When you're driving up, through the mountains, in order to reach Arieșeni (map below), you get to pass through a place called Nucet. The name of the place in Romanian sounds like it's related to the word we have for "walnuts": nuci. I thought the connection is only phonetical and even if it would be anyway related to the word "nuts", then it would have to do with some connection from the past.
Right as you enter this Nucet village, you get to see that the name has a clear relation to the vegetation. Right before entering the village, on the left side, there's a very nice forest of walnut trees. I still am baffled by the fact that the trees are still there. You know... walnut wood is pretty precious and though it would be a pain in the ass selling it nowadays (with the Police overwatching sales), in the past this would've been an easy prey. This nice natural plantation, with the grass very short, like it's been cut, between the trees, makes this magical feeling float in the air.
Not to mention the fact that the family of horses we found here were also contributing to the overall taste of the place.
I usually don't smoke in the car so, even though we were on the road for already 4-5 hours, I took the decision to make a 10-minute break there. Also taking pictures was free so why not?
There's a small chapel between the trees and the dirt road that goes through the middle of the plantation takes the curious visitor to a cave: Fânate Cave. I'm not so much into speleology (I and my claustrophobic tendencies do not go well with caves) so I decided we wouldn't venture on the dirt road. Instead, I took the time to roam a little around taking pictures while my partner was making phone calls to my daughter. I could hear her screaming through the phone "daddy! DA DDYYY!".
Really, I don't know how I managed to hear the cracks and sounds through the screaming of my daughter, but there she was. Little chipmunk, coming down from a tree, 30 meters away from me, and going into a bush nearby. Never even saw me. I was seeing its tail through the bush as she was ass-pointing me, doing something that clearly was keeping her attention away from me.
Really concentrated little devil.
I made 5 more steps towards her, cursing myself for not having even a manual focus, zoom lens and trying not to make to much noise. Impossible. I'm not the cat I used to be and to be sincere I wasn't wearing the most silent shoes for sneaking. Converse, bad for you and your foot in every single possible way you could think of. Still, I wear them.
The chipmunk didn't move a muscle. Definitely something important was distracting her because even an old babushka, hearing impaired, would've sensed me by now.
Still, from time to time, it would jump around through the bush, like it was going from one place to another, spending 30 seconds there, moving then to another place. It allowed me to move step by step closer to it enough to take that (cropped) shot. Her animal instincts awaken her from the source of it's distraction in the end and ran to another tree, a little bit lower, to the main road.
It must've to shit its pants when it realised that a human got so close, haha!
And then, when I approached the designated bush, I found out the source of its distraction: wild strawberries. It was too concerned with eating, the little piggy, so it couldn't hear me while stuffing its face with delicious forest fruit. Why you little chipmunk! Keeping it all for yourself and not sharing.
So the next 5 minutes I spent collecting some of the berries around that marvellous place I would say.
At least for me, it seemed that way.
P.S. I guess I'll star in the next Chip&Dale episode as the "bad photographer".
