfoot, the ground a tangle of branches, trees, stones, stumps, and tree bark. Like nothing I’ve ever seen at home. The ravine descends ever steeper until, with a great leap, it falls away altogether, an arid waterfall. The Olt flows below it, banks abounding in blackberry bushes.

Once in the Cozia Mountains, do not forget to visit the ancient Orthodox monasteries. Not far from the dry ravine stands the cloister of Turnu, accessible only by footpath. There you will meet only locals, quiet whispers, and kindness. I sit, gazing quietly at painted crosses and pictures of levitating saints as the sun sets. How heavenly the smell of fragrant candles, how great my shame for sitting there. Two days before, I bathed in the sulfuric black mud of Ocna Sibiu, which had left me smelling of hellfire and brimstone. In vain had I washed in Sibiu’s deep salt pits with water too thick to drown in. In vain had I tried to cleanse myself of that smell.

And here I sat in the Turnu monastery smelling like Satan himself.

LOTRU

THE GRASSY MOUNTAINS. “Mountains of Thieves” located north of the “River of Thieves”, also called the Ştefleşti Mountains. We hiked them without a map, and indeed I don’t know if a map of the area even exists. Kilometer after kilometer of grass, flat, layered cliffs and Asian-like steppes, horizon to horizon. I am astonished when, after hours of trudging, we rise again to the horizon only to discover more ridges rolling off into the distance. We do not encounter a single dwelling, only shepherds from a different world. An old engraving published long ago by the Hungarian Carpathian Society shows shepherds standing beside a gneiss cliff on Ştefleşti Peak. They grin roguishly at us as their dogs stare stubbornly on. Three-quarters of a century later, and the same cliffs, the same expressions, the same bristly faces, the same fur coats, the same snarling dogs. The grandsons of olden shepherds, the great-grandsons of bygone dogs – they stand before us unchanged! Be grateful for such lands, little brother, they are few and vanishing! 

On high Lotru plateaus, dogs fight fiercely and distant horses whinny. Land of hailstones and sweet grassy beds. We descend to the valley with evening. Chilly air rises from Lotru waters, but the sun high above illuminates the southern horizon, rimmed by the white cliffs of the  Latorița Mountains. Beneath the slopes nestles a tiny settlement called Obîrşia Lotrului, which boasts a little shop that sells exploding beer, watermelons, black bread, and long-untasted sugar. We are the only foreigners, perhaps the only customers. The shopkeeper sells sugar – a precious commodity in Romania – in the most peculiar way: only some customers are allowed to buy the damp yellow crystals, the others are not, no matter how much they beg and wave their money.

The rest of that exquisite day is spent resting on the banks of the Lotru River, protecting our shelter from curious bulls, eating bread and watermelon, and sampling amber sugar.

THE GAME OF INNOCENT BROTHERS

Do not throw your leftovers into the fire, place them on the ground. Tomorrow we leave, but others will come. Who? The wolverine, the badger, the crow, the mouse. And if the mouse does not come, the ant will take his place. There are many that walk the Taiga. They are just like us, only they wear a different coat.

Nanai hunter DERSU UZALA
in Hot Breath of the Taiga by V.K. Arsenyev, 1903

Play this game with me, my bloodthirsty little brother! It’s alright if you do not understand it right away. One day perhaps you will, and you’ll be a better person for it. This is the game of brother beast and sister plant. There are many steps on the path to mastering it. In the beginning, a little suffices: do not kill a frog on its wedding night, do not break a wagtail’s eggs, do not pull a fly’s legs out. That is enough for a long time. Your youthful blood must be infused with the beauty of April frogs and watery song, with wonder at a bird’s nest and a fly’s wispy legs, with the joyful knowledge you do not walk this earth alone. It takes time. If a spider comes to call upon you, do not howl in panic. It is just your eight-legged brother who crawls over you. Lift him gently, you are his boulder. If he were three hundred times larger, then there would be cause to panic. I haven’t yet asked you to love tapeworms or adore leeches, the gems of summer fishponds. But try not to harm ants, you kill enough as it is. And do not snuff out the life of each fly that buzzes passed. If a centipede crawls into your tent, lift it out lightly. If you come across a Carpathian blue slug resting on a dewy path, bend to it, move it aside so no hiker tramples it. How simple and how good. If you have come this far in the game, it is far enough. You will know, my stride-taking little brother, that you breathe the same air as all your other brothers. As all those creatures you cannot give life to yourself. As every beast that does a thousand things you can’t, and has been doing so for millions of years. You will cease to pointlessly end another’s life. Respect for life is of utmost importance, obsessing about overbred pets of least purport. As if “purebreds” were not of mongrel stock! Treat animals with respect even if they are the most ordinary creatures, their abundance is no reason to cause them harm. Treat them with respect even if they are uncomely and plain, or cannot raise their voice in song, or cannot be cooked and eaten. It is neither difficult nor praiseworthy to love useful or beautiful beasts. Yet I judge no one, it is not my lot. All depend upon the blood of innocent brothers. Some more so, some less. Eskimos – whalers and butchers – entirely. Bodhisattvas – ashram dwellers, rice eaters lovingly liberating every last louse – least of all. The rest of humanity lies in between, that is the way of things. Ahimsa and Ahinsa, two beautiful Indian princesses, have but one law: kill only what you must!

A beautiful sight, the hunter who kills only to survive. Days of solitary trudging through forests. Man and animal, who will get who? Death is part of the wheel of life; the electrons in a corpse never cease orbiting their nuclei. All the more repulsive is the city hunter, panting murderer, who, once a year, dons hat and coat and sets forth from his rancid office to kill in clean autumn fields.  Not for need or for passion, it merely behooves him.  Trumpets call out his blasphemy above glazed-eyed hares. The more needless the killing, the more pompous the trumpeting. But horns justify nothing, nor do they give glory to murderers. A bloody game!

Animal games are difficult, the rules unclear. It would seem that man is God to hares and deer and can do with them as he pleases, killing at will. And it’s true, without man, there would be fewer fields and in them fewer hares. Deer, too, would be fewer, only the strong would survive. But someone with many children has no greater right to the lives of his children than someone with one.

That is why each age must create its own rules, as humane as possible, for coexisting with our brothers, the animals. There was a time humans bartered for other humans, shot Indians, killed Tasmanians. Now they are ashamed of it. One day they will lament trapping, murdering and selling their brother beasts. At the moment, most biologists believe animals must be sacrificed for research. There are times when it is necessary and times when it isn’t. But for now, that is the way things are in this barbaric time when no one ever stops to think. This primitivism will pass one day just as slavery did. A new age will dawn and with it, new hunting grounds, new biology, new museums. It must change. For the past three hundred years, scientists have lived entirely on cadavers. Three hundred years of necrophilia, corpse worship, three hundred years of positive science. My friend works in a natural history museum. He has spent his whole life among corpses, collecting them, caring for them lovingly. How appalling. A perverted huntsman. He proves no courage on the hunt, the prey is defenseless, almost tame, soon to soar again in liquid solutions and exhibit boxes, awaiting judgment day.  These thrushes and shrews will never rear their young, grow old in forests, return to dust or receive a proper funeral by burying beetles. But he provides them with eternally glassy eyes and a bellyful of stuffing. Hecatombs of birds and butterflies, halted mid-flight. Skulls, cadavers, bones. Death wherever you look, captured in time. Like Azrael, angel of death, my friend wings o’er the countryside playing his dark game. He loves moles best of all. They can keep no secrets from him, every inch of their little corpses has been weighed, measured and counted. How wonderful it would be if he discovered one day that no two moles are alike. That each is a unique little creature with a unique little soul. That day will be long in coming, and who knows if he won’t need to inspect all the moles that tunnel below before he makes his discovery. My museum friend examines his beautiful lover too, but thank goodness, in quite a different manner. He doesn’t care how many hairs she has or how much her insides weigh. Those are secrets she can keep to herself – the most beautiful things about her.

Foul words have I written, hunters and biologists are sure to tear me apart. And rightly so. I deserve it. Just as those who freed the slaves of good people two thousand years ago deserved it. What they still don’t know is that my words on animals apply to plants as well. They, too, hear and see. One day they, too, will be free – but that is a different game.

Back to light, summer forest games! Precious lands, my curious little brother, you will never be alone there. Home to thousands of little creatures. The three Fates, many-legged, frightfully named. Haasea Flavescens, Polydesmus Complanatus, Polyxenus Lagurus. And their mother Glomeris Pustulata and aunt Polyzonium Germanicum. Under leaves, under bark, you might not know it, but they are there. A game of merrymaking!

Try catching an adder by then tip of its tail. It cannot reach your hand to bite you. And if it does, don’t kill it, it would not understand the punishment. Besides, you won’t die if you are not weak of heart. A game of courage!

Try catching a bumblebee, ever so gently. Workers sting, drones do not. They are otherwise nearly indistinguishable. A devils’ game! Bumblebees are not aggressive and seldom sting, but when they do, it is no more painful than an ordinary bee. Yet people never pluck up the courage to touch them. A funny game: elephants afraid of mice.

If you catch a crayfish, admire it. It is only an arthropod, but looking at its large, elaborate body, you’d swear it was a vertebrate. Wonderful. Grandfather of the river, who could ever eat it?

You can play animal games forever, they will make you a better person. At the very end, perhaps you will discover that earthworms infinitely exceed the most perfect machines – an airplane, by comparison, is poorly organized submatter. That it is better to spend a year locked in a prison cell with a fly than with an automobile. That it does less harm to the universe to let a steamboat sink than to kill a wasp. But those truths are not for everyone, my less bloodthirsty brother, they are difficult games!

Enough about animals. They are your brothers, you are profoundly close to them. Little children smell like baby chicks in the nest. Hair and feathers, the same splendid fragrance. It is wonderful to drift off to sleep with a girl at your side, but if she is missing, little brother, falling asleep beside dog or horse is also nice: the reflection of human warmth, breath, love, and life.

You can be sure of one thing, when one day beings from other worlds or star clusters alight upon this earth, they will not be able to distinguish that barely noticeable difference that divides humans from animals. They will not be able to distinguish the playful cries of children from the seagulls cry above the pond. And they will think a skunk to be a man – the same eyes, hunger, ears, stench, the same yearning to live.

ŞUREAN

THE DESERTED MOUNTAINS. Vast, godforsaken plains – like inner Mongolia. A solitary horse. Not a single pilgrim for three days. Miserable huts amid pastures, shepherds on horseback riding like bandits, flying like the wind, soaring and playing their flutes as they ride wildly. Toward Şurean Lake they gallop, beneath a peak two kilometers high. Silent glacial lake, skirted by bogs and scrub pine, overlooked by cliff upon cliff.

Tarrying and doldrums beneath Lui Pătru, the highest summit. These deserted mountains belong to us. Sparks from a great fire fly heavenwards on a beautiful windless night.  Ascent the loftiest peak is murder. Four stages to the summit, from beneath you see but one.  Vainly you hope for the climb to end.

Black Mountain towers amidst the Şureans. Its scrub-pine forests draw the pilgrim’s eye like a magnet amid those grassy prairies. Give it wide berth though, little brother. Better to avoid a shortcut on hands and knees!

Beautiful the Şurean Mountains, the Sebeş Mountains, the Orăştie Mountains. Culminating in gleaming mica to the northwest, they pour down into a valley, streams of innumerable slopes and ridges. With a bit of luck, you’ll find the right one. Follow it to lush forests where a mighty fortress stands. Temples and walls overgrown like ancient Mayan structures in Yucatan jungles, the Dacian stronghold of Sarmizegetusa was conquered more than two thousand years ago. Breath of antiquity. All is deserted, pieces of statues litter the ground. A single path, steep and narrow, leads out of the valley below. Even the main valley proved impassable. Not until Grădiştea de Munte, amid still trackless countryside, do we encounter smoking charcoal kilns and barefoot children playing with speckled pigs. A boulder filled river valley, dust-covered wormwood, the smell of cows, the buzz of insects, a warm evening.