Halki and Parting Halki

Friday, July 6, 2013—Emborios, Halki, Greece

A little after nine at night. I'm sitting on the balcony of my room. I've just watched the sun finally set (or the light from the sun slowly fade, to be more accurate—the sun actually sets behind me). It's hard to describe the peace of this vantage point at this time of day. The rugged hills of Halki and the uninhabited island that protects its little port look both unbelievably substantial and somehow unreal at the same time; they're like rock as mist and mist as rock. The wind has died down so even at the top of the hill (where I'm at) I can hear the water lapping against the dock and the boats. I can also hear the motors of the little fishing boats that head out each night. There are also the sounds coming from the restaurants and bars that line the waterfront: gentle sounds: people talking and laughing, not blaring music or anything even vaguely rushed. Earlier I got to watch Rhodes bathed in this vanishing light. The mountains in the area of Rhodes facing me are very green (especially by Greece standards), but the tops appear to be completely devoid of plant life; they are vaguely red crowns of dirt. When the sunset hits these bald tops this vague red becomes soft and luminous, which give them a strongly painterly feel … Turner meets Greece, something indescribable like that …

Hiked down the coast a bit today (my ankle hurt, but not as bad as I feared it might). I made it to this nearly deserted town called Horio, above which is yet another Knights of St. John castle. The town's fascinating because here and there people are restoring houses. Most, however, seem to have been crumbling for decades. I'm not sure of the dates, but this island was almost abandoned at one point. Apparently the water just ran out. A few people hung on. A lot bailed out, many to Florida (there are little plaques commemorating work done on the island as gifts from its Floridian offshoots and I keep hearing conversations between Greeks that go back and forth between Greek and American English—Greek Americans coming “home”). It wasn't till the tourist boom of the 70s this place came back to life. It's hard to believe that anyone would want to recolonize the interior here, though. It's some of the harshest, driest areas I've run into on any of the islands I've visited; it's amazing that the (many) goats here can even eke out a living. But a few people at least want their old homes back (or maybe to resurrect their ancestor's old homes). I wish them luck, even though I don't fully understand their motives …

Hiked up to the castle. It's in the process of being restored. Still, after scrambling up stone paths, temporary wooden walkways and some trails of my own making, I found a way to the top. It's pretty much like all the other Knights of St. John castles I've been to, but the views were spectacular. Especially interesting were these two really cool little beaches I could see, which existed back to back on a little neck of land that let out to a big round peninsula. I decided to try and get down to these for a swim, but I couldn't figure out how. I took a dirt road out of the town that looked promising but it just shunted me off down the coast. Heading down directly from the castle was a non-starter: it was perched on nearly sheer cliffs. I looked around in search of some trails with no luck. So instead I just hiked back towards Emborios and went for a swim at the touristy Potamos Beach, a great strip of shelving sand, but a touch too crowded for me (I went there the day before and felt kind of like I was in a place that was being slightly overrun).

Tomorrow (at four-thirty in the morning!) I'm catching the ferry south, to Karpathos. The person I was supposed to meet there, an Italian friend of who until recently lived in Istanbul, isn't going to make as it looked like she would (all the crazy shit going down in Turkey has thrown her life well off stride). So I'm not quite as eager to get their as I was before. Still, there are things there I missed last time thru and a few things I'd like to experience again. It's interesting, but this trip every time I'm getting ready to leave an island I feel sad (even if my experience there wasn't anything special). Each island in Greece is to some extent a world unto itself. So I really feel as if I'm leaving something important behind, something I can't experience anywhere else. There's also a feeling of … mortality … that comes over me at these partings. I'm beginning to realize (with my heart as well as my head) that I will never make it back to certain places in my life, which brings a finality to these partings that is a bit painful. These feelings largely go away as soon as I hit the next island: the hope of new discoveries takes over and the loss of the previous parting is converted into a pleasant memory, something from which I can draw strength. But that will come later for this Halki parting. As of right now I just feel like I'm losing something, something, as I've just said, I'll never get back …

Let's make this simpler: I need to remember that Greek ferries not only take from islands, but they bring me to islands as well …

*

My first morning here—some semi-poetic reportage …

I left the doors to the patio open and even the dawn sun was so hot that it woke me up. I stood up, walked naked out onto my balcony and saw the sun as a perfect orange-red ball coming up over the mountains of Rhodes. It was amazing. This blazing ball, the raw mountains, on Rhodes and especially here, and the light glinting off the blue-green waters around this island combined to be one of the most powerfully beautiful things I've ever seen. Then something weird happened. Suddenly I felt the craving for an ice cream cone—not just ice cream, but specifically an ice cream cone. I have no idea what this means (the Freudian implications are just too obvious to be any fun to explore in this case), but that's what happened. I don't even eat ice cream anymore and I couldn't say when the last time was I had it in cone form. But there is was …

Harsh interior Halki

Potamos Beach

Knights of St. John's Castle above Horio ("Is there anyone else up there we can talk to?")