Wolves or not

A friend and I were laughing recently about our mutual friend, Hannah, who always denied that wolves could be in the Czech Republic. But then she always denied that anything bad could be from the country. Even if she had a flu it was because you had brought it from England.

Wolves had been hunted to extinction here in the 19^th century, indeed there is a memorial in the Sumava to the last one. The big bad wolf of the fairytales was banished to the forests of other countries. And yet, the memory of wolves lived on in folk memory. I felt it distinctly in the darkness of the forest I viewed from the window of that night-bound train in Easter 1990. I felt it as I lay in a bed piled high with duvets on those freezing nights of my first stay in the house. As I heard the pad of snow dropping from the broken roof I thought of wolf padding through the drifts at the rear of the house, the following day my imaginings were reinforced by fox prints enlarged by the melting of snow. Maybe that is why the first book I wrote here was called Mother of Wolves.

The big bad wolf is now officially back. He was first seen, caught on a trip-camera near Vyssi Brod barely twenty miles from here. Wild creatures do not respect lines on maps and once the physical barrier of the Iron Curtain had been removed it was only a matter of time before the wolves' wanderings brought them into the Sumava Forest and beyond. It seems only right that EU freedom of movement should extend to this beautiful animal, if not in future to Brits.

Sumava - The Sound of the Forest

I have been listening to a delightful radio programme on the BBC called Susurrations of Trees - susurration is the English word for the sound trees make. The programme does not just explore the sound made by different trees, but also the different words we have for those sounds - psithurism for example is the sound of the wind in the trees. Of course the Czechs also have a word for it, but they go one step further their largest forest is called the psithurism - The Sumava (pronounced shoomava). My home is on the edge of it; the little town where I catch the bus is called Horice na Sumava. 

The Sumava extends over the border with Germany, where it becomes the Bayerischer Wald ( the more mundane Bavarian Forest). This huge forest is the most extensive (over 54,000 hectares) in central Europe and has the nickname the Green Roof of Europe or sometimes the Green Lung of Europe. And I love it.

I have spoken in earlier posts of the importance of forests to the Czechs, that it has a role in the Czech mind that is equivalent to the sea to the British. Sometimes when I walk in the forest and a wind gets up I feel this connection strongly. The psithurism of the trees is so like the sound of waves that I could close my eyes and I think myself back on a British shore.

Dreaming Of Houses

I sometimes dream of houses; I did last night. Hannah used to take the Jungian line on house dreams that they are not about houses but about the dreamer, with the various floors representing the dreamer's different levels of consciousness. I just note that they tend to happen when I am busy organizing something about my Czech house, not that the house in my dreams is my Czech house.

When I was buying and reconstructing the house, I dreamed a lot about squeezing through a crack and finding new attics - huge and full of lovely beams. Later I dreamed I was going round and round a house, still squeezing through cracks but into hidden staircases and secret corridors.

Last night I had a different dream. I dreamed that I was sitting with Eliska, and we were talking about how lucky we were to have such nice lovely neighbours. I referred to the ones who had bought and done up the other half of my house. This is interesting as my real house is detached from the neighbours'. Maybe my dream talk was of the potential buyers of my house, who are keen to develop the barn which is attached to the house. I understand their enthusiasm, I too had big visions for the barn and ran out of money. It is one reason I was happy to accept their offer. We will see if their and my dreams come true.