Denial

This early love poem by Giorgos Seferis became, under the Greek Colonels' régime, an anthem of liberation:

Denial

On the secret seashore
white like a pigeon
we thirsted at noon;
but the water was brackish.

On the golden sand
we wrote her name;
but the sea-breeze blew
and the writing vanished.

With what spirit, what heart,
what desire and passion
we lived our life! a mistake!
so we changed our life...

Travels In Greece

One of my favourite travel writers is Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915- ). I revel in the descriptive fireworks of his 2 best known books, A Time Of Gifts (1977) and its sequel Between the Woods and the Water (1986) - accounts of a youthful journey he made from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. Among other travel writings he's published The Traveller's Tree (1950) about the Caribbean - and 2 books on Greece, Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese (1958) and Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece (1966). In these books he explores very remote regions by mule and on foot. Leigh Fermor is passionate about Greece, its people and traditions, its myths and its landscape. He lives there and speaks fluent Greek. During WWII he fought in Greece and Crete, and helped organize the Cretan Resistance as an SOE officer. Disguised as a shepherd, he planned and achieved the capture of the German General Heinrich Kreipe in 1944, a daring operation which was later immortalised in the film Ill Met by Moonlight (1957) starring Dirk Bogarde.

Wounded

Giorgos Seferis, the Greek poet, wrote: Wherever I go Greece wounds me. Wounded by beauty? Wounded by love? Wounded by death? All 3, I think...

Greek Tragedy

Something is burning, baby, are you aware?
Something is the matter, baby, there's smoke in your hair
BOB DYLAN Something's Burning, Baby from Empire Burlesque

The fires in southern Greece have raged for almost a fortnight. Much of the devastation is centred on the western Peloponnese, that beautiful, mountainous peninsula separated from the northern mainland by the Corinth Canal, which links the Aegean and Ionian seas. Around 500,000 acres of farmland and forest have been ravaged, 6000 homes are believed to have been destroyed and at least 65 people have died. An Athenian schoolteacher was found dead in her car with her 4 children. She had tried but failed to outrace the flames. These have been the most extensive wildfires in Europe's history - much more serious than the ones which engulfed the northern Peloponnese in 2000. It's the biggest environmental disaster Greece has ever known. Helena Smith wrote this in the Guardian: In the Peloponnese, the peninsula worst hit by the fires, the signs of death are everywhere: in the stumps of still smouldering olive trees; the silver ash that carpets the land; the charred remains of carcasses putrefying in the summer heat; the trees tinged orange as if they are wearing wigs; and the thousands of others turned charcoal black, their baldness too awful to contemplate for those whose families have lived in these parts for centuries.

Jane Tomlinson

Jane Tomlinson (1964-2007) died yesterday evening. In July 1990 she was diagnosed with breast cancer. In August 2000 a scan revealed multiple secondary cancers. These cancers were pronounced incurable. She was given 6 months to live. Since then Jane took part in marathons and triathlons. She also completed 3 long and gruelling bike rides: from John O'Groats to Land's End, from Rome to Leeds and from San Francisco to New York City. She was given a BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award; and the Queen awarded her the MBE and the CBE. She has raised over £1 million for charity. She was - she is - an inspiration. But Jane would have been the first to point out that most people with terminal cancer could not or would not want to do what she did, and why should they? Who would - even if totally fit and healthy? The point is this: unless we really can't help it (and for some this may be understandably impossible), try not to give up. No matter how short life is. Whatever we do. For, as Ruskin said, There is no wealth but life.

More Stoat Stories

The mustelidae family has been getting a big blogpress lately.You know how you wait ages for a bus and then 3 come all at once? Well, first there was Annie Dillard's epiphanic weasel; then there were my own running stoats; and now comes Chris Townsend's dramatic stoat event in his garden (Stoat Encounters of the Third Kind?) involving 2 stoats, 3 pheasants, a coal tit and a sparrow hawk. A word about Chris Townsend, a member of the UK hiking community's blogerati. An outdoors enthusiast, he's been gear guru for tgo magazine since 1991. He's also a photographer, and author of 16 walking-related books. Chris has trekked many trails and long-distance paths including the Pacific Crest Trail, the Continental Divide Trail and the Arizona Trail in the USA; and he's walked from the toe to the tip of Britain, from Land's End to John O'Groats. I remember reading what I think was his first book, The Great Backpacking Adventure (Oxford Illustrated Press, 1987), which I enjoyed very much at the time. But his writing style and ability have improved by leaps and bounds since then. A book of his that's become a bit of a classic is The Backpacker's Handbook published by Ragged Mountain Press, one of the McGraw-Hill group of companies. As I write I'm looking up at my own copy on the shelf above my desk. It's a 440 page practical guide to backpacking equipment and technique. Indispensable. This sentence comes from the chapter On the Move: Skills and Hazards: One bear-country saying is that the way to tell the difference between black bears and grizzly bears is to climb a tree - black bears will climb up after you, grizzlies will knock the tree down!

Snowy Woods And Pilgrim Islands

The reviews are now appearing for Robert Macfarlane's new and eagerly awaited book The Wild Places and they are universally ecstatic. Look at the notices from The Sunday Times or from The Scotsman for example. I mentioned how much I was looking forward to reading this book in a post a few weeks ago. I don't think I'll be disappointed when I get my hands on a copy. In yesterday's Guardian he describes how he went about researching the book: I travelled widely, and I tried to travel wildly. I walked, swam and climbed through landscape and seascape. Wherever possible, I slept out. I travelled in all four seasons, in sunlight, rain and blizzard, and by night as well as day. I also sought out the company of native guides: people who had lived in those landscapes for many years, or came to know them intimately as scientists, artists, shepherds or foresters - people who had acquired the wisdom of sustained contact with a place... I had a great deal of fun. I spent nights out on cliff edges and distant bays, in snowy woods and on pilgrim islands. I walked up frozen rivers by night, swam into sea caves, and one midnight I wallowed in a phosphorescent Irish Sea. I slept near a shearwater colony (noisy), and under the sky route of thousands of migrating geese (deafening); in a winter wood (cold) and on the summit of Ben Hope (bone-chilling). I became lonely, tired, wet, midge-bitten, irritated with nature and, most often, very happy. If this account of getting out into the wilderness - living in it for a while, sleeping in it, experiencing it first-hand - doesn't inspire us, I don't know what will...

Trust Yourself

Trust yourself
Trust yourself to do things that only you know best
Trust yourself
Trust yourself to do what's right and not be second-guessed
Don't trust me to show you beauty
When beauty may only turn to rust
If you need somebody you can trust, trust yourself

Trust yourself
Trust yourself to know the way that will prove true in the end
Trust yourself
Trust yourself to find the path where there is no if and when
Don't trust me to show you the truth
When the truth may only be ashes and dust
If you want somebody you can trust, trust yourself

Well, you're on your own, you always were
In a land of wolves and thieves
Don't put your hope in ungodly man
Or be a slave to what somebody else believes

Trust yourself
And you won't be disappointed when vain people let you down
Trust yourself
And look not for answers where no answers can be found
Don't trust me to show you love
When my love may be only lust
If you want somebody you can trust, trust yourself

BOB DYLAN Trust Yourself from Empire Burlesque