A river breaks out thence, where the Spirit of the Carpathians was born.
Does anybody hear as somebody, far away in the mountains, throws into a tremendously deep abyss gigantic stones that ramble like a thunderstorm; or combs the forests by an invisible ax? It is He, powerful and majestic, left where He was born, having doomed Himself not for loneliness, but for happiness of freedom.
Being young, He caressed His clouds on the highest pasture lands. He lay on the soft grass, and blueness of His eyes blended together with sky blue. He rose up into the sky like a bird, flying over an unknown far land, which is why the wings sprang up on His back. He penetrated into the deepest bowels of the Earth like a snake, caressing His lover, the Earth. He became Her Spirit while She became His Flesh.
Upon the peak of a high mountain there sits a great Bird, having found peace in loneliness. It is He, relaxing after a long fly. And white Stones narrate to Him their feelings as they lie there under the hot Sun, and rains, and snowfalls, and playful winds; lots and lots of events have passed there before their eyes. They are reminiscing what happened there on that place millions of years ago… Those Stones live by their own reminiscence and the latter destroys them. Yet He pays no attention neither to them, nor to their narration; He just listens to them, in silence. For He is in love with Her, and Her mountains, and forests, and pasture lands, and rivers, and creeks. She allows Him, and only Him, to enter inside Her, disclose Her mysteries and acquire strength and life.
Every morning He enters into a river, just at the time when the Sun, with a flame of its rays, touches Her hair and the wind combs it while rocking Her centuries-old pine-trees. The lover covers him by wet, transparently clear kisses that are crystal cold and arduously hot at the same time. She becomes water in the river to kiss Him, and then He turns into the Great Kite to caress Her land and bowels. And He evaporates from Her after rainfalls…
One can meet Him on the paths of gloomy impassable forests. He may appear as either a grey-haired old man, or a young man, or a bird, or a snake or even a haze. The Spirit is everlasting and indefatigable; He is the natural force of the Carpathian slopes.
© Vesela Naydenova.1996.
