The falls require a benign hike on a wooden boardwalk through the forest. We stroll through trees and I breathe in the smell of dirt, stream water, and grass. It smells just as April should, and I remember that as much as I admire humanity’s architectural and artistic endeavors, there is nothing quite as sweet as being near the Creator’s original artwork. I think back to Saint Francis and his love for the birds, and I sympathize with his preference for grass and trees.
Like Victoria Falls, we hear these before we see them, a cleansing rush of water collecting in a pool. Seven waterfalls spill into a murky-blue lake, smaller than Zimbabwe’s but just as dignified. Croats cover the fields next to the lake, dining on picnic tables, lighting grills, playing Frisbee and volleyball. Our seven kids disappear into the trees and rocks along the lake and begin creating another imaginary land of their own, crafted from sticks, rocks, and mud. These sticks look identical to their counterparts in southern France, and the mud reminds me of the same stuff that collected in our campervan in New Zealand. The kids seem unable to not build another Terabithia, a Pavlovian response to being thrust into nature. Tate and Abbie swing from vines and squeal with delight over the risk of falling into the lake. I watch from a boulder, a bit sad that tomorrow they will say farewell. One family heads east to Kosovo, and the other heads farther north to Norway.
Reed asks me to help him find the bathroom, and on the way, we bump into Charlie and Megan.
“Hey, guys!” I say. “We’re from the bus.”
“Hi, yes, of course,” Megan says. “Beautiful day, right?” We squint up at another pristine sky.
“Where are the rest of the kids?” asks Charlie. I point to the waterfalls, where our gaggle’s exuberant hijinks can be spotted half a mile away.
“Man, that’s so great,” he says. “Seriously. What an education.”
We say good-bye, and I wish them luck in grad school. In life. With kids. Without. I hope they’ll nurture their own wanderlust.
On our way back to our car, we pass a surprising chapel tucked in the woods, made of stone with a simple wooden door. A cross fashioned from nearby sticks hangs above the door, and the few small windows are shuttered closed. The structure is about the size of Francis’s Porziuncola in Santa Maria degli Angeli, but it’s bare of any medieval or Renaissance frescoes. It’s a simple stone place of worship. I wonder if the Croats picnicking by the falls even know of its existence.
I stop walking and stand in silence, soaking in the chapel’s abrupt presence. Everyone else pays more interest to a small waterfall a few feet away, and for a moment, I’m alone. This chapel seems to be carved out of the woods where it rests, as though its parishioners are the birds and deer, perhaps a wandering pilgrim taking the long way back. The incense burned here would be rainwater and new grass; the Eucharist a hunk of bread in a vagabond’s backpack, saved from an earlier stop in a village bakery. The door is locked, so I walk around its perimeter and find a sign. It reads:
IN LONG AGO 1761, THIS CHURCH WAS BUILT AND DEDICATED TO ST. NICHOLAS, THE PROTECTOR OF TRAVELERS AND SEAFARERS. THE CHURCH HAS A SIMPLE PLAN AND NO PARTICULAR STYLISTIC TRAITS. ITS CLAIM TO FAME IS THAT IT IS MOSTLY BUILT OF DRIPSTONE, A NATURAL MATERIAL THAT IS EASY TO FORM, BUT AT THE SAME TIME SUFFICIENTLY LASTS A LONG TIME.
I know St. Nicholas’s story, the man our family recognizes each December with gold coins in our shoes, the saint we paid homage to back in Queensland with sweaty summertime sandals. But I had forgotten he is also the patron saint of travelers, the person entrusted to watch over nomads wandering the earth.
Over two-hundred-fifty years ago, people fashioned a simple chapel and dedicated it to Nicholas, the watchful protector of people like us. I think of him the next morning as we say good-bye to our friends, and as we hug the Croatian coastline heading south in our car. We listen to Mat Kearney and Josh Garrells, retell our favorite stories from our time with friends, and watch the sun slide between boulders bursting from the Adriatic Sea.
Tonight, I fall asleep in another guesthouse, waiting for another flight, grateful for God’s reminder of first Francis, and now, Nick.
18
KOSOVO
It was the year 2000, and Kyle and I were working for separate humanitarian organizations in Kosovo, a diminutive crumb of land that had been fought over for centuries in former Yugoslavia. He was rebuilding houses, while I was teaching English to Albanian teenagers, taking the summer to decide whether I wanted to work abroad full-time. I was with my team of volunteers, sitting inside in the heat of the day, parked next to oscillating fans and misting our foreheads with water. That’s when we heard there was a new American in town.
I was located in a village of a thousand people, two kilometers from the Serbian border. It usually doesn’t show up on maps, even the local ones. Nobody knows about the village unless you’re from the area. It was more than a little strange that an American would move here, alone. Still, we thought we should welcome our new neighbor with an invitation to dinner.
But it was broiling and I was sticky, and moving required getting out in the non-air-conditioned world, where walking down the lone dirt road meant a show for the elderly villagers as they peeked behind their curtains for the latest news.
I literally drew the short straw. Postwar technology being in short supply, a girl in my group cut a drinking straw and added it to the rest in her hands to determine who was lucky. I sometimes wonder whether I’d have a different life if I hadn’t drawn the short one.
I sighed, put on my shoes, and crept into the blazing heat. There was a high likelihood of running into everyone in this village by walking up and down the main dirt road, so this was my plan. Twenty seconds into my search, I saw a mirage, hazy atmospheric waves blurring what appeared to be an American gait. The body was coming toward me about a hundred feet away. This was my Mr. Darcy moment, though Balkan dirt road instead of pastoral British pond, dusty blue T-shirt instead of a white peasant blouse.
Kyle and I met in the middle of that dirt road.
“So, you’re the new American,” I said and instantly felt foolish.
He said, “Um . . . yep.”
I invited him to dinner that night, and he joined our group at the one restaurant in town. I noticed he made an effort to sit next to me.
A few weeks passed, and I left Kosovo, saved up money waiting tables in Austin, then returned to the village six months later. By then, Kyle had moved to a different village, but Kosovo is small and there aren’t many English speakers. We became fast friends, upgraded to dating, then married a little over two years from the day we met.
Fifteen years later, we look back at our meet cute on a dirty Balkan farm road on August 1, and we admit to knowing that afternoon. I was a spry college graduate, rosy future before me, and I looked at him and thought, I’m going to marry him. He says the same thing, standing at that spot on the road next to the ramshackle market with cheap cookies and cold Fanta. He just knew.
Fifteen years have passed, and we want to show our three children the spot on the road.