Mornings can also look like this

 

Every day, when I drive from Ljubljana to our costal region Primorje and cross the pay tool booth on the highway on Log, I usually reduce my speed. Because is it there, where my head starts to spin left and right all by itself. It is there, where you can see the Ljubljana Marsh, which was there even 6000 years ago and offered a home to those real “ecological” farmers – the pile dwellers. Their story of their work and life was beautifully captured by one of the most famous Slovene writers, Janez Jalen, in his book Bobri (literal translated: beavers). Their secrets, which are occasionally revealed through the land itself, are deeply hidden under a dense layer of fog, which didn’t and didn’t let me rest. So I decided to look into these matters myself. The tools you need to enter this magical land are quite humble. You need some water and an apple, or two. It also can’t hurt to take your camera along, although I knew that the photos I took would never truly capture the beauty it provides. And because the pile dwellers also had their ways of transportation – called “drevak” (a kind of carved wooden canoe), I took my own way of transportation, my trusted bicycle. 

 

At first you have the asphalt road, which slowly transforms into gravel and a more natural road, which again slowly disappears, kind of symbolizes that civilization itself slowly drifts away out of existence. Dawn and a layer of fog are lifting through the open plains in front, so orientation is quite hard to do. A cold, dewy August morning was showing me that autumn is slowly breaking its way through. Another sign of that fact was the corn field, which with its hard and brown leaves showed that the grain had to be collected soon. In the distance you could see the mountain Krim, which laid majestically around the field and watched over it like a lord above its worshipers, raging more than 1000 m high into the sky. Krim is the first of them all to get the first morning rays of sunshine of the day, every day.

 

 

The morning sunlight is slowly waking up its inhabitants, the animals around me. I am a small distraction in the process, but I keep my distance, to not disturb them too much. I glimpse at some looks here and there of confused animals, while they are chewing on their succulent morning grass. And from the bushed also emerges a marten, which looks at me and quickly disappears into the distance. I admire the incredible hearing of deer, which immediately start to run off when they hear my bicycle, although I am driving very quietly. Some rabbits on the path also cross my path and move out of my way, just as far away to make them feel safe, but not too far.  

 

 

 

 

There is more and more sunlight around me and across the flora emerge small rays, which make the dewdrops more and more visible. My ride across the Marshes is always followed by thin layers of silk, which were spread out by spiders in the night in hopes to catch some food for their breakfast - but all of if displays a kind of natural and innocent feeling. And the fog is almost completely cleared by now. There are a few traces of fog here and there, covering some lone fields around the Ljubljanica River current. The river flows, winding its way through like a snake and all its springs in Vrhnika till our capital. I can feel my spirits lifted, and I can especially feel this while walking, or more precisely, pedaling through the marshes.

 

 

 

 

I drive though the protected reserve Mali plac by Bevk, which is the first remaining place of the Marshes, the ones which existed before people took it under their rule and made it into an agricultural field for farmers. There, you can find all sorts of wildlife and plants and even after all this time, where I was living and surviving in nature, I didn’t see before myself. The wide path through Mali plac is a true witness to the countless masses and hordes of people, when they come to lay and rest, to overcome the daily routine and clear the true vision of their purpose and to get back in touch with the past.

 

 

The sun is high above the sky now, and the day turned into its second half. I guess I remembered my trail points of the excursion pretty well. Interestingly I find that this place offers another and whole new viewpoint of what there is to see and how it feels in the evening. I end my journey with a promise, to return to the marshes in twilight, to see and feel the land at night - and with another bicycle ride, but at nighttime. And with my two apples. And now, back to work.