…a Dalmatian island & its whispering cypresses…

In a few days I’ll be leaving the still very cold and rainy Swedish summer days. A short flight, a bus ride and a boat trip later my eyes will at last rest as they gaze over my favourite place on earth, the Dalmatian islands in the Adriatic sea.

There’s something very special about that area, and about one island, and one small fishing village in particular, that makes me keep coming back year after year. It’s as if the warm, dry air itself has a calming effect on my restless soul. As if the crystal blue color of the sea replaces anything that might be darker than itself. As if the sea salt there has an opposite effect – instead of worsening them it cures all my wounds.

There’s something about that place that heals me, never lets me down. Whenever I feel lost I can go back there and I always find myself in the silent sunrises warming up the sea, in the white stones and green, wooden jalousies so characteristic of the place, in the familiar sound of the waves breaking against the stoney shore and in the tall, green cypresses that seem to be whispering “It’s not just us, you can reach the sky too!”

For some reason those cypresses on Brac seem so much more credible than any fir-tree here in Sweden, no matter how tall it might be. And for some reason, every time I come back I get this striking feeling that one part of me, maybe the deepest part, had in fact never left. It had stayed there all along, enjoying the magic of the remaining three seasons while waiting for me to return and accompany it in another one of our early morning walks…  

© 2011 M. Gutic