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Sublime moment with a warbler on the canyon's rim Sublime moment with a warbler on the canyon's rim
(about 11 hours later)
This extraordinary Epirot valley is claimed to be the world’s deepest gorge, and from a spot called Beloi it seemed a reasonable notion. Yet it must be said that reason is the part of human equipment least appropriate to this experience. For, just to get there, you had to descend through a scramble of boulders and use all four limbs in tandem to map the next small awkward advance. Until finally, at the canyon rim, where a chest-high wall enclosed a small soil-floored cup with standing room for five, you looked out and it hit you. This extraordinary Epirot valley is claimed to be the world’s deepest gorge, and from a spot called Beloi it seemed a reasonable notion. Yet it must be said that reason is the part of human equipment least appropriate to this experience. For, just to get there, you had to descend through a scramble of boulders and use all four limbs in tandem to map the next small awkward advance; until finally, at the canyon rim, where a chest-high wall enclosed a small soil-floored cup with standing room for five, you looked out, and it hit you.
How bizarre, you reflected later, that, poised on the edge of all this nothing – the guard wall balanced above a chasm of 700m – and with only the exquisite liquid quality of Greek light between you and mountains perhaps 20km away, you had suddenly felt lost for air. How bizarre, you reflected later, that, poised on the edge of all this nothing – the guard wall balanced above a chasm of 700 metres – and with only the exquisite liquid quality of Greek light between you and mountains perhaps 20km away, you had suddenly felt lost for air.
In fact it was amusing to observe, as other pilgrims arrived, how the same inarticulate breathlessness could translate into so many different languages.In fact it was amusing to observe, as other pilgrims arrived, how the same inarticulate breathlessness could translate into so many different languages.
Earlier visitors had scratched their initials into the wall’s smoothed surfaces and I tried to imagine them all, and all those languages, failing in this same sublime moment. That line of thought led me back to conjure a time when the first humans, clad in who knows what skins, clambered out here too and saw this place and what strange and unrecorded words could they not find? Earlier visitors had scratched their initials into the wall’s smoothed surfaces and I tried to imagine them all, and all those languages, failing in this same sublime moment. That line of thought led me back to conjure a time when the first humans, clad in who knows what skins, clambered out here too and saw this place, and what strange and unrecorded words could they not find?
Then a wood warbler darted out and flitted across the edge of all this unspeakable drama, and I was made to tack to a greater drama. It was a migrant bird – in Vikos today, but tomorrow, perhaps, on Corfu and onwards, step by step, to Zaire. Then the swallows, which, gliding down this unspeakable abyss as if it were just one more sweet riff of air, may have bred in Poland or Ukraine but spend their winters in Durban. Then a wood warbler darted out and flitted across the edge of all this vast drama, and I was made to tack to a greater tale. It was a migrant bird – in Vikos today, but tomorrow, perhaps, on Corfu and onwards, step by step, to the Congo. Then the swallows, which, gliding down this unspeakable abyss as if it were just one more sweet riff of air, may have bred in Poland or Ukraine but spend their winters in Durban.
Wrapped right around our planet from Alaska to Vladivostok, it goes on: in our Claxton garden, in any quiet scrub pocket near where city commuters walk to work, but also here at Vikos. Among the pedestrian and the sublime, these migrant birds are draining south now among us all.Wrapped right around our planet from Alaska to Vladivostok, it goes on: in our Claxton garden, in any quiet scrub pocket near where city commuters walk to work, but also here at Vikos. Among the pedestrian and the sublime, these migrant birds are draining south now among us all.
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