CᾸPᾸŢÎNII

THE ENDLESS MOUNTAINS. You walk. Days pass. Hiking westward from the waters of the murky Olt with its warm sands and driftwood. Long will it be before its waters join the clear, rushing Lotru, river of thieves. Above it, walls so steep trees grow perpendicularly outwards. A gypsy settlement beyond Tent Valley, like nothing you’ve ever seen: fires, ragged dogs, earthen huts, stench, mud, skirts of red. Above the village, motley, waterless meadows, gnarled beech thickets, moist and distant pine forests, lofty grassy summits. Long the climb to two-thousand-meter high Căpăţînii pastures, long the journey through them, grasslands interspersed with boulders and broken slopes. Painted crosses stand at sheep intersections amid mountain passes. Take all your provisions with you. You will bring home silver horseshoes. Cabins there are large and square, like the mighty fortresses of old. If you fear drinking from muddy watering holes, better stay away from Căpăţînii mountain ridges! Olt pass marks the end of this range, continuing westward and you’ll enter the Parîng Mountains.

To the southeast, a great limestone massif provides stunning views, but its jagged skyline provides only limited hiking. Abruptly, majestically, Vinturariţa stretches skyward, queen over south Carpathian gales. Riven cliffs. Fierce, wild dogs. From out of nowhere, a pack of beasts surrounds you. To reach the range’s eastern boundary, you must pass through Cheia gorge, the narrowest in all Carpathia, harrowing passage in a storm. Between white walls an arm span across, the deep, jade green Cheia River rushes out of the mountains. At its mouth, the most magnificent Carpathian wilderness. A pearly cliff basin amid massive perpendicular walls. On its floor, broken and deserted hunting cabins. Ibexes. Archangelica and heartleaf oxeye high above our heads, bitter scent. Silence, mint tea and fir-bough beds. Absolute solitude.

In forests beneath the Cheia’s mouth stands a solitary convent run about by stone walls. I knock at the door, four nuns open. White lilies, fiery poppies shine in the evening glow. A cell-bound supper of corn, painted icons. Blows on wood call to evening prayers. The scent of plants, silent weavers. Never have I felt such peace of heart, never have felt such shame for my black and lustful soul.

PARÎNG

THE WILD MOUNTAINS. Enter them from the east if you can, you will better relish their majesty. We staggered in from the Căpăţîniis exhausted and half-starved, surviving on the barely edible leftovers from the bottom of our packs. Phantoms of feasts hovered over each step and evening fire, yet we were stunned by the breadth and beauty of the mighty mountains, a convergence of five Carpathian ranges. With its boulders and great retaining wall, the Wallachia – Transylvania trail resembled medieval military roads of interior upper Asia. It wound over passes and ridges for kilometer after kilometer without crossing paths with a single creature. Mountains on all sides. Time dissipated above endless plains, above the Lotru River, and above the green ridges and white cliffs of the Latorița Mountains which join the Parîngs. From here westward, there are more and more cliffs and craggy ridges and fewer grassy summits. Passing over gray glacial valleys and dark lakes, you may glimpse pilgrims in solitary tents, the first you’ve met in days.

I encountered the most beautiful sight on a side ridge. Hidden among dwarf pines and grass lies Shepherd Lake, also called Stoney Lake. Round, mild in daylight, icy at night. The most magnificent campsite in the Southern Carpathians. To get there, you must pass white limestone formations, red grass and sparkling green cliffs which are mined for the most opulent necklaces.

One rainy night beneath Parîng peak at the lower end of the Jieţ River gorge, I arrived at a lonely little elven cottage. I wanted to ask to stay the night, but I found the door open and the cottage empty and deserted. Inside there was a bed, and a chain hung from a pitchfork in the corner. Raindrops rustled on cornhusks upon the doorstep, a battered window creaked on its hinges. I had no blessed chalk with me, but there was nothing else to do – I lay down like a fairytale hero, all but sure I’d have a dark visitor in the night. But only the mice could be heard singing beneath the floorboards all night long.

THE GAME OF JOYFUL SIMPLICITY

What ill can Your Excellency do someone who lives on ten rubles a month?

N.S LESKOV, 1831 – 1895: Jednomysl

I loved playing this game, in my youth I was a master of it. And I feel its joy today as I write this for you, my desirous little brother. I recall my past simplicity, and I rejoice that perhaps your heart, too – who knows? – will be gladdened by it. Best of all is to delight someone with a letter, a smile, a handshake, love, a kind word – the game of joyful simplicity.

There was a time I wanted to survive in the universe without possessions, money, even food. The highest of games, unachievable. I was forced to give it up in the end. But I fought over every triviality, decided to live with as little possessions, money and food as possible. The most important traveler’s game! Seemingly banausic, yet beautiful all the same. I didn’t play for greed or thrift, I only wanted to dispense with material things, and I felt pity for nature. If everyone lived as I did (I supposed), the earth, its forests, waters, winds, and depths would survive a few thousand years longer than under the current circumstances. People would need less and produce less. But I didn’t have many followers despite not requiring much of them. I hadn’t come to destroy the new age or force anyone to live in poverty, I was merely practicing joyful simplicity.

I was well prepared for this game having encountered need during the war. I had never come close to starving, but I had learned not to live in excess. After the war, I received a laughable allowance from my parents, all my friends had more. It was hard not to grow bitter, but I succeeded. I never started the game of bitter simplicity. I wanted to travel far and wide, that requires simplicity – you won’t get far with a heavy pack. In it, I carried light and simple things since I wanted to be as free from people, their ingenuity and their products as possible. With every action, I tried to save the earth from the destruction that awaits it anyway, and perfect my ability to survive on my wits and skills. Try it too,  little brother, it will cause you no harm. A first millennium Greek philosopher writing on happiness and morality once said that those who enjoy luxury the most are those who need it the least. When you grow old, you will fondly recall the days you needed almost nothing. You need nothing for joy, fortune, and love. Bared soul and naked body. I remember the most beautiful time of marriage, the beginning. A straw tick on the ground, rough canvas filled with straw. Beneath a holey blanket, two hot breaths. There was nothing else in the room. Long can you draw on such beautiful beginnings, absolute poverty, the pure self-sufficiency of two hot breaths. Learn simplicity, my possession-hungry little brother! You must cease to love possessions, garments, money, food. You will gain more than you can imagine in return. Most people spend all their income on their things. Like little monkeys, they desire newer, shinier toys, incessantly snapping up colorful trifles. Swallowing and swallowing, their inexhaustible bottoms let loose a steady stream of barely used items, filling dumps. Dumps, depositories of wonderful things. Blessed are they who go there unabashed, whose sympathy for the earth and respect for the work of others compels them to gather discarded objects and give them new life. They delay world’s end!  There is now so much discarding of barely used items and extra food that it has become something of a natural phenomenon. And we should not feel ashamed to take advantage of it. Hunting about in dumps, fishing about in dumpsters. Like ancient hunters in search of game. There are places where those in poverty can receive all they need to survive. Dishes, food, skis, furniture, pencils, clothes, bicycles, backpacks, blankets, string, books, axes, boots, stoves, spoons. Anything and everything. Not out of love, but out of gratefulness. The givers rid themselves of their burdens but immediately replace them with new ones. One can live for free, as it were, though most of us dwell in an enchanted forest of vile excess. Throwing away useful items is committing murder. Remember the Eskimos. Keep the things you have grown old with – the things you love and those that have served you well – to the day you die, little brother! Knife, pot, house, wife, boat. Everything. To waste is to sin. It should be illegal, one day it will be. What can be more fulfilling than using a backpack till it can be used no more? That old, rank, Tibetan-looking sack has traveled everywhere you have. It has carried your belongings, helped you survive, gotten you through thick and thin. How can you simply throw it away and buy a new one?

We watch wealthier countries in horror as plates and utensils are discarded with the leftovers into sprawling dumps that stretch as far as the eye can see. Eskimos must stand aghast. They would not throw out so much as a burnt match or a bent nail. We don’t hesitate to scrap useful, well-crafted tin cans. Tin, a noble element. From the Big Bang, the universe spent billions of years creating it, transforming heavenly hydrogen to helium, to terrestrial tin. It will never happen again. Yet without batting an eye, we throw away something forged by the universe and crafted by ingenuity. Something that can heat food, fix boats, mend skis, carry water, save lives, hold heat, carry a candle, and perform dozens of other useful tasks. Naturally, we can’t spend our whole lives storing up old cans, but we can learn to live without them. A prisoner would be horrified if you threw away a clean sheet of paper. He would use a mere shred of it to write a message that might set him free, a poem that could immortalize him. We can’t stockpile paper our whole lives, but we can produce less. Being rarer, people would treat it with greater respect.

A little suffices, especially when traveling, little brother! Show me what you can make do without, and I’ll tell you if you can come with me. Learn to carry less. You will be the lighter for it. There was a time I could hardly lift the packs I carried:  saw, ax, cooker, kerosene lamp, flashlight, first aid kit, extra shoes, and lots of food – so I wouldn’t starve to death. Mine was a heavy, slow and joyless slog. But today I flit lightly over Carpathian slopes in want of nothing. I break branches by hand, cook quickly on an open fire, lay down in the dark by memory, dry my boots beneath my head, and I still haven’t starved to death. First aid kit? Garlic for every illness, my own urine for cuts and scrapes.

But in vain do I write. Values change, I see it on myself. As a boy, I used to laugh at my grandmother for refusing to throw old newspapers away. Today, my children laugh at my shocked expression as they throw away books they have finished reading. Grandma’s sense of pride and self-reliance came simply from knowing how to grow grain and bake bread. Pure soul. These days, pride is harder to come by. It is not born of store-bought bread and easy money.

Most people love new clothes. Wrapping their bodies in bolts of fresh cloth, they coo their satisfaction. That is what girls should do, my wise little brother. Dressing and disrobing is their lot in life. But you, love old clothes! Are you afraid girls will like you less for wearing them? Do you fear without nice clothes, buttons and silly collars you have no chance to find love? Then you underestimate them, at least the ones worth loving. Men, strong of thought and spirit, can walk about in rags, and deep forest souls with gleaming eyes and wild fragrance will still adore them, lay their lives down for them, long to fall asleep next to them. There may not be many of them, perhaps only one in a hundred, but they make living worthwhile. The rest is merely dust and ashes. Wear old pants proudly. Their age has taken nothing from them. Care not what others think. Take not their fashion, but let them take yours. Beach-loving dandies whose buttons shine brighter than their spirit.  They will envy you and try mightily to emulate you. But never will they roll up their pant-legs as easily and nonchalantly as you do.

Most people love money, and will even harm their own souls for it. But a little money is enough. If you had twice what you have, you wouldn’t have twice as many beautiful days amid mountains and forests. If you spend it on transportation, you might shorten your journey but that is all. Planes are fastest and most expensive, but you see little of the journey. Trains are cheaper and slower. That is better. Walking is nearly free, except what you pay in fuel for your body. You see and experience so much. Stick to walking, little brother! Best of all, stay where you are. Sit back and gaze down from mountaintops, take it all in. Breathe the sweet air as clouds float gently by. You need no money for that. Then you will be like the old sage, long dead. First a king of ancient India, he became a naked saint. “Liberated from the chains of wealth, false hopes and fear of fall, he was no longer ruler of the land, but of himself. Having nothing, he owned everything.”

And finally, most people love food, and not many show much moderation. If they must curtail their cravings, it is without joy. They are torpid and gluttonous. The full bottles they bear into the mountains they do not carry out. They toss them away in the forest as a monkey its banana peel. Since food has its own game, I will speak but shortly on it – gluttony is repulsive, disrespect for food even more so. Old bread must be eaten. Not because of a few pennies, but because of principle, because we should respect all that sustains us. Most of our brothers around the world are so hungry, many of them starve to death. Once I saw a magazine with a full-page color photograph (what a waste of paper, ink, and work) of a doleful looking young man. He had squashed his unfinished cigarette into a plate of bacon and eggs. The cigarette butt stood upright amid a serving of the most scrumptious looking bacon. It was undoubtedly the young man’s supper, he had undoubtedly paid for it with his own money. He could do with it as he pleased, he simply didn’t let it pass through his intestines. Yet looking at the photo nearly made me sick. There is almost nothing in the world that bothers me, but such deep disrespect does. If I were in charge, I’d lock the gloomy youngster up and feed him nothing but bread and water for three years. Not a day less.

How distant that youngster is from the old man I once visited deep amid Balkan mountains. He was preparing his stores for winter. Six barrels stood in the middle of a cool chamber. He raised the lid on each one: sour kraut, powidl, sheep curds, lard, honey, pickled herring. In the corner, there stood three large sacks. Flour. Dried peas. Salt. A bunch of garlic and some herbs hung from the wall, a pile of corn ears lay on the floor. That was it. The old man looked healthy. He smiled happily, and it seemed he had all he needed so survive five months of cold and dark.

Be modest too, little brother! Do not seek longingly for new things, keep to the old. Eat what you are given, let nothing repulse you. You will learn to survive arduous journeys, perhaps even wars. You will remain hopeful in hardship, not hang yourself in prison. Be harder on yourself! If you search, you will find hundreds of ways to be modest. At times it may not be pleasant, it may even hurt, but there is always a way. And if the day should come when you must choose between wealth and opulence that corrupts, and humble poverty, choose poverty! Not hardship and misery, that is bad. But bird-like poverty that nurtures gaiety and carefreeness. 

RETEZAT

THE TARN MOUNTAINS. Black bison and white sheep traverse mossy pastures, a rapid river rushes as clear-green as glass, embracing the entire range. The main mountain path is but a cattle track that winds its way upwards to meadows of wild grass beneath craggy precipices. You can tread where you wish and build your shelter as you see fit. Dwarf pine, juniper, and rosebay burn merrily in pilgrim fires. The faces of wild-roaming horses reflect off evening waters. The silence of mountain lakes is so deep you would gladly give up your life to remain there forever. Rare Festuca grasses on great rocky hillsides nod their heads in the wind, not a soul nearby. What you don’t bring with you, you must do without.

There are many paths to the Retezat Mountains, princesses of South Carpathia. But the southeastern route from the Jiu Valley is best. Oil lamps gleam in Buta lodge where bread-laden horses ascend southerly slopes. From there it’s a steady upward climb through forests, red heaths, and wetlands to steep, sheep-scaled crevices. Breathtaking views from ridgetops await, the tarn mountains are in sight. There on a wind-buffeted saddle far above equine lakes, the Retezats lay before us. Do not follow the ridge left through dwarf pine thickets, you will arrive in the “Little Retezats”, looming, pearly limestone summits, magnificent airy plateaus and a palette of low-growing flowers. That is where the Godeanu Mountains have their start, you will admire their beauty yet. Descend into a granite valley where flows an emerald river with no bridge across it. From there it is a skyward climb again up to the mountain lakes. There is nothing to give away that this is a national park. Shepherds leave behind charred stumps, sheep bathe their hooves in clear waters. Though not entirely deserted, there is no one to disturb the starry silence of evening fires. Soy patties cooked on a blaze of dry manure – food for the hardiest of travelers. Buffalo cheese from an unwashed shepherdess – only those who ate it with garlic were spared ailment.

GODEANU

THE VARIED MOUNTAINS. White cliffs shimmer in the northern reaches: ivory precipices, abyssal valleys. You will find no water there, no human dwelling, no mountain paths. Cliffs and plains, that is all. In the west, a memorial cross stands in the grass. Black hailstorms and blacker mists swallow ridgetop sheep tracks, but there is no getting lost here. Mountains stretch into the distance on all sides. After a cold night, the snow on distant the Borascu plain glistens strangely. Three days of arduous wandering. Bear droppings amid uprooted trees in Yellow Valley. The only way forward: through brook and waterfall. Hard going. Copses of plants, shoulder high, soaked in rain. Nights spent beneath igneous cliffs where water trickles, drop by drop. It takes patience to fill your cup. Windy nights among damp meadow flowers. Nights when eyes of dogs glow red in the darkness. They circle round you, silently, ever closer. Sleep is restless. You sleep beneath huge trees at the upper edge of the forest. At the mouths of gloomy valleys, puddled in yesterday’s snow, feral dogs tear at sheep carcasses. Desolation. A shepherd carries a cold handful of cornmeal pudding, his day’s rations. Huts here are built of thin stone slabs that have clawed their way to Earth’s surface and now lie strewn about throughout the range. Build a stony hermitage on the shores Gugu Lake, playing to the clouds your fluted song. Tibetan song of solitude.

Below the mountains flows Cerna River, once Wallachia’s utmost boundary, today still magnificent countryside. No roads lead to its source, only donkey trails. Wild old women twist sheep wool into thread. Spindles whirl between fingers, bean blossoms bloom red. An abyss of time. A few wooden, black, dwarfish dwellings whelming in manure. Beechwood fires. A river gushing from a cliff beneath windthrown trees, a wooden corn mill grinding away, clunk, creak, squeak. Stop the river, and the mill stops too. Shops and electricity are a long way off. Nothing but flat valleys, untended wetlands, and white gorges. From here the track rises to the boundary of the Godeanu, Retezat, and Vîlcan mountains. 

VÎLCAN

THE BEAR MOUNTAINS. Errant, rugged, and pathless. We spent three mapless days battling our way through them, crisscrossing valleys and ridges, some bare others overgrown, the sun above our only compass. We had but one thought: forge onwards, ever north. It was hot in the south near Tismana amid trackless karst plains. Sweet chestnut trees had been brought there long ago from the Greek monastery at Athos. At their outer edge, an old man stood guarding his beehives day and night. Next, endless beech forests. Our day ended in one of them, blessed day. Sleeping under an open sky, not knowing where we were. What a way to fall asleep! All was still – fire, forest, mouths, moon. No one about but a herd of boar in the dense thickets below us. Blessed was the morning as well: on a fallen beech trunk about four meters off stood a great bear. It looked at me long and hard, silently observing. I was silent too, and happy. Across distant valleys, raspberry covered hillsides reached skyward. The reddest slopes and largest raspberries in all Romania. Wild eastern song, clear and strong, rang from their midst. Raspberry pickers scaring bears, banishing loneliness. Have you ever eaten too many succulent raspberries, little brother? If not, go to the Vîlcan Mountains!

The following day’s toil ended above tangled gulches and valleys at the boundary between beech forests and pastureland. Beautiful, the mapless Carpathian journey following sun, shepherd, and woodcutter. The final night at forest fringe, evening mists descend into ravines. The last campsite of a wonderful holiday – two tarps stretched over three pilgrims keeps the rain off but let sweet breezes in. A pot to feed six pilgrims. A pot to quench their thirst. The next day is the last. We will walk through ridgetop meadows and descend along northern slopes through pine forests to the clear Jiu river. We will wash ourselves in emerald pools of mountain sweat, summer’s scent.

THE GAME OF THE WAYFARER’S DELIGHT

Poets words as such, sense they haven’t much
But childlike gladness, and a child’s sadness,
But truth all-pleasing, and truth uneasing,
But heavenly love, oh heavenly love.
Let him not hunger that he may call,
Let him not thirst that his tears may fall.
The path to heaven, the pathway to hell
He will show you.

15th century Aragonese song

This book often speaks of joy, sweet companion of long journeys. Joy turns dusty paths golden, and makes rainy lands bright. Just like people, trips also have two faces, and you can have your pick. Either you journey joyfully, remembering only the most beautiful aspects, or you walk in apathy and misery, taking home wretched, useless memories. Joy is the penultimate rung on the celestial ladder. It radiates from you brightly, promising to take you far. You feel the best is yet to come. In that way it differs from the highest rung, illuminated by the still, rosy light of beatific bliss and the knowledge that this life has come to absolute fruition. From there leads but one path – back.

Where is joy to be found, my grumpy little brother? Almost everywhere. It sits by the wayside and beckons to passing pilgrims, but few ever notice it, few are of pure and open heart. Those who do are rewarded, for it flies into their hearts and dances in their eyes, mouth, arms, and legs before rushing out again to await the next pilgrim. Eyes gleam, but they don’t know why. Mouth speaks words without meaning. Feet stomp, fists clench, tears well in the eyes.  A truly remarkable game!

Yet I do not know why joy leaps to the heart. High spirits are often its only residue. The highest joy neither rushes nor dances. At times, it rearranges the darkest, most despairing of thoughts like fragments in a kaleidoscope. The concerns that worried you for hours miraculously dissipate, and radiant joy bounds into your freshly swept heart. It only needs space! It leaps into your arms, and you wave to the sun. It leaps into your feet, and you do a pirouette. It leaps into your mouth, and you sing and shout for joy.

Everyone likely has different experiences. I was seized by pure joy in a little town at the foot of North Bohemian mountains. It was just a few hundred meters to the border. Irritable and unhappy with myself (I had hurt someone but didn’t want to admit it), I wandered the little town, having never been there before. Out of despair, I entered the rather derelict municipal museum. A little man bowed in the doorway, nose red from years of colds, two scarlet, slimy tracks etched onto the upper lip. And you know what, little brother? It was precisely him, an insignificant, neglected little man, who brought me joy. The museum was strange, old-fashioned. Sometimes I couldn’t distinguish between the collections and the rest of the rubbish that lay, left during cleaning, in piles on the floor.  Broken bayonets, piles of dead flies, fragments of a pot (perhaps of ancient origin?), antique, rusty fire brigade helmets, chipped porcelain, crumbling photo albums of long-dead locals, tarnished gold rings, military bugles, stuffed animals, trash, treasure. There is not such a wonderful museum in all of Czechoslovakia! The little man, encouraged by my excitement, described how good people from near and far bring him things they have no use for, and how he himself visits the dump to discover wonderful objects and return to them their vitality. The exhibit displays were all open, but when I asked, “Do visitors ever steal exhibit pieces?” his answer was peaceful. “They do, they do, but others keep on bringing.” There was nothing else to add, it was a lovely museum.

“I’ll show my most precious possession,” the man said finally. He drew back the curtain to expose a niche where a small engraving hung. Ancient. Dead horses lay on their backs, feet in the air, dying soldiers in their midst. Flying banners, flashing flames. The battle was over. A solitary mercenary knelt bareheaded in the corner.  Beneath the depiction, two sentences had been written in strange letters. “Dear God, give us the courage to risk and strike in life’s battles, and if we are to win, let it be according to the law and with untarnished faith and honor. And if we are to lose, endow us with the humility to stand at the wayside and greet the victors as they pass.” And suddenly it happened. Tears welled up in my eyes and I was overwhelmed by indescribable joy. Suddenly, I saw my iniquity and wretchedness juxtaposed to the glory, beauty, and grandeur of the world. An inexpressible sensation. The little man stood there at attention like the last sentinel, the faithful guard. Bidding him a hasty farewell, I ran out into the silent streets, no longer dreary but flaring in flame. In joy’s embrace, I sang at the top of my lungs. Like a Chasidic saint, I danced down streets to the forest’s edge. Out of that glorious town I waltzed, all the way to the border. Out of the town that had given me so much. At the forest’s edge, far from people, I fell to the ground for sheer joy and rolled in pine needles.

But joy comes to me most often with music or girls or a combination of the two. A South Bohemian village at noon. The summer fragrance of linden trees and Sunday dinners. I walk alone, not a soul to be seen. Sleepy village, goose droppings, afternoon so hot not even dogs bark. I limp along dismally. Stillness. Suddenly, sweet song soars, wild yet gentle. I cannot hear the words, but the girl’s voice electrifies me. It rises sharply and suddenly, amicably, then falls meekly away, as if the woman were laying her head on someone’s shoulder. I stand on the square glued to the spot, listening to the invisible girl, absentmindedly toeing grassy goose droppings with my foot. Rising above the deserted village, swelter, scents, and song. I clench my fists as reckless joy overwhelms me. Immobilized, I listen and listen. I wish to remain with that singing girl for all eternity, to sail with her across the sea. Strange are the ways of joy!

Enough about these experiences, everyone has their own paths. You might rejoice at a great fire, little brother, or an immense flood, shouting for joy at the sight of something so remarkably powerful. At the fullness of earth’s intensity. Yet the roaring of flames, the rushing of water drowns out your voice. Perhaps looking up into a circus dome moves you to tears as slender acrobats, like hummingbirds, flit high above earth, unafraid of death. Though perhaps clumsy or overweight, you suddenly rejoice in your humanness, in belonging to a race of beings capable of such unbelievable stunts. Or perhaps one autumn day, you enter an empty countryside church so still, only leaves rustle in the rectory garden. Sepulchral smells stray through the air. Your greatest desire: to lie beneath it.  Such sorrow for a futile, useless life weighs upon you. Into that silence and despair, an organ unexpectedly thunders. Freezing, chills run down your spine. Music, striking with its silvery hooves, soars heavenward in a cleansing cascade. Suddenly the sinfulness and triviality of your sorrow become clear. You leave the church transformed, joy in your heart.

Only joy, my fervent little brother, permits you to speak and act like a madman. People will forgive you if it radiates from you. I write this because there are many like you, feel not ashamed! Only ecstatic joy permits you to spontaneously do otherwise impermissible things. To thrust a penny into an unsuspecting stranger’s mouth; observe close up the faces of fellow passengers with hands like a telescope; knock a superior agreeably over the head with a roll of paper; play air violin in the middle of a shopping center; roll about in the town square calling, “By God, constable, do thy duty!”; address an old woman selling onions at the market, “Fair lady, what makes thee so exquisitely plumptilian and fuzzilicious?”; with an apologetic smile, press a glass pig into a strange girl’s hand. And hundreds of other forbidden things.

Nonsense words occur to you in joy, little brother. Hymen Thimblefist: a tiny, tight-fisted, lecherous tailor. A wordplay poem while picking sesel: Nestle sesel in a vessel. Wrestle vessel to a pestle. Pestle sesel then re-vessel. Joy reassures you it is better to write a poem than a book about mice or chemistry. Those who know can take no offense. You can spend hours, even days lying joyously on sandy beaches in apparent idleness, laziness, and dawdling without the slightest feeling of wasted time. Time vanishes in happiness. You live as cheerfully as a gypsy. Such carefree people, it is said their language does not even possess the future tense. They live here and now, in the present moment.

Joy – the barometer of the soul. What you do in joy can be neither wrong nor sinful. In doing wrong, you feel no joy. That is the justice of the universe. Immediate, merited. Joyless deeds – iniquity and hell. Were you unfaithful? Did you ride that dusty horse? Your punishment was swift. You were not happy, even if you thought you were. In the depths of your soul, there was sorrow. In joyful lovemaking, you feel your love must last until death, not just one beautiful hour, night or year. I think a joyful death must be beautiful too. So easy, so alluring. For death has two faces, little brother! One clear, honey-gold spring day, I walked through a city. There was a fair on the square full of laughing, joyful people. The April air drew my soul from my body, and I yearned to melt into the blue distance. Banners waved, trumpets played with martial tone beneath wafting breezes. I would follow them to hell, such was my joy. Someone beckoned, girls smiled and laughed, blowing each other kisses. At that moment I felt the joyful inclination to die. Right there and then. To soar into the air and simply vanish. How beautiful! There would be music playing, bagpipes and whistles wildly wailing. Like a hero, I’d stand upon the podium. Soldiers would smile, merrily aiming their rifles at me. Wind, wind! I would cry something beautiful and reassuring to the people, call to the girls, dance a final dance, laugh a last laugh and boom – I’d fall vanquished by sister death. Death on such a day! Haha! Let her come, I haven’t made love to her yet!

CERNEI

THE FLORAL MOUNTAINS. The paths to Cernei mountain valleys pass through great craggy gates cascading with cataracts. Alpine swifts shriek shrill before precipitous portals and lofty, towering walls, their voices somehow different than at home. Steep, rocky landscapes.  Villages nestled at ends of valleys – comforting little dwellings on slanting slopes accessible on foot or donkey. Blossoms blooming all around: large, abundant, colorful, thermophilic. Flower gardens near houses, wildflowers on bare cliffs. High above the valley, Arjana gleams. Steep ivory mountain. So abruptly does it rise, some have wept in weariness upon its craggy plateaus.

The Cernei Mountains fall steeply southward into Cernei valley, where one of the most exquisite of Romanian rivers flows. To the north lie the high rocky pastures of the Ţarcu Mountains which join the pathless Godeanus. This is the boundary of the Southern Carpathians.

Once, wearily, I sat on the bank of a brook beneath some mountains. My fire blazed as people, cows and goats returned to their remote hamlets from forests and mountain pastures. I greeted them and drank my tea. It was growing dark. As I prepared my bed for the night, a group of children dashed up from the hamlets below. Their little heads trembled in excitement, but they halted a good ways off. They were frightened. Some even held rocks in their fists. I called to them, they dropped their weapons and crept closer. The oldest began some jibber-jabber, and the others laughed in relief. Their parents had told them that a terrible stranger sits beneath the mountain at the forest’s edge, and his beard stretches all the way to the ground. That is how fairytales are born in the far reaches of the Southern Carpathians. Fear dissipated, the beard grew much shorter. Long into the night, the children poked and prodded me, closely observing me as I lay down to sleep, whispering and begging for Czech coins, thrusting slimy bits of bread into my mouth. I felt a bit like Mungo Park, the first white man in upper Nigeria.

MEHEDINŢI

THE SULTRY MOUNTAINS. A thousand meters above the river, the Mehedinţi Mountains scour the sky, the utmost outpost of the Southern Carpathians. Sheer. White. Thorny thickets, pathless precipices, serrated steppe grasses, the rarest and prickliest of which is Achnatherum calamagrostis – silver spike grass. Gleaming white cliffs blanketed in Banat pines and strange southern flora. Plants are fragrant and cicadas sing. Only after an arduous climb to the ridge by way of Seven Springs will you truly have encountered the Mehedinţi Mountains.

The remarkable Ţasna River ravine empties into the Cerna at the fourteenth kilometer. Steep, deep, black and white.  Black pines, white bluffs climbing stepwise hundreds of meters up. Like a Japanese ink drawing. An impassible white-water canyon overlooked by Indian prairies – what a place to grow old. You lay watching herds. Sheep, little black, squealing hogs, thick-coated goats. A beautiful land where you can lie amid sheep droppings and not look a fool. Above the herds, water vanishes and mountains regain their ivory sheen. Mehedinţi peaks sparkle like ancient silver as the sun sets faithfully on distant limestone crags. Nights are warm and fragrant with southern tranquility.

Below the mountains lies an old spa where you can rest your path-weary body in Herculane waters. You first catch sight of it from unimaginable heights, descending from Domogled, the tallest mountain, and oldest Hungarian nature preserve. From White Cross, you get a bird’s eye view of Băile Herculane. Fly down and alight for a while at the hot springs. Seven swirling springs bubble up at the base of bluffs. Free for all to enjoy. In the largest of them, a stony grotto below the path, you will find yourself at one with humanity’s suffering. Be not discouraged or repulsed. Immerse yourself in the warm water with the most afflicted: limping shepherds, scabrous old women. Gipsy ladies take off their blouses and descend into the mikvah, stripped to the waist. Their skirts billow in the water like great pink airships. Take your cure wildly in the smelly springs. Don’t be afraid to gargle. And when you emerge, you will find yourself strong and healthy once more.

A BROTHERLY WORD IN CLOSING

The Spray discovered no new continents on her voyage, nor did she seek new worlds. But to find one’s way to lands already discovered is a good thing. No king, no country, no treasury at all, was taxed for the voyage of the Spray, and she accomplished all she undertook to do.

JOSHUA SLOCUM, the first man to singlehandedly
circumnavigate the globe from 1895 – 1898

EMERALD WINDS waft o’er the oceanic expanses of Carpathian forests, I sense their fierceness and power. The time has come to raise your flag, little brother! Sail and become a child of Carpathia! You have no more excuses; I have so praised the pilgrim games, Romania, and her mountains even more. The sooner you set sail, the more likely you are to glimpse that land as I have known it. Hesitate and you may forfeit all and have nowhere to go. For even in Romania, people are destroying the wilderness at incredible speed; that which has been called progress hurtles ever onward like some unhuman force, a charging, unstoppable boulder. But a beautiful sort of poverty is still to be found among the Romanian mountains, as is the solitude of Asia-like plains. Shepherds there still speak a clear, hard Roman tongue and their boots, coats, and cheeses are still homemade. 

Many more beautiful lands likely exist whose mountains are mightier, valleys longer, pastures and forests vaster, and lakes deeper. But, for now, there are no other such places you can go to whenever you wish, whenever you feel burdened and wistful or yearn for mountain summits, solitude, freedom. Decide to go, and in a few short hours you are sitting aboard a train, celestial carriage, bound for Transylvania, Wallachia or Moldavia. No need for prior self-abasement, months of begging, bribery, and extortion. And none of the disappointment that awaits when your request to travel to mountains far afield is rejected. Freedom and independence, yet another reason I love Romania! And once you have circumnavigated all the Carpathian Mountains and played all the games, you will better understand the verses of poet Friedrich Nietzsche from his century-old book on holy Zarathustra, “My wild wisdom became pregnant on the lonesome mountains; on the rough stones did she bear the youngest of her young. Now runneth she foolishly in the arid wilderness, and seeketh the soft sward—mine old, wild wisdom!”