My two older boys and I grabbed sticks and rocks as the dogs circled closer, barking wildly. I took hold of a long pole that happened to have a nail sticking out the end. I stepped out between my boys and the dogs. In the midst of beauty there are dangers…
The first thing I noticed about Albania when we were there in July 2016 was its beauty. Actually, the first thing I noticed was the deeply pitted road between Korcha and Erseka, which the government tore up seven months earlier and was yet to repave. Our friend and host said they will finish the job right before the next election. Because that’s how things work. Anyways, we drove in late at night, so I felt the road but didn’t see anything. When I woke up the next morning – actually midday – I looked out the sunny window of the apartment at the camp. Wow! The mountains were right there outside the window. I like mountains. The hillsides in Albania, unlike in California, are permanently green. I like green. There are forests. I like forests.
I quickly set out to explore. I chose a dirt road heading out of town and climbed up a hill. Looking out over the countryside, villages dotted the landscape. I counted 16 villages surrounding the town of Erseka. The Albanian countryside looks just like the tile-laying board game Carcassonne.
The countryside is a perfect patchwork of towns, villages, streams, roads, fields, and forests. It is the idyllic pastoral setting.
Except the people who live there don’t necessarily see it that way. They see it as a place with no jobs. The owner of one coffee shop (there must be at least 15 coffee shops in the town of 4000) told me that he had worked for 15 years in Greece doing drywall and painting. Then Greece’s economy tanked and he came back home. He is now waiting for papers to get to the United States. Detroit will be his destination, I think. “Albania, pfft!” he said dismissively, making a motion with his hands as if to indicate that the country is dead.
Those who do have a job may be out in that picture perfect countryside more than they would like. I ran into people herding sheep, cows, and goats daily. A cow practically nuzzled my neck one morning while I was sitting reading on the rim of one of the hollows. We have romanticized the job of shepherds because we love Psalm 23. Interestingly, the rabbis did the opposite. They assumed – and apparently others agreed – that shepherds occupied the lowest rung on the social ladder. Indeed, it is not a competitive career field in Albania. One man in his 20s told us that he worked as a shepherd for exactly one month and twenty days. He only lasted that long because he had been paid in advance. He said it was just so boring. So boring, but it requires constant attention, otherwise the sheep will wander away.
Not needing to make a living from the countryside, it paid me in another way: beauty. I was constantly struck by the expanses of green grass, the stretches of forest filling the hollows, butterflies flitting by every ten feet I walked. Scampering lizards were unavoidable. Occasionally I would see a wandering tortoise. Birds made their songs audible all day. Bees circled the abundant wildflowers.
He wandered by while I sat reading.
This cow wanted to take part in my reading too.
Some people make a modest living by those abundant wildflowers. They head up the mountainsides to collect the flowers, dry them on a section of sidewalk back in town, and sell them to companies that use them in pharmaceuticals or other herbal concoctions.
In the forest I found wild strawberries. A friend told me once that wild strawberries had the flavor of five regular strawberries packed into one small, bright red wild berry. I found that they tasted exactly like Sweet Tarts. The flavor was intense. I took all the kids – our and our friends’ – the long way home one night so we could stop in the forest to snack on wild strawberries.
Trust me. They taste exactly like Sweet Tarts.
The topography was interesting. Erseka lies in a plain, with the Gramozi Mountains rising immediately to the east. The ridgeline of the Gramozis forms the border with Greece. To the south successive lines of ridges lead to a vertical wall of mountains that box in the land. To the west and the north, more mountains. In other words, there are mountains in every direction. My kind of place. The streams that flow from the slopes of the Gramozi Mountains have cut a narrow gorge right through the hills to the west of Erseka. One evening I took our older boys on an excursion nearly all the way through the gorge, mostly in the water.
I said the grass is beautiful. The sheep agree. Where there is grass there are sheep, and where there are sheep there are dogs. You may encounter dogs anywhere. Once while riding a borrowed mountain bike up a dirt track I heard loud barking coming closer and closer in the trees to the left. I couldn’t see anything but I could tell these dogs were moving fast. Suddenly a dog with bared teeth shot out of the forest, snarling in fury. Two inch spikes protruded all the way around his collar. Sometimes dog owners might outfit their dogs with something to make them look more intimidating. In this case the collar wasn’t really needed. This was a burly, savage looking dog. I think three out of six of our friends’ family members have been bit by dogs in Erseka. I jumped off the bike, picked up a rock, and hurled it at the dog. Not being a great shot, the rock bounced off the ground near the dog. The dog turned its attention to the rock, chasing it down barking as if it was an intruder into its space. I continued on. I’ll admit, my heart was beating a little fast. And I still held a rock or two in my hand.
One morning I got my boys up early and set out to hike to the nearest summit of the Gramozi Mountains, a direct walk up from the village. We followed the mostly dry creek bed (which has flooded in heavy rains recently, threatening the camp property with inches of mud and water), skirted fields, and made our way steeply up along the edge of the forest. Above the trees we hit grassy slopes. As I said, grass equals sheep equals dogs. We were passing through an area that must have been an abandoned shepherds’ camp (a very primitive one, as they all seem to be) when we encountered the first pack of dogs. That’s when we grabbed the sticks, stones, and pole with a nail sticking out of it. The nail had been used to form the poles into a kind of tepee. I thought it made a pretty good weapon for defense against dogs, not that I wanted to get a nail stuck in a dog’s flank or anything. I imagine some kids, even ten and twelve year olds like my boys, would have shrank at the sight of five or six dogs circling closer. I was proud that my boys stood their ground. I had to make them get behind me, in fact.
And the dogs? It seems that they want to assert their authority over the flock of sheep they are set to guard more than to actually attack. We stood our ground and they stood theirs. Eventually we just walked on. We encountered two more packs of dogs on the hike, one of which was called off by their shepherd. And we saw the same pack again on our way down. That time a rock and a dog did make contact.
The summit was nice. The cool fog inspired my boys to come up with a new way of wearing their shirts.
There were sheep and shepherds right up to the ridge of the mountains that make the border with Greece. When we were telling about the dogs after the hike, my boys said, “That made it more exciting and fun!” It made them feel like true adventurers, perhaps a little like warriors.
It makes me wonder how many beautiful things in life are made even more enjoyable by the addition of a little danger. Danger is obviously part of the attraction for those drawn to extreme sports. The backpacking I do has just enough danger to make me a little nervous, which in the end contributes to the enjoyment. Outside of sports and physical danger, I would say that marriage is a beautiful and dangerous thing. So is having kids. And God himself is both beautiful and dangerous. The records of encounters with the Lord in the Bible show us people shaken to the core. An encounter with God leaves no life unchanged. Beauty and Danger.
I never thought of it way. Very insightful.