Running Away to Home by Jennifer Wilson

Author:Jennifer Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

chapter sixteen

On the first Sunday in August, we thought we’d find some relief from the ninety-degree heat with a cool mountain hike. We stopped by Helena’s house to get directions to Samarske Stijene, or Summer Rocks, a labyrinth of stone sculptures and sinkholes in the Kapela mountain chain and the geological sister to Bijele Stijene, or White Rocks, the subject of Robert’s finest song.

Helena directed us ten miles south of town, where Jim parked the Peugeot at what appeared to be the trailhead, and we started on the path into dark evergreen forest, its floor thick with ferns, a tiny slash of trail cutting through. We never did make it to the signature view—we lost the trail about halfway in and decided to turn back when the forty-five-minute hike Helena described had already taken us two hours. But on the way home we saw a line of twenty-six tall, roughly sculpted rocks like marching soldiers in the waving grass. We pulled into a gravel parking lot that seemed designated for viewing them and got out to stand before a monolithic plaque, inscribed in Croatian, probably explaining the whole thing. Another mystery of Mrkopalj. As always, it was beautiful.

A car rumbled down the road toward us, skidding to a halt where we stood. Helena threw open her door and rushed toward us.

“Where have you been?” she yelled. “You have been gone for almost three hours and I am worried when I go to Goranka and ask if you are home yet!”

“Ah, we’re fine,” I said. “It just took longer than we thought it would.”

“There are downed trees all over the hiking trail,” Jim said. “You can’t even walk in there.”

“I will tell Paul about that,” Helena said. “This is the time of the year people are taking trees from the wood for fire in winter.”

She paused. “But I am scared you are dead in the woods! The next time you go in there, I must go with you.”

“We just followed the trail,” I said. “We only saw three bears, a jackal, a wild boar, and a yak. No big deal.”

“You are cheesing me,” Helena said flatly.

“Hey, what does this say?” Jim pointed to the plaque. “What is this place?”

“This is Matić Poljana,” she said. “Soldiers are walking across this field in World War II, and they freeze to death.”

She read the plaque:

Empty mountains, nowhere help

Misery and pain sat and stayed

Forever tired, cursed to die,

Left lying without hope.

Living continued with last effort

Travel without end

Speechless

With only a wish

To finally see the saving light of salvation

To finish the sickening battle.

Jim looked at me. Across the gravel road, in the field of stones and wildflowers, the kids chased a grasshopper to put in a Coke bottle.

“Well,” he said. “That clarifies everything.”

It was Jim’s first lesson in the wars of Mrkopalj. We were about to get more.

That night, as I laid on the futon trying to adjust myself into some semblance of flatness so I could read my Croatian history book in relative comfort, Jim returned from his evening nightcap at Stari Baća all aflutter.

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