Those Who Are Confused About the Season
Closer to the clouds
Hiking mountains alone in muddy weather usually isn’t a good idea, but it can always be a place for exceptions. While I was resting in Yasinya town in the Ukrainian Carpathians five years ago, I proved it.
Mountains surround Yasinya from all sides. Simply walking on peripheral streets, you can climb 200–300 vertical meters and reach the tops of mountains formally inside the town borders. At the same time, the civilization is close, including a stable mobile connection, just in case of any accidents.
Also, as for me, autumn is more suitable for seeing mountain settlements, covered by haze, yellowed thickets, and cozy smoke from huts’ chimneys.
I made two such hikes, the first one was to the Kostyrivka mountain on the eastern outskirts. An oblong ridge with a footpath stretches from it in a southern direction, which promised an enjoyable walk. According to the navigation on my smartphone, I overcame the altitude gain of 160 meters, and the mountain height is about 810 meters above sea level.
Initially, the road leads up by the village yards. Mostly banal but with noticeable details sometimes.
Almost all paths were like in the photo below. It didn’t prevent a cat from remaining clean.
Soon, views of cloudy hills became visible.
Underfoot, the fly agarics familiar to these parts began to appear.
At the same time, I was surprised to see crocuses in the middle of October and at a temperature close to zero.
As it turned out, it is normal for this subspecies to blossom in such a season. They are called autumn crocuses or meadow saffrons. In some languages, they have a name literally “timeless flowers” which is very suitable for them.
I could see almost all Yasinya from the top of Kostyrivka, although the length of this town, nestled between mountains, is vast. I’ll show it from south to north or left to right from that point. The area around a railway station:
They have cute multi-apartment houses under red tiles.
The town center:
The northern outskirts have a beautiful railway bridge. Further, Lazeshchyna village hid itself in the fog.
I didn’t meet people at the top, but I saw a lot of other mountain residents.
A modest dark chapel stands on the very top of Kostyrivka. That’s where the line of the chairlift starts — naturally, out of service in the off-season.
The village on the other side of the ridge is still Lazeshchyna, typically having a huge length between hills.
However, life is bustling even on the mountain. All the empty spaces on both sides of the road are divided by fences. Life here looks completely different from that in the valley 200 meters below. What can I say about comparisons with flat villages?
I continued going southward, towards the haze and invisible sun.
I reached a strange idol that turned out to be in honor of the USSR hero Rasul Isetov (1924–2009), who took part in the liberation of local villages from Nazi occupation in 1944.
One more similar chapel is located on the edge of a harsh mountain cemetery.
Still, the kingdom of the living was so close:
I saw a forest in front of me. The sun tried and tried to show up, creating incredible intertwinings of rays, clouds, haze, and gilded trees.
Of course, I wanted to get into that enchanted forest; moreover, a couple of more hills had to be visible over it. But the road that was like in the photos above all the time became entirely impassable. Before that point, I bypassed mud on grass on the roadside, but further, it disappeared. The only option was to climb over the fence and go through somebody’s pasture, but there could be dogs, and I didn’t risk it. So I had to go below.
A rainbow could be brighter as an award for all those muddy kilometers I had overcome.
Crocuses that confused their timing followed me in that colorless, cloudy world. Sometimes, there were entire fields of them:
The railway is kind of a border between off-road and civilisation. As usual, it is terrific in the mountains:
The next day, I tried to climb more muddy mountains on the opposite side of the town. So maybe, once, I’ll continue this story.
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