Running on Hard Ground

The roughest of running trails...

Leading to the isolated "castaway beach"--all my own for a swim at 6 p.m.

Counting the Hours

An irrespressibly warm breeze blows from the eastern Mediterranean—from the plains of Asia Minor, over the eastern islands and the Cyclades, and atop this mountain where our little house sits amid the olive groves. In late October, daytime temperatures remain in the high 20s Centigrade and at night it doesn’t dip below 20 C. (low to mid-80s, high 60s). Shorts and tee shirts are still the dress code, even sitting at a cafeneion or taverna by the ocean in the evening. The ocean is like bathwater, mostly calm and inviting, with neither current nor undertow. Τέλειο—amazing. It will remain this way, for the most part, through the end of December. When I will be shoveling snow, slipping on ice, and wondering if the firewood will last until Apri--and whether the daylight will ever return to the forty-fifth parallel.

Last night I had dinner with my English friends C. and P. and their son S., who Lucia and I met in the summer of 2014. Although they live in London, they have had a second home here for the past 14 years.

C. made a comment that resonated with me.

“When I’m here, time seems to stop. As soon as we get off the plane in Kalamata and smell the aromas of rural Greece—the wild sage and thyme, the Ionian Sea—we know we are really home.”

I couldn’t agree more or stated it more accurately.

Although it might defy logic or common sense for a middle-class, middle-aged dude from rural Maine to own a home here in southern Greece—a second home that is fast becoming a first home—there are no doubts: this is the place. And with any luck, circumstances will allow us (me and Ann, and our children) to spend a few more weeks here each year. And then, perhaps, some day…a lot longer.

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Why a Fence?

I had two major missions on this 23-day trip: run the Spetses 25km Mini Marathon and win my age group—mission accomplished! if more slowly than I might have liked—and work to install a steel, one-and-half-meter-high perimeter fence around our property.

Back line

Finishing the work today along the roadway

 

But why a fence, you might ask? (Certainly it will keep the riff-raff in.) Not unlike rural Maine, with its infrequent and unwelcome “Keep Out” or “No Trespassing” signs, there is no real way to deny access, not just to people who might be curious (or worse), but to any number of evening creatures: highly destructive wild boar (on the ascendance throughout Greece), packs of jackals—heard every night, like our coyotes, and although generally fearful of people, with howls that are worthy of your attention—and all manner of “escaped” farm animals: goats, sheep, and the like. The latter two (plus the wild boar) can exact enormous damage to grape vineyards and to trees like olive, lemon, oranges, pomegranate, fig, apricot, pear, and avocado. Our property has all of these.

And gypsies. Fearless outsiders, many of whom will not hesitate to “nick” any manner of tools, steel, tiles, and the like, engaging in a kind of petty thievery. With few opportunities, this population has been relegated to the margins for generations. Some might argue justifiably that they are an entire population that has been unfairly castigated as unrelenting robbers, pickpockets, and shysters—the Others who worthy of fear and contempt. And some in the mainstream population think much worse of these nomadic and poorly understood folk.

The large number of gypsies in Messenia feed themselves by collecting scrap metal and by traveling through the small villages, their old pickup trucks plying the mountain roads and coastal littoral laden with any manner of discarded metal, fruits and vegetables piled high, all manner of bric-a-brac for sale: plastic chairs and tables, live poultry, brooms, brushes, and recycled and reused wares. The megaphones on the hoods and roofs of their trucks—which, curiously, all seem to be white and have smashed windshields—announce their presence many kilometers before their arrival. In essence, though, they provide a service and are regulary patronized by many, especially the owners of tavernas.

So you hear the magnified banter long before they have arrived at your door: “People, we have chairs, shoes, tables. Come one, come all—for garlic, melons, tomatoes, excellent deals on potatoes…clothing, boots, and ducklings.” It can be a dizzying array of offerings.

I count myself a commited non-racist, one immune to the human sin of stereotyping. Although in the depths of my heart, knowing full well that we all harbor some type of racism and a collective urge to stereotype those who look and act differently, I realize that such self-righteousness inclinations are faulty at best. Utter fabrications at worse.

But let’s be clear: gypsies steal.

Maybe not all of them, and surely not all the time. And “steal” itself is a loaded word: Bankers steal, and so do Main Street merchants, and do little white children with fair complextions, blonde hair, and blue eyes.

But stealing, or what the larger population might consider stealing, is part and parcel of a thousand-year cultural dynamic in Greece and throughout the Balkans. Sometimes out of necessity—a marginalized population who have children to feed, just like the rest of us.

And Messenia is home to more gypsies than anywhere in Greece. The tent camps outside of Kalamata, with their austere and seemingly desperate character, tell the story of their mysterious presence.

And hence, the fence.

Other Security Measures

My friend Dimitri is a master metalworker with a veritable percolation of excellent ideas. One is for us to build a secure metal box, out of view, and large enough to hold a growing collection of tools (hoes, hand tools, metal ladders) that would otherwise “disappear” in our absence. The house is too small for all of these sundry items. An additional purpose: to store batteries for a photovoltaic array, outside of the living space, in a vented, insulated, secure container.

Another great idea courtesy of Dimitri: squaring off the mortared wall in the back corner, then back-filling it. This roughly five-meter square “platform,” with stone steps, would be located under our largest tree: a massive carob, which is always loaded with brown pods and is highly aromatic. And an excellent source of shade.

The view of Mount Likavounvos (the “wolf mountain”), visable from our porch, would be incredible with some elevation.

Shade is a critical component of outdoor living in southern Greece. Since most people (traditionally) live outside for nine months of the year, a social-gathering place—a veranda, a pergula, or some such—is an ideal element in Greek life. Even in busy Athens, the fortunate have an αυλή / avli (“garden”), a walled-in space, often with a lemon or orange tree, shockingly colorful bouganvillia, potted plants. It serves as a sanctuary. And ours will be too.

To the Bee Yards

My friend Panayioti is a full-time beekeeper, with more than 600 hives spread throughout the region. Unlike in Maine (we are amateur beekeepers), here the honey is harvested four times per hear. Such is the blossoming natural world in fair Hellas. Like traditional beekeepers, he moves his hives frequently (he can fit 85 or so into his pickup truck and trailer, strapped down with care) to wherever the blooms are happening: in the winter he places hives in the citrus groves and amid the wild oregano, thyme, and sage; in the spring they are moved near the olive blossoms, or near the chestnut trees (which produce in an incomparable, dark rich honey).

One of Panyioti's smaller bee yards--150 hives

Top of hive, sugar water covered with a cloth

Sugar water is feed from plastic bottles with small holes

Handling his bees without glvoes

Bees need water--he uses a drip system

For years I have asked him if I could “shadow” him to one of his bee yards. Last night, he said, “why not come to the mountain with me tomorrow. I have an extra veil. Wear long pants. You’re not one of those people who will die if strung?”

Greece's summer heat necessitates ventilation, front and back

Opening a hive to inspect

Finding the queen, checking the progress

I have been stung countless times and I remain among the living. So I left Dimitri (his brother-in-law) alone for an hour or so with the fencing, and I set off for the mountain with Panayioti.

I am a source a great humor with funny language mistakes. I speak with ease, but not always with care. I referred to the queen as a βασιλειος / vasileos ("king") instead of a βασιλίτσα / vasilitsa ("queen") and Panayioti couldn't stop laughing for five minutes. I wasn't sure what I said that was so funny until he corrected. The "king bee."

Hives on old tires, very clever use

An American beekeeper in Greece

I also asked him if he saw many snakes in the bee yard.

"Oh, yes, they like the shade of the tires and pallets."

"So, tell me the truth: will an ochia really kill you if it bites? Like right away?"

"Oh no, you may live several hours. Perhaps even half a day. In fact, maybe until the next morning. THEN you will die. If you are biten, go to Pylos for immediate care. Then they will send you quickly to Kalamata for more tests and  more antidote."

Wipe Away Those Tears, Young Man

I have always suffered a special kind of melancholy when leaving this country, a place that has coursed through my inner self since the age of 12, when I first came. I have experienced the sadness of leaving more than twenty times.

Happily, I have also experienced to joy of arriving more than twenty times.

This year I had the special good fortune of coming to Hellas twice in one year, an inexplicable luxury for a middle-class guy with a middle-class income. But sometimes you do what you must do—and I must be here. I won’t belabor the “why” of it. Just read this blog, with all its bumps and bruises, its wild pontifications, poor writing, and careless facts. The why of it will become evident—even just in pictures.

Ten years ago (2009) we gathered up the family “and moved to Beverely.” (The pop-culture reference will be lost on 90 percent of my readers). My incredibily supportive wife, and my (then) three compliant young children, all of us in tow.

We found a place in rural Greece (Finikounda, in southern Messenia, the western Peloponnesian peninsula nearest to Italy) to spend six months, rented the first floor of house, sent the girls to the local one-room school house, home-schooled our son. I worked as a freelance copyeditor (oddly enough, on an encyclopedia about Ancient Greece) and Ann enjoyed a much deserved sabbatical. We had scrimped and saved for this little adventure for a dozen years. Friends, family, and strangers were all supportive in our quest.

That sabbatical year, which was reduced to five and half months when my mother became ill, opened our eyes to the realm of possibility. It also set in motion, for me, a lifelong aspiration that began as a twenty year old, when I studied classics/archaeology during my junior year abroad in Athens: to find a small house in rural Greece. And that was about the time I threw myself into learning modern Greek, in which am now nominally (but carelessly) fluent.

We returned, as a family, in the summer of 2012. Marginal finances seemed to make the old dream unlikely and was nearly abandoned.

Almost by accident, the dream was resuscitated, like an old man who once wheezed and then found the special joy of breathing anew.

Building a house, an enormous financial undertaking, was not in the cards. This is the stuff of wealthy foreigners. So we found a piece of land with 17 old olive trees and a broad, let’s say stunning, view of the Mediterranean—looking toward Malta or toward North Africa, depending on your posture and imagination. (Obviously you can see neither over the horizon.) We knew the property was unbuildable, but the plan was to construct a tenting platform, obtain water, and maybe someday find an old “caravan” (British lingo for “camper”). It was the quintessential Greek property on the cheap.

But then the owners of this plot mentioned an old, dilapidated agricultural building, very small and seemingly an unlikely prospect. Thankfully, Yioryio, the father, had a vision for us and our aspirations—a way to “legalize” an old building, renovate it, possibly expand it. And so we traded the 17 olive trees for an overgrown lot, chock full of rubble and other debris.

The old house

Gradual improvements--including raising the walls for a loft space

In six short years we have transformed this old hovel into a “sanctuary,” which is an ancient Greek word and one definition of temenos—the name of this blog.

Little by little--as time and money allowed

A house warming for us with our Greek and foreign friends (Lucia posing), 2015

Each summer, with limited resources, I cleared the land—literally tons of rock and debris—paid a bit each year to raise the walls of the old structure, rebuild the roof, add windows, running water, a bathroom, and more recently a covered veranda. I planted trees and flowers and every manner of indigenous plants; found some kindly English friends to watch over the property, water the plantings (absolutely necessary for eight months—from May through October, when rain almost never happens). This little daydream became more an more real with each passing year.

Becoming a Greek

On a parallel track, as early as 2005, I began researching how to leverage my Greek heritage—all four grandparents were born in Greece more than 120 years ago—in order to obtain dual citizenship, which is permissible from both the Greek and US perspectives. (Boris Johnson, the current idiot Prime Minister--Donald Trump's lost brother--is, for example, both English and American.)

This was an epic undertaking requiring multiple trips to the Greek Consul General in Boston; obtaining an impossible trove of original documentation (grandparents’ birth certificates, wedding certificates, etc.), and nothing short of a steely determination.

In 2017 the prospect was consummated: I swore an oath to protect and defend the Hellenic Republic, passed the mandatory FBI criminal background check (no I have not murdered anyone—not yet at least), and received a military service waiver, as I had passed the threshold of age 50.

Ann, Nia (our youngest, then a minor), and I marched into the Koroni police station, with our poet-farmer friend Niko as our local “sponsor,” and received our official Greek identity cards. Then, later that summer, Nia and I obtained our Greek passports at the Kalamata police station. We are now, officially, citizens of the European Union (with no impact on our American citizenship)—and card-carrying Greeks. The same opportunity is available to our other children—Manny and Lucia—and Ann can leverage her Italian heritage (as one cousin has) to obtain Italian dual citizenship. We can all be Europeans (and Americans) together!

The potential for living happily ever after has improved. And long after I have become dust, this little sanctuary will belong to our children. If they wish.

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We are officially “registered” in the nearby town of Methoni, with its imposing Venetian castle, which was built in the early Middle Ages and once house over forty thousand souls. (All of whom were executed—decapitated—or sold into sexual or chattel slavery by the besieging Ottoman Turks in the 1600s). Yes, the "evil and viscious" Turks. My Cretan grandfather, born a subject of Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, is smiling at his famous qualifier.

I joke with my dear Evyenia (Nia) that we are now obliged to defend the castle ramparts: shield and sword in hand, ready to fight the good fight.

Today’s “fight” is against modernization, Westernization/Europeanization, and financial ruin. Greece has kept its hairy chin just above the water. And now, it is poised for a comeback—slowly and seemingly against all odds.

We have a deep an abiding love for this country, which represents much more than our cultural heritage.

It is not just a “second home” but both a mythological and metaphysical home, one that courses through our blood and lives in our warm beating hearts.

Sunset between the bambo, Finikounda harbor to the right, big beach to the left