Dispatches from the mountain hut
I am in Montenegro, on the last stop of my six week Grand Tour of Ex-Yugoslavia.
The air here is incredible. A mix of mountain and cypress and salt from the sea. The children sleep for hours each day, like they have been given sedatives. it took me a week to keep my eyes open past 10pm.
My new no dinner policy is having a gratifying effect on my waistline, and my children's extended nap times are restoring my spirit. It's sweet to watch my boy and my girl crawling and running riot here in this cradle of wildflower and rock where I spent the happy summers of my own childhood. A place of crickets and swallows nests, endless stars and sunwarm rock. Each morning the light floods in; I am greeted by cloudless sky and sunlit hills. By pomegrantes and figs slowly ripening on the tree, by the flowering bushes (and there just beyond the hill, the bend in the road) the air from the sea.
My little village - with its unfinished brick houses and its occasional snakes and goats is no tourist attraction, but its stones and dirt paths, its dusty oaks and colourful riots of nightflowers belong to me as much as my own bones do. The house my grandfather built will never be pretty. It's a communist cube, utilitarian. A bunker with windows, designed to withstand earthquakes. If the Apocalypse comes my best bet will be to hide out here, especially now that the grape vines and tomato plants are prospering. I am sure I could take a number of you with me. I hope you like figs.
I swim daily. The tree-covered cliffs that border the little bay lurk in the water like half-submerged crocodiles. The tourist season has not yet started, and the sea is gratifyingly cool and clear. In this sheltered bay I temporarily set aside my fear of sharks and tsunamis. The water welcomes me like a friend. I swim at the day's end. The sun exits gaudily. The moon turns me silver as a fish.
The air here is incredible. A mix of mountain and cypress and salt from the sea. The children sleep for hours each day, like they have been given sedatives. it took me a week to keep my eyes open past 10pm.
My new no dinner policy is having a gratifying effect on my waistline, and my children's extended nap times are restoring my spirit. It's sweet to watch my boy and my girl crawling and running riot here in this cradle of wildflower and rock where I spent the happy summers of my own childhood. A place of crickets and swallows nests, endless stars and sunwarm rock. Each morning the light floods in; I am greeted by cloudless sky and sunlit hills. By pomegrantes and figs slowly ripening on the tree, by the flowering bushes (and there just beyond the hill, the bend in the road) the air from the sea.
My little village - with its unfinished brick houses and its occasional snakes and goats is no tourist attraction, but its stones and dirt paths, its dusty oaks and colourful riots of nightflowers belong to me as much as my own bones do. The house my grandfather built will never be pretty. It's a communist cube, utilitarian. A bunker with windows, designed to withstand earthquakes. If the Apocalypse comes my best bet will be to hide out here, especially now that the grape vines and tomato plants are prospering. I am sure I could take a number of you with me. I hope you like figs.
I swim daily. The tree-covered cliffs that border the little bay lurk in the water like half-submerged crocodiles. The tourist season has not yet started, and the sea is gratifyingly cool and clear. In this sheltered bay I temporarily set aside my fear of sharks and tsunamis. The water welcomes me like a friend. I swim at the day's end. The sun exits gaudily. The moon turns me silver as a fish.