Climbing Mountains

You cannot stay on the summit forever;

you have to come down again.

So, why bother in the first place?

Because what is below does not know what is above,

but what is above knows what is below.

One climbs, one sees.

One descends, one sees no longer,

but one has seen.

There is an art of conducting oneself

in the lower regions

by the memory of what one saw higher up.

When one can no longer see,

one can at least still know.

Mt. Analogue

This past weekend, a group of about 40 people from Momchilgrad packed up for two days and piled on a bus to climb some of the highest mountains in Bulgaria. It was a 'pohod' planned by Gospodin Ergin from the Obshtina in order to commemorate the Momchilgrad holidays that had transpired during the week and the Islam holiday Bairam, celebrated at the end of Ramadan (month of fasting and purifying). The ironic thing is that the journey's destination was the Rila Monastery, a notorious Eastern Orthodox Christian sanctuary for prayer which has been home to some pretty saintly people.

We started out at Hizha Vada. The beginning of our quest was marked by the appearance of a fox which everyone stopped to photograph. The fox came out of the woods to stand in front of our group. It just stood there while people struggled to take out their cameras and capture the moment. Then, when the fox got tired of looking at us, it turned around and went right back into the woods.

The group started walking and within 10 minutes, the big, eskimo coats started coming off and people started stripping down to cooler layers. Our bodies' natural heating mechanisms were working full force, propelled by our trudging uphill. I was fortunate to meet many people from Momchilgrad. Teachers, people who work for the municipality, store owners, the journalist from the nearby big town Kirdjali who came along to document our trip. Ergin, the trip planner, re-named me Stacy...to decrease the confusion that resulted every time I tried to explain that I'm both Bulgarian and American, but I'm here in a Turkish/Bulgarian region representing an American organization. Huh?!

So, we walked, and some danced and some sang and some complained and some got sick, and so on, but somehow we moved forward. And then it got dark and we were still walking. And we encountered ice and rocks and bushes and puddles and streams and some fell and some got wet and a few had flashlights, so a few of us could see. And some walked slow and some walked fast, so our group broke up into clusters and it was a bit scary at times and i later found out that some thought they might not come out of this scenario alive. But, gosh darn it, it was an adventure...and if you could only see the sky by this time...the zillions and zillions of stars that you could see when there wasn't a single car light or street light for many, many kilometers. Some commented on how romantic the whole thing was...bushwhacking in the wild, wild Rhodope mountains, in the dark, in the company of the bright stellar plentitude of the universe. Some commented on how stupid the whole thing was, that we didn't leave earlier to get to our Hizha (i.e. nature hotel) by daylight. Yes, it was hard, but the whole thing was somehow blissful and euphoric at times. Go figure!

Then, we saw the light of the Hizha and we reached the Hizha and everyone was blissed out and euphoric at this moment because, well, the Hizha meant warmth and food and rakia and vodka and maybe singing and maybe sleep. Then, our fearless leader had to go back to gather the other groups who had gotten a bit lost in the wild. By a miracle, we all managed to come together again in the hizha and to eat and drink and laugh and pat each other on the back for making it through that daunting bit of wilderness in the dark, hardly being able to see the shoes of the person in front of us. Then, we slept, and it was good.

The morning after, we were awakened by the mezmerizing views we had missed out on the night before. There was a lake right next to the Hizha. Who knew? We were lucky that no one stepped in it by accident. That's how little we could see...most of us were surprized by the discovery of the lake. Then, there were the layers and layers of mountains in shades of purple, pink, grey, and dark blue...layers that seemed to go on forever. This was the view that greeted us as we came out of the Hizha to walk a kilometer to the bathroom. It filled us to the brim with beauty, so much so that we didn't even notice the smells from the triangular hole in the ground that passed for a bathroom out here.

We washed in the cold mountain stream coming out of the lake, ate breakfast, and started out on the day's journey refreshed. The weather was sunny, warm, and delicious as we set out to explore the seven lakes of the Rila mountains. Lakes with appealing names such as: the Kidney, the Eye, and the Tear. The ironic thing is that the tear is found above the eye. One of our group-mates reasoned that this must be because of the wind...the wind blew the tear upwards. Our leader said that it was actually because everything is upside down in the mountains. The fresh mountain air makes your entire psyche turn upside down and of course, then, your perception goes upside down.

To be continued....maybe...if there is enough demand ;)