Chapter 2.

 The rustle of car wheels on a bumpy stone road brought me back to the present. In the distance, I saw a time-worn red pickup truck approaching along the winding road. This was quite common, since most of the local villagers drove such cars. This transport was practical and very convenient, because village life is not like city life. Here people provide for themselves; village farming, vegetable gardens, and livestock give them healthy and tasty food. Bringing hay, collecting firewood to heat the house in winter, all this could be done by fitting it into the spacious bed of a pickup truck.

  Looking down at the bottom of the now almost empty cup, I took the last sip of the cooled coffee and, looking up again, saw the same pickup truck parked near the patterned wrought-iron gate of my garden. A thin man with a thick gray mustache suddenly jumped out of the car; he looked about 70 years old but seemed very cheerful for his age.

“Kalimera kyria,” he said with a clear country accent. “Are you Nicole Spring?”

“Kalimera, yes, it's me,” I answered with a slightly questioning intonation at the end, without expecting his appearance on this predictably quiet morning.

“I have a postal notification for you.” He extended his hand forward, holding some paper and waving it as if to prove his words. I got up from the table, wrapping my plush robe a little tighter around me, went down the three stone-paved steps of the veranda and walked up to the fence. He handed me a piece of paper and I took it without opening the gate through its steel bars.

  I began to read and concentrate on the text. Among the standard printed text of the postal form was something written in the apparently illegible handwriting of a local postal employee.

“It looks like some package has arrived for you from abroad. You must go to the local branch and pick it up.”

I turned my gaze to him. His shaggy, ashen mustache moved slightly in the wind, and from time to time he adjusted it so that it took the desired position.

“Do you see the village in the distance?” He waved his hand to the right and with active movements pointed towards that village in the distance, which had been attracting my gaze for a long time.

“Go there, reach the central square and immediately see the post office. There you will pick up your parcel.”

That's it... I still have other addresses.”

  Before I could say a word and say goodbye to him, he instantly jumped into his pickup truck like a flea, slammed the door with the window all the way down, and began to sharply turn the car around, mercilessly scraping the tires along the rocky road and raising thick clouds of sandy dust into the air.

  “Don’t forget your passport!” he shouted, leaning out of the open window, already driving away and sharply pressing on the gas.

  Standing at the gate, shrouded in a cloud of dust, which the nimble messenger so generously bestowed on me, I watched as a red pickup truck quickly disappeared along the winding road, becoming smaller and smaller, as if with its route showing me the way to that very village.

  Having folded in half the piece of paper that had just been handed to me in passing, I returned to the veranda.

  The weather was wonderful; only a few fancy, voluminous clouds, similar to soft marshmallows, floated slowly, where the sea and sky merge in their eternal kiss. The hour was still early. I looked at the swallows, who were already carrying pieces of clay and hay in their beaks from somewhere onto the veranda, marking the outlines of the future nest under the roof.

“It’s a wonderful day, and how the sea shines! It could turn out to be a beautiful painting!” Taking a deep breath, I exclaimed out loud and looked at the swallows, as if talking to them, and mentally already accepting that this summer they would become my constant restless company.

“I’ll go towards that village, paint a quick study in a couple of hours, and have time to stop at the post office along the way.”

  I did not expect a package from anyone, but my curiosity did not want to wait a day to receive the mysterious box.

  Returning to the house, I went into the newly equipped workshop from the second bedroom. Every time I entered there, I felt the persistent smell of oil paints. Since childhood, it evoked many sensations in my mind, so fuzzy and, at that time, hitherto unknown, but very warm and pleasant.

  From the top shelf of a large wooden closet, I took out my backpack made of thick black fabric similar to suede; it was roomy, and I often took it with me to the plein air.

  There I put several brushes of different sizes, a palette knife that had become dirty over time, and napkins to wipe my hands and brushes. For paints, I only took a large, heavy tube of titanium white since all the necessary paints were always prepared in advance and squeezed out on my palette, which I kept in the freezer during breaks from painting. Thus, thanks to my cunning artist trick, they could be preserved as fresh for many months.

  I took the palette out of the freezer. It looked rather strange next to the pieces of frozen meat.

  I placed the palette in my compact wooden travel pochade box and tightly closed the lid with a small lock.

  A couple of small, but different-sized blank canvases stood in the corner of my studio, waiting in the wings for a colorful transformation. I took them both in case one would be better suited in format for the composition of my future sketch. This whole process was similar to how a fisherman gathers his gear in anticipation of a rich catch. So, like a fisherman, I carefully collected my artistic tools every time in anticipation of a successful painting.

  Having placed, as it seemed to me, everything I needed for painting in my backpack, I put on comfortable emerald-colored denim shorts, a light mustard-colored linen shirt, and snow-white sneakers, and in one wide swoop I hoisted the backpack onto my shoulders. As I walked past the kitchen, I grabbed a small bottle of water from the kitchen table so that thirst wouldn’t prevent me from concentrating on the painting. And opening the top drawer of the chest of drawers standing at the entrance, following the instructions of the messenger, I took my passport.

  The weather was so wonderful and welcoming that it would be a big miss not to ride a bike today.

  I locked the front door of the house and went down to a small warehouse under the porch of the house, where old household utensils were stored. Among all this rubbish stood my bicycle, which I brought with me and had never taken out since the day I moved to Chalkidiki.

  I brushed the dust off it with an old piece of cloth lying on the shelf at the entrance. Then, using small finger pressures, I checked the tire pressure. To my surprise, despite the long period of oblivion, my iron horse turned out to be quite ready for new adventures.

  Having rolled my bike along the path to the exit, I opened the latch and opened the metal gate door.There was no one around for hundreds of meters, only flocks of birds chirped restlessly, where seagulls soloed among all this discord.Probably from lack of habit , I slightly awkwardly climbed onto the bike and began my journey.

  At the very first meter, I swayed from right to left, but with each subsequent turn of the wheel, I felt more and more lightness and freedom, as if the wind itself had carefully picked me up. After a couple of hundred meters, I came out onto a country road that ran parallel to the seashore on the left. Three fishing boats were heading towards the shore, returning from their morning fishing. And only the sound of their engines stood out among the harmony of awakening nature. The sea was unusually calm; a barely perceptible breeze created small ripples on its surface. The sunlight reflected in this slight trembling and created a magical flickering of golden highlights on the surface of the sea, each of which always appeared at an unexpected point and immediately disappeared, as if playing catch-up with my gaze.

  In the distance, one could see the shores of Kassandra, the first leg of Chalkidiki. And from the shore of Sithonia, the second leg where I settled, in clear weather, one could quite clearly distinguish in the distance a series of villages that stretched along the inner coast of the neighbouring peninsula.

  The morning state of nature always awakened in me feelings of delight and gratitude. The day is just beginning, and it seems that everything is possible...

  The road to the village went up and down, repeating the relief of low hills.I made an effort as the road climbed, rising from the seat of the bike and standing on the pedals. And then I enjoyed the free descent down, like a bird flying!

  Rushing on a bicycle at speed down the road from the slope and releasing the brakes, I thought, “This is how I would race towards fate, throwing away all control. Simply, easily, trusting life and God.” Riding down the hill, I felt the oncoming flow of a warm, gentle wind on my face. (Look how it was.)

  The aromas of nature along the road changed several times per second. Spicy chamomile, fragrant Louise with obvious notes of hops, the slightly bitter smell of chamomile, and yellow flowering gorse bushes fragrant with honey sweetness danced in the streams of the fresh morning breeze. All this was similar to how I would open a thick volume of an encyclopedia of medicinal Greek plants and, instantly flipping through all the pages of the book, I immediately felt all the aromas of the herbs on each page turned over. I greedily caught each of the aroma, inhaling them deeply and everything seemed perfect to me.
I continued on my way completely absorbed in this moment.

Read Chapter 3 ➔