I crawled in last night at around 2:30 a.m., got up at 6 a.m., and ran down the mountain and into the deep valley behind Finikounda. The European Union gave this valley the “Natura 2000” designation recently. It is pristine in every way imaginable, and includes the remnants of two ghost villages that were largely destroyed during World War II. A friend in town grew up in one of these villages, one of the last families to remain there after the war. He recalls a dirt floor, no running water, and a single table for meals but no chairs. Everyone squatted around the table at meal-time.
Running along a gravel track to
the depths of the valley, I searched for a place to cross the river. Nearly at
my destination, I scared up a 250-pound wild boar--the feeling was mutual. It didn’t see me at first,
then charged across an open field like a 100-meter Olympian. You could not
possibly outrun this creature. I looked for a tree to climb and finding none (fairly unlikely in Messenia), ran as fast as I could in the other direction. This hairy, snorting beast did
not follow, thankfully.
Then I retraced my steps, found a
different crossing, running past the tiny chapel to Aghia Ioannis Riganis (St.
John of the Oregano) and several more abandoned buildings from another era.
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As part of my quest for total
language immersion, I usually tune in one of the Kalamata FM radio stations both in the
car and at home. The home radio is part of my sophisticated low-tech security
system, along with a battery-powered lantern that I leave in the loft when I’m
away at night.
The thieves are smart, so this is
hardly a deterrent, or possibly just a minimal deterrent. I’m hoping the night
prowlers ask themselves, “Is that crazy American dude with the baseball bat
inside, even though his car is gone and the gate is locked?”
Some English folks a mile down
the mountain suffered their second break-in this year, while they set off for a
brief stroll on the beach at 10 a.m. Apparently, they were being watched, which
is how this usually happens. They returned to some awful damage to their windows and
door casings—and their very fancy security system was pried off the wall with a
shovel (never leave tools outside!). They found the ear-piercing alarm in the
deep end of their pool, fully submersed. The thieves then ripped out all the wiring for the
alarm’s central controls—which is linked to the Pylos police station. That's where the
officers are playing backgammon, drinking coffee, and chain-smoking cigarettes.
“What alarm? I don’t hear anything.”
Our advanced security system
costs 12 euros—radio, lantern, and batteries. We don’t have a pool.
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“Kalamata, 90.5 FM, P-a-l-m-o-s,
the voice of Messenia. Now a word from our sponsors.
“Hey guys, you all want the best
for your goats, don't you? This is why you need to do all your shopping at Panayiotis’s
Goat Supply, just past the traffic circle in Messene, for all your pastoral
needs. Remember, Panayioti gets it done!”
The editor in me is deeply
troubled by the unclear antecedent.
Do I really want to know
what “it” is?
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