"There are moments when pure chance can flick a switch and change the direction of your internal [life]..."
~Lawrence Osborne, City of Spirits
I arrived on the island October 31, 2016 on a writing sojourn. Around this corner, the ferry gently approached the port where mules and their handlers await your bags. Modernity ends at that exchange. You walk to your lodging (and the rest of your time), and the animals oblige quietly and help your way. That is the Gulf of Saronic, reaching the summit monastery on Mt. Eros, over a mountain vegetation of olives and sage. A terroir absent carbon pollution, the island itself supplies what the sea gives - there is a pristine organic exchange of nutrients at the ecotones (the coastline), not degradation. And the beneficiary is food. Only known by the Greeks is the secret of the one and only calamari of Hydra, prepared at no cost to the indigeniety of the squid; grilled or fried in olives and sage, your lemon is your lemon, and this dish is your juice of all. Cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, more olives and capers and cubes of feta cheese (Fall is its season - goat's milk at its ripest), you have your staple salad for the table oil. White wine and I kicked back. I just barely arrived in this present.
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