Ay Petri
In the summers
and winters we would go up the mountains to the settling where we owned a small train car shaped home. A long narrow road wound upwards like a ribbon from the city by the sea up into the village on high, where the clouds would touch the peaks and snow would shroud the land in winter. Right as the road straightened, and the mountains stretched into plateaus, there lay a small settling. A weather radar stood gated off on the hill to the left, with a single house next to it. In front on the house, closer to the edge there was a blue globe erected that indicated elevation. Back of the house was guarded by a curious crater, not too grandeur in size but ominous nonetheless. In winter this small hill would be covered in snow and used for sledding and skiing for beginners. Although, no matter the weather, horses and ponies where always waiting at the bottom to give rides and take photographs.
On the right of the road, where the rest and most of the settling lay, there were a few restaurants and a scenic overlook on a cliff, where most tourists would climb some white steps and have sit for a perfect memory. Often, in the spring mornings as the sea warmed, it would cover up in a blanket of clouds that from here would hide the city completely and make one feel like there isn’t in fact a city there at all, and the settling was in the clouds in the sky, alone and comfortable. From the restaurants I remember only two, one because they had eagles up front, and the other because the owner was our friend and he had the best stew and bread for purchase. Granted, the settling was small enough for everyone to know everyone and most certainly everyone was a friend.
In the winter, upon entering your house everything would be cold to the touch, so before one could take off their garments, a fire would have to be started in the chimney. If you were a person of fewer means and the proud owner of a simpler house, electricity would extend only for lighting. The chimney was used for cooking and heating and drying things and had to be kept going in the night. It adorned the wall that had the kitchen and the living room in front, and a single bedroom with 3 beds, one of them a bunk, in the back.
It was always an adventure, packing oneself with as many big plastic bottles and buckets as one could carry and setting off, not too far, into the woods for a well. We went clanking and bobbing past the richer houses that had garages and several floors, water reserves and electric heat, and some of which were located a little too close to the cliffs. Across small woods and shrubbery, down a narrow steep path that led into a small rocky clearing, where a metal lid covered a fresh water well. One time, we halted at the top of the path and hid in the woods after spotting a man bathing there. Nobody washed in the well directly, of course. The water was always extremely cold and very delicious. After filling, all the bottles were to be carried back up the path, which was now a lot more challenging. But worth it in the end, since it made for a marvelous cup of tea on the chimney.
The herbs for the tea were gathered on the plateaus in the summer and dried in small bunches, hanging in garlands all around the house. Summers up there were just as extraordinary. Setting out for herb gathering, leaving the settling there was a patch of wild strawberries growing off the dirt road on the way to the rangers house. There one could sit and taste the wild berries the sweetness of which can never be found anywhere else but the sun soaked mountains. Most of the Mediterranean mountains were in fact plateaus, instead of peaks, although it never seemed that way from the bottom. Often, hiking these one would come across a number of edible nuts and berries, and champignons grew thick and white, speckling the dewy grasses.
