It's Saturday, a calm autumn afternoon. I haven't left home since the previous day and slowly start to feel that ugly affliction some people call "the cabin fever" creeping inside me. Luckily, it's still October and this corner of Eastern Europe is enjoying the better part of the autumn season, sunny, comfortably warm, the proverbial Golden Polish Autumn. A short walk seems to be a good idea, and not just for me, since the local elderly dog needs its daily exercise, too. His master (and commander) has decided to spend the entire day on a horse trip and now it's my responsibility to take the poor fleabag for a walk.
My attempts to bring the dog outside turn out as a total failure. The lazy beast keeps lying on its owner's bed and doesn't bother to move, or even wag its tail, when I'm repeating its name. All I get is blank stares. After wasting five minutes playing a sad clown, waving the leash right in front of its nose and repeating the key words ("Come on! Let's go!"), the same words that normally turn him into a frenzy, I give up and leave the house alone. Dog or not, I'm not going to waste this kind of weather.
Destination: nearby fish ponds. They have been an integral part of the local landscape since the late medieval period because carp farming was omnipresent in this part of Upper Silesia, my native region of Poland, even before the discovery of America. What's more important, the ponds were a part of my childhood. My family used to own a meadow located next to one of the ponds and every year we all went there to perform the ritual of haymaking. After all, the handful of sheep we owned back wouldn't have survived winter on snow. To get there, I need to leave the house and go into the opposite direction. After crossing a busy highway I turn right and quickly leave the ear-rending noise of cars and trucks behind me. It's time to feel a bit nostalgic. After all, I walked these parts when Federal Socialist Yugoslavia still existed.
And so I'm walking down a narrow asphalt street between houses and pass a small stud farm, currently closed to the recent death of its owner (who happened to be a dentist, and the Nemesis of my childhood). Yet again, I'm reminded why I don't feel comfortable when vising this area with our family dog. The space between the road and solid fences surrounding the homes is so small that it makes evasive maneuvres hard, and it's sometimes necessary. The street has a few sharp turns and a passerby sometimes get surprised by cars whose drivers shouldn't be allowed to even look at vehicles, let alone drive them. Sadly, a small but vocal minority apparently thinks that speeding above sixty kilometres per hour on a village road is perfectly fine. This time I'm lucky, though, and the only car I meet drives slowly and safely past me.
In most cases, so-called graffiti makes me clench my teeth and growl quietly, but I'm making an exception here. It's one thing when some troglodyte with a spray can leaves an ugly smear in the middle of my city, and another case when it's an old railway bridge in the middle of a (relative) wilderness. Back in the old days, this railway led to a nearby factory, but then 90s happened and the entire region was thoroughly deindustrialised. The tracks weren't necessary anymore and somebody, prolly the state railway company, removed them. The remaining bridge looks a little melancholic but, thanks to the anonymous paint can maestro, one can admire the contrast between lively paint colours and faint greenery.
Finally in the Carp Land! Shortly after leaving the bridge, I arrive at a grove standing between the road and the shore of a carp pond. It turn outs that even a dirty camera lens can be useful when the sun paints the photo with its rays. The light feels different than in September, it's sharper, colder, a bit alien and distant, just like its source was located in a faraway galaxy. But I still love it, just like I love this part of autumn.
I decide to take a photo but it's not that easy to find a good spot in the thick grass and bushes. Even the sun struggles to shine through the dense leaves.
"Satanic mills," an English poet would say. Far away on the other side, grim structures of the industrial zone have replaced the trees and meadows I remember from my childhood. The view feels like a dissonance in a fine tune and is uncomfortable almost on a physical level. Luckily enough, the zone has not sprawled along the entire shore yet.
Well, look at it, people really live here! I try to imagine a summer night spent in this house, lying on the bed next to an open window and listening to the mysterious voices coming from the nearby pond. The very thought is enticing, especially for someone stuck to living in a commie-era apartment block, right in the middle of a big city.
If there's anything I failed to do in my life (and I can't really blame my parents or the school for this failure), it was learning more about the names of ordinary plants one meets during walks or mountain hikes. There are a few exceptions, like the dandelion which grows everywhere in the summer, but that's it. And this is why I can't tell you the name of this cute little plant, but does it make it less charming? Rose by any other name, and all that.
At the start, I wanted to take a picture while holding my phone just above the pond's surface, but dropped the idea because of a simple reason: I was wearing wrong shoes. I didn't fancy the idea of walking into the reeds in ordinary sneakers. Sure enough, they're supposedly a military brand, but that hardly makes them waterproof. Luckily for me, the view is scenic enough even with the reeds in the picture.
And this is what I'm talking about. Take a few steps and your feet get under the water. There's hardly anything I hate more than soaking my feet during a walk.
Apologies for the quality of the photo, but this was the best my budget phone could do.
The carp pond is very much alive. It's not just about all kinds of insects, including my beloved dragonflies, but also the fish which like to check out what's happening on the surface, jumping out of water with a loud splash. And then, THEY arrive on the scene. A couple of waterfowls lazily floats on the water. Back in the day, they used to annoy me during my lame attempts to catch fish, chasing the bait I was hauling to catch a juicy pickerel and forcing me to roll the line in, and then throw it in another direction. Eventually, I wised up and decided that I was not made to become a master angler. The result of that epiphany was a truce with the waterfowl, to the point that I actually find them cute (to a reasonable extent, that is).
Then I turn back and return to the road, trying to reach another pond. Even though I've been here a thousand times, I never figured out what was the purpose of the wooden contraption on the roadside. It would hardly work as a fence. Maybe back in the day, when tractors and cars were still a rarity, local farmers used it to tie the horses pulling carts with hay? One day I'll have to find someone older than me and ask them to explain this mystery.
The sun is piercing my photos even when I lower my camera slightly to the ground, but the light is so lovely that I cannot complain about it.
Finally, I arrive at my favourite spot. Right behind me lies the meadow my family owned for almost an entire century. When I was a kid, we'd come here every summer for haymaking. During each break in the work, I'd come here to rest under the majestic oak. The meadow was eventually sold to somebody and now it's a complete mess, overgrown with grass almost as high as myself. I don't even bother with taking any pictures. But the oak? Yes, it's a true wonder of nature even now when it's leaves are slowly withering.
Its powerful roots spread horizontally, clinging to the low shore just above the water. It's time to make a short pause, so I sit down and light a cigarette, admiring the dead branch half sunk in the water. Trying to cast a fishing rod would end in a disaster since all the branches and twigs at the bottom would shred the line. Fortunately, such plebeian pastimes are long behind me and I can just enjoy the view.
The tree's name must be Narcissus because, apparently, it loves admiring his own reflection in the water. The air is almost still and you can hardly see any wrinkles on the surface, which means that I'm lucky: I get to see two copies of my favourite oak.
Another nameless plant. This one must be really fragile since it's withered so early in the autumn. Now it's dried remains stick out of the faded greenery like another Nature's memento mori.
One look at the sun and I'm reminded that it's not summer anymore. It's only four in the afternoon but sunset will be coming soon. Time to say goodbye and head back home.
A relative of mine used to work as a keeper at one of the carp fonds nearby and had the habit to talk a lot about his work, but he never mentioned those bizarre wooden contraptions seemingly floating on the water. I guess it's another think I need the Elders of the Tribe to explain to me. On the other hand, I can actually name some plants on this picture: they are cat tails! It's funny that I learned some parts of it are edible just a few years ago, even though they've been an (almost) everyday sight since forever.
"End of the gas line". I've finally reached the other end of the last carp pond. There's nothing to admire here, just some houses so ugly you could weep and a busy road. And so I turn around, heading home and feeling a bit melancholic. I liked the carp ponds much more back in the day when there were barely any sings of human presence in the area. Now, with all the factories and new houses around, it just feels a little sad, but hey, I'm not a Luddite. Without the new industrial zone we'd probably have a literal ghost town here, with barely any jobs and no taxes for the town budget. Maybe a few grey buildings littering my favourite landscape are an acceptable price for progress (or, at least, survival of the community).
Besides, ugly factories or not, I'll return to this place soon enough.