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Hiking Down the Mountain
After two days at the first mountain, our group met a second group of students on the train and commenced to a larger mountain. We were now 11 students and one middle-aged New Zealander the students had picked up at the hostel under the student center.
We started hiking again from the train station, through a village with babushkas(grandmothers) walking side by side thick in conversation and chickens clucking and pecking at the ground.
The village ended at the foot of the mountain and we began to climb upward pretty steadily. The rain had begun before we got to the mountain, but now it came more steadily. We were climbing at a good, steep incline and we looked a bit like a line of mules, bent forward under the weight of our packs as we took on the mountain. The rain made for slick terrain, but we pressed on. The New Zealander reminded me that there are no mountains in Texas and kept checking to see if I was ok. He was fairly certain that I wouldn’t make it.
About halfway up I asked him to predict how much longer it would be. We kept cresting hills and they seemed to be the top and then they weren’t. False hope shot down.
He predicted that we would be finished in about 200 meters. I agreed under the conditions that if he were wrong I would push him down the mountain and write him a nice epitaph in various languages on the hillside. He was wrong.
Fortunately, I decided to have mercy on the fellow.
An hour and a half later we crested the top and I laughingly told those who sat down that we weren’t finished and that they had better get up! Jura looked at me seriously and pointed to a distant peak, “We’re just resting. That’s the mountain we are trying to get to.” Gulp.
Altogether the climb was beautiful and less intense that I had imagined. We wound our way around the sides of the hills until we came to our mountain. There were blueberry bushes all along the way and even an old deserted cheese factory for goat cheese.
Once we made it to our mountain, the wind picked up and it was a struggle to remain earthbound. We climbed steadily and made it victoriously to the top around four o’clock. 5,000 ft in one day. Not too bad.
The wind and rain were soaking us and threatening to take us back to L’viv via air transport. We decided to make a quick decent but couldn’t find a trail down from the mountain.
This is where the real adventure begins. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line… So, we began to head straight down the mountain out of the wind. We were walking straight down through fields of barren blueberry bushes. Within minutes our pants were soaked. The hills were extremely steep so the bushes served to provide traction, but we still slipped and slid our way down.
For at least a mile we climbed down through these fields of bushes, laughing and picking our way down as best we could. Andriy found that weaving was a good technique, so we began to move down as though we were skiing, only without the skis and without the snow.
That night we burrowed into our tents on the side of the mountain and listened to the wind rush by. We had found a fairly sheltered place, but the wind was so strong we were certain we would wake up in Ivan Franko Park in the center of Lviv. The boys made dinner while the girls talked and laughed in our tent.
I’m not sure how to wear the title of intern. I’m not exactly sure what all that entails. But for now, I am content to get to know these new friends and ‘do life’ with them.
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