I saw a tornado once... in Crete.
It was early October of 2005. I was on holiday in Crete with my now wife, backpacking and camping our way along the south west coast. The weather had been terrific the whole time... bright sunny skies, pleasantly warm, hardly any wind. It was an indian summer in Crete, and rainy, dull, cold old-Glasgow seemed to be on another planet.
It was my 5th time on the big island and a time to relax in my favourite region, revisiting old haunts and introducing Maria to the charms of Hania. So it was that we had passed our time in Paleohora, Souyia, Loutro, Frankokastello and were now free camping under a kopse of pines, itself situated on a low lying island at the mouth of a dry river bed just outside the village of Agia Roumeli.
In fact, it was no ordinary dried up river bed, but the seasonal stream - and sometime torrent (of which more later) - which flows through the Samaria Gorge -- the longest gorge in Europe and a world famous tourist attraction. These were the last days of our holiday, a time, for me, of immeasurable sadness as the thought of leaving Greece, the place that permits and embodies all that I feel to be important, looms over my every moment. Being outside, being near the sea, walking in the mountains, walking tall in my shoes, pride and generosity and the importance of gestures, good company and good food, and the wonder that comes from a mythical landscape infused by vibrant, heavenly light. A real life: that was what I had to lose.
As much as I love to spend summer in Greece, so much does it pain me to leave. So we whiled away our last days just being there: I watched Maria swimming, we drank ouzo with octopus for lunch, I read a magazine, we slept in our tent and listened as the wind gently caressed the canvas. And every so often I sighed as the thought of leaving took momentary precedence over the immanence of Crete.
So our last full day swung around... with a surprise. The sky that had for two weeks been blue and clear, had turned a heavy leaden gray. It was to be expected I guess, it was no longer high summer. My mind flit back to landing at Eleftheros Venizelos three weeks before... the storm and the surprisingly cool air that greeted me as I left the airport lounge... Still, there still wasn't a breath of wind... Far from it, it was as still as the grave.
We got up and did what we always did on waking: we went for a swim. Now, I'm not much of one for 'swimming'. Don't get me wrong: I love being in the water, it's just that I seem to spend most of my 'swimming' time expelling stinging salt water from tender orifices. So I usually just do a quick bloom to cool down and spend most of my remaining beach time raking the horizon of the water with binoculars in attempts to find out just where the fuck my dolphin of a wife is. But on this day, there was something in me that did not want to get into the water... period. The sky was bruising further and it was like darkness was descending. Standing by the shoreline, there wasn't a single soul on the beach save us. I looked into the water... no sea bed could be seen beneath the smooth gray glaze of the waveless surface. I felt like some primeval and malevolent force, hardly cognisable, was coiled ready to strike should I get into water...
My wife teases me about my beach habits. Unable to understand how I can simply bloom and watch the sea for the duration of her swim, which has been known to last up to 2 hours, she calls me frightened. And perhaps I am in a way. I can remember as a child visiting a gorge in the highlands of Scotland on a family holiday... again it was dull, again I had planned to swim. But then everything stopped as we stumbled across and read the simple stone memorial next to the shore telling the story of a couple of kids who had drowned at this spot... one trying to save the other.
And then there was Nas, Ikaria at one singularly difficult time in my life, again backpacking in the Aegean, this time alone. On an island infamous for it's huge waves, strong tides and incidence of drowning, I sat on the little beach of Nas, again out of season, again alone, surrounded by the ruins of the temple of Athina, Patroness of Bulls, staring at the sea wondering if I should get in...
Something akin to the feeling that I felt on that occasion did I feel while looking at this smooth metallic sea under the heavy leaden sky of Agia Roumeli... and again I couldn't get in.
Maria was happily splashing away on the mattress, I was rolling cigarette number two, the air was so still I could hear her limbs gently breaking the surface of the water...
... I looked up from the labour of my cigarette to sea a tornado out to sea, it's funnel connecting the sea to the dark mass of the sky.
My heart leapt into my mouth... not out of fear, but rather from the excitement of witnessing something utterly incredible... the confusion of not knowing what to do. I let my half finished cigarette fall to the sand and pointing, shouted at Maria to look at the horizon...
I have never seen her move so quickly to get out of the water, and to tell you the truth, I was panicking too and ran in a little to give her a hand out... then abandoned her to make the last few feet out wearing mask and flippers and carrying a fully blown up mattress... I had something more important to to.
These days, everyone of us has a digital camera. More than this, we seem to pass our entire lives in one endless project of self-documentation at a level of detail that is often hard to justify. Anyone who has ever had to sit in front of a friend's laptop while they go through their 16 folders of photos and videos... from a weekend in Brussels... will know what I mean. But would I, at that point, when it really mattered, when I was standing in front of a fucking tornado... in Crete!... would I have my camera handy and if so, would it have enough battery power or indeed space to document the moment?
I fumbled in my bag, every so often glancing up, half expecting it to just turn tail and disappear. There it was. I pulled it out and switched it on... Fucking shitty machine! It takes so fucking long to power up! If I just manage to take just one photo, I swear to God I'll buy a new one!
Still, the delay did give me time to actually stand and look at the thing. There was no doubt about it: it was getting closer. When first I saw it I could have estimated it's distance from the coast to be something like 10 kilometres. It was easily discernable, but far enough away to be viewed without fearing for one's welfare. Now, as I waited for the tiny green and amber lights on my camera to stop flashing, thus confirming that it actually had enough battery power to take at least one photo, now it had moved a little closer was a little bigger... and now you could actually see it spinning, the look of which I can only compare to a heat haze on a hot asphalt road.
You know those heat hazes which rise from the surface of the road in high summer, you see them best from 50 metres or so away from the point at which the road turns suddenly affording a backdrop of vegetation or buildings to your gaze along the direction of the road. These then seem to bend a quiver as they are distorted by the current of hot rising air. It was like the entire funnel of the tornado was composed of a spinning film of this stuff, moving slowly from the surface of the sea to the darkness of the cloud base in a spiralling motion.
The camera beeped. I had enough juice for a shot... Snap. Got it.
Maria was, as usual, full of questions: Where did it come from? Why does it spin? Do you think it will come further in? Do you think we should run away? What do you think? Are you listening to me? ...
I was, it was just that something else was distracting me...
The locals were running down to the water's edge, to the little harbour where a few rowing boats lay tethered to a small concrete harbour. The sea was still as calm as a sheet of polished steel, but they were taking no chances. They too had watched it move further toward the coast and had decided to get their boats out of the water. We walked towards them.
"Ehete dei pote tetoio pragma;" we asked (Have you ever seen anything like this before?) "Ohi, pote" came the surprising reply. (No, never). It was then that I realised just how special a moment it was. I turned once more to face it. Yep, it was closer, still spinning around itself, now bending slightly in the middle. The locals busied themselves with their boats. I cracked off another shot, framing the phenomenon between a lampost and the harbour side Greek national flag. However, something was different about it. It was changing, turning into something not quite as dense, not quite as as striking. And then, it struck me what was happening: It was beginning to disappear... from the bottom up.
Its contact with the sea had now been broken, and in place of the spinning haze was a clear view of the waves. Above this, the tornado continued to spin, but it would move no closer to the coast.
Soon the horizon was visible, and within five minutes of it beginning to disappear, the whole thing had vanished leaving only a few whisps of cloud rapidly evaporating against a brightening sky. The whole thing had lasted about fifteen minutes.
The sun came out. We continued walking into town towards the taverna where we had passed a pleasant morning the day before. O Kyrios Georgos again was there and again business was slow so again we were treated to coffees in exchange for... having the intimate details of our private and public affairs teased out of us by his endless questioning.
How long had we known each other? Do we plan to get married? What religion was I? What do you think of the war in Iraq? Have you ever been anywhere as beautiful as Agia Roumeli? What do you mean its too early for raki? Min les malakies bre!
O Kyrios Georgos was, of course, 100% Cretan, and a force of nature in his own right.
And when his curiosity had been slaked and we finally had an opportunity to ask HIM something, we asked him if he had ever seen anything like it in his life...
"Ohi", he answered "Pote", and immediately changed the subject in an attempt to scare us with a fictitious story about a sea creature he had once seen in the bay.
That's what I love about Crete: it is awesome and sublime, and nature is at its rawest down there where the White Mountains tumble into the sea. And while its inhabitants have a just reputation for being proud, hardy and phlegmatic souls, they are simultaneously of the most generous, quixotic and playful of people... and for all this I hold them and their land in my heart.
This tale is not yet finished... we had another adventure that day, one which brought us into much closer contact with the powers of nature. But I cannot imagine a better way to end this post than with those words.
It was early October of 2005. I was on holiday in Crete with my now wife, backpacking and camping our way along the south west coast. The weather had been terrific the whole time... bright sunny skies, pleasantly warm, hardly any wind. It was an indian summer in Crete, and rainy, dull, cold old-Glasgow seemed to be on another planet.
It was my 5th time on the big island and a time to relax in my favourite region, revisiting old haunts and introducing Maria to the charms of Hania. So it was that we had passed our time in Paleohora, Souyia, Loutro, Frankokastello and were now free camping under a kopse of pines, itself situated on a low lying island at the mouth of a dry river bed just outside the village of Agia Roumeli.
In fact, it was no ordinary dried up river bed, but the seasonal stream - and sometime torrent (of which more later) - which flows through the Samaria Gorge -- the longest gorge in Europe and a world famous tourist attraction. These were the last days of our holiday, a time, for me, of immeasurable sadness as the thought of leaving Greece, the place that permits and embodies all that I feel to be important, looms over my every moment. Being outside, being near the sea, walking in the mountains, walking tall in my shoes, pride and generosity and the importance of gestures, good company and good food, and the wonder that comes from a mythical landscape infused by vibrant, heavenly light. A real life: that was what I had to lose.
As much as I love to spend summer in Greece, so much does it pain me to leave. So we whiled away our last days just being there: I watched Maria swimming, we drank ouzo with octopus for lunch, I read a magazine, we slept in our tent and listened as the wind gently caressed the canvas. And every so often I sighed as the thought of leaving took momentary precedence over the immanence of Crete.
So our last full day swung around... with a surprise. The sky that had for two weeks been blue and clear, had turned a heavy leaden gray. It was to be expected I guess, it was no longer high summer. My mind flit back to landing at Eleftheros Venizelos three weeks before... the storm and the surprisingly cool air that greeted me as I left the airport lounge... Still, there still wasn't a breath of wind... Far from it, it was as still as the grave.
We got up and did what we always did on waking: we went for a swim. Now, I'm not much of one for 'swimming'. Don't get me wrong: I love being in the water, it's just that I seem to spend most of my 'swimming' time expelling stinging salt water from tender orifices. So I usually just do a quick bloom to cool down and spend most of my remaining beach time raking the horizon of the water with binoculars in attempts to find out just where the fuck my dolphin of a wife is. But on this day, there was something in me that did not want to get into the water... period. The sky was bruising further and it was like darkness was descending. Standing by the shoreline, there wasn't a single soul on the beach save us. I looked into the water... no sea bed could be seen beneath the smooth gray glaze of the waveless surface. I felt like some primeval and malevolent force, hardly cognisable, was coiled ready to strike should I get into water...
My wife teases me about my beach habits. Unable to understand how I can simply bloom and watch the sea for the duration of her swim, which has been known to last up to 2 hours, she calls me frightened. And perhaps I am in a way. I can remember as a child visiting a gorge in the highlands of Scotland on a family holiday... again it was dull, again I had planned to swim. But then everything stopped as we stumbled across and read the simple stone memorial next to the shore telling the story of a couple of kids who had drowned at this spot... one trying to save the other.
And then there was Nas, Ikaria at one singularly difficult time in my life, again backpacking in the Aegean, this time alone. On an island infamous for it's huge waves, strong tides and incidence of drowning, I sat on the little beach of Nas, again out of season, again alone, surrounded by the ruins of the temple of Athina, Patroness of Bulls, staring at the sea wondering if I should get in...
Something akin to the feeling that I felt on that occasion did I feel while looking at this smooth metallic sea under the heavy leaden sky of Agia Roumeli... and again I couldn't get in.
Maria was happily splashing away on the mattress, I was rolling cigarette number two, the air was so still I could hear her limbs gently breaking the surface of the water...
... I looked up from the labour of my cigarette to sea a tornado out to sea, it's funnel connecting the sea to the dark mass of the sky.
My heart leapt into my mouth... not out of fear, but rather from the excitement of witnessing something utterly incredible... the confusion of not knowing what to do. I let my half finished cigarette fall to the sand and pointing, shouted at Maria to look at the horizon...
I have never seen her move so quickly to get out of the water, and to tell you the truth, I was panicking too and ran in a little to give her a hand out... then abandoned her to make the last few feet out wearing mask and flippers and carrying a fully blown up mattress... I had something more important to to.
These days, everyone of us has a digital camera. More than this, we seem to pass our entire lives in one endless project of self-documentation at a level of detail that is often hard to justify. Anyone who has ever had to sit in front of a friend's laptop while they go through their 16 folders of photos and videos... from a weekend in Brussels... will know what I mean. But would I, at that point, when it really mattered, when I was standing in front of a fucking tornado... in Crete!... would I have my camera handy and if so, would it have enough battery power or indeed space to document the moment?
I fumbled in my bag, every so often glancing up, half expecting it to just turn tail and disappear. There it was. I pulled it out and switched it on... Fucking shitty machine! It takes so fucking long to power up! If I just manage to take just one photo, I swear to God I'll buy a new one!
Still, the delay did give me time to actually stand and look at the thing. There was no doubt about it: it was getting closer. When first I saw it I could have estimated it's distance from the coast to be something like 10 kilometres. It was easily discernable, but far enough away to be viewed without fearing for one's welfare. Now, as I waited for the tiny green and amber lights on my camera to stop flashing, thus confirming that it actually had enough battery power to take at least one photo, now it had moved a little closer was a little bigger... and now you could actually see it spinning, the look of which I can only compare to a heat haze on a hot asphalt road.
You know those heat hazes which rise from the surface of the road in high summer, you see them best from 50 metres or so away from the point at which the road turns suddenly affording a backdrop of vegetation or buildings to your gaze along the direction of the road. These then seem to bend a quiver as they are distorted by the current of hot rising air. It was like the entire funnel of the tornado was composed of a spinning film of this stuff, moving slowly from the surface of the sea to the darkness of the cloud base in a spiralling motion.
The camera beeped. I had enough juice for a shot... Snap. Got it.
Maria was, as usual, full of questions: Where did it come from? Why does it spin? Do you think it will come further in? Do you think we should run away? What do you think? Are you listening to me? ...
I was, it was just that something else was distracting me...
The locals were running down to the water's edge, to the little harbour where a few rowing boats lay tethered to a small concrete harbour. The sea was still as calm as a sheet of polished steel, but they were taking no chances. They too had watched it move further toward the coast and had decided to get their boats out of the water. We walked towards them.
"Ehete dei pote tetoio pragma;" we asked (Have you ever seen anything like this before?) "Ohi, pote" came the surprising reply. (No, never). It was then that I realised just how special a moment it was. I turned once more to face it. Yep, it was closer, still spinning around itself, now bending slightly in the middle. The locals busied themselves with their boats. I cracked off another shot, framing the phenomenon between a lampost and the harbour side Greek national flag. However, something was different about it. It was changing, turning into something not quite as dense, not quite as as striking. And then, it struck me what was happening: It was beginning to disappear... from the bottom up.
Its contact with the sea had now been broken, and in place of the spinning haze was a clear view of the waves. Above this, the tornado continued to spin, but it would move no closer to the coast.
Soon the horizon was visible, and within five minutes of it beginning to disappear, the whole thing had vanished leaving only a few whisps of cloud rapidly evaporating against a brightening sky. The whole thing had lasted about fifteen minutes.
The sun came out. We continued walking into town towards the taverna where we had passed a pleasant morning the day before. O Kyrios Georgos again was there and again business was slow so again we were treated to coffees in exchange for... having the intimate details of our private and public affairs teased out of us by his endless questioning.
How long had we known each other? Do we plan to get married? What religion was I? What do you think of the war in Iraq? Have you ever been anywhere as beautiful as Agia Roumeli? What do you mean its too early for raki? Min les malakies bre!
O Kyrios Georgos was, of course, 100% Cretan, and a force of nature in his own right.
And when his curiosity had been slaked and we finally had an opportunity to ask HIM something, we asked him if he had ever seen anything like it in his life...
"Ohi", he answered "Pote", and immediately changed the subject in an attempt to scare us with a fictitious story about a sea creature he had once seen in the bay.
That's what I love about Crete: it is awesome and sublime, and nature is at its rawest down there where the White Mountains tumble into the sea. And while its inhabitants have a just reputation for being proud, hardy and phlegmatic souls, they are simultaneously of the most generous, quixotic and playful of people... and for all this I hold them and their land in my heart.
This tale is not yet finished... we had another adventure that day, one which brought us into much closer contact with the powers of nature. But I cannot imagine a better way to end this post than with those words.
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