It starts with doing something I avoid doing while spending the summer in my ancestral village. I put on shoes. While I love to ramble around barefoot for most of the day here, this is going to be a bit of a trek. You see, the main village, the core of the area so to speak, is positioned on the slope of a hill, almost equidistant from the north and south coast of the peninsula. Here, on the north shore, was the village's harbour: two stone piers, one built by an emperor, the other by a king; large stone warehouses to, well, house wares for shipping or store caught fish. No one lived here, back in the day. But as times changed, so did the nature of the place. The shipping and the fishing became less and less important, and having a summer house, for yourself, or for some additional income in the form of tourist rentals, became more of a priority. And so I find myself here, in the spot where an old warehouse used to be, now a summer house, a stroll away from the main village. And the cemetery is a further stroll away from the village.
So: shoes. And we're off.
We will not take the main road, filled with car traffic from endless tourists who have driven from half the continent away to spend too few days for too much money in a respite from their normal lives. No, we will take the country road, used for access to land, fire-fighting purposes, and as a nice detour in case you've had one too many glasses of the local red and would like to avoid any difficult questions from the gentlmen with badges on the way home.
First, we need to scale the face of the hill where the road starts. It's not too hard, and it's the only part of the trip that will get us to break a sweat, but after the climb, it's mostly flat further on. Before we finish the climb, we turn around to take one final look at the sea, before the trees block our view.
Our feet take us through mostly dense but friendly forest, of Mediterranean trees and bushes, of which I can name but a few. Like the shipping and the fishing, it's become less important to know the name of every tree and plant one sees, especially if your livelyhood isn't connected to the natural world. And yes, I can pull out my phone and use an app to identify every plant I meet, but it's one thing to google a poem, another to know it by heart, you know?
We keep on, and here and there when the higher trees give space for stuborn bushes on our right, the bell tower of the village church might throw us a glance from away west. Now, if you look carefuly in the foliage, you might notice something. Between the thick vegetation and tall pines, you will see a particular hue of lighter green leaves catching last rays of the sun. One might call them olive-green, in fact, because in older times this whole area was almost nothing but olive groves. But, as times changed, and the march of progress and industry took people from their villages and placed them into cities, as shipping and fishing and knowing the names of plants became less important, and as one makes more money renting apartments to tourists then from toiling on the land, the wild retook many of the groves. Many, but not all. For as we walk, we meet some noble olive trees, in manicured groves, between drystone walls.
There's rarely any car traffic here, which is what makes it a nice place to walk, but I can hear a car coming. I step to the side a wait for it to pass, but when it makes the bend in front of me I recognize the faded red of this little French machine.
"You're still here!" says a childhood friend from behind the wheel. I barely saw him during my time here, as it has become usual since we've become working adults. He is one of the few still working the land, and between that and tourism, summer is busy for him and others like him.
"Yup."
"Hey, the day is getting shorter, so I'll have more time now. We'll go eat something one of these days while you're still here."
"Deal!"
And he's off. Short and to the point, very much a man-from-the-country kind of conversation.
Pressing on, and we soon find ourselves at the edge of the village proper. The first few shy houses appear, followed quickly by more. Many are abandoned. It's quiet in the village here, away from the main road. Used to be you couldn't walk through here without at least getting startled by an eager dog, but now it's just quiet. The population dwindles with every passing year. A dying village, in a dying nation.
We move through the village and must now pass a stretch of the main road. Pass the school house, pass the badly-kept football field, but now we're surrounded not by olive trees or forest, but vineyards. We are passing through what is called here simply The Field. A flat strech of good, fertile land, which gave the village its intial prosperity so many many years ago. It's still covered in vine trees, although here and there is a patch of abandoned vineyards, the vines embraced by thorned tentacles of blackberry bushes, and a few orchards of various trees. As we walk, we can see the the cemetery on the other end of the Field, with its crown of cypress.
As we move off the main road for a final bend, we are greeted by a stone cross, one of four positioned at the four corners of the Field. Built long ago by the villagers, perhaps from gratitude to the bounty of the Field, perhaps for the protection of that vital slice of Earth, or indeed both. They serve as checkpoints in the annual spring religious procession, hiting once again of some connection between the spiritual and natural life of humans.
And before we move to the cemetery, we take one look across the Field at the village, stretching gently down the hill.
And so, we come to the cemetery. A serene place, under tall cypress trees, sourounded by vineyards, with a view of the sea. As I look around and say my hellos to the residents, I am reminded of a comment I heard my father say once, that you can tell a lot about a people by the way they treat their dead. Well, ours here don't seem to be complaining.
Just as I'm done, I can here the church bell sounding eight o'clock. As a child, this was the universal "time to go home" signal. Games would end, and we'd all run home for dinner. Well, I should get moving too, it's getting dark. And as they say in these parts: better to let the village die, than its customs.