Valley! (Poplar)

- The Valley from here!

- That one from over there?

- Not that one, mate – Valea Plopului!

Ah, how I wish I could 'valley' at Valea Plopului now and yesterday and tomorrow and the day after tomorrow! Have you ever lived dreams, but how should I put it, truly lived them, vividly, in the flesh – dreams with flesh and bones, with fires crackling like a campfire and with the smell of flute resin dripping onto your beards intoxicated by too much mountain song (it's never too much!!!)?

Do you know that one about the Oltenian and the giraffe? Well, Valea Plopului is the giraffe and I am the Oltenian who sees it, lives it, deeply breathes it in through all the pores of my heart and exclaims „such a thing doesn't exist!”... Something like that, except it does exist! It really does exist!If you can dream it, you can do it, dear Oltenian blessed with the gift of seeing and especially of living the giraffe! (I respectfully and lovingly greet all Oltenians who inhabit the house of my chest, I love you, you wonderful and amazing people, you are mine, come on, tell me, two Oltenians crossed the Olt, after them two more crossed, how many Oltenians crossed the Olt back and forth? Whatever you answer, I still love you, you know, right?, even if the correct answer is 3, because Rădoi crossed too, poor guy...)

Riiiiight, excuse me, what was I actually trying to tell you!

Do you know what it's like to be woken up at 6 AM by a sweet melody clanged on cymbals-cosmic pot lid (what UFOs would you even cook for 100 people in?! Bless your hands for the meals, Ioana&Co!), exactly how all nations clap their hands of David and shout to Him with a voice of joy, do you know what it's like to live in psalms? It would never have crossed my mind that this too is an obedience to Paul's word „speak to one another in psalms” (Ephesians 5:19), but unbelievably amusing are the ways of our nonconformist Lord who sits at the table with tax collectors and sinners!

Or what's it like when, at the same hour, the yawning of the sun is accompanied by the vigorously beaten toaca with the ladle (exemplary, from a rhythmic point of view, like in great monasteries), a concert conducted under the baton of Anda's unrestrained energy, our door-to-door caroler with are you going to give us or notone of those non-fasting treats, sleepily stumbled out of bed/off the threshold, immediately seasoned with the most goofy and sweetest laugh – Mornin' to you today too, hey, wake up and do three prostrations, for the Risen One has given us another day to love each other laughing like fools – do you know how that feels? Because I can hardly find the words to explain it to you, and I get annoyed that through this text you can't hear our hearts cheering madly from dawn to dusk (Dawn and Dusk – an excellent album by Subcarpați, I recommend it not warmly, but fervently, especially for mountain trips!), singing 'I don't care about life', because we have business with Life?! (Or can you hear us, I wonder?)

In other words, do you know what it's like to wake up daily at 6 AM out of love, with joy, stumbling over the day's dawn in the hallway on the way to the bathroom, both it and them dazed and more confused than you, all with our toothbrushes lazily hanging from the corners of our mouths, swollen from the sleep that stubbornly refuses to leave our eyelids, come on just 5 more minutes!, and mumbling a semi-conscious 'mornin'', but smiled so sincerely, with all the teeth of the soul, that you'd say our sunrise has a different geography: it starts from the rooms of our house at Valea Plopului and only then goes from east to west!?

Whether you're cleaning toilets, cooking in industrial quantities, cleaning fences, scrubbing shower tiles, washing a 'Carpathian mountain' of dishes, unblocking ditches with a shovel, renovating the bathroom on the 3rd floor (yes, they were told to clean the bathroom, and our boys over-complied, they manfully scoffed „say no more, we can do more!”, determined that they don't play in the mop-and-rag league, so they set about changing pipes, painting with washable paint, and buying new toilet lids, almost artistically reinventing the toilet on the 3rd floor, now a whole universe, their own creation, even communal heritage!) or you go to the forest for firewood and return barefoot, with the forest litter nonchalantly scoffing at the fabric of your socks and impudently dancing between your toes, because the mud craved your slippers so much (who goes to the forest after a rainy day in slippers, Gabi??), that it swallowed them whole – whatever you do and wherever you are, you are bombarded with automatic fire by the same sweet breath of Grace that booms through the fleshy walls of the hearts of all those alongside whom you toil, you shed appearances and sing your joys and sorrows together, “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord” (Psalm 150:6), “In every place of His dominion, bless the Lord, O my soul”(Psalm 102:22)!

Do you know what it's like to suddenly find yourself face-to-face with what the modern world (pardon, the “good society”) has declared to you from above, laughing scornfully (an internal wound) and with cold conviction, “scientifically proven” and “experimentally tested” that ha! Wake up, girl, you won't find anything like that anymore in our times!? Do you know how beautifully my-Truth-Love leans in the corner of their absolute truth, with what silent and revolutionary love my Truth from the hearts of Iustin and Maria, married for 3 years (they told me not to list them as newlyweds, but as “expired” already...) and who came to camp with Siluan, the little child with whom God has eternalized them for a year and a month, rests against the sharp edge of their sword? Do you know what a gentle, peaceful, much-desired, and eagerly-awaited defiance of the law of post-industrial nature this is? Maria, Iustin, Silu – I don't have enough tears in prayer to thank you for the cold compress of living water with which you bandaged my fever of slipping into the world's mouth! May God bless your family and keep your hearts the same good ground from whose fruits I was deemed worthy to partake! Thank you, beloved temples of the Holy Spirit, thank you, thank you, thank you!

Or do you know what it's like to dance night after night for hours on end, madly, Christianly (I've told you before that in the beauty of madness, no one surpasses the Orthodox), around the fire lit with the flame from the eyes of our muddy volunteers, His barefoot forest-wanderers and wood-gatherers (Gabi, Lavinia, Ciprian – I'm looking especially at you, I'd be lying to say I'm sorry, when for that copious portion of laughter I feel indecently good), to hop and spin until your shoes break (been there!) and until you fall off your feet? (Also been there! It's all Rafaela's fault, the wonder-girl with a predestined name, my guardian-dancer angel in the form of a forest nymph! The joy of the dance threw her legs unconventionally high, so, caught in the hora and seeing my dear playful one out of the corner of my eye, she challenged me to hop too!, despite the considerably narrow hem of my skirt, by no means suitable for a leg propelled towards the head with the force of a shout – but too late, the song overcame the thought and I found myself cut down by the skirt that had stubbornly insisted on flying with my leg, and thud! on the ground with my wheels up, but laughing all the way, because “Lift up your hearts”, right?!)

And do you also know what I wish you knew what it's like? To start each day with the liturgy waltzed by the choir of our boys (archangels), whom I'm sure the seraphim and cherubim envy for the fierce competition they provide – forgive my heresy, but that's how I feel! – and to end it with the Paraklesis to the Theotokos sung together by all our loves bundled together in the choir stall, by our hearts fluvially pumping the same Blood articulated according to the notes in the scores – this experience is so powerful that if you close your eyes, you are swept away... (Been there too!)

Mmm-hmm... That's pretty much how the Camp was... Can I help you dry those dishes? / I'll use the pickaxe and you come with the shovel, okay? / Hey, share some of those logs with me, what's wrong, did you go to bed a man and wake up a tree? / Please, can you stay with the child for a bit? Make sure you don't leave him near those stairs / Get out of here, I'll wash them myself / Girls, who wants perfume?? It's vanilla and caramel! / Yes, yes, let her come, let her come sleep at our place! Where there are six, there's room for a seventh! / Where are you going, stay here and I'll teach you! Criss-cross steps – four to the right, four to the left, then three by three. Wow, you got it! Did you see that?! / It is truly meet to bless thee, O Theotokos...

Mmm-yeah, that's pretty much how it is with her, with the Camp... I never thought I could clean toilets with so much love...Such a thing doesn't exist, such a thing doesn't exist!

Oh, beloved Camp! What have you done to us? How many yearnings for alarmingly illegal gatherings have you instilled in our souls!

It's impossible for me to describe the spirit of our Camp to the extent of the intensity with which it ravaged me, rolled me through myself and then rebuilt me, so all that's left for me to tell you is “taste and see”! “For the Lord is good” (Psalm 33:8)!

Good. It is still good! The best, undeservedly good...

For the umpteenth time,

Thank you!

And now, let's go, Valley!

Poplar...

Ana Bănică

Photos by Gabriel Luță