Funny Turns

Yes, last week took a strange turn for me too. Nature Walking. And she, who was our guide leading us a merry dance – Let us call her Zoe, not her real name of course – at one moment an ancient hag, another a seductress, and another a young abandoned child. Not a moments rest, and all about as far as the planet Saturn from the possibility of the internet so that writing last week was out of the question.

With Zoe. We had spent the week walking the wild flower filled high valleys of the Grissons, a people who live in an area of the southern Alps. They speak a language which they call Romansch, a mix of German, Italian, French, Latin and, I have strong reasons to believe, Byzantine Greek. Salve, they say to each other when they meet, along with many other ancient sounding words, which reflect their position throughout history at the crossroads not only between north and south, but also between east and west.

With her, an angel of history striding across this crisscrossed land which used to be known as Raetia, like a St Martin or a St George (Sogn Gieri they call him here), but a knight strangely transformed into a weeping female form of Don Quixote.

With Zoe – Or ‘Bare Life’, as it is in Greek – pressing on relentlessly. And along the Jacobsweg also visiting some of the churches, along the gorge of the Via Mala (the ‘Bad Path’) in driving wind and rain to gaze up at the ceiling of the church of at Zillis, struck dumb, as if again in St Sophia. …

… in the Grissons, as the saying goes, “You need three people to pass from life to death: a Salis ( a willow twining up the left arm), a Planta (a creeper twining up the right), and a Travers (a crossbeam)”.


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