A Summit in Slovenia
Five thousand feet up in thin air. Tongues of last year's snow sleep in the gullies under pine-litter like a horsehair blanket. More lichen than needles lasts on the trees. A cloud moves through the wood. It brings dull bells of drop-eared sheep. A cuckoo mocks itself. Somewhere up in the mist is a line: the mountains shed their names and become Italian, or Austrian. Forest, frontiers alike, the cloud slips through.
There's a chapel, with cardboard icons. Four hundred Imperial prisoners of war lifting the road, coil by coil, to the pass went under an avalanche: the Tourist Board translates for English, French and Germans.
There's a beery hut. The man behind the bar pilots a radio dial to catch the midday news in any of five languages, all garbled by a sound like crumbling scree. We're too far up, above it all; reception's poor.
In the woods, the ants are building empires, ziggurats of pine-dross, towers of Babel. They need only a flagpole; I plant my stick. Hundreds swarm up. At the top, they wave then blunder back, wagging antennae: Brothers, turn back! It's all a terrible mistake!
Philip Gross
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