When I told them where I was going, I was met with one of three responses: I would die, I was crazy, I would die crazy and though I had died alone, having tumbled down some precipice, everyone would know that I was crazy and it would be much discussed at my funeral. Sometimes they just laughed. Even if I could speak passable Greek, what would I say?
I went because the name of the place means unwritten. Since I had first heard of Agrafa, I knew I had to see it. The only question was when. In late June of this year, when I finally had my chance, the question then became how - that is, how I would die.
The Agrafa is a tight knot of mountains in central Greece stretching south from Karpenisi all the way north past Karditsa, bound on the west by the basin of Arta and on the east by the vast agricultural plains of Thessaly. It preserves its history in its name. During the 400-year Ottoman occupation of Greece, the mountains - and the fiercely independent people they sheltered - refused the empire’s soldiers, cartographers and, most importantly, its tax collectors. To the Ottomans, the land was neither accessible nor profitable. It became a blank spot on the map. It wrote its history in absence.
Left alone, the Greeks of the Agrafa were free to speak their language and record the lineage of their families. They tended to their flocks and the few crops that could survive the winters and the thin soil. They lived as if there was no outside world. It was a rumour whispered from the haze of the distance. It had very little to do with them; they had even less to do with it.
In more recent history, the mountains became known for their bandits and rebels and, later, as the modern age seeped into the Agrafa on dirt roads, for poverty and depopulation. Many have left and the ruins scattered throughout the region attest to the changes that have soaked up through the roots of the mountains, even to the smallest hut and its goats with their music of bells.
The modern world now has a little more to do with the Agrafa - plenty of timber, a bit of tourism - and many Agrafiotes have more and more to do with it. The distinction between these mountains and everything else - the line between the inked and the bare - has by now all but disappeared. The roads bleed their black, and the absence itself continues to be erased.
Ignoring the predictions of doom, I set out from Karpenisi and for six days walked north. There was too much road. Four hours out from Karpenisi I came to a dirt road that dwindled into a footpath paved with the golden leaves fallen from the oaks on its flanks. Ducking through the underbrush, constantly scraping spider webs from my face, I eventually made my way to the bottom of the Tavropos river canyon. On all sides the canyon shot nearly straight up and dressed itself in impenetrable forest.
I camped on the banks of the Tavropos and marvelled at the sudden profusion of life. That morning I had stumbled through a predawn Athens overcome with rigor mortis and now the trout sparked in the stream. As dusk ran out of breath, the air stilled and fireflies swarmed above the trout, each a mirror to the other.
In the morning I got lost. I walked several hours up, up, up a forest road above the village of Kerasohori, all the while gazing south into the far northern spurs of the southern Evritania range. I passed blue, pink and yellow boxes of beehives, the bees’ wings the loudest voices in the evening forest, their bodies like pollen alive in the gold light.
I finally crossed over the ridge and the mountains rocketed up all around me. I felt that I was finally getting somewhere, though I had little idea where I was. I scrambled onto some rocks overlooking the plunge into the valley and unfolded my map. I did this less to figure out where I was and more to show some distant mountain, if it happened to care, that I intended to go on.
A battered pickup truck wheezed towards me up the hill. A shepherd - must have traded his dogs for the truck - hopped out, hands behind his back, shoulders and chest slightly stooped in that Greek male all-so-knowing-and-in-charge posture. We bantered back and forth in pidgin Greek for a while. It wasn't until later the next day that I realised he was telling me that I was well off the path I needed - by at least five or six kilometres - and he must have been maddened by the stubborn, just-not getting it American. "Difficult mountains," he said, easing into his truck. “I go," he said, putting into the spaces around the words a multitude of things he’d rather not say: "You're dead."
That night I forgot his words as I watched the full moon, first orange as the setting sun, then white like an egg as it birthed itself slow from behind a peak, delicate as a new flower atop the dark spire of the mountain. Silence.
The next day I could see what the shepherd meant. The road abruptly stopped as it rounded the mountain's curve, affording superb views but nowhere to go but up. From the crest I could see the road I needed - far, far away, winding off into the distance, interlaced with ragged peaks. I was inspired, but I had to turn around.
An hour later I found myself at yet another crossroad holding my map open but not really looking at it. I held it as one might a sail, hoping to catch in a subtle breeze some ineffable suggestion made clear. It was the cardboard sign of a forlorn hitchhiker with no passing motorists to read it. Again, as if it were perfectly natural that these things should happen only as and when they do, another truck bounded down the dirt road and skidded to a halt beside me.
My pack lurched around in the bed of the truck as the three shepherds discussed business and smoked with the windows closed. At a few points, we crossed through herds of scrawny-looking sheep and the men commented on the poor quality of the filthy and sorry-looking animals, bright red dots spray-painted on their woollen bellies.
Unable to confirm the presence of water (they shrugged one after the other) or just how long it would take to walk to Marathos via the highland road (they shrugged in unison, the Greek shrug, where everything - eyes, chin, hands - drifts up), I opted for the paved road, yet again. It would get me there, nothing more.
It was a boring walk; I regretted turning back from the highlands. Eventually, the mouth of the river came into view, the canyon, narrow and radiantly green, winding off behind it. What my map had recorded as a little dirt road descending gently to the river had turned into an EU construction project. It had been widened, flattened, discoloured like a bruise. Workers tacked fencing to the earth to hold it back from falling apart. Construction trucks rumbled up the road behind them, the grey dust an ersatz stampede.
After 40 minutes of walking, I reached the valley floor where yet more construction workers, their browned skin white while they strained in sweat, toppled old electric poles into the river. After doing away with the old ones, they pulled taught the new lines pinned to the new steel poles, grunting and digging their feet in the earth, pulling at the cords that whipped in the hot air as if some great mammoth beast pulled back from the other end mute but fierce.
One of the workers asked where I was from. I said America and he gave me a thumbs-up. Another worker insisted I ride with him up the road, and I was happy to join him. We bounced along as the road narrowed then widened again, dumptrucks and trailers pulling in and out of the road and around each other in a crude, halting dance. "Obama?" he said to me, somewhere between a question and a statement. "Obama!" I replied. "No McCain, no Bush!" he said laughing, bouncing on his seat, his hands jumping over each other spinning the wheel.
He dropped me where the road split and shrunk. The river, once chrome-blue with tailings from the gravel pits that fed the new road, cleared and sparkled. The verdant canyon narrowed and the road climbed upon it, further peaks becoming visible all around me. Terraced fields sloughed down the mountain. Goats chewed absently at the abundant grass.
After two hours' walking, a strange sound emerged from the canyon behind me. A small van, goods, supplies and water barrels sticking out the windows and roped to the roof, wobbled up the raw-hewn road, its wild Gypsy music careening off the canyon walls. Its absurdity seemed to make it shrink. I waved at the driver, he waved back and the music dwindled as it wound up into the pass. A couple in a Kia pulling a trailer rattled past and I smiled. Some wild this was. Everywhere I looked, I could see the faint tracings of ancient footpaths. Like the cruelty of a museum, I could touch none of them. As if in mourning, the mountain sprouted flowers from their bones.
Another worker offered me a ride and I climbed into his oversized truck. He dropped me at the trailhead to Asprorema canyon - swallowed by the construction debris of the new paved road - and I made fast progress on a surprisingly clear path. The vista up-canyon erased all my frustrations. Here, as the sun coupled with the haze and soaked the canyon in gold, the glimmering unknown, the wild green, was what I had wanted all along. I almost jumped down the trail, eating it with my feet that dug like hands.
I spied a fox, rust and grey and silence, slip between the green-hued sheets of fading light. Evening rested in the boughs of the trees and bent them low over the path. Birds offered occasional songs that ended quickly. Sporadic breaks in the forest revealed sheer drops into the river below and emerald spires stretching up above into an ageing blue sky.
As I went on, it became clear the trail was used though not maintained. Huge trees fell across the trail and only across the trail as if they had meant to die sealing off the forest. Footprints cut into the hill above them. I followed them around the immense upturned roots.
After two hours of teasing, the trail swooped down to the riverbed and the abandoned settlement of Eklisia. Among the thick-waisted trees and round, river-rolled boulders, there was little to mark what was once the biggest town in the Asprorema valley. A few log beams leaned against a rock. Some stones gathered in a circle, but it might have been an accident of the river that had already collapsed a large portion of the soft bank, leaving roots to reach like beggars' hands. As I cleared debris to set my tent, I found a porcelain handle from a tea cup. It was the most that was left of the people of Eklisia.
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