On to Cap Korakas

Text: Dimitris Noulis

Rocks chiseled by wind and water

It is a sunny and windless February morning. On Paros, an agricultural island by birth, Spring is making herself already felt. Our eyes are filled with the greenness of the new crops on the fields and the blueness of the archipelago that surrounds the land. A palette of cold colors, say the experts and the beaches are empty. Still, the brown earth and the stones that spring from her guts make up for the loss of warmth.

Maybe that is the reason our two Parian friends have chosen this particular path to take us on. Hospitable as they are in a true Greek way, they want to show us the best the island has to offer. Meaning, the simplicity of the Cyclades’ drawing lines as well as the intensity of their light. A combination that balances on the edge of the rocks. And what better than the path that through a forest of rocks leads to Faros, the lighthouse!

We leave our car at the entrance to the cape. There are quite a few flowers flowering between the stones but they cannot tame the wildness of the landscape. The path and its surroundings have something primitive that takes us back across the time and across our senses. When nature could still win our respect and our relations with her had the immediacy of worshipping.

Rocks chiseled by wind and water, either the rain’s or the sea’s and their interaction, that digs into the stone giving them the most amazing shapes.
From up close the diversity of their colors is astonishing. More likely because the rocks are full of mineral sediments that shine under the sun. But still, there is a toughness, a… ferocity in the air. Something out of this world!

At that moment, when you feel abandoned by that ancient Greek “median” and are more likely expecting to come up against a giant raven(=korakas in greek), you find yourself in front of the most optimistic contrast: the whitewashed Faros with its blue dome, on the shoulder of the huge rock! Like a proud feather crest on the edge of an old soldier’s cap. And everything finds its way back to more humane proportions. As when the contract of trust we had signed with nature was still valid.
But this is the story of another path on Paros’ rocky spine…