In the Shadow of the Carpathians
Last week I travelled to Rakhiv, a small mountain town in south-western Ukraine nestled in the Carpathians. At first glance it was a picture of bucolic charm. But under the surface there was doubt, grief and the beginnings of division.
The small mountain town of Rakhiv is surely one of the loveliest in the Carpathians.
Surrounded by thick evergreen forests, sloping fields where hay is still stacked in the old way around a tall stick, and with the River Tisa gently flowing through it, it is the picture of bucolic charm.
In its small central square old ladies and children sit on low stools and sell three different types of local berries - all related to the blueberry - their hands and mouths stained by their wares.
In the market fresh and dried local mushrooms are stacked alongside sticks of salami made of deer, pony or cockerel and whole smoked pike, their jaws propped open by small sticks to reveal rows of perfect jewel-like teeth.
The town is enlivened by bright bunches of flowers in attractive arrangements. The accompaniment to this rural idyll is the sonorous pealing of church bells. Orthodox and Catholics live cheek-by-jowl here in what was once the frontier lands of the Hapsburg empire.
This winning trinity - the church bells, the flowers, the meandering river - combine to create a sense of calm, redolent of an older, slower, simpler, and perhaps kinder way, of living.
But the real reason for the bells and the flowers are darker. They were ubiquitous not because they celebrated life and beauty, but because they were occasioned by the death of so many of the region's young men.
And, as charming as life is in this small town appears to be at first blush, speaking with locals I became aware of a gentle but insistent undercurrent of doubt, grief, and even bitterness.
The Ukrainian war - the largest in Europe since 1945 - may be far from these mountains, but its icy tendrils reach into every kitchen and every cobblestoned courtyard.
In one such kitchen I met Tanya. She had lived in the battered eastern town of Bakhmut before fleeing the advancing Russians at the beginning of the war. Her only son was still fighting on the eastern front.
"He won't take any leave," she said. "He told me he doesn't want someone else to die in his place."
On an afternoon walk up a winding mountain lane I saw family members gathered in black outside a small stone house. A muscular young man had turned his head away from the others and wiped tears from his face.
In the pretty main square, where Hapsburg-era houses still outnumbered the unlovely concrete housing blocks of the Communist era, hung portraits of the dead. Each was inscribed with a name, a patronymic and a military unit. Some of them were barely out of their teens.
Locals, meanwhile, spoke with fear of roving government press gangs ready to scoop the unsuspecting, the unfortunate, or the poorly-organised into the army.
"You only have to get drunk and miss your bus home," a local man told me. "Next thing you are in the back of an army waggon on your way to Bakhmut."
"Once you get to the frontline there are only two ways home," he continued. "In an ambulance, or in a body bag."
I arrived in Rakhiv by rail, a wonderful five-hour journey from the western city of Lviv through rolling hills and past tiny villages where local children still came out to wave at the passing of the train.
Leaving Rakhiv to the south, three days later, I drove with friends along the River Tisa which separates Ukraine and Romania, now a member of both Nato and the EU.
And once again the war was everywhere: army checkpoints, manned by soldiers with automatic weapons, studded the roads and barbed wire had been laid out in spools. The wire was here not to keep outsiders out, but Ukrainians in.
Despite the patrols, some young men still try to sneak across the Tisa at night. More than a dozen have been swept away or died in the freezing water since the war began, locals said.
I have visited Ukraine a handful of times in the last two years. In much of the country patriotism is still vigorous and binary.
The fiery romanticism of the early war period has now faded to be replaced by a smouldering anger towards Russia and a steely determination to prevail.
During a visit I made to Kyiv in August an old man was berated for talking to me in Russian.
The national colours of Ukraine - blue and yellow - were festooned along Kyiv's main street. The foot-soldiers of Putin's army are referred to dismissively as orcs.
The national mood, nevertheless, has darkened in recent months. Many are infuriated by increasing reports of corruption, especially in the military recruitment apparatus.
In one notorious recent case, mentioned by many I spoke to, an official in charge of the draft in the southern port city of Odesa was found to have pocketed millions of euros and bought a villa in Spain for his family.
In some quarters in Rakhiv patriotic fervour has not just faded but it has curdled.
"Why should I fight for this country?" a local man asked me angrily. "Look at the state of the roads, look at the broken-down factories, all our children are forced to work abroad."
"I love my land," he said. "But my land is not Ukraine. Ukraine has done nothing for me. My land is Transcarpathia."
This dispatch is free to all subscribers. I will shortly be publishing more about Rakhiv and Transcarpathia, which is surely one of Europe’s wildest and most interesting corners and comparing it to Transylvania where I lived in the early 1990s. If you would like to receive that post, please opt for a paid subscription.
NEWS & LINKS
+ After Rakhiv, Kim and I travelled to Sepsiszentgyorgy (Sfantu Gheorghe) in Romania where I gave a talk to young Transylvanians about ‘Life After War’.
+ We are now heading back to Wild Bear Lodge and readying for our autumn bear-viewing season. The wildfires are dying down and the bears are beginning to head down the mountains.
+ If you would like to follow our adventures in the BC wilderness with the bears you can also sign up to the Grizzly Bear Diaries. Or you can also follow Wild Bear Lodge on Instagram or Facebook.
+ The primary reason for our visit to Ukraine was to meet wounded and traumatised veterans who want to take part in our Wild Bear Vets programme, a charity initiative we are running at the lodge. More soon on that.