One of the things on my long-term “to do” list is to make an English Wikipedia page for our village of Podhumlje. I want to do this for many reasons, but mostly because the Croatian Wikipedia page for Podhumlje1 lists a mysterious landmark: the Bačokovo archaeological site.2

Sasha and I first read the Bačokovo page a few years ago, but it was only a couple of weeks ago that we decided to hike to Bačokovo to see if we could find any visible remnants of the Roman villa rustica3 (agricultural complex) built between 200-400 AD that are supposed to be there.

During our first visit, turns out we were exactly in the correct place, but we couldn’t find anything from the Bačokovo Wikipedia page, even scrambling through the overgrown brush. Of course, we forgot to take pictures. So we did a second hike, in the wrong place by mistake. But because of this, we stumbled upon the likely old Roman road that led to the villa compound (satellite image above, top).

Undaunted (and inspired by the large road!), we returned home and read a bit more about the site. We found the parcel numbers for Bačokovo, which belong to the town of Komiža, in the online Croatian real estate information system (Katastar) and scanned Google Earth’s satellite pictures and 3D visualizations. The parcels (approximate boundaries, red, in screenshot above) exactly matched the information on the Wikipedia page, even extending to the road we’d found on our second visit. And interestingly, two long walls leading down the hill from the road correspond, in large part, to the parcel boundaries (!).

For our next expedition, we plan to bring trimmers to better make our way through the brush. I’ll talk about it in future posts. We’re determined to find at least something from this Roman complex, though we might fail. If it’s ever excavated, one could imagine it might resemble the Bunje site on the nearby island of Brač4:

One of the things I love most about Vis is re-discovering infrastructure (most of it agricultural, built some time ago1) in the form of stone terraces and paths. I find it incredibly moving to think of the nameless, faceless humans who dug up, carved/chipped, and manipulated pretty much all the visible stones, creating structures that are useful, beautiful, and in harmony with the natural surroundings.

Over the past week, with the help of our friend Katica’s son, his superior chainsaw skills, and our new neighbors’ grazing horses,2 we were finally able to achieve something we’ve wanted to do for a long time: create a shortcut to Katica’s, our on-grid home base.3 Yesterday, after my trimming of tall grass on a small stretch of ungrazed terraces, Sasha and I happily timed our inaugural shortcut walk: 10 minutes one-way, including a now-visible stone “superhighway” (image above4) and its old stone steps (photo below).

It feels amazing to have put this ancient infrastructure back into use. It felt great to think everyone around will use it (e.g., last night Katica stopped by with another neighbor, having showed off the new path). And someday, we plan to figure out how the horses can access the superhighway part of the path.5

I leave you today with a virtual stroll. I hope you can feel my sense of wonder.

It was in Winter 2019 that we did our first “test” of living on Vis in the winter. Having negotiated remote work with our employers in Prague, we stayed on the island from January to March, loving every moment.1 We did things we’re too lazy to do now, like sit on our balcony at night or swim in wetsuits. People definitely thought we were crazy, but with few newcomers to the island in the winter, they somehow adopted us. We provided free entertainment.

We met Nediljka, as I’ve already talked about. We spent a lot of time helping Ivo and Jadranka, whom we’d already met during our annual September grape harvesting, tidying up their vineyards (photo above). It was from Jadranka that I learned how to harvest wild asparagus (Asparagus acutifolius), a true indicator that spring has sprung on Vis (photo below, first harvest, 2019).

People in Dalmatia spend many hours in March roaming through the brush, on the constant lookout for asparagus. Asparagus plants near towns are stripped immediately of their delicious and tender sprouts, which like to shoot out from the prickly parts of the plants after rain. Everyone leaves the plants intact, ensuring next year’s bounty. Over time, one memorizes plant locations (I, for example, know where each and every asparagus plant in Galiola is). Sasha and I never end up cooking wild asparagus; we love it too much. We carefully divvy up our foraged sprouts and chew on them slowly, to make them last longer. I know for certain this tradition dates back at least to Grecian times,2 but I’d put money on it having older origins.

Another indicator of spring here is the blossoming of our orchids.3 They’re tiny, just a few centimeters tall, and I am never able to capture how cute they are in pictures (below). Anyway, they look like little bees and there are many varieties. They emerge from the ground just when the bumblebees start flying around, drinking rosemary flower nectar in the spring sun. Just like with asparagus, I leave the plants in situ, watching them grow back from the ground each and every spring.

So welcome, Spring 2026! We have a special addition to the foliage this year that I’ll talk about in future posts: our new village neighbors brought their three beautiful horses to graze on the grass growing around the asparagus. The orchids.

Phoenix, rising from the ashes, was the name we gave to our ruin. Its regeneration began on October 29, 2020. That day, we bushwhacked a path towards it. We cut down the trees and bushes growing inside it (I still remember the fragrance of cut mastic, Pistacia lentiscus, from that day; video below).

Over the years, mostly because of our friend Marnel’s determination and brawn, Phoenix grew up towards the sky. Two years ago, Phoenix got a roof. Back then, we hoped the weight of the roof would stabilize the walls. But one curvy wall had its own plans and, as you know, eventually collapsed. The whole structure became unstable.

• Full album, Phoenix: https://photos.app.goo.gl/5vXHeft21j7axSYHA

• Full album, Gravitational Pull, https://photos.app.goo.gl/zTHDkZumvRNNjsjE9

Well, a Phoenix wouldn’t be a Phoenix without dying before cyclical regeneration. So over the last week, our eagerly awaited demolition crew arrived, triumphant on a sunny day after extended rain. To our amazement, they carefully deconstructed the roof, saving most of the materials, with the help of a bulldozer. You have to see it to believe it (hats off to our crew!): https://photos.app.goo.gl/aFsmP5bBepZRCc496

With Phoenix now safe, we wait. Maybe it will regenerate. Maybe not.1 In any case, we have a beautiful new forest path. Several neighbors plan to reuse the recycled components.2 In this way, Phoenix is already rising. What’s not to love about that?

So far, this year has been rainy. Not as rainy as Cornwall, but we still generally get a version of the UK storms a few days after they’ve made landfall there. Various kinds of strange-looking mushrooms have sprouted up all over the place. To keep our satellite fired up for work, Sasha plays “Solar DJ,” adding power to our various batteries with a generator when sun and wind don’t suffice.

We’d planned to reduce Sasha’s Solar DJ burden by upgrading the batteries for our wind generator. Anticipating winter, at the beginning of November, Sasha had selected equipment with our electricity helper, Marnel. New lithium batteries (plus a new inverter) with a smart battery management system (BMS), a new wind turbine controller with dump load,1 and two more solar panels. But the electrical equipment took its own sweet time getting here from China; in the meantime, Marnel picked up solar panels in Split. It was the end of December before everything arrived on the island. We needed a couple of sunny days in a row in order to install everything. With the non-stop rain, we had to wait.

And wait.

Installation Day finally arrived on February 1, in a brief window before the next big windstorm (extratropical cyclone “Leonardo”/”Stephie”). Marnel unfurled the panels (below), hauled away the old gel batteries, and hooked up all the electrical equipment in the nick of time: the system would get its first big test with Leonardo/Stephie.

Nervous about Leonardo/Stephie’s 80kph+ wind gusts, Sasha and I had had our fire extinguisher handy for “bad scenarios” (e.g., dump load overheating). But the system—though not our balcony (below; now repaired)—withstood its first test with flying colors.

Of course, if we’ve learned anything from living here, it’s to expect the unexpected. After storm Leonardo/Stephie passed, after we’d repaired our balcony, the new system collapsed. The new inverter suddenly stopped working. The new batteries were inexplicably drained of all power. Marnel came to fix each of these mysteries, but with the endless rain, we are still waiting for the new batteries to fully charge (below: BMS showing drained batteries, slightly charged a few days later, and today nearing 75%).

Until things are back at 100%, until a stretch of sunny days, Solar DJ Sasha has once again sprung back in action, firing up the generator to fill our two reserve battery systems, switching our satellite on and off to conserve power, and turning the new system off before bedtime to make sure its power isn’t drained again. Scanning the “electricity horizon” in anticipation of the next catastrophic event.

P.S. Some of you have asked what we’ll do with the collapsed ruin. We’ve decided to bulldoze it because it’s unsafe. Everything’s all arranged but delayed by rain; I’ll post about that when it happens.

Perhaps we’re just becoming more weird than ever? Here’s a list of just a few strange phenomena that have changed in us over the past four years:

• Inability to drink alcohol: Sasha and I used to look forward to drinking and conversing together after each day. We absolutely loved it. But after a year of living here, we found our bodies suddenly rebelled against alcohol. Even if we had just one glass of something, we’d get headaches and diarrhea. It’s weird. One feels awkward in social situations, and we keep trying to sip alcoholic beverages now and then. So far, we’ve always failed. Beats me why this happened!

• Hesitancy to kill life around us: I must admit I used to find it pretty easy to kill an ant, for example. I didn’t think too much about it, though I’d read that Buddhism encourages not causing injury or death in the non-human world.1 I’ve gone through vegetarian phases (the longest lasting nearly eight years), but give up every now and then, simply because it’s still hard to be vegetarian in Central & Southern Europe and one wants to be polite. When I have to eat meat or fish, I find it harder than ever. Neither Sasha nor I can find it within ourselves to kill most pests. Like, we should burn the nest sacks of pine processionary caterpillars around (and we did do the first winter!), since they weaken our pine trees. But we just can’t do it anymore. It’s gone so far with me that I don’t even like weeding and often let random plants grow wherever they want. Overall, this feeling appears to be strengthening rather than waning.

• Difficultly wearing clothes: After a previous lifetime of “dressing up” for work, we now have the privilege of working online. This means we don’t have to think about clothes or “looking cool in the eyes of the world” anymore. Which feels amazing, but we still can’t decide what to do with all our fancy clothes. They sit, waiting for moths to attack them, tucked away in storage in Podhumlje. Having no neighbors, we especially love “clothing optional” summers (donning clothes for visitors, online meetings, and going to town, of course). Our feelings are so strong about that that I just told Sasha this morning, for example: “You know what’s hardest about winter here? It’s not the windstorms or the darkness. It’s having to put on all sorts of clothing!” To avoid clothes in the winter, I often roam around in a furry bathrobe+hat+flipflops (first photo below), if there are no meetings on the schedule. “Winter Sasha” attire is a bright orange jacket+sweatpants+hat (second photo below, showing off our receptacles for night peeing so we don’t have to go outside).

  

  

• Difficulty getting inspired to eat: We have a rotation of pretty healthy, mostly vegetarian meals we cook, often including our own produce (especially in the winter when there is abundant kale and arugula). But overall (and perhaps it’s a factor of aging [?]), nothing really tastes that great. So, we try different recipes and such, sometimes retreating to a restaurant in despair (in winter, there are only a few restaurants open). Overall, eating ain’t like it used to be, so we supplement our healthy meals with our vices. They somehow still satisfy. For me, this often means (too much) Zero Coke; for Sasha, it’s chocolate.

A lot else in us has changed, I hope for the better. It’s curious because the outside world seems to be getting worse. All in all, when we think about it, we find ourselves repeating how lucky we are to not have died before this experience. We feel like we’re living in extra time, beyond what we could ever even imagine.

For those of you who’ve not been to Vis in winter, you’re missing out, because as dry and desert-like the island is in summer, it becomes a lush green in winter, fed by winter storms. And there are flowers! As I speak, the rosemary bushes are blooming purple; my self-seeding arugula patch has recovered from its summer dormancy and this generation is starting to flower (photo above).

The weather, even on a rainy day like yesterday (below, coffee on the festive Komiža riva [waterfront promenade]), means one spends a lot of time outside. Whenever the sun emerges, we all bask in its light.

Wishing you and yours a wonderful holiday season. Thank you for joining us here, and looking forward to relating more tales from Galiola in 2026.

At least once a year, Sasha gets the same call from Nediljka regarding her nemesis, Mirko. Mirko roams the forest near her beloved Dragodid because he swears by the health benefits of Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis).1 If you encounter Mirko in the forest, he will, unprompted, tell you at length how all his ailments have been cured by just inhaling the scent of these magical pines. He bumps into Nediljka a lot during his “pine bathing” strolls, so if she loses something, he’s (in her mind) the first and most convenient suspect.

“Mirko did it again!” Nediljka always exclaims in her annual nemesis-related phone call to Sasha. “Who? Slow down! What’s going on?” “It’s my kosir (“billhook” in English, a cutting tool that functions both as an axe and a knife)!2 I bet Mirko took it!”

Nediljka always ends up finding her treasured kosir later. But her distress is real, since her kosir’s her most useful tool. She uses it daily. To cut holm oak (Quercus ilex; its acorns are ripening as we speak, photo above) branches with leaves her goats like to eat. To bushwhack Aleppo pine branches that happen to get in her way during daily treks.

Just like the never-ending Nediljka-Mirko confrontations, there is an eternal island debate that can flare up when you least expect it. People are passionate about the issue: Which is “more-native-to-Vis”, holm oak or Aleppo pine?

Pine-haters (obviously not Mirko) go to great lengths to express their hatred of the trees, which they feel Tito and those “goddamn Communists” planted in the 1950s, even bulldozing whole patches of forest on their properties. Oak lovers, in contrast, extol the wondrous nature of its wood for burning, declaring pine “dirty” and barely fit for one’s fire (photo below: our pine and oak forest, with gathered brush from both trees ready for winter burning). Nediljka appears to be neutral in the pine vs. oak debate, claiming her grandmother survived on holm oak acorn bread hiding up in Dragodid during WWII while burning dry branches from both oak and pine.

There is some evidence that people throughout history did bake acorn bread3 (and even press acorn oil!),4 getting useful tannins for softening leather that I guess offset the laborious tannin-leeching process. So, holm oak’s been around for ages in this neck of the woods, but so too has Aleppo pine. While pine wood might not be preferred, pine tar and resin were essential for waterproofing ancient ships.5

While I couldn’t find any substantive sources about post-WWII pine planting on Vis, meaning I can’t definitively settle the debate, I did discover that both trees likely came to islands across the Mediterranean before there were humans. In fact, the prevalence of one over the other may depend on changes in rainfall across time, regardless of human forest management practices.6 It may be that there are now more pines than oaks on Vis than in the past; maybe they are better at surviving climate changes.7 But because no one’s ever counted the numbers of pines and oaks on the island (and there are no plans to do so), we will likely never know.

Whatever. Just like Nediljka, I’m staying neutral in the Great Pine vs. Oak Debate.

After the tourists go home, Wednesdays and Sundays are pheasant hunting days on Vis. The sounds of barking hunting dogs and rifle shots start slightly before dawn, resounding through the surrounding landscape. I can tell they’ve caught something if the commotion stops. Eventually, it always does. Sometimes, I find feathers (above photo, with oil painting by our deceased friend Michael).

It’s true we have a lot of ring-necked pheasants here on Vis, but I don’t mind them. They dig funny holes in the garden during the summer, squawk around, and fly away if I get near them. The pheasant hunting tradition on Vis most likely been here since antiquity, with the presence of pheasants being documented in Ancient Greece,1 with further introductions by Ancient Rome.2 Some locals might dispute this, but I like to think of it this way.

Probably because the pheasants always remind me of my South Dakota childhood. In 1970s South Dakota, pheasants were ubiquitous. The (non-native) ring-necked pheasant is the state bird, even though they were purposefully “introduced” there only in 1908.3 I know that one of my grandfathers, my mom’s dad, a veterinarian, was an avid pheasant hunter (more on that in a moment; he’s on the left in the first photo below with his plane). My other grandfather was, too (he’s in the second photo, with my dad’s older brother4).

Although pheasant meat, even in sandwich form,5 appears on some South Dakotian menus, I don’t remember my mom or dad or us kids ever touching the stuff, though I might remember incorrectly. We had good reason, knowing that my mom and her brother had had to pluck the feathers off and/or skin the countless pheasants hunted by my grandfather. In the 1950s, pheasant hunting in South Dakota was actively encouraged. There was a daily hunting limit of eight birds per person. “Pheasant hunting tourism” was even introduced to help reduce their numbers (by then, the population was millions strong).6

My mom’s dad died many years before I was born. As the most famous pheasant-related legend about him goes: he was out in his brand-new convertible, hunting pheasants. Driving across the western SD prairie, focused on setting his sights, he didn’t notice an impending cliff. Jumping out of the moving car at the last minute, just like in the movies, he was uninjured. Upon coming home, when asked about his car, he couldn’t care less. His only statement: “I had to walk back home in my goddamn cowboy boots!”

My grandfather’s statement echoes in my head whenever the dogs start barking on Vis. When the rifle shots start going off. I imagine my mom, her brother. Both of them, buried under mountains of South Dakota pheasant feathers.

Earlier this week, one wall of our quasi-art project (i.e., rebuilding the stone ruin on our property for a storage place using somewhat traditional methods) collapsed. Thankfully, our friend working in the interior of the ruin jumped out of the way, with tragedy just narrowly avoided.

Now, in the aftershock, we feel at an impasse. Safety in the next phase is of utmost priority. It’s hard for us two 50+-aged people to even think of removing the gigantic stones from the ruin’s interior. The place can’t be legalized (especially now). We don’t have endless funds for any next step, which might mean:

• Tearing down the ruin completely.

  • But how?

• Finding someone who could evaluate:

  • Can we safely do rock removal work in the interior (or not)?

  • How do we know that the other walls are stable (I’ve noticed one wall, the one opposite the collapsed wall, has shifted slightly)?

  • What would be the safest, cheapest, fastest, and easiest way to then minimally finish off the storage space? Neither Sasha nor I, after witnessing the unforgettable sound of the collapse and feeling that split-second of worry about the fate of our friend before we knew he was o.k., wish to ever risk anyone sleeping in the place.

Right now, we’re thinking through everything. Trying to keep clear heads. So I thought, dear readers, if you have any thoughts about what to do, please indicate your choice. And if you have any creative ideas, please let me know in the comments.

I was quite oblivious to the world of insects before living up on Mt. Hum. But as we enter our fourth winter perched up away from human settlements, I am increasingly astounded by the mostly useful functions of the “aliens” in our midst. We keep spiders, to name just one example, inside our cabin now; they eat mosquitoes, gnats, and other pests (i.e., the black pine sawyer beetle, Monochamus galloprovincialis). I am an absolutely terrible “amateur naturalist” and can never even remember the names of my various observations. But I wanted to record here that this year, I’ve noticed a markable increase in the number and variety of mantids basking in the late-autumn sun. One I spotted (but forgot to photograph) was yellow; another was brown (below, likely the Mediterranean mantis, Iris oratoria; video above from Sept. 2022, likely the European mantis, Mantis religiosa).

A couple of days ago, I learned that our semi-feral cats, who aren’t afraid of most creatures here, fear a mantis showing its “startled display” (below). This particular mantis hissed like a snake upon seeing a cat who’d stumbled upon it by accident. The cat immediately retreated. I was awestruck at this sight.

Never-before-seen-in-Croatia mantids are slowly making their way here.1 I am glad the ones who’ve been here longer, like those pictured here, aren’t too bothered by us. They even let me pick them up and move them away from danger (e.g., when trimming grass). They don’t tremble in my hands. They don’t hiss. It humbles me to think that they implicitly understand I don’t mean them any harm. That we share this environment.

A couple of weeks ago, Sasha and I stumbled across an older documentary about Vis. Our friend and neighbor Katica lives in the house complex you see in the screengrab1 above, the one with the red roof. We do our laundry at her place. Rent a storage place from her. “Katica!” Sasha called her on the phone as soon as we finished watching the segment that featured our neighboring village of Podhumlje, “Your place is famous! It was a morgue in WW2!”

Yes, a morgue. Back in 1944, towards the end of World War II. Nazi Germany was occupying the closest islands (Hvar, Brač). The Allied Forces, advancing through Italy, banded together with the Yugoslav Partisans, united in one goal: to not let the Nazis take Vis.

Vis quickly became a military stronghold, with a strategically important emergency landing airfield and serving as a launching point for commando raids to occupied Hvar and Brač. The British and Partisans quickly established field hospitals (think M*A*S*H) for wounded Allies and civilians, with the main surgical center being “our Podhumlje” (in Katica’s house and those surrounding it). To my great fortune, the surgical center’s operations together with snippets about daily life were recounted by Podhumlje’s British surgeon and his son in Stretchers Not Available: The Wartime Story of Jim Rickett.2

While there are aspects of the book that are hard for this “woke” 54-year-old to stomach (e.g., the descriptions of women’s roles and fates3 together with racist descriptions of Yugoslavs4), I still devoured the text with relish, because it was chock-full of interesting details about life at that time. What people ate,5 how they managed electricity and water,6 how they moved around the island,7 and so on.

Most interestingly (to me), Rickett describes how Podhumlje became the social meeting center for troops on the island (p. 196: “our mess quickly became the official club on the island”). Our village’s 15 minutes of fame! Troops housed in Komiža and Vis would gather in this makeshift club, where (according to Rickett) the island’s only piano was moved. Rickett credits Podhumlje’s popularity to the roaring fireplace and endless requisitioned wine in the surgeons’ mess (sketch below, p. 195).

Rickett notes there was actually an American expatriate on the island at that time, fatally wounded during an airstrike in the town of Vis on March 27, 1944. I’m not the first expat to think about dying here on the island, turns out:

“An old expatriate American called Joe was badly hurt with a severely crushed chest when the hospital [in Vis town] was hit [by the German air raid]. Joe had left a comfortable life in America before the war started...[h]e had opted for the somewhat Spartan life on the island…. When asked why he had left America, he replied, ‘It’s okay for the dough, but it ain’t no place to die.’ Dalmatia was where he always said he wanted his life to end, and that night he was granted his wish.”

Joe’s last name isn’t included in the text. I can’t get him out of my mind when I pass the pile of WW2 barbed wire I’ve gathered cleaning up the terraces over the years (below). The headlines these days are full of saber-rattling. Of violence against so many people. Totally unnecessary things.

This use of numbers for months is particularly handy for language learners like me. It’s easy to remember the appropriate word endings for numbers, and everyone immediately understands what month I’m talking about. It was from Nediljka that I first learned this linguistic shorthand.

In Nediljka’s mind, every month (number) is assigned a certain activity that she performs on cue. An annual drama with 12 scenes. To me, it seems like this must be some kind of historical imprint, a trace of pre-modern life. Of course, in island towns, the bells would toll to mark time’s passage every day (they still do), but Nediljka grew up far beyond earshot of these chimes. I often imagine that, in her home village of Dragodid, chore-filled days would flow together. Seasons would come and go; certain activities (mostly related to agriculture) had to happen at the right time.

I haven’t been able to record all of her month designations; as the seasons now turn, I wanted to give you a few examples:

• 3rd month: time to harvest immature pine cones for syrup (below: 3.2020, Sasha and me in Dragodid)

  

• 7th-8th months: time to harvest rosemary (below: Nediljka with donkey Gali, 07.2020)

  

• 9th month: time to harvest grapes

• 10th month: time to start harvesting olives

• 11th month: time to press oil from the olive harvest (below: Nedilka at the Podšpilje agricultural cooperative with their donkey, 11.2024)

Anyway.

I’m astounded how quickly time has passed since last September. The days are getting shorter. I find myself using the number shorthand (“It’s the end of the 9th month. It’s almost time for the olives to start ripening.” )

I sometimes think we might be the last generation who really knows how to create fun for ourselves out of nothing. I’m not sure, but maybe it originates from a culturally-enforced lack of reverence for wealthy people (both Sasha and I experienced this, despite growing up on different sides of the Atlantic) combined with parents who, thankfully, forced “us kids” to go outside and entertain ourselves from dawn to dusk. Regarding the latter: when one spends most of the day wandering around, one learns to entertain oneself with whatever’s on hand. Be that playing with random kids. Digging in dirt. Even swimming in gutters.1

Fall harvests on Vis, the last few years the old-timers were still active,2 used to be entertaining in this creative way. The point of the harvests, beyond the obvious gathering of grapes for wine or olives for oil, was also—importantly—about spending time together and telling tales saved and refined all year for these moments.

We harvested grapes for the first time in September 2017 (video below; image and video above from 09/20183). One day, our rental scooter broke down. Ivo, dad of the guy we’d rented our scooter from (and a butcher before mass tourism arrived on Vis), picked us up. Initially gruff on the way back to town, Ivo’s heart melted once Sasha started interrogating him about the vineyards full of ripening grapes. “My vineyard’s right there,” Ivo pointed out the window. “Wanna give me a hand? We’ll grill some fish and bring some wine!”

Harvest day rolled around. By chance, local legend Jakov (short form: Jaki, meaning “strong one”) strolled into the vineyard, offering a helping hand. We were warned by Blagoje4 (short form: Blagi, “mild”), Ivo’s right-hand man, that Jaki was famous for wandering around the island and “liberating” useful items from absent property owners. Well, Jaki greeted our crew and rolled up his sleeves: “Did you guys have lunch yet?” Upon spotting Sasha and me, he swiftly launched into his well-known introductory script for foreign tourists: “Sono Giacomo dell'isola di Lissa.5 Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita / mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, / ché la diritta via era smarrita. // Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura / esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte / che nel pensier rinova la paura!”6

“Cut the crap!” — Ivo and Blagi rolled their eyes, trying to shush him: “They understand Croatian.”

Undaunted, Jaki switched languages and continued, promptly recounting another of his prepackaged stories intended for domestic tourists: “Way back in 1944, when English and American troops were deployed on the island, my old man had just turned twenty. He had a bum leg, so he didn’t get conscripted by the Partisans. Instead, they shipped him to the refugee camp in El Shatt with old men, women, and children from all around Dalmatia. There, in the middle of the desert, he was the best man available. I myself was conceived over there. The old man, until his dying breath, couldn’t stop gloating about how he’d never ever had so much sex as he did in that Sinai refugee camp. All thanks to his bum leg!” Even Ivo and Blagi, who must have heard this tale at least a hundred times, burst into laughter. And so the stories and harvesting continued on and on, through lunch and after, all the way up until we’d plucked the last cluster of grapes.

I guess some traces of this kind of jibe-filled harvesting are still around. People still tell a few jokes, share meals. Volunteers usually receive a gift of a carefully-measured liter of wine or oil in exchange for one’s help.7 But it seems to me that the old-timers’ “create something out of nothing,” non-reverent spirit is fading as they leave the stage. I’m not sure what it all means. Harvesting just feels increasingly awkward as time passes. And Jaki’s Dante spiel for foreign tourists, more and more often, springs to mind:

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.

. . .

(Inferno, Canto I. Translated by H. W. Longfellow)

This reminded me that I haven’t recorded yet what has worked well in my “Mad Gardener” experiments (sample above, from today: hot peppers, amaranth, arugula), and what has been an utter failure. Let’s start with the latter.

• Total failures:

  • Corn (loved by rodents and too hard to protect)

  • Cucumbers (they don’t like it anywhere I’ve tried growing them here)

  • Drought-resistant beans from Arizona (rodents also love them and too hard to protect them; I just grow enough to replace my supplies to try another year with a slightly-different technique)

  • Fig trees (only on the upper part of our land, where I can’t water them every day; barely alive after this summer)

• Successes:

  • Amaranth (though it starts growing in September instead of at the start of the season like it’s supposed to, in random places where I never seeded it)

  • Arugula (“children” of my Prague arugula; salad all winter and o.k. pre-winter harvest starting now)

  • Avocado (I let them sprout from uncured compost)

  • Collard greens (sturdy little plants through drought and more than we can eat in winter)

  • Fig trees (the ones near water, where I can water them every day)

  • Herbs (specifically: oregano, rock rose, rosemary, sage - no water required; thyme - water required)

  • Hot peppers (when in oil barrels and containers protected by terracotta pots)

  • Ice plant Mesembryanthemum cordifolium (one can theoretically eat it in salads, but it’s quite salty)

  • Kale (loves our winters, but not summers)

  • Lima beans (grew well over the one test winter, but I don’t grow it anymore because Sasha and I can’t learn to love them)

  • Mulberry trees (they did much better than expected this summer)

  • Parsley (does much better than I expected)

  • Sweet peppers (in the ground; they do better than hot peppers in soil)

• Somewhere in-between:

  • Carob trees (trees alive but growing slowly, even with irrigation)

  • Citrus trees (bitter orange, lemon, kumquat, mandarine, orange trees alive but growing very, very slowly)

  • Eggplants (grow well here, but not worth the water)

  • Garlic (e.g., one grew well a year later than it was supposed to grow!)

  • Goji berries (alive, but not yet becoming the big shade bushes I expected after planting last autumn)

  • Grapes (am slowing improving our soil, but they need more nutrients)

  • Onions (grow o.k. but not worth watering all summer)

  • Pomegranate (alive but getting smaller rather than larger[!])

  • Tomatoes (no variety I’ve tried so far really loves it here, but they do o.k.)

  • Watermelons (I cannot figure out why some years are better than others in the same overall conditions)

All in all, there’s something for us to eat from my garden pretty much every day, though I can’t guarantee what or how much. There’s no way to really feed ourselves exclusively from our land, even with more plants, until I figure out a dry bean variety that would grow well here (or get chickens, which I’m not interested in doing at the moment). My main ambitions: to live long enough to see my trees producing more fruit. To improve the soil a bit more. To keep having fun2 doing my various “Green Prison” experiments.

Supplementary reading:

Semple, E. C. (1928). Ancient Mediterranean Agriculture: Part I. Agricultural History, 2(2), 61–98. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3739455 (open access; lessons already known by the ancients basically match my non-scientific observations here so far)

Semple, E. C. (1928). Ancient Mediterranean Agriculture: Part II. Manuring and Seed Selection. Agricultural History, 2(3), 129–156. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3739730 (open access)

• For those interested (Jan. 2021-Aug. 2022): cabin-building photo album

Last August, Michael stopped by for coffee, his t-shirt emblazened: THINK. ACT. SHARE. He’d wanted to drop off a portrait of us he’d painted before he left for Austria (video below). It was the last time we saw him. Although we hadn’t discussed it, we all knew he was leaving for good.1

Since then, it’s been hard for Sasha and me to plan anything related to construction. Michael’s gone. While he’s literally all around us (in our walls, in our floors, in his beloved drystone walls), his seat stands empty. His red Kaizer Franz cup on the table.

“Grandpa told me that the vineyards, including the ones on your land, extended almost to the top of Mt. Hum. The work was hard: constantly working to improve the quality of the soil, the villagers would transport animal dung uphill with their donkeys from their village (image below: Podhumlje1 viewed from our place) up onto the terraces. It was exhausting. After rainstorms, the enriched soil would wash down the hillsides; the villagers would gather it up again, then carry it back uphill again. Well, the reason why there are no grapes left on the terraces is that when Grandpa inherited his land (including your land), his hatred for all grape-related work compelled him to rip up all the vines. He and his brother replaced everything with rosemary.”

This story’s echoed in my head these past days. Looking around, watching my little garden bounce back from the recent goat attack, staring at the not-really-calorie-filled rosemary, I’ve been wondering what it would take to survive if our current food production systems fail. While it would be possible to ride out most catastrophes on Vis,2 life would be very difficult. The donkeys are gone, the communal agricultural cooperatives are on their last legs, and so much knowledge about the food-growing (including soil maintenance) techniques has been lost. The few islanders still alive who remember bits and pieces of the past from their post-World War II childhoods (like the man we bought our land from, or our friend Nediljka), don’t seem to remember all the details. While some attempts to document fishing/sailing techniques have been made, a comprehensive analysis of island agricultural history (notably, how island women [image below: Geopark Vis3] contributed to the agriculture process) is largely absent.

To my surprise, I came across an article in the Guardian this past week that reviewed a new book4 that Sasha and I are eagerly awaiting to order. In the book, author Luke Kemp describes “the rise and collapse of more than 400 societies over 5,000 years.” Strikingly, his thoughts regarding agriculture and the loss of cultural memory dovetailed exactly with mine: that our current reliance on large-scale agricultural practices is one of the greatest dangers facing humankind. In fact, this overreliance may make it impossible to bounce back from future societal collapse, according to the article’s author, Damian Carrington, and Kemp:

“People in the past were not heavily reliant on empires or states for services and, unlike today, could easily go back to farming or hunting and gathering. ‘Today, most of us are specialized, and we’re dependent upon global infrastructure. If that falls away, we too will fall,’ [Kemp] says.”

These days, on our part of the island (my nickname: “the Sahara”), any water trapped in our terraces from the winter rains is long gone. The sage leaves have curled up. Our grapes are struggling, despite irrigation. I leave bowls of water here and there for thirsty bees, wasps, Dalmatian wall lizards, snakes. Also for the only small mammals (hedgehogs, rats, feral cats) that can survive here; one usually has only fleeting glimpses of them when thirst begins to drive them mad. Speaking of which, you can see here our new “climate change refugee,” Damar, who stumbled out of the forest about a month ago, parched, panting, out of his mind.1

We’ve always known there’s a population of wild goats in a rocky valley near us, and when I first started my small summer garden, I carefully prepared wire cages to protect from rabbits, rodents, and goats. This winter I planted more drought-resistant trees (almonds, figs, a mandarin orange, mulberrys). But I was lazy and didn’t even think about fencing off the young trees. I left the covers off the wire cages. Complacent, I’d completely forgotten about the danger of goats (below: Croatian Mountain Rescue image, rescuing a young wild goat on the coastal edge of “their” valley2).

Three days ago, I woke up to do my usual morning watering, early, before the sun burns. Upon getting close to my garden, a stench greeted me (“Male goat!”). Who knows how many goats had visited us overnight. In any case, they had taken a huge risk in getting to our place, crossing the main road from the valley. They had (unsurprisingly) drunk all the water I leave for thirsty animals. But I was taken aback when I saw they’d also surgically drained all the makeshift ollas3 I cover with rocks (yes, they had carefully moved the rocks to one side of each and every olla [!]). Almost every single green thing had been consumed. I quickly covered any “survivors” with chicken wire, screen mesh, and fruit tree nets. My post-goat garden now, more than ever, resembles a desert (below: the few remaining plants, including rosemary bushes and Greek strawberry trees).

It’s impossible to get angry at the goats. While I feel genuine sorrow for the plants and trees I’d spent all summer cultivating, at least, in the end, they helped some goats in need to, ever so briefly, quench their overwhelming thirst.

Sasha and I are the kind of people that shopkeepers smile at, bemused, when we go to the hardware store. It’s clear we have no idea what we’re doing. They’ve come to know we always have an urgent “problem” to solve, something that most folks know how to fix easily. But to the shopkeepers’ astonishment, one thing we did manage to solve, with a little help from our friends, was water access.

We had no clue about water when we bought our land (actually, we didn’t even think to ask about it). In the early days, our handy friends had many creative ideas about what to do to gather and store rain water. While this method works well for some people, ours was a different story. Before we built our road, after Sasha plus three men had already lugged a heavy tank (allegedly for potable water) uphill, they discovered it was full of a mystery chemical (“Sasha, I’m afraid to use water from it on plants. See where you guys poured that stuff out? Nothing grows there anymore!”). That tank was made of white plastic, so in the summer sun, a strange amalgam of gathered rainwater, algae, and the unknown substance congealed inside. Snakes loved being in the tank’s vicinity. Mosquitoes descended from the heavens to sting us wherever we walked. The result of our first water-related attempt: complete and utter failure.

In the meantime, our friend Marnel had decided to apply for a survey to see if the city could hook up water to a plot of agricultural land he’d recently purchased. (“It’s only 60 Euros! We have nothing to lose!”). We decided to submit an application with him. While Marnel’s survey ended up in disappointment (i.e., no city water connection possible), our survey was unexpectedly approved for future hook up. Why? It got us thinking. I scoured a detailed map our friends at the Croatian Geological Survey had given us. “Look here. This blue dot. There’s a spring up the road. Right here!” We jumped in our car to check it out. The blue dot marked a locked door; exterior faucets were also latched. Along the road, we spotted a few manholes. “Look! It’s Komiža City Water!” Emboldened by the initial approval and our discovery of the likely water source, Sasha drove down to the city water office to ask if they’d formalize our hook up. It was the depths of the pandemic; the office staff worked intermittently, but after a year, we got our chance. “There’s another guy who wants a connection near you. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of everything. That will be 1,000 Euros.”

By utter coincidence, an auxiliary city water line did indeed extend from the source we’d scouted out all the way to underneath our property, at the bottom of our road. A crew came and installed a water connection.1 We celebrated that entire summer by taking as many cold showers as possible there, hiding private parts from tourists passing by with a makeshift screen (below). By then, our cabin was well on its way to being finished, so we started sleeping there.

No one had a clue about what to do to get water up to the cabin itself. Sasha brainstormed with Michael and Marnel. They eventually decided we would need a pump that we’d intermittently run to push water uphill to a storage tank. But to run a pump, we would need electricity (a saga for another day). To get the water to the tank and to the cabin, uphill, we’d need a very long (>500m) water pipeline.

The Pipeline Plan was audaciously simple. Everyone was skeptical it would actually work:

• The agricultural piping would start at the city water connection (~250m).

• The pump would be installed at the point where the natural water pressure stopped (i.e., the altitude of the water source, ~280m).

• From there, we’d run piping along the road and up through the (yet to be cleared) brush above our cabin.

• We’d install a new 1,000l water tank there, at ~315m, in the shade (I eventually covered the tank with aluminum bubble wrap to prevent our nemesis, algae).

• From there, the pipeline would run to the cabin (~305m), where we hoped gravity would be enough for decent water pressure, enough to make it to our kitchen sink and to an external shower. For warm water, we’d install an external water heater powered by propane, one used by RV enthusiasts, that turns on once water runs through it.

• We’d pump water to fill the tank based on our water consumption (these days, we pump ~1x/week in winter; every few days in summer).

Marnel advised we cover the whole pipeline with rocks in places we couldn’t bury, to prevent damage by UV rays, rodents, and other hazards plus to keep any water inside the piping from nearly boiling (warm months) or freezing (winter, though it rarely gets under freezing here). Laying the piping itself would be challenging work, and we didn’t feel we could ask anyone to help us with that. So we just enlisted assistance for the “easier” parts: Marnel installed cabin plumbing, electricity, and the water pump; Michael helped Sasha carry the 1,000l water storage tank into position (picture at top).

Over 500m of pipeline work (laying the pipeline, covering it) then loomed in front of us. Agricultural pipeline’s made of a tough plastic, so it’s hard to manipulate. But Sasha and I did it, navigating walls, cutting through dense brush, leveling the shady spot for the tank, burying the piping wherever we could, making rock cover for the parts we couldn’t bury. We hooked everything up, started the pump with Marnel’s help, and held our breaths. Eventually, water began to flow all the way to our cabin. The water pressure was perfect. Our pipeline (sketch below) still feels like one of the greatest achievements of our lives.

That said, a random tourist once drove over it, losing control of his gigantic camper, right after we’d gotten the system up and running (solution: pipeline patch to fix the squished segment). One day, a geyser erupted at the spot where we had to join two pieces of piping together (solution: reattach the joint with bare hands). Another time, we let the water tank get too empty, letting air into the system. The next unexpected disaster is just a matter of time. Our pipeline, though, gives us the essential missing element before that happens. The thing that even Romans couldn’t solve in order to live here.2 Water.

My aunt asked me recently when I’m going to reveal the reason no one has ever lived where we do. I’d already started a post about water (Reason One; will finish that soon), but a series of events spurred me to talk to you about fear (Reason Two: extreme weather/fire danger; above: tornadic waterspount spotted 05/2024). Today, Sasha and I woke up literally shaking in our boots. Here’s why, with a list of how we tried to (obviously not so successfully) manage our fear.

Extreme heat: Strangely enough, a recent heatwave was less intense on the island than on the European continent, but it still packed a punch. Our cabin started heating up to 30C/86F+. For the first time in my life, I started feeling claustrophobic. While we want to feel climate change on our skins, I have to admit, it was kinda hard to maintain sanity throughout this heatwave.

• Fears: Claustrophobia (me). Getting heat stroke (mostly me). Unexpected fire ignited by totally dry shrubbery, grass, and trees (Sasha & me).

• How we tried to manage:

  • We added inexpensive aluminum bubble wrap to one side of the cabin to shield it from the “morning sun”; old white sheets help in the afternoon (pics below). To our surprise, this might actually work?!

  • We broke down and ordered an off-grid air conditioner (we’d been resisting this, but I started falling asleep when I need to work).

  • Over time, we’ve created a small fire escape zone, but we decided, knowing the risks, to leave our trees. For the shade. If the worst comes, we’ve come to terms with the fact our cabin will likely not survive.

Extreme weather events: Over the weekend, there was a tragedy in Texas. Yesterday, nearby Split was struck by a brief, intense wind/hail storm, resulting in extensive damage. We got swept up by the tail end of this same storm today. The worrisome part about this one: it was gigantic, stretching from the Adriatic all the way up to Russia (below).

Fears: A storm as intense as they had in Split hits us, hurling trees and branches into the air. Excessive water and/or mud starts flowing down Mount Hum (the terraces should stop this…but will they really?).

How we try to manage: Work off adrenaline with walks after big storms. Dark humor and bad jokes. “Hey,” I said earlier, “Remember how people used to build underground storm shelters? Maybe it’s time.” “Like in the Wizard of Oz?” Sasha chortled.

We’re almost over our immediate fears from earlier today. It’s okay to us if we get swept up in something we can’t control; we’re old enough to realize that anything could (and will) happen. It doesn’t mean we don’t still get afraid. What I can’t understand is why more people don’t seem totally petrified.