IN GRANDFATHER’S FOOTSTEPS

I place my feet carefully in the prints of Pan Nicolai’s brown rubber boots, as we make our way up a slippery mud trail toward the crest of a range of mist-shrouded hills. Marilyn follows closely behind me, clomping in too-large hiking shoes supplied by Misha and Tanya, our solicitous hosts at  “Bokorosh”, a family home turned travellers’ inn in the village of Mizheria, in Synevir National Park.It is our first day in the Carpatian Mountains of Ukraine.

 Our sturdy 74-year old guide, dressed as for a Sunday outing in Alpine hat and tweed jacket, pauses and gestures with his walking stick to the panorama that surrounds us.  In every direction, deep green grass dotted with tiny alpine flowers spreads across alpine meadows, here and there punctuated with sudden splashes of deep crimson clover.  Soft air, pure with the incredible freshness of rain-washed countryside encourages deep, refreshing breathing. The mountainsides are crisscrossed by trails along which cows are led to the upper meadows to pasture, and patched by gardens tended by village families behind tattered rail fences. The Carpathians, this corner at least, appear to have neither benefited from nor been blighted by the post-Communist rush to modernize Ukraine.

Friends at Ostroh University in Western Ukraine had urged my friend, Marilyn and me to stay at  “Bokorosh”, a family home turned travellers’ inn in the village of Mizheria, in Synevir National Park during our visit to the Carpathian Mountains in Ukraine. As I gazed at the endless stretches of meadows and trees, the brilliant blue sky, and below us the village of houses strewn randomly across the valley,  I silently thank those friends, as well as the  bus driver and the helpful locals who had brought us to this part of our journey.

The bus ride from the town of Kamyanetz-Podelsky was a peaceful four hour journey through villages, hills, gardens, forests, that makeup this the gentle, beautiful countryside. In the town of Ivano-Frankivsk, our driver, assigned a hapless young man the task of finding us a way to the  village of Mizheria, where our host, Misha, had agreed to meet us.  With the help of a couple of local travellers the reluctant assistant soon got into the game, commandeering a taxi for four of us and bargaining him down to a fee of about $7 per person  A short journey at Ukrainian taxi speeds on narrow roads winding through deep forests,  curious glances and a few questions by friendly park militia, a phone call on our behalf by one of the other taxi passengers, and we were soon receiving the traditional kiss on both cheeks from our relieved and welcoming host who wondered how two non-Ukrainian women would find their way to his lodge.