Vorokhta

Kolomyia, Ukraine, May 6, 2018, 7:30 PM

I'm in Kolomyia after a very pleasant 1 1/2 hour train ride back from the Carpathian Mountain village of Vorokhta which I had reached a few days earlier with a 2-hour bone-rattling ride on a bus so crowded that every seat and standing space was filled.  Fortunately, the bus didn't fill up until it was well into the journey and I got to sit the whole way.

Last year I visited a family in the mountains in Vorokhta and I hoped to find them again at home and well.

Timing and Luck are everything.  For me, in recent days, it's been all luck as the timing was part of the luck.

After checking into my Guest House/Hotel in Vorokhta, I decided to take a nap as I knew I would need all the energy I could muster for the long hike up the mountain to see my friends.   I didn't wake until 4 PM, but I knew they would insist on feeding me so I figured arriving around dinner time might not be such a bad idea.

Now a year older I was curious how I would do climbing the hills.   As it turned out I was pleasantly surprised to find it no harder than I remembered my last hike up the mountain.  But certainly no easier!

The first part of the path and the dirt road it paralleled had lots of turns with no way to know what to expect around the next bend.  And, indeed, much to my surprise I stumbled into the middle of a herd of goats who scurried away as I took their picture,

Then further on two dogs came out barking at me from a house perched with one corner right on the edge of the trail hiding what lay beyond.  The dogs' owner called to them and shouted something to me,  Some kind of warning.




Almost immediately two horses appeared around the corner of the building pulling a wagon and bearing down on me, I jumped to the side of the path and watched them pass by with just inches to spare.

It all happened so fast that it wasn't until they had passed that I registered that this had been an encounter of some potential peril.  What brought it home to me was my retrospectively registering the driver's grim expression of strain and concern.

Pleased as I was to be able to make the climb it wasn't easy.  And as I got further up I found myself sweating and my heart pounding.

But I said to myself just keep putting one foot ahead of the other as I anticipated the wooded area I remembered farther on, where I would be able to cool off in the shade which eventually I was able to do,

As I proceeded I came to two forks in the road and luckily I remembered or guessed right and stayed to the left at the first and took a right.at the second.

And as I looked up the big hill ahead of me I said: "Dear Lord let this be the right way and the final hill and show me the red roof of my friends' house when I crest this next hill".  And he did!

Still, as I approached the house it seemed very quiet.  I hoped they weren't away.  Then I saw there was clothing on the line, a hopeful sign, and further on I noted a door was open on the smaller building next to the house. As I drew nearer I heard music and as I stood at the open door out came the son whom I had met last year when he was home from college for Spring break.

He greeted me with a big friendly smile of recognition which I really appreciated and took me into the kitchen of the main house next door where his sister was lying on a sofa facing away from me.  He said something to her and then told me to sit on the couch across the room from his sister. Where I sat and waited.

And waited.

I wasn't sure what was going on here.  His sister hadn't greeted me and continued to lie facing away from me. But I did as I was told thinking all would become clear eventually.

I looked at the clock on the wall and noted it was almost 6 PM.

And then, about 6 or 7 minutes later the mother and grandmother came into the room. The mother clasped my hand with a big smile, They both seemed genuinely delighted to see me.

What ensued was my midterm exam to test my beginner's Ukrainian on which I have been working with some diligence.  The result?  I'm going to give myself a C mostly to encourage myself to persist rather than be discouraged by a lower grade although I had to use Google Translate more than I would have wished.

We chatted and struggled to understand each other. They had had a long winter here in the mountains with a lot of snow. The daughter had gotten married and now had a 5-day old daughter whom I now understood she had been nursing when I arrived.

I showed them pictures of my two young grandsons 2 and 5 years' old, to well deserved and expected oohs and ahhs.

We had a very nice meal of borsch, meat, and cheese.  And we downed shots from the bottle of vodka I had brought accompanied with "Za zdorov'ya!". 

The father, who invited me to their home after we met on the trail last year, did not appear nor did their new son in law which I found puzzling.  Gradually from our conversation, I was able to decipher that they were away but would return the following day.

And so we agreed I should also return the next day.

As I left the mother walked me to the fence and showed me the new barn they had built and with equal pride pointed out their view of Mt. Hoverla just as her husband had the year before.

Mt. Hoverla is the tallest mountain in Ukraine a sight I had been looking forward to rephotographing with my new camera.

The way down is directly through fields and meadows. It is a much faster and steeper route than the way up along the winding dirt road and paths.  And it's much easier, of course, going down.  But it took me just as long as the way up as it was a perfect evening in the country and I did not want it to end.


So I found myself continually stopping to savor the view and feel the peace and quiet and listen to the chirping of birds, taste the clear air and perfect beauty of this place so far from the troubled world in which we live.

The next day I napped again in preparation for my return.  This time, however, I awoke to a torrential downpour that went on for several hours.  There was no way now for me to return.

Fortunately, I had not gone up earlier when it was sunny or I would have been caught in the storm and been thoroughly drenched or worse.

My cold has returned but not with the devastation, I'd have experienced had I gone up the mountain again.

So I'm feeling really lucky in how everything turned out.

I'll just have to come back and complete my visit next year.

Thanks for reading!