Looting Memory in Corinthian Greece — Page 2
By David Lee Drotar


The tourists all gone, the crisp air of autumn was already spilling down the mountain onto the red-tiled roofs and clock tower in Arachova. Village shops optimistically displayed colorful scarves and fur hats in sidewalk displays. Soon there would be skiers on the slopes of Mt. Parnassus, a mere two hours from Athens. But today we were taking advantage of the waning daylight and previous week’s rain by looking for forest mushrooms.

Arachova in Greece

With each step, my sneakers pressed into the spongy trail. Thick, gray clouds swirled around towering Kefalonia fir trees, a species that grows only in this forest and on the island of Kefalonia. The real show was at our feet, however. Yellow petals of the fall-blooming saffron crocus poked through the moss and fallen leaves. Around each bend we saw a different variety of mushroom ranging in size from a thimble to a dinner plate, in color from pure white to burnt orange.

In Trance With the Oracle of Delphi

In total, 280 different kinds of mushrooms grow in the National Forest of Parnassus and we were seeing just a small sampling on this section of trail. It was perfectly legal to pick them—assuming you knew what was safe to eat. As one theory goes, the famed oracle of Delphi knew exactly what she was eating when hallucinogenic fungi induced her prophetic visions.

mushrooms in Greece

Delphi

The more widely espoused explanation for the trances, however, is that the priestess inhaled a narcotic gas released from a fissure in the ground. Whatever the source of the visions, political leaders of the city-states traveled far and wide to Delphi to seek her advice before any major military decision.

I bent down and examined the mossy stone wall lining the 3500-year-old path to Delphi through the old-growth forest. Most of the assorted breadbox-sized boulders were still expertly fitted together as if stone masons had built the wall yesterday.

Soon we arrived at the edge of a deep canyon, the deepest in all of Europe, in fact. Some brush grew out of the almost vertical rocky walls but there were no discernible ledges and no path down.

My guide Panagis, ever the playful leader, dislodged a small rock from the soil and threw it over the edge. “Be careful, everyone,” he called, “because if you fall, you never come back.”

As if I had been thrown over the cliff myself, a flood of memories washed over me. This was not my first time traveling in Greece, but during the past two weeks I had never laughed so much or thought about philosophical issues so deeply as with this current bunch of illogical, emotional Greek bandits who had stolen my heart. It would be hard enough to say goodbye tomorrow, let alone lose any one of them or my traveling companions to an accident.

But Panagis wasn’t joking this time. Several seconds later, I was startled out of my daydream by the sound of the rock hitting ice at the bottom of the ravine. Notwithstanding the distance that the reverberating sound must have traveled and the amazing fact that there was a permanently frozen stream deep inside a forest chasm in a Mediterranean climate, the secret that the canyon held was truly chilling.

During the Second World War, Nazis controlled their twisted narrative by throwing troublesome Greeks into the icy pit. Today, a warming climate occasionally spits out an intact human body and a piece of the story to rock climbers well equipped and brave enough to venture downward into the dark history.

All Greeks are storytellers and historians at heart insofar as their history and culture has shaped the rest of the world in so many ways. Their collective memory is long and far reaching. They are sympathetic to Syrian refugees because they remember a time when Greek refugees from Turkey fled to Syria. More than anything, they understand that words and stories are powerful vehicles for either good or evil. They can foment unrest and violence or they can be used to inspire people. Both cases have happened repeatedly in their history.

Of course no nationality can claim that they invented storytelling. Some people say that since the earliest drawings scratched on cave walls, the unique characteristic that set Homo Sapiens apart from all other creatures on earth is its ability to communicate experiences and to create complex stories. In ways that are still evolving, humans bank those memories not only in their minds but in a myriad of other ways expressed in art, music, literature and architecture. But they may also be the only species capable of willfully destroying those same memories.

Drawings in Greece

IF YOU GO

For information on these areas in the Corinthian Riviera of Greece, see:

Corinth

Ancient Corinth

Arachova



David Lee Drotar

David Lee Drotar's travel stories appear in The Globe & Mail, Earth Island Journal, The Buffalo News and numerous other publications. He is a frequent contributor to Perceptive Travel. Drotar is the author of seven books including Steep Passages: A World-wide Eco-Adventurer Unlocks Nature's Spiritual Truths.





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Related Features:
Uncovering Greece, Underwater and Underground by David Lee Drotar
Painting as Prayer in Greece by James Michael Dorsey
Agamemnon's Fan Club by Tony Perrottet
Out of Smyrna by Gloria DeVidas Kirchheimer

See other Europe travel stories from the archives


Read this article online at: http://www.perceptivetravel.com/issues/1216/greece.html

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