Comfort

We were still in the dry part of Mt Loutraki/perohora above Loutraki when night drew on. Luckily there was a gorgeous little glade, where sheep are kept in the Summer, but they hadn`t actually arrived there yet. Because the weather was between iffy and downright threatening I camped in a Mandri.. which had been designed to protect sheep from the worst weather. The gate was too low for George, but he much prefers wider spaces, so he was tethered in the very delicious grass. This glade was full of a huge variety of grass and grassland species, and that`s why George was so happy with it. Although when they are very hungry and have to satisfy urgent metabolic needs horses like the sugar rich grasses and clovers that make up cattle leys, they are not designed to eat much of this kind of food, and, ponies particularly, get ill very easily when kept on this type of pasture. Horses normally prefer to select from a variety of less rich grasses -if they have leisure to choose. This is because they like variety, and the tastes of different herbs and so on. Also as every herbalist knows, different plants have different virtues for the body.. and grasses and cereals specifically designed to make animals fat spectacularly lack these kind of extras. But here George was glad to be able to promote his own health by selecting from a cornucopia of grasses and herbs rich in trace elements and different vitamins which were delicious too.

All too often shepherds seed old mountain meadow land with wheat or barley..not because they want to harvest them, but because they provide early green, which makes the animals give more milk., or fatten up in time for Easter and May 1... they say.

This is in the short term..of course..and cereals are notoriously short of vitamins and trace elements.. which the farmer then has to provide in the form of mineral licks and vitamin supplements. Also, of course, the thin soils of the mountains are protected from erosion by the grasses that grow there. Ploughing and seeding makes the soil vulnerable. Most places that are seeded in this way by shepherds are able to produce an early flush of green for about two years. Then they can produce nothing but weeds and thistles..and plenty of stones.

Luckily our glade had not been destroyed, and George reaped the benefit. The grass grows very quickly in the spring, (as any lawn mower owner knows) so George wasn`t depriving the sheep of their grass. I could not have grazed him there if it had been seeded, as cereals have not evolved to be grazed, but to grow and produce seed..once. So once they are cropped, they will not come again, but grass- as any person who has to mow lawns knows- will come again many times. In addition, as well as the sweet and fast growing annual species of grass, which survive the bad times as seeds, there are perennial grass species on the mountains which have evolved to survive drought and freezing by going dormant. That means they hold the soil with their roots even when they appear to be dead. , on the other hand cereals just die, (as you can prove to yourself by observing any dry stony fields that people have seeded just to get the subsidies) and have to be reseeded. So, all in all, the precious mountain pastures ought to be left to do what they do best: hold the soil and feed livestock.

Just in the glade some lucky person was building a house- how? aren`t their laws against it? Such a lovely place, I`d LOVE to live there. But I wouldnt do what this person is doing..take ALL the water that used to flow down the mountain there,(I`m sure their are laws against this too..see the photo of laws) a large water storage tank has been built- no - not for storing rainwater, but for stealing the life blood of the forest. A spring which provided water that used to seep through the glades and tree roots has been trapped in a concrete tank, from where it can get out only through plastic pipes _ in order to water whatever the house owner wants to put in his garden. He has also generously allowed some water to go into a trough for the goats and sheep, and any wildlife that would otherwise perish because the water supply is lost. Why choose to live in a forest, if your main aim is to murder it by growing unsuitable water hungry plants ? Can it be NICE to watch the supremely important dry forest perish all around your perimeter fence for lack of what you choose to use with such reckless abandon.? I suppose it can.

Near to the house and its new deposito the Hunting association has sited two reservoirs..in case of fire.

GREENWASH

Throughout the forest the Hunting Association is making pretentions to being green and "protecting the forest". Ha. If there weren`t all these cement boxes full of water the forest would be damp enough to survive the odd cigarette end. Nothing could save it from arson, which according to French sources (and the French have been dealing with forest fires for longer than the Greeks -in modern times) is the cause of about 75% of fires.
But public relations experts obviously told the hunters that if they put a little, a very little.. of the stolen water " in containers near the path ""for use in case of fire"they would get credit for protecting that very forest that human folly, and only human folly is putting at risk.And people would think the Hunting Association, with its` little water tanks , was a environmentally aware and caring organisation.

Incidentally, I, being a suspicious type of person, hit a large metal water container put out to save the forest from fire by the Hunting Association, with a large stick. "BOIIIING!" it went, like a great empty church bell. Not CLUNK like a metal container full of water.

After the glade we continued upwards into an area with healthy, monumental trees and gorgeous open meadows. Lovely.After the meadows we started downwards on the damp side of the mountain towards Pisia. Beautiful trees, streams and a variety of vegetation. Flowers and butterflies.

And red dots stapled to the trees. Oh what? The Hunting Association`s idea of helping us access our own countryside by torturing it. And with monumental cheek every now and then in place of a red dot there was a picture of a camera. This marked (apparently) places that the Hunting Association in its wisdom considered so pretty that we might want to take a picture. Which of us wants to be told what`s beautiful by some oik whose own aesthetic values allow him to destroy the beauty of the forest by hammering nails into trees to attach plastic signs? Ooooh it makes you want to spit!

We stopped for lunch in paradise. We had climbed down towards Schoinos through consistently gorgeous pine and mixed forest. Then there were cultivated fields and meadows. These were farmed in the old way so all the beloved cornfield plants were there. Look at these swathes of gladioli. I just had to stop, to spend time there, surrounded by such miriads of flowers, and those flowers bordered by dark green forest.

I can`t tell you how wonderful it was to lie under a tree, watching George graze on best quality unimproved grass while I gazed at flowers that are getting more and more rare, but were here in abundance.

The forest all around was in perfect shape. Well it IS on the wet side of the mountain. But I couldn`t help feeling that, no matter how wet the mountain is naturally, there is a limit to how much water it can give away without suffering. The water has been used sustainably up til now. But I wondered how healthy it would continue to be since there is so much building going on.

And-oh my prophetic soul- when we got near to Schoinos- one part of the forest there was showing early signs of stress. Because Schoinos has been developed. BIGTIME

I thought it was strange that I couldn`t find anyone..in rural villages there are people everywhere..but not here. Eventually I found a person. He told me that the priest kept animals, had got a horse, even. After a search I found Pappa Dimitri. He was kind and generous. His house and garden were full of pet dogs and cats and birds, and goats and a pony. He showed me a cart he had rebuilt and trained his pony to pull. He gave me lots of food for George.

A rural village and only ONE fulltime inhabitant that kept animals. Everyone comes at the weekends from Athens.

I camped in an old olive grove. I woke up, as usual at about 7. I pottered about, looking at things, as I usually do. At 8 I heard sprinklers. It was to water the grass in an empty house`s garden. Suddenly all the empty houses started using water. What for? To have a lawn they were stealing the life of the forest. That very forest that was the reason they had built in Schoinos at all. Maybe it wasn`t always for a lawn. Maybe they were pretending to be farmers by growing fruit trees. Maybe they had planted water hungry decorative bushes and trees and flowers.Whatever. One side of the forest is beginning to be affected. PITY.

I was walking along the road that goes from Schinos towards Alleppohori.

As I was passing the gate of a house a person called out to me. This was Eva Bakas. She invited me for a coffee. I explained that because George was loaded up, I couldn`t stop unless I unloaded him. I explained that George expected at least a two hour break if he was unloaded.

"You`re not in a hurry, are you?"

Well, no, I wasn`t.

So in minutes George was grazing and I was drinking coffee. Soon Eva`s husband, Babis came home.

We had a LOVELY time.I stayed for lunch. Then I went to see their land...they are proper farmers and nothing is being sprayed or sprinkled without a reason. Sadly a large part of their land they do not cultivate because the price they can get for their fruit is ridiculously low, and they refuse to work to make fruit merchants rich, while they make a loss. They are lucky to be able to make such a choice: too many farmers just go broke and sell out to bigger landowners who can exploit the land more "economically" or sell to holiday home owners...

Babis told me that Schoinos now has over 2,000 homes..almost all holiday homes..this from 150 houses for permanent residents not so long ago. He was surprised that I noticed the forest was getting stressed, because, he said, water isn`t extracted from springs in the forest. Maybe it isn`t- directly- ..but this isnt the whole story about how forests dry up. Drilling wells lowers the water table and this causes springs to disappear, miles away from where the drilling is taking place. Plus, drilling happens by the sea , the extraction of water causes salination as sea water is drawn into the dryer soil..

Babis said that they can`t grow most kind of fruit trees, just citrus, because these are tolerant of salt. Most fruit trees can`t take the level of salt in the water in Schoinos.What he was really telling me is that salination is already a problem at Schinos. So the forest is under threat in two ways: lowered water table meaning the shallower rooted trees can`t reach water as they used to, and the amount of salt in the groundwater is increasing as a result of increased drilling.

Babis and Eva don`t drink municipal water..its too salty. They go and get water in bottles from a Spring.

Soon it was evening and I had stayed for supper and was about to stay the night.

I LOVED that instead of being on the road with George I was spending time with new friends.

Eva and Babis were able to help me get overthe loss of Bling a lot. They had lost two dogs to poison. They showed me pictures. Awful loss.

They told me that in Schoinos a year and a half previously some pervert had killed about thirty pets. The village was just full of corpses one morning.

Eva contacted an organisation which tries to protect stray animals in Greece:

strays.gr

This organisation publishes details aboutthe laws that protect animals from poison and so on. Eva made loads of copies of these, including details about the penalties for illegally killing animals. She stuck these all over the village.

She says there have been no more poisonings for 18 months now.She is rightly proud that her activism has saved lives.

They havent taken the decision to get new dogs yet. The shock of coming home and finding their two dogs poisoned in their garden makes them feel very uneasy about how to keep them safe.

They feel, as I feel about Bling, that we failed to keep them safe.. that indeed there is no way to keep them safe.

Anyway talking about Bling and seeing their photos of their dogs was probably a kind a therapy for all of us.

All I know is that I am very glad that Eva was in her garden when George and I were passing. Because she and Babis helped me and comforted me very much.

If only everyone who lived there could live like they do: with kindness to the land, then one could relax and say "OK this beautiful place is safe for ever"

All that`s needed is kindness like their`s

The last photo shows George relaxing in a place that has always been treated kindly: Babis and Eva`s garden.