On Foot to Constantinople

One thing leads to another and, as so often happens, one book leads to another. After a recent re-read of Mary Norris's delightful Greek to Me, I took her suggestion and began reading Patrick Leigh Fermor's A Time of Gifts.

In 1933, Fermor, an eighteen year old English student, decided to leave his studies behind and to walk from Holland to Constantinople. (The book was written over forty years later, based on the journals he'd kept.) 

The prose is lush and delightful--a wonderous travelogue of Europe between WWI and II. It's a bygone world, where a young man can travel on foot and be greeted by hospitality at every turn--from the inn keeper who gives him a room because he looks tired to the town jail that will provide a warm, unlocked cell and breakfast to the workhouse run by monks, with its communal dormitory and breakfast provided after a stint of woodchopping.

It reminds me a bit of Richard Halliburton's popular travel books--I was quite enamored of them when I was young -- but Fermor is a much better writer as well as being a deeper thinker.

I'm reading the book slowly, pausing to look online for pictures of some of the places he describes--the Dutch polders and landscapes, the picturesque towns, the castles along the Rhine . . .we followed some of that same route back in '70 on our motorcycle trip and I could see it as he must have done from the barge that gave him a lift--without so much traffic and rather idyllic. 

But it was 1933-- in Germany "the town was hung with National Socialist flags and the window of an outfitter's shop next door held a display of Party equipment: swastika armbands, daggers for the Hitler Youth, blouses for Hitler Maidens and brown shirts for grown up S.A. men..." There were pictures of the Fuhrer in various manly poses and the author recounts hearing a woman say, "What a beautiful man!" to which her companion agreed, adding that Hitler had wonderful eyes.

At the same time, Fermor encountered many who were openly opposed to the Nazi movement, "in different ways and for different reasons.  It was a time," he goes on to say, " when friendships and families were breaking up all over Germany."

How familiar this all sounds. I can only hope our country continues to move away from the cult of personality that is destroying the GOP as a rational (and necessary) conservative voice. But I digress . . .

Meanwhile I'll keep traveling by way of this book of riches, secure in the knowledge that I have the second part of the v0yage standing by. 

 

Just a Closer Look . . .

Is it a sleeping baby dragon? That was my first impression.

But no, it's only a Red Velvet okra pod that developed into a curl because of its position in the fork of a branch.

Still, I think it's pretty darling -- almost like those netsukes I was talking about a while back.




I love the close-up abilities of my little camera. And I love how on the computer screen I can see things really well . . . things that I might otherwise have overlooked . . . from the textures of bark, rusted iron, and worn wood . . .

. . . to the somewhat surreal or artificial look of these Kousa dogwood seed pods. . .

. . . to the patina of weathered red paint atop the rough geometry of an old barn . . .

. . . and the road map of magenta veins on the back of a lab lab bean leaf.

I've been thinking about how much there is in my small world, particularly when you take a closer look-- there are days and days I never leave our farm . . . and when I do, I rarely go far. I've been here in this lovely place for 34 years now -- and I'm not bored yet.

But I do feel surprised and honored when bloggers of a decidedly cosmopolitan nature stop by to see what's up in my tiny neck of the woods.

Some of these cosmopolitan blogs are new over there on my blog roll. Recollections of a Vagabonde is one. I followed Vagabonde to some tiny islands off the coast of Newfoundland -- islands that still belong to France. I had no idea that such existed. (Good thing the previous administration didn't know about this either, back when they were renaming French fries 'freedom fries.' A French toehold in North America! Boy, would that have gotten W's knickers in a knot.)

Maia's Into the Moonlight took me to lunch at a beautiful ranch in Portugal and on to Patagonia before I recalled that I had work to do in the here and now. I commend both of these to your attention!