It’s been a whole month, including some events of note. Some short notes, about events both notable and not: a mountain, some music, my reading, and more.

The Big One

Manu and I did a trip up Mt Olympus, along with a bunch of old friends and new ones. We started at Gortsia (1100m) on Saturday afternoon, and tramped for 3 hours to reach the refuge Petrostrouga (1930m) for our first night. Sunday morning we took 4 hours to reach the refuge Apostolidis (2760m). This leg we passed along a ridge called “The Neck” with spectacular but also rather frightening slopes on either side. Between these slopes and the long walks, by the time we reached the refuge Manu and I had decided we weren’t up for the final ascent to the highest peak Mitikas, and we stayed indoors while the more adventurous members of the party donned helmets and set off. We did however take a stroll up to an easier peak nearby, Profitis Ilias, at 2803m. On Monday we came all the way down by the same route (much more confidently along The Neck’s ridgeline this time) and took ourselves, weary but triumphant, home.

However the trip did not all go entirely according to plan. In fact I injured myself, bruising my ribs in what I’m calling “a risky untethered descent” (to be more precise: getting down off my bunk bed in a hurry in the middle of the night). In the week following I’ve had covid (whether related to the trip or not I cannot tell), and the ribs have made the relatively mild coughing much less pleasant.

To be honest though, if that’s the price I have to pay to get high on hills, I’m willing. It was grand to be up in that spectacular country, and delightful to share it with Manu and to have him so enthusiastic for the wildlife and the beauty up there.

Music

We advertised our Irish session and got some drop-in visitors: two Australians, each of them with a few more clues than most of the rest of us have put together. Then the next weekend we played a gig at the Spiti Tou Filaka (an open-air venue in Angelochori). I wasn’t delighted with our performance, but it wasn’t embarrassing. Lots of friends out in support. I’ve been listening to Mike McGoldrick (wicked fast) and I’ve ordered the new CD of Tijn Berends on bouzouki.

New tunes:

There’s also a music-adjacent secret project which I’m not saying anything about just at the moment.

Reading

Pretentious high culture: I read Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger and it slightly wrecked me. Firstly because it’s an incredibly sad novel, full of defeat and failure and overwhelm, but also because I finished it completely unable to understand what he was trying to achieve. I’ve got Stella Maris waiting for me in hopes that may help me see what he was trying for, but I don’t quite dare enter that emotional landscape just yet. It reminds me a lot of my reaction to M John Harrison: an odd combination of respect, dislike, and bafflement. Only with Harrison I think I understand the kind of argument he’s making, even if the argument itself is too clever for me to follow; similarly with the other work of McCarthy’s that I know and love, I may not understand what he’s trying to say but I can at least guess at what he’s talking about. Here the formal structure is so odd it’s very clearly intending something, but I can’t figure out a something that fits the content in any coherent way.

Joyful, exhuberant low culture: in recovery from The Passenger and from covid, I’ve hurtled through the six books of Megan Whalen Turner’s Queen’s Thief series. They’re pretty short (most took me only 4 or 5 hours of reading time) and very compellingly written. I particularly enjoyed the setting, which is Mediterranean-inspired (although not historical), and of course the larger-than-life figures with their larger-than-life problems and larger-than-life solutions.

Thinking