Greece: The mountains of Agrafa

When I told them where I was going, I was met with one of three responses: I would die, I was crazy, I would die crazy and, though I had died alone, having tumbled down some precipice, everyone would know that I was crazy and it would be much discussed at my funeral. Sometimes they just laughed. Even if I could speak passable Greek, what would I say?

I went because the name of the place means unwritten. Since I had first heard of Agrafa, I knew I had to see it. The only question was when. In late June of this year, when I finally had my chance, the question then became how - that is, how I would die.

The Agrafa is a tight knot of mountains in central Greece stretching south from Karpenisi all the way north past Karditsa, bound on the west by the basin of Arta and on the east by the vast agricultural plains of Thessaly. It preserves its history in its name. During the 400-year Ottoman occupation of Greece, the mountains - and the fiercely independent people they sheltered - refused the empire's soldiers, cartographers and, most importantly, its tax collectors. To the Ottomans, the land was neither accessible nor profitable. It became a blank spot on the map. It wrote its history in absence.

Left alone, the Greeks of the Agrafa were free to speak their language and record the lineage of their families. They tended to their flocks and the few crops that could survive the winters and the thin soil. They lived as if there was no outside world. It was a rumour whispered from the haze of the distance. It had very little to do with them; they had even less to do with it.

In more recent history, the mountains became known for their bandits and rebels and, later, as the modern age seeped into the Agrafa on dirt roads, for poverty and depopulation. Many have left and the ruins scattered throughout the region attest to the changes that have soaked up through the roots of the mountains, even to the smallest hut and its goats with their music of bells.

The modern world now has a little more to do with the Agrafa - plenty of timber, a bit of tourism - and many Agrafiotes have more and more to do with it. The distinction between these mountains and everything else - the line between the inked and the bare - has by now all but disappeared. The roads bleed their black, and the absence itself continues to be erased.

On getting lost

Evening light on the grass in the meadow of Prividzoula above the Tavropos River

Ignoring the predictions of doom, I set out from Karpenisi and for six days walked north. There was too much road. Four hours out from Karpenisi I came to a dirt road that dwindled into a footpath paved with the golden leaves fallen from the oaks on its flanks. Ducking through the underbrush, constantly scraping spider webs from my face, I eventually made my way to the bottom of the Tavropos river canyon. On all sides the canyon shot nearly straight up and dressed itself in impenetrable forest.

I camped on the banks of the Tavropos and marvelled at the sudden profusion of life. That morning I had stumbled through a predawn Athens overcome with rigor mortis and now the trout sparked in the stream. As dusk ran out of breath, the air stilled and fireflies swarmed above the trout, each a mirror to the other.

In the morning I got lost. I walked several hours up, up, up a forest road above the village of Kerasohori, all the while gazing south into the far northern spurs of the southern Evritania range. I passed blue, pink and yellow boxes of beehives, the bees' wings the loudest voices in the evening forest.

I finally crossed over the ridge and the mountains rocketed up all around me. I felt that I was finally getting somewhere, though I had little idea where I was. I scrambled onto some rocks overlooking the plunge into the valley and unfolded my map. I