On March 20 Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull erupted several times in a row and caused major disruption to air travel across western and northern Europe. Our writer Meg Pier went there last May and found out firsthand why the Icelandic people have such a healthy respect for the power of Mother Nature, and how the mystery of the country’s landscape has led to a culture steeped in folk tales.

In a 2007 survey conducted by the University of Iceland, 64% of those polled had some belief in huldufolk or hidden people, and alfar, or elves.  Almost two-thirds had some belief in guardian angels, or fetches.  I found out why during a four-day, 400-mile round-trip jaunt from Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital, to its southernmost point of Vik.

One of the newest land masses on the planet, the sweeping vistas here are alternately eerie, majestic, playful, and even frightening, giving rise to some of mankind’s oldest emotions.  Goosebumps, gasps, giggles and even tears are among the gamut of reactions that Iceland’s landscape elicits.  Within an hour’s drive, a visitor can walk on lava fields and glaciers, across black beaches and verdant fields, and under waterfalls and rainbows.  In our trek across southern Iceland, my husband Tom and I experienced the magic of an otherworldly geography that has inspired long-held folk traditions.

On a misty spring morning, we left Reykjavik and meandered along the winding Route 1, with long stretches as the lone car on the road.  Our heads swiveled continuously, gawking at the scenery–herds of Icelandic horses romping in emerald pastures, plumes of steam rising from a geothermal field, and immense snow-capped mountains standing sentinel.

A couple of hours later, on a flat stretch of road, we saw the Westman Islands off to our right, a family of triangular rocks rising from the shimmering Atlantic.  Ahead, something on the face of a steep green hillside glinted in the sun.  As we got closer we realized it was an immensely long strand of gushing water spilling over the horizon high above—the 131-foot Seljalandsfoss waterfall. 

We swung left, joined the handful of cars in the parking lot, and approached the cascading water.  No rangers, no ticket office, no lines, no one else even in sight.  We stood together transfixed, our mouths hanging open.  Then Tom realized there were a couple of people actually behind the sheet of water and left me to go climb the rocky path to join them.  Mere feet from the pool at the waterfall’s bottom, getting damp from its spray, I experienced a glimmer of what it must have been like for early Icelandic settlers when they first approached this roaring wonder.  I felt tears well up, of immense awe and gratitude.

Terry Gunnell, professor of Folkloristics at the University later explained “The landscape for Iceland’s people is like a book, full of stories, much like it was to ancient cultures in Norway and Ireland, and to Native Americans.  The geology here is full of really important significance.  Houses can be destroyed by something you can’t see, such as an earthquake, you turn on your tap and get a smell of sulphur, in the winter you see the dancing Northern Lights spread across the sky.  The wind can knock you off your feet, the snow can really seem to take shape in a blizzard, the environment is very much alive here.  There are powers out there you can’t really fight and it shapes the way you see the world.  Iceland’s people explain their understanding of the world and their beliefs through stories.”

Refreshed by Seljalandsfoss, we motored on to Skogar, a crossroads that sprung up at the site of one of Iceland’s most reknown waterfalls, Skogafoss.  With what we had just witnessed, we thought it unlikely we could be any more wowed, and we were hungry.  We ate lunch at the Waterfall Inn alongside a dozen French tourists. 

As I devoured my simple but hearty sandwich, I noticed Tom staring above my left shoulder, an odd expression on his face.  I turned my head and felt my heart skip a beat.  Mounted on the wall were a collection of black and white photographs, casual portraits, circa the 1970s.  One of the subjects was returning Tom’s gaze.  He was a ringer for Tom’s father, who had died only a few months earlier.

We knew Skogar was home to a folk museum, and navigating by instinct, found it a short distance away.  In the midst of a group of elderly Icelandic tourists, we steered around room after room of densely-packed displays donated by generations who called these wild shores home.  The ingenuity behind their everyday items made clear that life itself here was a precious commodity.

Some of the artefacts on display are connected to folklore and the supernatural.  For instance a comb, a pair of scissors and a hairpin are said to have come from the elves or “hidden people”.  The Museum collection includes certain rocks and stones believed to have magical properties.  Some were reputed to protect the owner from lightning or fire, or to guarantee that he would always have bread to eat. Others were healing stones of various kinds.

 “The folk tales are still a living factor in the life and literature of the Icelandic people, and very popular among the young and old,” Jon R. Hjalmarsson, who compiled the book “A Traveller’s Guide to Icelandic Folk Tales”, commented later. “These old tales continue to reflect in many ways people’s thinking, dreams and imagination.  People will always tell stories.”   

An elderly museum volunteer gave a performance on a dulcimer-like instrument, which sounded melancholic and medieval.  He then moved toward an old upright piano and fingered the chords of “Amazing Grace”.  His countrymen encircled him, and lifted their voices in a variety of keys.  The resulting cacophony was somehow sweet and beautiful.

Outside, we ambled over to a very authentic-looking recreation of a tiny village, with small houses, outbuildings and a church.  Several of the buildings appeared to be built into the hillside, their roofs and walls made of turf.

We had driven by numerous tiny communities nestled at the foothills of glaciers, no more than homesteads, each with a cluster of buildings painted in cheerful shades of reds.  I felt real respect for the people who had the spirit and fortitude to carve out a life in a corner of this vast open space.  Iceland, with a population of 300,000, is the size of Kentucky, which has population more than twelve times larger.

Allowing for the possibility that just maybe there could be a display by Mother Nature that could top Seljalandsfoss, we headed down a gravel road to Skogafoss.  As we pulled in, crowds were re-boarding their tour buses.  Once again, we were practically by ourselves, being humbled by hydrology.  Seen in reverse order, Seljalandsfoss perhaps would not have been as moving for me.  Skogafoss is more than 35 feet higher, and seemed to be ten times as wide, its rumbling seemed louder and the spray more ferocious and reaching a greater distance.

I stood back farther than Tom and watched him watching the water.  Legs apart, head tilted back, hands shoved in his jeans pockets, I could almost feel the wheels turning, and visualized a big question mark over his head.

We were now just a short distance from Vik and the car was quiet as we drove through a pass carved in massive mountains.  This is Iceland’s rainiest area and it was a typical day.  Pulling over to better read a sign, the view below us recalled Brigadoon, glimpsed through patches of dewy fog drifting by.  In a steep valley below, a river flowed toward an elegant white church with a graceful steeple, perched on a ridge.  Fanning out below was a small village.  It was a peaceful scene.

“A common device in the stories is weather, such as fog, marking the border between the civilized world and the wild, showing how you could lose direction in all sorts of ways, going into other territory where there are other rules, such as the Outlaw stories,” said Gunnell.  “The stories also speak to people’s hopes and dreams, finding themselves in a pleasant valley with a better life, after coming through a fog, or waking up in a different world when sleeping.”

Once down in the pleasant valley, we stopped for coffee at a casual restaurant in Reynishverfi, on the shoreline.  The clouds parted, and we decided to take a stroll on what was once named one of the world’s ten most beautiful beaches by Islands magazine.  In the late afternoon sun, we crossed a field of waving purple lupines to the black sand beach.  The waters were turbulent and foaming aquamarine waves surged and crashed.  Beyond the surf, at the far end of the beach, strangely shaped black columns reached into the sky. 

“Strange and uncommon features of rocks, cliffs and hilltops often have stimulated the imagination of the people and seem to have been the background for creation of some of the folk tales,” Hjalmarsson said.  ”The rock pillars at Reynisdrangar standing in the sea south of Vik are not ordinary rocks, but said to be trolls trying to drag a three-masted ship to land; when daylight broke, they turned to stone. “

A couple of miles down the road, we found our accommodations, a rustic but comfortable lodge tucked back against soft green hillocks.  While Tom took a pre-dinner nap, I took a walk around the grounds, accompanied by a friendly black Labrador who appeared out of nowhere to join me.  We crossed a footbridge over a pond and came to a wide, shallow river, beyond which was a farm, its three buildings dwarfed by the massive mountain rising behind them.  The scene appeared both solitary and cozy.  I wondered what it was like for Vik’s 600 residents living here in the Icelandic winter.  It occurred to me it was no surprise Iceland has one of the world’s highest literacy rates at 99.9 percent.

“Stories were told on farms in the winter evening, as families were carding wool, spinning, knitting or repairing farming equipment,” said Gunnell.  “These tales warned kids not to go into that lake because there is a water horse there, not to go too far away from the farm because of the danger of outlaws or trolls or hidden people who might take you.”

There had been fierce rain throughout the night and the next morning saw scattered clouds hanging low in the sky and in a hurry to move on.  As we headed in the direction from which we had come, I felt sad to be leaving this patch of the universe, but grateful to have experienced it.  Once back through the mountain pass, a grassy plain stretched ahead, the Atlantic now on our left—and beginning to solidify before our eyes on the horizon, a huge, shimmering rainbow.  We took it as an auspicious sign that a good day lay before us.

We backtracked on Route 1 for about an hour, the landscape still fresh to our eyes, and then took a right on Route 26.  We were heading for the gate to hell, according to folk lore, otherwise known as the volcano Hekla.  We climbed rolling hills sparsely populated with sleek horses in a palette of earth tones and the occasional red-roofed farm.  Then the terrain began to level out, and soon we were traversing a lonely road down the middle of a vast lava field of grey gravel.  To our right, in the distance, sculpted dunes bore the scars of a powerful surge of something.   Beyond, Hekla presided over it all, a grand dame with a white shawl of snow across her shoulders.  Far off to our left was a hulking, flat-topped black slab, looking like a burnt Ayers Rock. 

Mile after mile went by, with the only change in the scenery being the appearance of strange groupings of oddly-shaped black rocks.  It occurred to me these were the remains of real volcanic activity, and just when that activity might have been, I didn’t know.  I began to feel genuinely uneasy, and I could tell Tom was relieved too when we reached an intersection and knew from our map that we had some solid space between us and Hekla.

“Folk tales also spoke to the harsh living conditions of the times, and offered cautionary tales that provided ‘road maps’ for moral behavior.  Every hill, every crossroads, every river, every archaeological remnant had a story, and all of these stories formed part of the local belief system,” said Gunnell.  “If the map reflected in the legends was followed, you had a good chance of living in safety.  If you broke it, you stood an equally good chance of ending up in a folk legend yourself, if not on a list of mortality statistics.”

The word “geyser” is one of Iceland’s contributions to the world’s vocabulary.  Later that day, we joined a dozen or so other tourists rimming the perimeter of blow hole Strokkur.  Seconds and then minutes ticked by and I began to wonder if we were all waiting for a geological Godot.  Then the small crowd collectively drew in its breath as the earth blew a giant translucent bubble.  Time seemed to stand still for an instant as we intently watched the embryonic form grow and grow and then explode in a tremendous rush of energy, shooting a powerful surge of water 65 feet high.  We all screamed and shouted in great delight, looking at each other in astonishment, grinning madly.  

Our last stop before returning to Reykjavik was Thingvellir, a place of astonishing beauty and mind-bending geology.  Thingvellir carries profound historic, political, religious and cultural significance for the Icelandic people, and is often referred to as the country’s very soul.  Indeed, Thingvellir could be viewed as the equivalent of the U.S.’ Grand Canyon, Plimoth Plantation, and Capitol Hill, and more, all rolled into one.  In 930 A.D., Iceland’s settlers established an assembly at Thingvellir, called the Althing.  Now recognized as one of the oldest surviving parliaments in the world, it was one of the earliest governments of the people, for the people.

Thingvellir is marked with a line of deep gashes in the earth, filled with crystal clear water.  Tom and I watched a young boy and his father race each other back and forth across a small footbridge over such a ravine.  They were gleefully shouting “Now I’m in Europe” when reaching one side, and “Now, I’m in America” on the other. 

A scene that would have had us scratching our heads anywhere else in the world made perfect sense here in Iceland’s first national park.  The world is literally slowly tearing apart here, where the North American Plate and Hreppar Microplate are drifting away from each other at the speed our fingernails grow.  The continent-tagging duo suffer from the common misconception that it is the Eurasian plate, rather than the smaller Hreppar, that abuts the North American in Thingvellir.

Ironically, given the world’s–and particularly, Iceland’s–economic woes, the ravine in question was the “Peningagja,” or “money gorge”.  Lore says that if you throw a coin into its crystal clear waters and can see it reach bottom, your money worries will be over. 

Judging by the size of the crowd tossing silver into the abyss, folk tales are still an antidote to fear and uncertainty. 

 Meg Pier

“I met him when I was twelve, and the minute I saw him, I knew.”

Joan Medina wipes a spare wisp of brown hair away from her face and smiles in the direction of her husband Arthur, or LowLow as he’s better known. His back is turned to us as he reaches into their lowrider for the paintings he’s lining up along the fence, and I can’t be sure whether he’s listening or not. Joan and LowLow have been married for more than twenty years, and she’s telling me now how long before that, she knew he was the one for her. As LowLow turns and catches her eye, he gives her a quiet, private smile, which conveys the easy grace of their relationship. Turning her attention back to me, Joan’s warm brown eyes light up with emotion as she describes her love for her family, her art, and her faith.

Together with their twelve year old daughter and their extended family, the Medinas create religious-themed paintings, murals, jewellery, and barbed wire objets d’art which they sell outside the Santaurio de Chimayo church in the tiny town of Chimayo, New Mexico. As well as spreading the word of Catholicism through art, the Medina family is part of the lowriders, a movement originally formed by disillusioned Mexican-American youths in 1950s post-war America. Rebelling against the cultural prejudices they experienced as immigrants to the U.S., Chicano youths began to express their defiance via the ultimate American icon: the automobile. In New Mexico and California, they took cast-off cars (mostly Chevy Impalas) and modified their chassis so they sat just above the ground. To the cars’ exteriors, they added bright colours and unique designs. Suddenly the “lowrider”, as it was known, became more than just a car: it became a distinctive cultural marker; a symbol of defiance to society around them.

The lowrider movement has since evolved into a distinct subculture that is less about rebellion and more about asserting an identity. This is how the Medinas see it, but their lowrider has an added dimension in that it is for them a mobile shrine to Catholicism though which they spread their faith. It’s strange that the Medinas carry out such a traditional mission through the ultimate symbol of American modernity, but this is not the first contradiction I encounter while in New Mexico. As I stand on the dirt road outside of the church chatting to Jean, I feel as though I could be in rural Peru or Bolivia, rather than in one of the fifty United States. Instead of strip malls and fast food outlets, roads here are dotted with traditional Adobe-style houses. Between towns, churches built in the same style perch proudly, as if keeping watch of the people who inhabit the towns nearby. In these parts, Spanish is the dominant language, and food takes strong influences from old Spain and Mexico. The cumulative effect is that it is incredibly easy to forget what country one is in.

The fact that New Mexico has changed hands many times may explain why it clings intensely to a past identity of which it seems unwilling to let go. For thousands of years, Northern New Mexico was home to native American tribes who lived in settlements around the Santa Fe River. All this changed with the arrival of Spanish colonialists in the late 1500s. In 1598, Don Juan de Onate led a group of Spanish settlers into Northern New Mexico, driving the natives into pueblo settlements, many of which still stand today. The Spanish took over the surrounding land, and by 1610, Santa Fe had been established as the capital of New Spain. Spanish rule continued until 1821, at which point Mexico gained their independence and renamed the area New Mexico. The Spanish influence, however, remained – even throughout a protracted civil war between Mexico and the U.S.. Mexico eventually lost, and in 1912, Mexico became the 47th state in the Union.

Aside from its political history, New Mexico is today more famed for its art scene than anything else. The starkly beautiful high desert surroundings lend a certain kind of mysticism to the area, which could be the reason why artists of all types are drawn here, and have been for over a hundred years. Even if you’re here for just a couple of days, you can be sure that LowLow and Jean are far from the only artists you’ll encounter. Chimayo itself is situated along what is known as the “High Road” between the cities of Santa Fe and Taos. For 54 miles, the road twists and turns north through the high peaks of Sangre de Cristo Mountains, passing through tiny artist downs that dot the road’s mountainous folds. Although the more recently-built highway is a much faster route between the two destinations, the High Road is like the artists who inhabit the towns along its course: aesthetically pleasing, unpredictable, and definitely more interesting.

At the High Road’s starting point is Santa Fe, undoubtedly the centerpiece of New Mexico’s art scene. The city teems with painters, sculptors and performers, and considering its relatively small size of just under 70,000 people, the town’s nearly 250 galleries are astounding. Many of these galleries stretch up the main “artists artery” of Canyon Road that winds up from the center of town into the higher hills. Along this road, you’ll find artists creating everything from oil paintings and watercolors to wire sculptures and clay masks that they sell to passing tourists and serious art collectors alike.

Perhaps Santa Fe’s most famous resident artist is Georgia O’Keefe, who fell in love with it in 1929 and decided to make it her home. When one considers the dramatic desert surroundings in which she lived, O’Keefe’s characteristic abstract landscape paintings make perfect sense.

Besides art, religion forms a large part of Santa Fe’s character, as it does in the other nearby towns. With churches filling the open spaces, traveling the High Road feels a bit like a pilgrimage, like one would embark on the Camino de Santiago across Northern Spain. Within Santa Fe itself, the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assissi, the city’s patron saint, and the Loretto Chapel, known for its amazing spiral staircase, are grand examples of religious structures. In Chimayo, the Santaurio de Chimayo church although smaller and less austere, is perhaps more famous, serving as a modern pilgrimage site for over 300 000 visitors a year. Built from the traditional sand and clay material of adobe, two bell towers flank white crosses that stand starkly on the metal pitched roof. Inside the church, a small adjoining room contains a well of dirt that is said to have healing powers for visitors. Like the pilgrims before me, I packed some of this dirt into a tiny tin container to take away with me. As I talk to Joan now, I pull the tin out of my pocket and ask her whether she believes in the earth’s healing powers. Of course, she says. Don’t I?

The sun has reached its peak, and it’s time for me to leave the Medinas behind. I say my goodbyes and walk back to my car. It’s the same car, and in the same place I left it, but something’s different. Up until now, I’ve been impatient to get back to the road to reach Taos. My encounter with Joan and LowLow has changed my perspective, however. As I witnessed the meaning and purpose they see in each small moment of their life, I think they may have inadvertently taught me the true purpose of a pilgrimage – of my pilgrimage. The Medinas point to a truth that makes me think a pilgrimage is less about reaching somewhere, and more about a chance to reflect on and appreciate life in its present moment, right here and right now.

As I head north, Chimayo grows smaller in my rearview mirror and I turn my attention back to the road in front of me. It stretches out ahead, stark and brown and never-ending. Instead of focusing on where the road will lead, I put all my attention on the part of the road I’m on right now, and doing so gives me an odd feeling of relief.. Suddenly, I feel rejuvenated.

I take a deep breath of contentment, and exhale into the nothingness.

Catherine Parker

Colorful Boats Tell the History of an Island Civilization

Taking the strong arm offered to me, I was the last to board the small boat. I plopped down at the rear of the craft, next to the man who helped me on. During the next half-hour, he navigated my journey into a remarkable world of a hundred shades of blue and green.

Carmel D'Amato is third-generation Blue Grotto boatman who built his vessel, a frigatina, with his brother. He navigates visitors through several caves during a half-hour ride.

The cavernous Blue Grotto seen from above. Malta's southern coast is speckled with sea caves, including Honeymoon Cave, Reflection Cave and Cat's Cave.

A boatman in Malta’s Blue Grotto, Carmel D’Amato has the sea in his veins—his family has been plying these waters for over 80 years. He is a third-generation captain of one of 77 boats that bring visitors into the gaping caverns that rise out of the aquamarine waters here. The vessel Carmel and his fellow boatmen use is a frigatina, one of several kinds of traditional Maltese boats.

Carmel said that only six of these boats are still wooden. The narrow bay they call home is enclosed with sheer cliff face, and storms coming in from the south are frequent–four years ago, two-story waves created by gales off the coast of Africa washed away 30 boats. As a result, the boats are taken out of the water each evening and stored in a boathouse. About ten years ago, the owners began converting to fiberglass, which makes lighter work of this daily lifting.

I felt my stomach churn as we motored from the narrow harbor, no more than a slit in a steep rock wall, to the vast open sea. Within moments, we tucked back into a cozy inlet and my anxiety began to turn into anticipation. Then, as my curiosity mounted, we veered right and through the mouth of the first in a series of caves. After an instant of darkness, I was soon transfigured by what looked like a waterborne aurora borealis.

The chamber seemed to throb with a luminous sapphire light, the translucent water serving as a prism, refracting the rays of sun seeping in from outside. As we rocked to the rhythm of the waves, Carmel showed us a stretch of glowing orange coral at the watermark on the cave’s wall. Moments later he pointed out another patch, this one purple, just above lapping teal waves.

I asked Carmel if he had ever been frightened by steering against the tide inside the caves, a question he laughed off. When I persisted, he acknowledged a time in his early days when a storm came up unexpectedly, the winds changed, and, yes, he had been a little scared, but the squall had passed quickly.

After weaving in and out of several caves, each a dappled canvas of light and dark hues, he turned a corner and a massive natural stone arch loomed before us, carved in the cliff face by centuries of wind and water. On our return, we saw another formation that has probably existed for eons, a line of fisherman on a ledge in the rocks above, their rods forming a row of right angles in the sky.

A rent of two falcons a year

To the score of ringing church bells on a Sunday morning, I walked through a small leafy park to a marble 16th century “gardiola” jutting out from a promontory overlooking the water. The watchtower was adorned with sculpted ears and eyes signaling a watchful presence high above Valletta’s historic Grand Harbor. The handiwork of the Knights of St. John stretched along the graceful curves of the waterline–graduated tiers of golden stone rising from the shore, protectively encircling a swath of inland ochre-colored dwellings.

The Knights of St. John were a long-time presence on Malta, one that continues to loom large today—they make regular appearances in every day conversation with locals. A religious order formed during the times of the Crusades in the 11th century, the Knights were given Malta as a home in 1530 by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, for the rent of two falcons a year.

Early in their 265-year reign of the island, the Knights established the adjoining “Three Cities” of Senglea, Cospicua and Vittoriosa along the southern coast of Grand Harbor. After a horrific 1565 battle with invading Turks that involved decapitated heads being fired as cannon balls, the Knights built the highly fortified Valletta across the Grand Harbor, on the Sciberras Peninsula. At 1,800 feet by 3,000 feet, Valletta is Europe’s tiniest capital.

The neighborhoods of Malta's "Three Cities" are densely-packed and teeming with life. Photos © Meg Pier.

Boatman Carmen Farrugia skippers a dghajsa in Malta's Grand Harbor. Annual dghajsa races are held in Grand Harbour on Sept 8 and March 31.

From the park, I headed down to the waterfront, descending one flight after another of steep steps carved into the rocky headland, snaking my way through the tightly-packed neighborhood. Potted asparagus ferns and pink sheets strung on a clothesline bejeweled the sun-bleached, peeling facades of limestone buildings. Looking up, I spied a toddler on a balcony above, hugging a shaggy long-haired cat as big as her and, across the way, a brooding, muscular man, smoking a cigarette. Passing an open door, a spicy scent wafted by, and I heard what sounded like a well-practiced argument between the elderly couple inside.

Emerging from this compact universe to the harbor, I was drawn toward a small flotilla of graceful and brightly-painted boats bobbing in the clear azure water. From among them, boatman Carmen Farrugia called a welcome and I boarded his dghajsa (pronounced dye-sa) to enjoy the view from the water. As we glided about the harbor, he taught me about the type of craft he skippered, a passenger boat that sits low in the water, akin to a gondola.

The dghajsa passenger boat is double-ended, with a high fore stem, called a rota in Maltese. The shape of its rota developed for two reasons, both related to its usage. First, the height provides space for the boat’s registration number, which, as a passenger vehicle, needs to be visible to port authorities. And second, it gives the boatman a place to hold the boat steady when he brings passengers ashore, while taking the fare with his other.

The dghajsa’s backrests are called spallieri, and generally display a glazed oval in the center that depicts a British symbol, such as a lion, St. George, or the Brittania. This practice speaks to Britain’s long-standing presence in Malta, which they ruled from 1814 – 1964, and the economic reliance of the Maltese dghajsa boatmen on the English, who they long considered the source of their daily income.

There were some concerns that the dghajsa would not survive the British withdrawal from Malta in 1979, when the island country became totally independent. In fact, tourism has ensured that the crafts have not only survived but thrive, as a popular means of getting around the Three Cities.

Carmen pointed out sights such as ancient Fort St. Angelo at the tip of Vittoriosa, and the 21st century Mediterranean Film Studios beyond it, where water scenes from The Spy Who Loved Me and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen were shot. He told me that after a stint in the Navy, he had emigrated to Canada 42 years ago when he was 24, but came back after a year. During my visit, I met many Maltese who had worked abroad but returned home.

“Now, I go to church every morning and pray for beer and bread,” Carmen said with a smile, as we ended my tour at the Vittoriosa embankment in front of the Maritime Museum. “That need is met by taking people for a ride, like this.”

The Museum resides in what had been the British Navy’s bakery. Built in 1842, its exterior was inspired by England’s Windsor Castle. Inside, it now offers a well-documented look at Malta’s long history on the water.

A view from the waters of Malta's Grand Harbor. The Knights of St. John's Grand Master de la Valette, for whom Valletta is named, strengthened Malta's defenses.

Joe Abela is the Museum’s ship model maker and restorer. He told me that Grand Harbor hosts two regattas each year using traditional Maltese wooden boats, both commemorating significant passages in the island’s annals. The first is held on March 31, in observance of Malta’s Freedom Day, when the British departed; the second, on September 8, celebrates the victory over the Turks.

A typical race day for Regatta participants starts with a Holy Mass at 10 a.m. held on the wharf near the rowing club, followed a light dinner. By 12:30 p.m., the rowers have to be at the Deep Water Quay area, ready to race. Each village has a traditional spot from which they shout and sing to encourage their rowers, with the enthusiasm getting wilder as the boats get near the finish line at the Customs House.

According to Joe, when the Senglea team wins, a flotilla of boats from the village cross the harbor to the Customs House to escort the victors back to the Senglea Marina. The contingent is met by a crowd of supporters and a spontaneous party is held near the Regatta Club, which continues till late in the evening.

“The following day everybody sleeps very late and in the morning the city is like a ghost town,” he wryly observed.

One of Joe’s primary resources in understanding the structures and color schemes of historic vessels is “ex voto” paintings, commissioned by sailors after surviving a turbulent storm as offerings to the Madonna or other figures central to their Catholic faith. The Maritime Museum displays one such painting, originally from the village of Qala, on the neighboring island of Gozo. In Malti, Qala, means “sail.” The local proverb ‘Ghandu r-rih fil-qala’ refers to the ‘wind blowing the sails,’ meaning someone has luck on his side when performing a task.

A cave wall with mystical healing powers?

Perhaps St. Paul had this proverbial good luck in 60 A.D. when, according to the Bible, he took refuge on Malta’s shores after his boat was shipwrecked. There are 365 churches on the island and the Maltese proudly assert they are one of the earliest Christian peoples in the world, having been converted by St. Paul himself. In casual conversations with a variety of Maltese people throughout my two-week stay, reference was often made to the official state religion of Catholicism as having arrived by boat.

“Our religion is part of our national identity, and apostolic origins are claimed for our faith,” observed Paul Guillaumier, a Pauline scholar and resident of Rabat. “There have been many different peoples and rulers on Malta and the Pauline tradition has been a consistent unifying force for centuries.”

Wandering the winding streets of Rabat, I found my way to a square dominated by a centerpiece of this faith, St. Paul’s Church. According to strong local tradition, the saint lived for three months in a grotto under where the edifice now stands. To the right of the basilica, I made my way down rock-carved stairs, the cool air underground a welcome relief from the heat outside.

St. Paul's Grotto, where the apostle is said to have preached during his stay on the island. The marble statue of St. Paul was a gift of the Knights and sculpted by Micheangelo's assistant Bernini.

I gingerly pushed open a heavy wrought iron gate and peered into the cave. An elegant statue of the saint, carved by Michelangelo’s assistant Bernini, was set back in the chamber. Four large filigreed candelabras flickered at his feet. To his left, hanging from the ceiling, was a silver sconce in the shape a two-masted sailing ship, its light casting strange shadows. I could understand the belief that the cave’s walls have mystical healing powers.

The natives that St. Paul converted had already been in Malta for some time. While it is believed that Malta was connected to Sicily at different periods during successive ice ages, archaeologists trace settlement of the island to Neolithic man, believed to have arrived on its shores by boat.

“Seafaring is inseparable from existence on Malta. The first settlers to Malta arrived by boat,” said Dr. Reuben Grima, an archaeologist and Senior Curator for Prehistoric Sites with Heritage Malta. “The earliest settlements were established in places that are accessible by boat, where embarkation is possible, such as the ancient temple of Hagar Qim. Because they had no beasts of burden, if they wanted to carry a heavy object to a neighboring community, it was easier for them to carry a load by boat than carry it over land.”

My exploration of Hagar Qim began atop a remote, windswept cliff on Malta’s west coast, far above a sprawling meadow bejeweled with brilliant wildflowers, and an aquamarine sea further below. The early morning light illuminated a necklace of gigantic rocks–not of the precious variety, but immense inter-locking slabs of golden stone. The object of my admiration was Hagar Qim, translated loosely as “standing stones,” one of two adjoining megalithic temples commanding the heights here.

Virtually having the site to myself, I slowly circled the enormous structure, studying the boulders carved into geometric shapes, admiring the ingenuity behind aligning such massive stones together like a giant jigsaw puzzle more than two millenniums ago. One alone weighs more than twenty tons. Some were dappled with pit marks, some engraved with decorative plant motifs and spirals.

A contemporary marvel, the significance of these sites to the prehistoric men and women who erected them remains a mystery. It’s theorized that these were places of worship for a fertility cult, based on the discovery here and at other temples in this archipelago of statues dubbed the “Malta fat ladies”. A collection of the big-bottomed figurines is now displayed at the country’s National Museum of Archeology. In a related intrigue, this distinctive voluptuous female shape can also be seen from the sky in the outline of another Maltese temple, fittingly named Ggantija.

“Humans are always in search of new lands”

Clive Cortis of the Museum said, other types of carvings are also found at the 30 temple sites across the Maltese archipelago. He noted that images of boats are found at Malta’s Tarxien Temples, a prehistoric site of megalithic structures dating back to around 3600 B.C.—1,000 years before Egypt’s pyramids were built.

“Seven thousand years ago, man came to Malta from Sicily—we know this because pottery found in caves here matches that from there,” Cortis said. “Some may ask ‘Why did they come?’ Well, why did we go to the moon in 1969? As human beings, we are always in search of new things, new lands. If early Sicilians were fishing in the channel between the two islands, they could have seen Malta.”

Marsaxlokk Bay is home to 70 percent of Malta's fishing fleet. The luzzus, brightly painted traditional boats, can be traced to the Phoenicians.

A fisherman's gear, and his day, are laid out in his luzzu in Marsaxlokk Bay.

If seen from the seat of an airplane, Malta’s outline resembles that of a fish, and Marsaxlokk Bay is at its “mouth”. Home to about 70% of the Maltese fishing fleet, the harbor is like a bowl of beautifully-wrapped candy, with scores of vibrantly-painted boats in hues of yellow, red, blue, green and brown, all nestled side-by-side. The bows of many boats are painted with the symbol of the “eyes of Osiris,” a practice believed to have been inherited from another civilization that once called Malta home, the Phoenicians, a Mediterranean trading culture dominant between 1550 – 300 B.C.

Decorating the bows evolved from the days when seafarers, always superstitious, created figureheads that originally represented fearsome creatures intended to scare the ‘bad spirits’ at sea. Later, the figureheads assumed a more altruistic appearance. Traditionally, the bows of Maltese boats boasted a triangular area called the “moustache”, which identified its home port, a tradition no longer observed. According to the old custom, when the master was in mourning, this area of the bow was painted black.

I arrived here to find it was market day, and the harbor was abuzz with activity. The shoreline was crammed with stalls selling local handicrafts, merchants vying for the attention of the crowds milling past tables spread with wares. The water was strung with boat upon boat, bow to stern across the crowded bay, fishermen calling to each other as they unloaded their catch. With each step, my eyes were drawn in a dozen different directions, jumping across the intersecting angles, the scene an ever-changing kaleidoscope of primary colors.

The harbor is ringed with seafood restaurants, most of them two-storied, family-run enterprises. Business was brisk, with extended families at big tables piled high with platters. Hungry from the sea air, I soon was eagerly devouring Stuffat Tal-Qamit, a delicious octopus stew.

Joseph Farrugia is a Marsaxlokk Bay fisherman. His boat is a luzzu, suited perfectly for the work, with ample room for all the nets.

Marsaxlokk Bay's fishermen are at home in their luzzus, enjoying lunch, repairing nets and pausing to enjoy the sunshine.

Joseph Farrugia is a Marsaxlokk fisherman whom I met on a late Saturday morning as he and his son unloaded the catch from their luzzu (pronounced loots-zoo). They go out every morning just after sunrise to retrieve the nets they put out the prior evening before sunset. Their daily routine is dictated by a startlingly simple fact–in daylight, fish can see the nets.

Like Joseph’s boat, almost all those in Marsaxlokk Bay are luzzus. He said the luzzu is much more suited to a fisherman’s work than a fiberglass boat—heavier, more stable, with its shape providing more space for his nets. Joseph uses three different kinds of nets, ranging from 24 – 40 square millimeters, with which he catches bottom fish, such as squid, octopus, and mallet. A good day brings 100 kilos of fish; a bad day can be as little as five kilos.

In the summer months, Joseph may go out as far as ten miles into the sea; in the winter, it’s not safe to go out more than a mile. If he has a favorite watering hole, he’s not saying. Other than spots off-limits to fisherman, such as sanctuaries and diving sites, he sets his nets all around the island.

Joseph said his family has fished for as long as he can remember. His son joined him recently; he was taught by his father and uncles when he was 15, more than 40 years ago.

When asked what he does for fun, Joseph smiled, and replied: “Fish.”

I left Joseph’s boat, and meandered along the harbor’s circumference. Before me, in a luzzu, a fisherman cut a line with his teeth. To his right, a man tugged on one of the piles of blue and green nets he seemed swaddled in. To his left, an old salt took lunch out of a paper bag. Behind him, the dark head of young fisherman popped up from below board, and scanned the horizon.

The string of boats across the harbor called to mind the double helix of a DNA strand. And my visits to Marsaxlokk Bay, Grand Harbor and the Blue Grotto seemed to weave together a millennium of life on Malta’s waters, a palpable pattern of time, place and tradition.

Meg Pier

www.viewfromthepier.com

“If you do any digging in the Maltese islands, you’re bound to find something—it’s all just one big museum,” said my guide, Amy Pace of Sliema. “When the streets of M’dina were being repaved about four years ago, they discovered they had hit a buried column of an old Roman temple.”

Indeed, the list of artifacts found in this archipelago could be longer than the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the variety of cultures that have called the island home perhaps considered more diverse than membership in the European Union. This island nation lays claim to a treasure trove of history and mystery, swashbuckling and secrecy.

Malta’s sister island of Gozo, just a speck in the Mediterranean at a mere 9.5 miles long by four wide, lays claim to a pretty big boast in the annals of archaeology. Its home to Ggantija, one of the oldest free-standing structures in the world, built in 3600 B.C., pre-dating the pyramids by nearly 1,000 years.

The temples of Ggantijia are believed to be among Malta's oldest, dating to the period 3600 to 3000 B.C.

The largest of Ggantija's megaliths weighs about 57 tons. No wonder it's named after the "giantess" believed to have built the structure.

The Gozo hilltop of Ta Cenc is the site of ancient dolmens and affords a vista across a valley to the Citadella.

The largest megalithic complex in the Maltese islands, Ggantija stands on the southeast slope of Xagħra hill, overlooking Ramla valley, southern Gozo, and beyond to Malta, five miles away. The site is composed of two temples spanning over 40 meters, and enclosed by a single huge outer wall, which reaches six meters in height. The gigantic dimensions of the megaliths used to build the temples fired local legend that the structures were built by giants, thus, the name they still enjoy today.

An armchair archeologist and History Channel buff, I had been drawn to this tiny archipelago in part because it is home to more than 30 examples of civilization’s most ancient architecture. Nonetheless, I was puzzled that the earliest megalithic building could be traced here, to this tiny group of islands, rather than the continents of Europe or Africa.

“There is one school of thought that as islanders, the people were more introverted, and, as a result, began to get more original,” said Reuben Grima, Heritage Malta’s Senior Curator for Prehistoric Sites. “There is another alternative theory that societies that were in frequent communication with others sought ways, possibly such as temple-building, to strengthen their own local identity, to ritualize their kinship.”

“Creating structures such as Ggantija indicate that how the society was organizing itself changed dramatically,” he continued. “As an agricultural society is established, the people are more invested in a place than they would have been as hunters. That shift in sustenance creates a very different sense of place, and perhaps the beginning of a local identity.”

After hurtling through a millennium in the span of a few miles on winding roads, Amy and I found ourselves at the crossroads of Ta Cenc, our quest for Bronze Age relics rewarded with a sign pointing ahead to “Dolmens,” under which was noted “Private Property”. I was reminded of the Wizard of Oz’s scarecrow at the fork in the Yellow Brick Road, his arms crossed and simultaneously pointing Dorothy in opposite directions. After only modest debate, we decided the dolmens wouldn’t be advertised if there wasn’t an invitation to take a look, albeit with respect.

We slowly lurched forward on a rutted road, with farmland on our right, and a rocky field to our left, our eyes scanning for large stones that appeared to be strategically placed, versus scattered by nature. Suddenly I saw the iconic structure of two upright stones, and one across the top of them. I cried out, the car was shifted into park and we jumped out, leaving the doors wide open as we made our way toward the dolmens.

We crossed an expanse of pockmarked stone, from which succulent plants sprouted, stepping carefully to avoid trampling their tiny flowers. Reaching the standing stones, we enjoyed the north-facing view from their perch on the high plateau. On the other side of the vast valley was another hill, capped with another larger stone structure in golden hues.

“Dolmens indicated a burial site, often placed cliff-side to provide a view and place of prominence,” Clive Cortis of Malta’s Museum of Archaeology later told me. “These monuments, like others on the Maltese islands, date back to the period from 2500 B.C. – 800 B. C. The dead were cremated, and the ash put in urns that were placed in the ‘window’ of the dolmen.”

The crumbling medieval walls of Gozo's citadel contribute to an atmosphere of mystery and beauty.

Continuing our time travel, we fast-forwarded almost another thousand years, arriving at the honey-colored hilltop monument we had seen from afar while at Ta Cenc. The Citadella is Gozo’s old capital, its defensive location fortified further with massive bastions. On the exterior wall of the Citadel is a Latin inscription dated “Roman Emperor AD 138 – 161,” which translated reads:

“The people of Gozo (set up this inscription by Public Subscription) in honor of Marcus Allius Rufus of the Quirine Tribe, Son of Caius, for his merits on being raised to the rank of Knight by the Divine Antonius Pius Augustus and thereby also honoring his father, Caius Vallius Postumus, Patron of the Municipium.”

When I marveled at the inscription date, Amy responded, “Yes, it goes back that far, the Arabs were wise, they would not go against the sentiments of the people, and when erecting a new gate they fitted the Latin inscription into the side of the wall.”

“Excavations inside and around the citadel have yielded various remains from different cultures, like the Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, Medieval and 17th century Knights of St. John,” said Cortis. “After the 1551 attack by the Turks on the island, in which almost the entire population was taken into slavery, the Knights refortified the city with new bastions. From then until the 17th century, a law stated that nobody could sleep outside the city walls.”

While that meant as many as 5,000 once slumbered inside the Citadel’s gates, residents today number far fewer. In fact, I wasn’t sure if there were any residents at all calling this hilltop home when wandering its narrow, maze-like medieval alleys. Profusions of golden flowers spilled from the crumbling facades of fallen buildings, and ancient doors had keys visible in the locks.

George Refalo, a resident of nearby Rabat, said there are 11 people who still live at the Citadel—among them the “court attendant,” who is mandated to live in close proximity, should the need arise to open the Court in an emergency. Such a need is admittedly few and far between, but the tradition persists. Refalo noted the attendant is also responsible for the timing of the citadel’s clock, which chimes every quarter of an hour. Because it is weight-driven, it needs human intervention on a daily basis.

“One of the local habits is that the Gozitans leave the keys in the main door lock,” explained Cortis. “This shows how safe our islands are, one can just turn the key and walk in, but there’s another ‘romantic legend’ aspect. Throughout the centuries, Gozo was attacked by pirates and husbands were taken into slavery. Wives kept the key in the lock so if their husbands succeed in escaping from the pirates they could just walk into their house any day at any time, thus showing how faithful they are!”

“The keys in the door is a symbol of the peace of mind that in the old times residents used to have due to the close relationships amongst neighbors and extended families living in the vicinity,” said Refalo. “But the tradition also comes from the fact that in the old times, keys not only used to be very big and bulky but very heavy too—and not easily replicated.”

A statue of the Virgin Mary graces the red sands of Ramla Bay.

Our last stop in the continuum was Ramla Bay, one of the few sandy beaches on the rocky Maltese islands, and a hodge-podge of history and lore. Making our descent to its shores, we paused for what I was sure was an eons-old procession—a shepard and his dogs herding a couple dozen goats and sheep. Grazing seems too delicate a word for the feeding frenzy that took place.

“Ramla’s archaeological remains range from the Roman to the Knights’ periods,” said George Azzopardi of Heritage Malta. “On the Xagħra side, the remains of a villa of the Roman Imperial period were unearthed. From high places overlooking the bay, one can still see the substantial remains of an early 18th century underwater wall, built by the Knights to hinder enemy approach.”

And high above the red sands of Ramla Bay is where perhaps Gozo’s first tourist had an extended stay. Legend has it that Homer’s hero Odysseus was held captive here for seven years in a clifftop cave by the nymph Calypso. Despite Calypso’s offer of eternal youth and Gozo’s gorgeous scenery, no lock was big enough to keep Odysseus from his homeland, and his own faithful wife Penelope.

Meg Pier

www.viewfromthepier.com

The dashing bride and groom. Photos © Jen Carswell

Gathering energy for the strenuous journey to come.

Riding to the temple, at least part of the way.

Natasha and I, pretty in pink and burgundy.

Hiding At An Indian Wedding

Every little girl likes playing dress-up. I was a fairy queen, a rock star, a Ninja Turtle and the list goes on. But at 27, I have few occasions. An Indian wedding a few weeks ago allowed me such a long-awaited opportunity. Besides the fact that my salwar kameez was extraordinarily hot (to the point of causing dizziness), I thoroughly enjoyed my Indian make-over and the chance to be part of a wedding ceremony so different from my usual experiences as friends and loved-ones tie the knot.

At around 11am, Natasha, her mother, my mother and I arrived at the groom’s apartment. Ajay Abbi was having his red turban meticulously wrapped around his head. We headed into a different room where the rest of the women were seated, patiently. Waiting. No one really spoke much and the majority of the entertainment was provided by the year and a half year old Roma. She was full of energy, which she mostly used to keep from wearing her traditional, rather pointy shoes. I had tried on similar ones earlier in the week and they are unbelievably uncomfortable. I understood her desire to be bare-footed.

As I scooped up the big-eyed, curly-haired toddler, Natasha said, “but I thought you didn’t like kids.”

“I like the cute ones.”

Then there were a few sweets and some tea. Outside, the horse was also getting all dolled up. An elaborately ornamented saddle, with flaps and bells and other hanging things were being strapped on the unimpressed filly. Both the horse and the bride took less time to get ready than the groom.

When he finally emerged, he was followed by the numerous photographers hired to capture all of the day’s special moments. Ajay sat in a chair, at which time a garland made out of 20 rupee notes (30 cents) was placed around his neck. This is meant to bring him and his new wife financial prosperity. The idea of money came up regularly. Often various people would wave money over others heads, to bring them good luck in this domain. The bills were then given away to someone else, usually the musicians or children. Natasha made off with 250 rupees by the end of the day.

A mask with hanging beads was tied in front of the groom’s face. And then retied, and then again, as it refused to stay in place. There was drum music as he FINALLY made his way from the apartment to the horse. He was accompanied by dancing and singing. The horse was then led about 100 metres with the groom triumphantly riding, continually batting the beads out of his face. All around people were dancing and singing, attracting curious onlookers from balconies and windows. Normally, the groom rides the horse to the temple. After 5 minutes, Ajay’s chariot was transformed into a Suzuki Swift. The temple was apparently too far by foot.

Normally, the groom and his family are supposed to arrive before the bride. But this, too, was modernised. When we arrived, she was already there. He had taken too long to get ready.

The marriage took place in a Hindu temple, but Ashish is Sikh and Pooja, his bride, is Sindhi. The difference of religion meant that the families did not agree to the marriage, and therefore did not pay for any of it. Until the day before the wedding, the immediate families were not sure to attend. In the end, everyone was there to celebrate.

In the temple, men and women covered their heads. There was music as the bride and groom prayed and walked around a pagoda-esque structure. In Hindu weddings, they go around 7 times, in Sikh weddings 4. Everything else, I did not understand. It was very hot, especially in my heavy, jewelled outfit. Standing up made my head spin.

Afterwards, more food and more photos. The tensions about the marriage meant that it was smaller than most and that the reception proceeded the ceremony and was not later on in the evening. Natasha explained that there are literally a million traditional prayers and ceremonies and blessings, half of which they had probably forgotten. She also said that Indian weddings are quite traditional and that all of the parties and normal pre-nuptial shenanigans occur during the days preceding the wedding. And if you count all of the various get-togethers, an Indian marriage can last for an entire week.

Having attempted to look dignified as I melted in my kameez, I was very happy to put my yellow and white flowered-dress back on. Throughout the day, I had gone rather unnoticed, and did not stand out as the foreigner at the wedding. As Natasha (who was also wearing Western garb), my mom (newly changed) and I confronted the rain and the muck, I noticed other party-goers taking our picture. So, in the end, it was more than just a dress-up, but a brief and delightful disappearing act.

Jen Carswell

It is the end of June and I have stepped off the plane into the beautiful, heaving, exotic, garbage-ridden streets of Mumbai. This city is like none other I have ever seen before. I find no common reference points between where I have lived in Canada, England and France and this living place, where everything is in constant motion. And making constant noise. Here, everything is too much, overwhelming and in-your-face, at least, that is, until you start to get used to it.

My blue rubber boots and umbrella. © Jen Carswell.

I arrived in the financial capital of India not only as a confused foreigner but worse still as a lowly intern. For six weeks, my time is to be spent writing articles in the city section of a well-reputed newspaper called the Indian Times. Luckily, my job responsibilities do not include getting coffee and chai, or doing the photocopying because in India labour is so inexpensive that someone has been hired specifically to do those tasks. So, a new city, a new life and a new job. And I actually wanted all of this.

During my flight from London, my backpack was lost. My only suitcase and sole tie to anything similar and comforting. My first day was therefore spent slugging from shop to shop under the blazing sun with, very honestly, thousands of other Saturday bargain hunters. My mission was to replace the bare essentials, while I prayed that my baggage would arrive the next day. I think that I would have appreciated the experience more if I had only known how rare and precious a thing like sunshine could be. Two days later, the monsoon started.

The first day the water poured down, hitting the pavement and exploding like tiny viscous missiles. One followed by another and then another. The streets began to fill up. The puddles turned into larger puddles and then started to resemble rivers. A current circulated from high to low points and accordingly one had to walk with or against it. Car tires were drowned in liquid and a wake shot out behind them as they drove, like following a boat on water-skis. I had to wade up to my ankles to reach the door of my building. And I think that I was one of the lucky ones. I saw photos of people waste deep in mucky, murky rain water. One made me laugh: a man with an umbrella in one hand, a tray of tea in another and the water lapping at his hips.

Marine Drive, Mumbai

I really thought that it was the end of the world. And it may come yet. The tides are expected to reach record heights at the end of July and with no drainage system to speak of and no where for the water to go, it will slowly rise and paralyse the city. In 2005 there were similar water levels and the city shut down for three days. Thousands of people died, many suffocated, unable to escape from cars and other enclosed spaces. This makes me fearful.

But my Indian colleagues and friends are very unfazed by the whole thing. They are perennially subjected to this quasi-apocalyptic weather and just deal with it. My friend Natasha loves being in the wind and rain and called me out onto the roof of our building to watch the madness and majesty of it all.

My only defense: blue rubber boots. At least that way I’ll be protected up to my shins. I don’t like having wet feet and I imagine that the water carries lots of nasty and unwanted things. If I don’t wear them, I carry them; but they remain my very faithful, though cumbersome, companions. People stare as I pass by, but as my sheer presence attracts constant stares it is hard to say what is, in fact, spurring their curiosity. Where I live, there are very few tourists and so many of my ‘neighbours’ have never seen a white person in real life before (it may seem politically incorrect to say, but I don’t know how else to say it).

My work continues as I become more accustomed to the differentness of Mumbai. I hope that when it rains, it won’t be too long or too hard. Deep down, I know better. Perhaps my boots will serve as a kind of modern-aged rabbits’ foot. But I no longer think that I am facing the end of the world. No, no, it is just the beginning.

Jen Carswell

Lyndhurst, South Australia
4 December 2002 6:30pm

The wind whips the orange dust into a constant abrasive stream flowing endlessly and in flurries across the whole plain. The dust permeates everything, but after the first day everyone accepts that it is the new natural order. It can pass through shuttered tents, you feel it could pass through metal walls. It always leaves a fine powder across everything that acts as a constant reminder that you have chosen to live in the Australian desert for a week.

We must be mad.

There are showers on the site, but they achieve nothing in the constant wind. The moment you step out of them you are covered in the orange dust that buries itself in your skin. It will be more than a week before it is all washed away and it becomes a kind of badge back in the city; you know your eclipse brothers and sisters from their burnt, orange skin. Over this time we have all commented on a new found admiration for the Arabs who have lived with the desert for so long. A Swiss man reminds me of “In’sh’allah”, “God willing”. All plans are made subject to this, to balance the arrogance that humans have in the face of the power of the natural world.

This is the one that got me addicted. In this picture you will notice the left hand side of the sky looks like sunset, but the right hand side is dark. This is because the right hand side of the sun was still covered. It looked amazing with the eclipse glasses and this shot captured it. Photos © Dhugal Fletcher.

All reservations are lost when you are moving around the site. So many smiles, so many people speaking a myriad of languages; clothes, customs, cultures swirling together into a global humanity. The eclipse chasers have come from around the world and driven for a day or more outside the closest Australian cities to gather together to share the experience of a Total Solar Eclipse. There is a trance music festival happening here in the wilderness to celebrate the occasion properly and the music…the music is omnipresent. It started at sunset on the first day with an opening ceremony where the local aboriginal people of the Flinders ranges here in South Australia welcomed us to the land. It has been running twenty-four hours a day since then. A clear wall of sound delivered from a tremendous sound system on the main stage and one less than half the size sitting in the middle of the open marketplace that forms the hub of the site. It is unlike anything I’ve heard anywhere before. It is psychedelic trance, electronic music, and it fits the desert background as though it was always meant to be there. Everywhere you go in the camp you can hear one of the main systems or one of the smaller ones that start up around the sea of tents at all hours of the day and night.

One afternoon I’m playing my Djembe along with the tunes one of our crew is putting on our own sound system. I’m part of a group on a twenty-four seater bus that has driven two days from Melbourne to be here. Our driver has setup a four thousand watt system he is powering from a combination of wind and solar power generators he has brought along. So our camp site is a village hub in our part of the greater camping grounds where about four thousand of my new best friends from around the world have come to live together for a week. About four Japanese men approach us holding small Djembes of their own and ask to join us, we welcome them to sit and we start to play rhythms together. We take turns in leading a new rhythm that matches the music our DJ is mixing for us and enjoy laughs and drinks together as we learn from each other’s styles. After a few hours they decide to move off towards the main stage and thank us. This is the first time I realise that they can’t speak a word of English and I can’t speak Japanese. And yet we’ve just been talking happily in music for hours.

At night, the crystal clear skies allow a view of the cosmos generally unseen and unknown. With small binoculars you can see the curvature of the new moon. That in itself is almost a revelation. At sunrise and sunset you can see the sun angling through the sky, even being bent by the earth’s atmosphere. It was a dark moon when we arrived, and each day sees slightly more light. You can spend hours lying on your back looking up into the
infinite.

And we do.

There are no clouds, no city lights, no hindrances. And the beauty of nature is overwhelming. Even a long way from the sound systems, the night winds deliver bursts of music to you… first from one stage, then another. Late at night a third stage starts up and runs to sunrise. The music drifts in surges across the plain as though someone is opening and closing a door. You fall asleep with it and awake to more.

The music stopped.

This can only mean one thing. The eclipse is about to begin. The music gives way to the sounds of thousands of people making their way to higher ground to await the moment of Totality. The anticipation and excitement fills the air, bubbling to the surface in waves. It is impossible to resist… waves of whooping and screaming in joy pass up and down the thousands of people lined along the ridge in the middle of the plain. With the naked eye, the sun is still too bright to look at. Through the eclipse glasses you can clearly see the shadow on the sun. Slowly creeping to cover it.

This is the moment that started it all, taken during the 25 second Totality that changed my life. You can see the eclipse in the picture next to my shoulder.

We stand and talk meaningless words.

Prepare for the moment.

Be ready to get a photo during totality.

Pass a spliff.

Check the sun again.

I am filled with a new profound respect for the sun. Even with most of its face covered the light hasn’t changed. You still cannot look at it. Then in the last minutes before Totality it begins to get dark. A cold wind starts up. The light changes quickly as though sunset approaches. Sunset really is approaching, the sun will set in partial eclipse, but for now the moment is imminent; at any second the black sun will open its eye to us.

The transition is almost instantaneous. I am looking at the black sun in absolute awe. I cannot hear anything. People are excited, they must be making noise but I cannot hear anything. I have the photo taken of me with the eclipse in the background. I take one in return and then stand again motionless. I cannot hear anything. The red of the corona is….unique. I think I should look around at the darkened sky. I cannot move, transfixed into a timeless moment. ‘Like a reset for the brain’ the Swiss man said. I understand that now. In this moment a hardened nihilistic cynic sees the soul of the universe. How can you stuff that feeling into the sausage machine of language? How long has this moment lasted?

The transition is sudden and without warning. I feel like something has just been taken away from me. Something I wanted. Needed. My eyes hurt and I turn away. There is screaming and whooping, hugging, celebration of life, existence. Sound returns and we are alive. It continues. Sunset is only half an hour away.

We sit and watch and talk meaningless talk.

The music starts again, slowly, timorously at first, but building back into thunderous glory. The sun sets cut in half, as it crosses the horizon you can view it through the eclipse glasses and wonder at the half of it that is missing.

The only thing I feel sure of anymore is my vow that I will see the next totality I can.

I will travel wherever I must.

In’sh’allah.

Dhugal Fletcher

Venus in the Cellar. Photos © Bérengère Berra

Various paintings inclucing Salvador Dali's reproductions in the Cellar, near Rue de la Tombe-Issoire.

Beneath rue Saint Jacques. Mushrooms grow beside tree roots hanging from the ceiling arches.

The Dead Crossroad near rue Emile Richard, beneath Montparnasse cemetery.

The Salle du Chateau located beneath rue Alphonse Daudet.

Inside a Chatière, leading to the bunker beneath rue d'Assas.

Paris Underground

Very few tourists know that when they stroll around Paris, others may be lurking only 40 metres underground beneath their feet. The French capital hides an unexpected treasure known to only an exclusive and initiated elite.

For years and years, I have been strolling through these tunnels under the city of love. Hereafter, I will describe the experience I made as a Catacomb wannabe, when I first discovered the hidden treasure on my own, in a dangerously naive way. Luckily, I met a cataphile, who knew his way around the tunnels and helped me to become one of these professional strollers myself…

A young man is walking in a 10 metre deep trench and following a pair of very old railway tracks. They are out of service and hidden by the wild vegetation of a wasted land. His only equipment is a pocket lamp and some beers. He doesn’t yet know that he is approaching the gate of the mighty catacombs of Paris. The rail tunnels become longer and darker. A growing fear has already started to form in the pit of his stomach.

Suddenly, a dark deep hole in the ground appears from the shadow, and then a stream of light, pours out. Clad in a green hat, blue suit and gum boots, A guy called Indy jumps out, like a Jack in the box. He is muddy, unshaven, and looks a bit like a drunken punk. A large smile spreads across his face. He seems to know the place, to be used to it, like a kind of ready-made tourist guide.

After a quick handshake, the boy admits he is already lost. The muddy guy laughs: 230 km underground, hand-dug galleries are running under the city of lights. There is no way to go down there without a perfect knowledge of your road.

Beers against knowledge, the deal is done. The tourist and the cataphile disappear, consumed by the darkness.

The galleries are scrolling out under their quick step. There is something from ancient Egypt in the air. Every inch of stone shows the marks from the former pit worker’s pickaxes. Every wall is covered with decades of graffiti, testifying, bearing testimony to the previous explorations, for the ones who know how to read them.

The ground is half flooded, and the boy’s shoes and pans get wet. First room: La salle du chateau, the castle room: a circular table, rooflight and four gargoyles. Around a massive pillar, an outstanding castle has been built. The light of a few candles are flooding out from the towers. According to the guide, everything here is hand made by the cataphiles. First pause, first beer. The march sets off again.

Modern kind of galleries, rub shoulders with older ones. They pass through the Cellar, a room where two Dali paintings face a Venus, a place where the walls offer artistic expressions at every corner. Another long trek again, the next stop is the Cabinet Mineralogique. Built in the 17th century, it was used to display the public’s fascination for geology. Over the entrance, stands a huge stone block marked 1811. Second and third beer.

The visitor and his guide meet two other explorers there. It’s a busy place. They wear a kind of ghetto-blaster on their backpack with some punk music on. The chat revolve around police patrols, light empowerment and secret areas. Seeing the tourist boy, every body falls silent. The secrets must be stored here. It’s time to go, the time passes so quickly in the deep dark. Next stage : the boneyards under Montparnasse cemetery.

The remains of more than six millions Parisians rest silently, buried in the galeries. The two explorers arrive at the Dead Crossroads. A hole on the wall leads them to a small room. Under their feet, the ground is composed of eight meters of bones. Walking there sounds like crushing rotten wood. Hundreds of Parisians of diverse social backgrounds, aristocrats and unknown commoners, have their remains mixed together in this huge boneyard.

On the road again. The cataphile guide walks very fast. He wants to reach the World War II German Bunker as fast as he can, under the Lycee Montaigne, in the 6th Arrondissement. Inside, a time travel is offered to the visitors. On the wall, German inscriptions still warn against smoking around ammunition. A swastika on the wall testifies that this was a place largely frequented by skinheads in the 80’s. But the Bunker is not the goal.

Not far from there, a medieval underground chapel from the XIVth century awaits visitors. A holy water font gushes out from the front wall, disrupting softly the religious silence that still hangs in the room.

This contemplative path leads them to the last step of their trip. Hidden in an alcove stands the grave of Philibert Aspair. He was the porter of the Val de Grace convent during the French revolution. He got lost in the labyrinth, and his body was found and buried in 1811, more than ten years after he disappeared. He becamed a kind of holy saint for the cataphile community, reminding everyone of the modesty and caution they should observe in these historical hand-made tunnels.

The two explorers start a long walk back to the daylight. It’s probably the early morning outside. Darkness and tiredness tend to hypnotize the walkers. Arriving near the entrance, a fresh wind jolts them suddenly from their stupor. Coming back to light and civilisation has something of a new birth.

Muddy and exhausted, the unwary tourist goes back home for a long sleep. Paris showed him it’s hooded face, and will never look the same again. He feels glad to share the secret: under the paving stones, lies one of the last places of complete freedom of the world’s most visited capital.

Marc De Boni

Chernobyl's reactor number four and its steel and concrete sarcophagus. Photos © Chuck Wightman.

Chernobyl: Green, Tranquil and Toxic

April 26, 1986. Chernobyl’s Reactor Four erupts in the morning sky – shuddering through the homes of its workers in the town of Pripyat 3 kilometres away. Official silence is maintained by the Soviet government until Swedish radiation detectors sound the alarm days later.

Today it’s possible to tour Chernobyl, Pripyat and the reactor complex. The Exclusion Zone enclosing Chernobyl in a thirty kilometre restricted radius is two hours drive from Kiev, breezing through small villages and thick forest on a sparsely traveled two lane highway. A military checkpoint marks the entry to the zone: Guards emerge from a small office to ensure our papers are in order. I notice little difference from one side of the gate to the other. Both sides are lush and green. “Further away from the main road,” my guide Yuriy says, “many have returned to their former villages.” Unofficial numbers estimate as many as a thousand voluntary returnees. “Most are older peasants, left with few alternatives, owing to disruptions in compensation payments.”

Shortly we are within the ten kilometre exclusion zone, the original evacuation line set a few days after the disaster. The thirty kilometre zone was set nearly a month later. Residents of Chernobyl and Pripyat were originally told they would return home in a matter of weeks. All tolled 300,000 people were resettled.

The streets of Chernobyl are ribboned with huge stainless steel pipes bringing heat (from a gas plant outside the city) and water supplies to the offices of the remaining workers. 3,000 people currently work decommissioning the complex, and constructing a permanent nuclear waste handling facility. Workers live in the town of Slavutich, 30 kilometres away, commuting via a special train.

Many Westerners are unaware the remaining three reactors at Chernobyl continued operation long after the accident at number four. Construction proceeded on the fifth and sixth reactors – in a planned twelve reactor complex – until 1989, just prior to the accident’s third anniversary. The remaining reactors were gradually decommissioned until the last shutdown in December of 2000, when western governments pledged substantial aid to alleviate the power shortfall, most of which has yet to materialize.

The monument in the centre of Chernobyl, to the 600,000 liquidators who struggled to bring the disaster under control.

Larger than life portraits of senior Soviets watch time erode in a back room of Pripyat's theatre.

Near Chernobyl’s centre a monument honours the 600,000 fire fighters and “liquidators” who fought the blaze and cleaned up the aftermath. Only fifty-six deaths are officially acknowledged as a result of the catastrophe, but estimates of cancers and other illnesses start around 2500 and rise from there. We share a solemn moment admiring the bravery, dedication and honour, of those who fought to contain the disaster.

Pausing at the tour office, Yuriy displays pictures of the site in different stages of remediation. A large map delineates the zones of contamination, now highly contested in establishing who is entitled to compensation, and what land is fit to be inhabited. The zones sprawl far beyond the exclusion borders. I can’t help but wonder what the people living in these towns and villages have been told.

The area surrounding the power plant looks similar to any industrial zone, with little obvious indication of the disaster. A massive field of hydro towers sits dormant. Construction cranes slowly corrode beside the hulking concrete cooling tower built to serve reactors five and six. There is little evidence of the thousands of workers here, and the site feels strangely empty.

International agencies have agreed that current levels of radiation are safe for the brief exposure my day trip involves, but I wonder about the workers. Yuriy notes they are paid five times the normal Ukrainian wage (roughly $1500 per month), working only two weeks each month, but the money seems paltry given the risk.

Once home to some 48,000 people, Pripyat is eerie in its solitude. Our tour of the town begins in a junior school’s entrance, boasting greetings and posters similar to those of any school, intact as though time has stopped mere moments ago. Gas masks are strewn near the main foyer, a facet of Cold War preparedness. I have never seen a real gas mask before. They offer a curious contrast between East and West: our children offered only ludicrous ‘duck and cover’ drills. I imagine the panic of these children, discovering the enemy is not ten thousand kilometres away, but a familiar landmark, mere minutes down the road.

Books in the school library are slowly moldering. The chemistry lab looks as though a cyclone has passed through. The gymnasium’s hardwood is buckled, creaking ominously as we cross.

The best view of Pripyat is from a hotel at the centre of town. Marble slab still lines the foyer, but everything else has been stripped away. Ascending the stairs to the upper floors, our feet crunch on shards of glass that were once the hotel’s windows. Small trees have begun to sprout from the floor, as seeds have blown through the empty frames.

The view is haunting: rows of Soviet bloc apartments, now nearly smothered by trees; the reactors resting solemnly in the distance. The sky is cast an appropriate grey, but the trees are a lush green, birds are singing. The images conjure the notion of paradise lost, now slowly being redeemed.

Returning to earth, Yuriy points our Geiger counter to some moss sprouting from the pavement. Surprisingly, it reads even more radioactive than the gates to the crippled reactor. Biomass is known to absorb substantial quantities of radiation.

Significant debate continues as to how much radioactive material actually escaped from the reactor during the explosion and subsequent nine days of fire in the core. Estimates range from twenty percent, to almost all of the reactor’s fuel, leaving possibly less than five percent in the core.

Adjacent to the hotel is an amusement park, slated to open the May Day holiday weekend in 1986. Its Ferris wheel stands intact, awaiting children who will never come. A nearby theatre contains a treasure trove of larger than life paintings of Soviet leaders, and there is the sense of being in a giant open air museum of the former Soviet era. Even streetlights feature small hammer and sickle designs.

An elderly returnee couple pose inside of their humble cottage.

An astounding field of radioactive vehicles, from tanks and trucks to helicopters, offers the clearest sense of the disaster's human magnitude.

Venturing to an outer village, we are invited to a modest meal by an elderly returnee couple, and their Belarusian friend. Only every third or fourth house is inhabited; the rest succumb to a now familiar decay. Conversing through Yuriy’s translation, their remarks surprise me, all three longing for the regimented days of Stalin.

While acknowledging the purges and famines, they resent the present corruption. As easy as it would be to dismiss their laments as those of simple country folk, they sagely observe that Europe is integrating, while the Soviet Union has disintegrated. The borders, they all agree, are false. ‘All one people,’ pronounces the Belarusian, frustrated with the hassles he experiences crossing from his own country.

My hosts don’t understand why their government cannot provide them with a market for the few cows they raise, though they quickly assure us the food they have proffered is not local, as much as I am certain it is. Their moonshine would peel paint, though it certainly shakes the damp out.

Some distance outside of Chernobyl, the vehicle graveyard is my final stop. My itinerary describes “thousands of trucks, helicopters, and armored personnel vehicles so soaked in radiation it is dangerous to approach.” A crude viewing stand has been erected on the far side of the road, to facilitate a full appreciation. The helicopters seem bigger than houses, larger than anything I have ever seen. These are the choppers that continually dumped loads of clay and lead into the fire in an attempt to smother it.

‘Only fifty-six dead,’ I remember. The memorial in Chernobyl makes no list of names of those to be honoured. It is only here, at the vehicle graveyard, that one can begin to imagine the human toll.

Chuck Wightman

© Charles Taylor

Celebrating Totem Poles

Imagine yourself invited to a big party, a party likely to be going on for a few days. You know that there will be feasting, dancing, speech making, and story telling. You also know that you need not bother to bring a gift to your host. Quite the contrary, your host will be lavishing gifts on you and the other invited guests. These gifts will be items of value and utility such as blankets, sewing machines, motor-boats, clothing, and metal pots, all produced elsewhere and imported for the occasion. Locally made canoes and carved objects may also be given to the guests. Even gifts of flour and sugar, not produced in this part of the country, may be distributed in large enough quantities to be taken home after the party is over. There is only one catch. When your turn comes to give such a party, you will be expected to give gifts of greater value to your host and his family.

These kinds of parties actually took place among Native- American people of the Pacific Northwest until the early part of the twentieth century. Their name for such a celebration is “potlatch” and its main purpose was to enhance the social standing of the host. Of course, he didn’t do it all by himself, his family helped by providing hospitality and goods for the guests. The potlatch was, in effect, a competition between individuals and families for social status. It developed and thrived in the Pacific Northwest where there was prosperity among the Native- American people. The sea provided a great variety of foods ranging from whales to salmon. Shellfish were plentiful along the ocean shores, and the forests provided game in abundance whose pelts were traded. The forests also provided wood, which was used for construction of houses, making canoes, and all sorts of carved objects for daily use and decoration.

There was a long-standing tradition of wood carving among the coastal people of the Pacific Northwest. Until the arrival of Europeans and migrating Americans from the eastern part of the country, the tools used to do the carving were made of sharpened stones lashed to wooden handles. With the arrival of outsiders came iron and steel, which could be fashioned into blades to replace those of hard jadeite stone.

One of the carved art forms of the region, the totem pole, is widely known and associated with the Native-American people of the coastal Pacific Northwest. It has been assumed that the carving of these poles, some as high as sixty feet, was of great antiquity. Explorers visiting the region until the late eighteenth century made no mention of such poles. They did describe the carving and painting of house fronts and interiors, but nothing about large poles covered with carved and painted animal and human figures. Many anthropologists date the origin of the totem pole art form to the early nineteenth century when settlers brought new metal tools into the region. The totem pole would seem to be something new based on existing traditions of woodcarving.

So, what do totem poles have to do with the potlatch? When a new totem pole was to be erected, the occasion was considered to be significant enough to hold a potlatch. Other occasions like marriages, births, and deaths were also times for such a ceremony. Chiefs who had been made wealthy by the fur trade could afford the expense of commissioning an artist to create a totem pole. This symbol of his affluence coupled with a potlatch was a powerful claim to prestige. The totem pole proclaimed the lineage of the chief and his tribe in the same way as a coat of arms with its animals and symbols would do in Europe.

Totem poles were not objects of worship but the real or mythological animal depicted at the top was symbolic of the lineage of the chief and was, therefore, an object of reverence and respect. Each pole tells a story or legend and should be “read” from the top down. The stylized carved animals and humans are fairly easy to identify, but unless the viewer knows the story, it is not possible to fully understand the significance of the figures. The animals depicted have special characteristics with which the Native Americans could identify. These people lived close to nature and were well acquainted with the creatures of the forest, sea, and sky such as the bear, wolf, beaver, frog, salmon, whale, shark, hawk, raven, and eagle, to name a few. Frequently the creatures were also depicted with human arms, legs, and ears. In this form they were considered to be supernatural or mythological beings.

Once the carving was finished, the painting of the pole followed. Modern carvers have a whole rainbow of manufactured paints to choose from. In the early days the carvers obtained their colors from materials near at hand. For example, black and gray were made from crushed charcoal, manganese, or graphite. White was made from crushed clamshells and red from berries and animal blood. Decayed moss and fungus were used to make yellow, and brown came from chewed cedar bark or bear dung. Green was obtained from the scrapings of copper bearing rocks. In all cases the binding agent used was oil from fish or land animals or chewed salmon eggs. The pigments and binders were mixed in stone dishes and applied with brushes made of animal fur or strands of cedar bark. Sometimes areas on the poles were left unpainted.

The traveler in coastal areas of the Pacific Northwest, particularly in southern Alaska and adjoining areas of British Columbia, will be exposed to totem poles everywhere. They are a wonderful part of any Alaskan cruise and are worth some time to be studied, appreciated, and photographed.

Simon Baker