28 august 2007
hills like white elephants
Edward Abbey would have been proud of me.
We were staying in a town, so were strangely insulated from the island. But at last I got out of the bus and walked between villages in search of a huge lost city (which I did indeed find some of), and this is what I heard and saw and smelt and ate:
goat bells; goats; small birds in bushes; swallows; martins; giant electric-blue bees; goldfinches; jackdaws; hundreds of honeybees on golden roadside thistles; butterflies: small blue, swallowtail, huge fritillaries; a soaring falcon; silence.
Wild figs and delicious tiny wild grapes; resin and herbs; camel thorns, and a Roman cistern full of cool clear water and tadpoles.
Mount Psiloritis, where Zeus is said to have spent his childhood.*
* The other, rival mountain where the other people tell you Zeus really spent his childhood was invisible and somewhere else.
