This is what remains of my father's home...
.... in the village of Karitsa...
... high up in the mountains of Evrytania in Central Greece...
Hadn't been back to the house since I spent a month there when I was 7 years old, but so much was familiar, especially the clay stream running down to the farm below the house, the scents of oregano and tea growing wildly everywhere, the giant bugs and the silence.
The road to Karitsa passes through a gorge...
... the closest point between the cliffs is known as
"To Kleidi" or "The Key," and has been called that since ancient times, at least since the time of the late Romans / early Byzantines who used the pass to block invasions. The people of the region are still known as Roumeliotes, a derivation of Romans. This is also the region of ancient myth: Atalanta and the Boar hunt in Aetolia or Calydonia. During the Ottoman Empire, the northern part of the region was known as the Agrafa (or, "The Unwritten") because it was simply not worth it for the Ottomans to trek through the mountains to rule it. The people were ungovernable, and the region attracted brigands and thieves. During WW2, the Greek resistance began in the nearby village of Domnista, a guerrilla militant group that was one of the key factions in the Greek Civil War a few years later.
Today, the area is relatively uninhabited, but its spectacular waterfalls, rivers and cliffs are breathtaking. The roads have also vastly improved. The last time I was here as a seven year old, we rode horses all day to reach the villages.
