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Friday, February 23, 2018

Winter Epirus

I always thought it was a bit dramatic, my husband's insistence that we cover the beautifully tiled floors of our New York bathrooms with some not-so-beautiful rugs. It's too cold on the feet, he always says, this from a man who could suffer the most numbing circumstances without complaint.

With my experience of a February Epirus, however, I now realize the sensation he's been avoiding comes more from an Epirote memory than the present-day winters of New York. No matter how long the heater in the Margariti house has been running or the house air has been warmed to a comfortable temperature, the tiled floors remain painfully cold to the touch. And this is in a fully formed, windowed, modern, heated home. I can barely imagine how it was in his childhood home, a home I arrived at in the sweltering summer of 1983. A home with no heat, no running water (so forget about a warm shower on a winter morning) and enough space under the doors to allow entry to creeping creatures or winter winds.

In this Winter Epirus, there are several unexpected surprises. One such delightful surprise is the water . . . it's  everywhere!

Rivers run off the mountains, into the sea, from every direction. And flat valley fields have become lakes filled to capacity, their farm roads submerged with only the smallest edges peeking up through the water to let the unknowing eye understand that these are, in fact, not lakes! Such abundance of water exists, of course, because of the winter rains--constant and steady. And that rain brings idle time. For many of the villagers, cafes and taverns remain the favorite places to pass that time. The summer crowds have dwindled to local residents and rather than familiar outdoor living, they huddle beside warm fires in well sealed taverns. At first glance, a village that appears sleepy and void of residents is actually bustling with life. It's just mostly indoors.

The Epirus winter siesta is the fuel that fires the evening rendezvous as the summer-siesta ritual is carried into these darker days. Most shops still close at 2:00 (and not one second later, as I learned one day when I tried to get something from a launder in Igoumenitsa). The schools let out at the same time so the students and the workers can go home for the afternoon meal and customary snooze. For myself, however, I find waking up in the winter darkness a bit disconcerting, as sunset occurs within the siesta window of time. But the siesta seems to be the norm as shops reopen around six in the evening and cafes spring back to life.


The wet winter also brings a new variety of fruits and vegetables. Green leaves are plentiful, their varying types of lettuce offered in salads along with cabbage, chard, fresh scallions, and leeks, or boiled to perfection to be eaten with fresh olive oil and bread. Add to that a squeeze of lemon, or orange or grapefruit as the citrus fruits are so abundant, those that aren't plucked from their heavy branches, are left to carpet the ground beneath them, dotting the landscape of Eprius.

It's a landscape that mesmerizes those of us who visit her in the summer months. Her beautiful seas of azure blue or her sharply angled mountains, are those which seal our desire to return. And it is not unusual for those colors of summer to show themselves on a dry February day. However, Winter Epirus mostly offers dramatically contrasting colors of a different nature. Her landscape is swept with steely gray waters and purple clouds. And snow-capped mountain peaks lie flat against a white sky for a dramatic backdrop to darker lowlands.

Epirus is a land of many treasures, meant to be enjoyed in all seasons. However, winter offers much more than most tourists realize. Author, Jim Potts, recalls one February visit to the Epirote mountains in his book, The Ionian Islands and Epirus: A Cultural History. "The cold north wind was blowing and the snow had fallen higher up," and he found the mountain villages "extraordinarily beautiful," as do I, though there is one Epirote village in particular to which I am somewhat partial.




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2 comments:

  1. I remember another icy February when I had a high fever. The snow was quite deep and the car was parked at the bottom of the cobbled kalderimi. The wheels simply span on the ice. I tried to put chains on the wheels, but made a mess of it. Help soon came, and we managed to reach the main road, which had been cleared by a snow-plough. There may not be many people living in the Zagori villages in February, but you can always count on the Epirots to come to the rescue. Jim

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