May 2 - 4. Nature will take over.

Our friends chose a mountain resort where we were supposed to spend a few days. A two-hour-long car ride from Lviv. There is no highway, so we pass all the little towns that lie between our home and the destination. I counted four of them. All of them include houses: small countryside homes and modern apartment complexes. There is always a church, a school, a market, a few playgrounds, a few abandoned sights. There is always a brand-new long park alley that displays the faces and names of fallen fighters born in the given town. Every single town on the map is now provided with such a memorial. One of them, on the main square of the town, was a long wall with smaller photographs. Hard to say how many rows of them there were. Between two sections of these photographs, a big incision in stone that says “Glory to The Fallen”. The square was still decorated for Easter, with colourful ribbons and eggs. Teenagers were sitting on a bench, all of them staring at the smartphone of their friend. They burst out in loud laughter. 

From the car window, it looked like life and death had learned to coexist and cancel each other out, at least here, in the Western part of the country. I have no personal experience of the cities that stand behind the frontline. I think the cold breath of death is much more perceivable there. 

The mountain resort turned out to be a big family place in the middle of the lush greenery of the Carpathian Mountains. It is positioned at a walking distance away from numerous sources of mineral water, like all of the resorts in this area. Most people go there to patch up some health issues that have been bugging them, take a walk in nature and spend time with their loved ones. 

Definitely too many kids for my taste, and a questionable use of resources: the building is completed with a water park and a bunch of small colourful constructions that spread around a large territory under a mountain. A small house next to it has a garden, with hens and geese, and it looks like it has been standing there since the beginning of time. At some point of this house’s life, a huge, ugly thing grew in front of it, blocking the luxurious mountain view it enjoyed for ages. Gentrification spreads everywhere, and I think it makes me sad. 

The resort offers a very good spa, with a multitude of different saunas, a big pool and a number of services from the certified doctors. I am sitting beside my friend on a hot bench, covered in a well-made mosaic in the best traditions of the Roman and Turkish baths. It smells really good, and I feel like getting as much of that smell inside my lungs as possible. We were discussing the memorials we saw that day. “We will only know the real number of those who died after the war ends, if we are lucky”, she said. A robust man in front of us was taking care of his little daughter, but he looked at us carefully: he was listening to the conversation. It is usual to make eye contact with other people inside a sauna, while sitting right in front of them, doing absolutely nothing for a few minutes. After a little while, the little girl decided to go away, and her father obliged, following her. He turned his back to us, revealing a gigantic scar that crossed his torso, still of a light red colour. I noticed the huge stitches that crossed the scar line. Under his arm, there were other, smaller scars. The man was wounded in battle. And probably, stitched right there: the scar was fresh. He took the hand of his little daughter and exited. 

Our friends invited us to their room, they wanted us all to play a board game – something we often do together. This time it was a disturbing activity: through a number of questions, the game was going to determine how old the gamers are. The winner is the one who reached the “Grandpa” point at the top of the card. The questions included something about knee pains, relationship with parents, teenage crushes and knowledge of the 80s pop-culture. The youngest person in the group (not counting our friends’ five-year-old), I won with flying colours. We laughed it off over a glass of whiskey. “I told you I was born a pensioner”, I said. It sounded funny, but I felt tired. And I have been tired for a long time now. 

After years of living in Italy, my eyes grew accustomed to the faded earthly colours of the South, tender olive green and spiky shapes of palm trees. So the next morning, I stepped out of the hotel alone, leaving my mom and friends behind, and taking on a tourist trail among the mountains. Greedily, I was gazing around, trying to take in as much of the luxury of the fresh spring forest as possible. The asphalted trail was not enough, so I plunged into the wilderness that surrounded it. About ten minutes into the unmarked and untouched woods, the trees shielded me from every noise: from the hasty tourists with children walking the trail, from the sounds of the nearby village and farms, from the rustling of the car wheels on the concrete. The spruces formed a magnificent dome above my head, taller than any cathedral I had ever seen. The chirping of the birds echoed through the air, muffling the sound of my footsteps on the thick, soft carpet of needles and leaves. Thoughts about war and the sound of the air alarm do not reach this far into the wilderness of the mountains. The soil, the cold, brisk waters of the river, the solemn walls of trees have been here long before, and will remain after us, outliving the war and everyone who fights it. A comforting thought. Being here is like touching eternity, connecting to something bigger than reality.

A few dozen meters into the woods, there is a tree arrayed in little pieces of beaded jewellery - Ukrainian gerdans. They hand off the branches here and there, some of the jewels are visibly old, others seem more recent. Someone chose this tree as an altar, a meeting place with the forces of nature. Someone decided to come bearing gifts to the forest spirits, to sweeten their temper and soothe their senses. Somehow, this discovery did not seem unexpected at all. It matched perfectly the enchanted atmosphere of the place. I stayed there a while, studying the gifts. It did not even cross my mind to take anything away: it belonged here, on the uncharted trail, on a tree that meant so much to someone. I took the closest piece, took a photo of it, and placed it right back. 

On my way out of the woods, I would notice a lot of fallen trees and broken trunks — a regular occurrence in nature. However, the hollow spaces inside the fallen trees were filled with fresh grass and leaves, carefully tied together with tiny ropes. A moving act of tenderness towards nature, the commemoration of the fallen, a winning battle against death. Can we cherish and commemorate our fallen fighters in a way so beautiful and heartfelt that it will overcome time and emphasise their heroic past?

We made a brief stop at the old Polish cemetery in the town of Drogobych, as we were coming back home. Our friend’s grandfather rests there, so there was time and place to pay respects and leave a few candles in his memory. I wandered around the abandoned graveyard meanwhile. The stone monuments of mourning angels go back to the end of the 19th century. The cemetery is the final resting place for whole families. Their descendants must have moved to Poland a long time ago, leaving the graves behind. Nature took over the crying stone Virgin in the centre. After all, I thought, this is what will happen to us, our orders, religions, wars and governments. Nature is the one that will stand silently on our graves. Not a sad thought, but a rather comforting one. As we were leaving the semi-abandoned graveyard, my mom sarcastically noted: “Good place. Nice company. Silent, educated”. We were on our way a few moments later. 

We got home late, in time for a shower and sleep. The silence of the woods was replaced by the sounds of the city, including its sirens. I checked Air Alert – the mobile app that signals the alerts around the country. It is programmed to plunge you into a preposterously loud siren noise, and a robotic voice over it announces, “Attention. Air raid alarm. Please, head to the closest shelter, and wait for further instructions”. The same thing happens when the alert is over, it can happen after a few minutes or a few hours. In some cases, it does not end. Luhansk, my home town, announced the air raid alarm 1126 days, 18 hours and 16 minutes ago, as I am writing this. When I opened the app, previously downloaded from the App Store, it flashed me with the question “Do you enjoy Air Alert? Tap a star to rate it on the App Store”.

I tapped five stars and went to bed.