The Crispest Echoes
“I don’t really know how I know what it smells like, but I can definitely smell a bear” I stammered.
For reference it’s a heavy, musky smell — in a different context, perhaps kind of pleasant for its realness. However, when scrambling through undergrowth in a dense Serbian forest, having detoured from the path on the demented impulse of a friend, it is the smell of fear.
Take it from me, the human mind is capable of exceptional levels of subjective, wishful thinking when it comes to map-reading. When you are desperately optimistic, signs in Cyrillic morph to correlate with your roman script map, a petty gradient becomes the steep incline you expected, a fork in the path is just where it should be… give or take five kilometres. Just me? Fair enough… I wouldn’t trust road-trippers who calculated the distances of their entire journey from a map on which there was a bear the size of Belgrade either. We asked for it. Intense and prolonged disorientation, that is.
We were seeking the “Best View in Serbia” — the kind of made-up Balkan tourist attraction, that haphazard backpackers, showing up in the staggeringly beautiful Tara National Park, completely unprepared, are likely to be seduced by. A helpful (…if slightly unsure of the English for the cardinal directions and basic left from right compass points and other basic prepositions’) woman in the trekking office had us hyped at the prospect of a three hour circuit, with such a thrilling reward. Off we set, assured our shitty footwear was no problem, a hastily-purchased picnic packed and relieved that lingering over breakfast hadn’t cost us a day of orgastic, nature porn.
I don’t know how we managed to take a wrong-turn but I know it was early, carelessly committed and had a drastic impact on the course of our day! Don’t get me wrong, walking among friends in verdant woodland, without encountering another soul is pretty close to my idea of heaven. We weren’t complaining. But we weren’t getting there either.
I’m a big fan of rising panic’s intrinsically comic nature. Perhaps in the fourth hour of our little trek, Al — borderline megalomanic at the best of times — filled with deranged enthusiasm, had convinced himself that the “Best View in Serbia” lay up a dubious, unmarked path on very steep and wild terrain. Barechested and charging ahead, beating away the undergrowth with a trusty staff, he reached the brow of the hill ahead of the rest of us sweaty, lumbering fools. No view, let alone the best the country had to offer, just a crestfallen trudge back down to our original course… And then there was the bear (smell), the dwindling of our food and water, and the falling light. Empty stomachs and encroaching darkness make amusing creatures of us all. Thankfully, when you are five it is hard to descend into full on freak-out mode, but teetering on the edge and trying to stay jovial is as funny.
Having reached a real clusterfuck of a crossroads, we were completely thrown. By this point we’ve hit the five hour mark at minimum and after some very serious map consulting and nervous laughter, had to face the fact that we had absolutely no idea where we were. Someone spotted what looked like a house sign and after a discussion, laced with stifled panic, myself Alex and Wilby set forth to ask for directions. By this point I am reading the red logger’s marks on trees as portents of evil and all-but imagining serial killers lurking among the shadowy pines.
Twitching at snapping twigs, a red roof emerged through fruit trees, followed by what I recall as a marginally wonky, gingerbread house. Classical music drifted lazily through the warm, late afternoon air. Following its source around the back of the house we came across the elderly owners, chopping wood. There was a lot of smiling, a lot of pointing, a lot of… italian?! Some broken English and fruity charades from Wilby who is at least a foot too tall for himself and particularly animated in such situations. The next thing we knew we were dashing awkwardly through the garden in pursuit of a wizard we would come to know as Marco, him looking back, gurgling encouragement, wild eyed, with a captivating smile and untenable energy. Then WOAH — there we were, smack bang on the edge of Serbia’s best view, and admittedly it was pretty impressive. Teetering on the edge of a seriously sizable drop, with a geriatric madly gesticulating that the land mass in the distance was in fact Bosnia, made it all the more invigorating.
Fast forward fetching the others from a crumpled heap at the aforementioned cross-roads, marvelling at the view from it’s official point and throwing our voices out across the lake to be answered by the crispiest echoes I’ve ever heard… by the time we returned to the ranch Marco and his wife had quite clearly turned out their larder and rustled up a veritable feast. I can’t remember what we ate, only that we dined high on that rare breed of dizzy happiness, born from a mix of not quite believing your luck and extreme exhaustion. We purused endless photo albums and sipped on an otherworldly, almost too-delicious-to-be-real, homemade cordial created from some mind-bending mountain flora or fauna. Stepping out on to the veranda to smoke, the sky had dissolved into starry splendour and Marco ushered us out for a walk through the woods, meadows and silence. We were soon tucked in for an early night at our unlikely hosts’ place, sleeping like babies and awoke the next day to a carnival of bird song. We really could not have knocked on a more hospitable door.
Kate is a foolhardy backpacker with a penchant for getting lost and a lot of love for words, spices, strangers and open spaces.
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