High up in a valley in the Krkonoše mountains, our group lives in an old climbers cottage in a clearing in the pine forest. There is no electricity, little phone signal and the only running water dribbles through a tap in the dark, dank, back store room. Mice roam freely. A bat sleeps on the wall by the front door.
The seven women sleep on a long bed in the kitchen, next to the stove fire, wooden dining table and old fashioned washing dresser. The four men sleep upstairs. Thick walls and double windows block out cold, heat and most sunlight. At night we see by candle light and head torches, the fire outside catching soft faces around it.
We are from Czech, Poland, The Netherlands, Basque country, Belgium, France and the UK.
During the day we walk, we work. We are silent, we talk, We are alone, we are together. We move, we are still. We cook, we wash, we sleep. This is our home, our reality for this time. It is a short moment, but time stretches and moves and is so rich and full, that by the end of the week I am completely alive with the place and these people.
Blueberries dominate, they are everywhere. On the ground, staining our hands, the taste in our mouths. Pol plays with the colour. Each day a little more. Marking stones, bruising his face and pushing them deep into the creases of his skin of his hands. His fingers dark. Katerina paints her stomach and breasts with the purple juice. We eat them everyday. It seems that Katka’s lips are purple all the time.
Trees. Spruce pine, beech, sycamore, ash. The forest is dense, it has clearings, low areas of new growth, managed meadows, streams and rivulets cutting through the forest and the mountain side.
Bark beetles ravage small areas of pine. The trees stand bleached and naked of their foliage. Blue skies bright above. In the surviving forest, pine needles and cones litter the ground. Mushrooms surround. Frank and Katka pick them. We eat ceps with many of our meals. Some are huge and they are all delicious.
The national park guide leads us from the cottage up through the valley. The mountains here are very old, he tells us. Some are 500 million years old. And older. The peaks have eroded into rounded crowns. Rain, wind, sun, ice changing their shape over millions of years. We are in a glacial valley. U shaped. Shist is the bedrock. We are grounded. Through our feet. And later through our knees, stomachs, spines, skulls, faces and pelvises. Our bodies meet with the earth and melt into the rock.
We lie in an open yellow meadow. The grass is spiky. Our eyes are closed. We are listening. And waiting for the images that will come. Ants crawl over us. Over bare skin, up trousers, in hair. One goes into my ear. I squirm. I hear bees flying past, they are very close to me. Travelling. We are all travelling. With charcoal, and paper on our chests, we draw. Fast and then again, very slowly. I see the insects in my mind's eye.
I go to the river. Lucia was washing in it a little earlier. I saw her from afar. So at home in her nakedness and in the water. I want to feel it too. I undress. And dip my body into the cool pool, there are flecks of brown in the water. It is cold. I go under. I feel cleansed and arrived in this place.
Vision excluded. A black canvas. Hana places my hands down on the moss. It is soft. It moves down with my weight. I feel it squash. She moves my chin and directs my face. A gentle shoulder tap. I open my eyes. Green. Yellow. Green. Colour floods in. Brightness into my brain. A beetle comes into focus. Shiny black. I watch as it scrambles up and down thin tendrils of grass. It’s skittering movement up and down, falling, feet and legs sticking, grappling with the bending blades. Moving quickly but not getting far. It crawls onto my middle left finger. It patters to my palm. It stops, confused. It doesn’t recognise this texture. Skin. It attempts to fly. Its wings fuzzing and blurring. But they don’t lift the beetle off. It stays grounded on my skin. Again it tries. I can see it is stressed. I don’t move. I let it find its way back to the safety of the green.
A different day. A bus. A second bus. A fun journey from our valley to another. We are tourists. With other tourists. On the bus. Pop music is playing. The Bee Gees. Chatter chatter. A lady assumes Frank to be Czech and burbles away to him. He grunts in agreement to her questions. He enjoys the exchange. End of the line, we disembark and check our map.
We take the path. Tarmac. It is steep and the group separates. Milos far behind, in the pine forest, Lucia and Hana up front, the scrub breaking out. Matxalen and I hold the middle space. Different paces. It is hot. We disperse and come back together. Lungs puffing. Salty sweat on each of us. We walk in silence.
I am lying in the long dry grass. It is a soft pillow for my body. It supports me in all the right places. Pol lifts different parts of my body up and plays. He moves me around, he squeezes and holds, releases, mobilises and surprises. Counterpoint. Electricity. Tension. Emptying. I fall. I ground. I release. It is bliss.
Sitting on a rock on the path, eyes closed, Katerina whispers to me. In my ear. She is close. She talks of the forgotten breath. Of lost oxygen and the air missing within our bodies. Invisible loss. A breathe not fully expelled. All those breaths. From when we were born until now. Where have they gone? I listen and wonder. And I feel the air in my lungs.
Hana leads me eyes closed and reveals to me, a Gentian. Five blue trumpets. Bright in the scrub. My face is close. There is a bee. It crawls down into each flower. Shuffling back out bottom first, legs covered in pollen, nectar drunk and stored. For a few minutes, I witness the bee and this moment of its life. And then I become the flower. My body holding space for a buzzing visitor, my skin, is a petal trembling in the soft mountain breeze.
We reach the summit of Snezka. There are so many people. We are bamboozled by the numbers and the human constructs of buildings and cable cars and pylons and fences. It seems far away from the wild world we have been inhabiting. We don’t stay long.
Descending for a picnic around a small rock circle. Bread, cheese, eggs, strange veggie sandwich paste, carrots, apples, chocolate. Then we snooze. Bodies held by the mountain as we dream.
Mara stands still. She is somewhere in the valley. I don’t know where. But she is standing. Her body still, her eyes open, looking, watching, seeing. Time stands with her. Mountain, forest, plants, animals, insects, birds. She may stand for up to an hour. I wonder what she witnesses.
Lucia and I walk to the river to bathe, the others prepare for sleep after dinner outside by the fire. We walk by the light of the stars, remembering the stoney pathway from the cottage to the water. Past the highland cows, along the old track, the stream trickling to our right. I remember the spiders’ webs hanging with morning dew, now collecting this evening’s droplets. We strip and wash in the shallow icy water. The water is too cold to stand in for long. Our feet hurt from the chill. Memories in my bones of having done this before, in some other life an body.
6.35am. We pad up the valley, Mara, Katerina and I, to the hidden waterfall. We arrive warmed by the uphill climb. We shed our clothes and dip our bodies into the pool. Heads under. Eyes open in the cool water. Then up for air. Gasp. Our bodies bob, necks and heads still, arms resting just below the surface. It’s too cold to move. We watch the water run down the smooth rock and into the small basin. We spot a moth, floating. Trapped by the water. It is so beautiful in death. White wings, dancing on the current.
Leaving this place is bittersweet. It has been my life, my reality. These people my family and the landscape my home. But leave we must, we must return to our other living realities. The other ones we choose. They also hold riches.
I thank the Giant mountain. I thank the people. I thank the cosmos for this opportunity, these connections, the sharing of this time together. And I say goodbye to the Krkonoše.
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Bohemiae Rosa is an interdisciplinary open-air workshop for dancers and artists exploring the relation between body, art and landscape, led by Frank van de Ven and Miloš Šejn. With thanks to Frank, Miloš and all participants of the 2019 workshop.
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