This isn’t much of a photo but the story behind them makes it interesting.
Napoleon’s presence is still felt all over Croatia. His forts perch on top of mountains. One of our guides spoke of him with admiration: he came to Croatia and helped modernize the country, opening up roads, cleaning up the streets, basically. I cannot confirm if this is true, I’m just reporting. At any rate, with all of the evidence of antiquity in Croatia – old Roman aqueducts (that still work) stretching across the land outside of Split, etc. – there’s recent past too. The past living around us. The bullet holes in some of the walls in Dubrovnik – pointed out to us – from “the Serbs” (spoken in a tone of … hatred doesn’t even cover it) … and Napoleon’s forts, well-preserved.
So out on the beautiful island of Hvar, Ante drove us up to the top of one of the mountains. It was a very narrow road, with lots of terrifying switch-backs, definitely not a road for tourist busses. At a certain point, all signs of tourist life just vanished. It was just steep slopes, covered in fields of lavender, catching the light from the descending sun. You could smell the lavender in the air.
At one point, Ante pulled off to the side of the road. There was nothing there to be seen – no souvenir truck, no food stand, no building, nothing. It was just a small indentation on the side of the road for cars to pull off. The staggered fields of lavender stretched off in the distance. It was extraordinarily beautiful. He took us over to a crumbling wall. He wanted to show us something. Beyond was something that didn’t look like much, just a worn-out path of pebbles and rocks, sloping down the cliff.
“This is Napoleon’s road. He built it,” said Ante.
Out in the middle of nowhere. Up on top of a small mountain. Evidence. Napoleon was here. The thought of carving a road out of those cliffs – so your horses and war wagons and cannons and whatever else you had going on – could come up to the top in order to survey your territory – was an awe-inspiring feat. Maybe not Egyptian Pyramids awe-inspiring but still. I walked a little ways down Napoleon’s ride, trying to picture it, and him.
And so a small pebbly path was transformed because now I knew what it meant, and I could see the past overlaying the present, or I could see the past THROUGH the present, like translucent images laid on top of each other.
And I was very grateful to Ante, who took us to a place beyond the reach of tourist groups and busses and crowds, a lonely road in the middle of nowhere, the smell of lavender in the air, with ghostly armies climbing up and down the slopes.
