From Panagia Giatrissa to the forest area of Vassilik

I have been tormented for years by that verse of Nikiforos Vrettakos, the poet born under the shadow of the highest mountain of Moria.

For years and years I have been wandering around Taygetos and listening to its ravines, its gorges, its geophysical depths and its steep slopes. And I was always drawn to that rich stone mane, as I first encountered it, driving those straight roads past Sparta. For I thought I could not make it mine. No matter how much I sucked it in.

After a few times, when I walked it for good, twice on its top and three or four more times in the famous gorges (of Vyros, Koskarakas and Rintomo), I was left with a bitter feeling that I knew nothing of this exuberant and impressive mountain that fascinates you like no other, on the way down to Gythio. But I naively believed that at some point in time I had learned enough about it. Basic naivety and recklessness on the part of the hikers. No sooner do they walk a mountain than they think they’ve mastered it. However, I had to grow up to understand that no mountain, no matter how much you boast that you own it, should not be said to know it well.

Since I understood it, I was opening the dream maps and so simply, without any desire to conquer and “know”, I was learning, walking slowly in his wonderful footsteps, immersing myself in the dream of sensation and magic.

“Taygetos was not a mountain.

You didn’t suspect the incredible height

and the incredible light that make him

to look like one, then gold

and when a blue polywing…”

continues Nikiforos Vrettakos, who was born in Krokees of Laconia, having from his birthplace across this “excitement that rises once and divides the stars into here and there”.

It was the end of August, when the line I drew on the map in my mind started from almost below Gythio in Laconia and slowly climbed up the whole southern ridge of the Taygetos and then went out to the heart of the mountain, where the unique, wonderful and, of course, unprotected, forest of Vassiliki began to unfold its supremacy.

In order to understand what the forest of Vassiliki is, we must first define it geographically and then trace it on the map of “Anavasi”.

The forest is named after the village of “Vassiliki Laconia”, a village located south of Sparta, on the foothills of the Taygetos and just below the famous monastery of “Gola”. The forest has essentially no connection to the village of Vassiliki, as there is no road connection between the village and the heart of the forest system. On the contrary, the village of Vassiliki is connected to Arna and from there, by a dirt road, one communicates with Selegoudi, which of course is reached by an unpaved road from Aiges of Gythio. From Selegoudi, climbing up the asphalt road, one reaches the neck of Giatrissa, where the famous monastery of the southern Peloponnese of the same name is located. Here the asphalt is cut off, but we are also breathless at the steep and horrible aspect of the castellated monastery, which has unfortunately altered the universe, with its cement and reinforced walls.

The monastery is located at an altitude of 1050 meters and rides the mountainous bare ridge. It is a passageway to the entrance to the southern walls of the Taygetos and of course to the heart of the fascinating forest of Vassiliki.

It should be said here that this very special forest, the richest in the Peloponnese, with its mixed composition and the delightful botanical variety of its species, did not succeed in receiving from the official state protective support or recognition and its inclusion in the recognized National Parks. Otherwise, according to the State, Attica has two National Parks, that of Parnitha and that of Sounio…

Leaving the Monastery of Giatrissa and after nine kilometres of good dirt road, we reach the position of Agios Giannakis of the hill of Hionistra, where we meet a large and characteristic crossroads. From the west and high up from the mountain comes another road, dirt and wide, originating from Kardamyli in Messinia. At this junction, which is the gateway and natural observatory of the whole forest, the view of the great and impressive peaks of the Taygetos unfolds, as the latter descend to the forest border of Vassiliki, creating a rare image of an alpine and densely forested system.

This point, which is the only gateway to the forest complex, lies just below the last major peak of the southern Taygetos, Mavrovona. Mavrovouna, which has an elevation of 1,909 metres, is also the last mountainous “finger” of Taygetos, otherwise called Pentadaktylos (“Fifth Finger”).

For the record, the five characteristic peaks of Taygetos are, from the north, Neraiodovouna or Gupata (2,032), Spanakaki (2,024), an unnamed one (2.229), Prophet Ilias (2,405), the highest peak, which together with Chalasmeno Vouno (2,204) form a single horizontal ridge, and Mavrovouna (1,909).

Between Mavrovouna and Prophet Ilias, the highest peak of the Taygetos, the dense forest of Vassiliki opens like a fan and the densely walled forest of the peaks. It is a mixed forest and consists of black walnut, holly, oak and fir trees.

I leave the car here and drive downhill through the forest, starting my route, always with a view of the opposite naked and spilled peaks of Mount Taygetos. In less than five minutes I arrive at the Forester’s cabin and the tin settlement of Agios Panteleimon. This is where the farmers and those involved in agriculture reside. The tin or wooden houses are tucked into the forest and have makeshift courtyards and washbasins, hanging on the branches of the trees. There is complete silence and order. The chapel of Agios Panteleimon has been rebuilt, and from the stone and tin roof that was the old one, another has been built next to it, with cement and a stone roof. They have taste two similar chapels, side by side, made of different material.

The road continues to go downhill and with a big traverse turns south, opening in front of me the high mountain paradise of Taygetos. The forest is spread out to its edges, while the core of Vassiliki is visible in the distance.

Here, in the heart of the Vassiliki, you are breathing in the severed wings of your life. You reattach your broken limbs. And you wonder: How much do you give for this heart? Of course, all your wealth. And whatever else it takes, of blood and body too…

But here, in the heart of the forest, a large gully is formed that then splits and forks the central nerve of the dense forest.

I leave on my right the road that goes uphill to the livestock settlement of Agios Dimitrios (summer only), where it ends and I take the left, downhill at the beginning, branch of the forest road that leads to the heart of Vassiliki.

This is where the good stuff starts. I feel like I’ve left the world that is already far away, hours away, and I grasp the feeling of total freedom, by the hair.

An absolute bucolic landscape is born in my eyes. A few scattered small valleys open up like a fan to the right and left. Little houses with obelisks and sloping wooden roofs, taken from children’s storybooks, frame the wooded and deep green layer of the complex. Gardens of sparse esperia expand the surprise of the eyes. The absence of people, the absolute solitude and the great and meaningful word that this vast neighbourhood of angels emanates, lead me directly to the pastures of Eden. I cannot get enough of reading and recognizing myself as I was before I was born and enclosed in the order and harmony of civilization. I am now an uncivilized and pure lever of natural movements, not even conscious of its purpose and destinations.

This forest, with its evergreen and myrobic green. The tops of its glowing trees, the smooth and soft skin of the grassy earth, the caves of light, the fumes of fragrance, the incessant chirping of the birds and its explosive serenity introduce me by storm to the most beautiful, yet lost, human sense, a sense that has been evaporated, willfully and consciously, by the modern probe of life. I draw up from the depths of my history experiences hidden and warm animal locks and joints of my natural instincts.

I am now walking free from the need to “return”, but also to reintegrate into the system of values proposed and constructed by our consumer mania. I feel stripped of superfluous and necessary ornaments, of the virtues of our bourgeois civilisation, of ‘should’ and ‘should not’, of the order invented and applied, for thousands of years, to our lives by the moral code of human history, by religion and morality, and all their derivatives. It is this religion of uncivilized animals and this morality of bushes and reptiles that justifies the virtue of the universal God and the divine majesty of our true nature.

I walk in the middle of an avenue of the living, among trees and temperate grass, rare wildflowers and nests of bees and zubera, brushing aside sprigs of ferns and joys, undisturbed by reservations, shames, monomania, egos, judgments and passions. My only passions are the sucking up of life and the wasting of its images. I shun the cracks and fissures of misfortunes. Every rock that rises before me and every crack that opens at my feet is but my natural circle, the clause of God and the primordial matrix of life.

This downhill path I take at the end of the road is desperately beautiful. Planted as if with wisdom and guided by exuberant life-directing noses. Plenty of signs nailed to the trees, (E4 and 32) do nothing but point out the human presence of matter.

The path I take follows the deep stream that then forms the large gorge of Vyros. At Kakia Skala, a particularly complex and slightly dangerous area of the Taygetos, I meet the cross of trails that now lead to the summit of Prophet Ilias. The trail bypasses the large Madara, passes Potisto and reaches the summit of Agios Georgios, at Musgia. From here I face the proud and velvety peak of Prophet Ilias and shake my stern. The return is via the settlement of Agios Dimitrios, leaving on my left the Pentavlos and the road that leads to the climbing refuge at Varvara. I am always in the all-encompassing forest of Vassiliki, which as I can see is vast and continuous, with no breaks and no bare slopes. The road I take takes me back to the original junction and brings me to the tin settlement of Agios Panteleimon and the Forestry Department of Vassiliki, where I left my car.

In about a thousand meters and at the big crossroads of Agiannaki I now turn right and take the direction of Kardamyli, instead of the Monastery of Giatrissa.

I make a stop for a snack and lay my whole life on the pine needles. I sit double-legged and unwrap the old plaid napkin, in which all the world’s delicacies are neatly tucked. A tomato, a few olives, and some yeast bread from my mother’s village. And I ate. And I was as happy as I’ve ever been. With a view of the mighty Five Fingers, with the crocus drifts of the evening, the caterpillars circling me, the drunken trills of the birds and that strange, inner landscape of the heart.

I get up, numb from the cumulative bliss and continue my trek. I pass under the peak of Mavrovouna and coming out of the forest I reach one of the most beautiful landscapes of the Peloponnese. The wildness of the folds and the dissection of the mountains give me an unforgettable image. I stand to pray. To the one and only, holy sense of beauty. Which is given to me by the vast and by turns sensual view of the Messinian Gulf and the mountainous dissections that descend tenderly towards the sea.

I walk the entire body of an incredible and nerve-wracking mountain beauty, the southern end of the Taygetos and indeed the Messinian one, which ends, after a distance of twenty-one kilometres, at the monastery of St. Samuel, two kilometres outside Saidona. This is also where I meet the asphalt. I leave the road for a while and take a hollow path up to the abandoned monastery. An immense sadness overwhelms me for its degradation. Inside, which fortunately was open, I admire the beautiful frescoes of the Middle Ages. I turn back to the road and, after I have processed that erratic little castle of Kitrinianis, opposite the monastery, I take the asphalt road that leads me, after five and a half kilometres, into the rich and balconied Exochori. Lost in the voices and passions of the little people, I leave it hastily and after a total distance of thirty-two (32) kilometers, from the heart of Vassiliki, I arrive at Kardamyli. It is already dawning, but it is still dawn for me. Life goes on at a different pace here, but my heart has been charmed, conquered and remains in the body of the beautiful Vassiliki. In the body of a soul that pulsates under the rough shadows of the most beautiful mountain of the Peloponnese. Pentadactylos…

NOTE

This whole crossing, starting from Gythio and passing through the beauties of the southern Taygetos, the Monastery of Giatrissa, the forest of Vassiliki, the paths of Vyros, the Monastery of Samuel, Exochori, and finishing in Kardamyli, requires two days. It is done in one day (the asphalt, dirt and hiking trail) only by those who have a good command of the field and the reading areas of the scales.