When I step off the marshutka in Mestia’s town square, it
seems as though up until that moment I had only been half breathing, never
filling my lungs completely, only taking in enough oxegyn to keep the mechanism
of my body functioning. As we admire the green mountains surrounding the town
and the way they are stained yellow and white, the first cold of fall spreading
its colors like finger paints across the landscape, I drink the crisp air deep
into my chest and let it nip at the bottom of my lungs. I relish each breath
like rich chocolate, turning it over in my mouth and examining every element of
the flavor.
At home, in Colorado, the mountain air taste like pine trees
and sunshine. In the fall you can smell the sweet golden rot of the aspen
turning and the sharp tang of the cold that is to come. I feel that in Mestia
too. My breath slices into my lungs with the promise of snow, but here the air
is heavier than at home. It taste of the thick forests and dark waterfalls that
run through the mountains, of the flaky grey slate rock covering the trails and
the stalky cows that litter the hillside. (Almost everything in Georgia smells
a little like cow)
To get to our home-stay, we must cross a small pond in the
middle of the stone road. It is fed from a stream springing from the road a
little further up the hill. Someone, probably the woman running Manoni’s
home-stay, has stacked long thin wooden boards across the narrow side of the
water.
We leave to climb the mountain in the afternoon and quickly
shed the jackets we wore in the village, soaking up the sunshine. At the top,
the valley, the village and the road stretch out before us to either side and
then are lost behind dramatic snow frosted peaks. The wind is cold and the
clouds role away rapidly overhead, making it seem as though the range is really
a great turbulent sea of rock and forest and smooth green pasture.
As we make our way back to the home-stay, our thoughts are
full of food since our stomachs are pointedly empty. The smell of a nearby fire
seems tinted with the sugary aroma of roasting marshmallows.
“I could definitely go for a s’more,” Adam says. We have to
explain what this is to our friend Eamonn, and the discussion of graham
crackers makes me wish we had just a few of those and some peanut butter.
“Or apples,” I say, “Apples and peanut butter is just as
good.”
“Don’t even say that,” Adam says, wincing at some delicious
memory of home.
“Actually,” I say, “What I could really go for is some hot
chocolate.” Everyone groans.
When we arrive back at the home-stay, our hostess reads the
hunger on our faces and offers us soup, though we have not paid to have meals
included in our stay. The soup is
thick with onions, cabbage, and carrots, and we can hear the plastic spoon scrape
the bottom of the pot as the last bowl is filled. We are also served plates of
bread that we smother with rich honey and tart cherry preserves, red syrup
running down our fingers and bubbling like sticky rubies on the table.
All thoughts of graham crackers long forgotten, we retire to
our rooms with beer and several bars of chocolate. The day hangs heavy on our
bodies, and we quickly resign ourselves to the exhaustion, sleeping two to a
bed or tucking our clothes into the sheets to ward off the cold that settled in
with the evening.
We catch the 5:30am Marshutka back to Zugdidi. It’s the only
one that leaves Mestia all day. I step out in front of the bazaar in the rain and
pull up my hood. The city tastes of mud with just a hint of marshutka exhaust,
which fades as I leave the station. Mostly I taste the rain running down my face as I begin my long walk across town to catch another
marshutka home.
