Short Trip to the Edge

by Scott Cairns

  From there, our crew of five hundred lined up to receive the Bishop’s blessing, lined up to venerate the icons, and exited to the courtyard where we lined up for trápeza. Even if I hadn’t already noted that many of these visitors were Russian, the fact of their lining up for anything should have told me that they probably weren’t Greek.

  Eventually, we were all fed. Although it was a Monday (usually a fasting day for the monks), the Feast of Saint Andrew trumped the fast, and we enjoyed potatoes with fish, feta, and olives—not to mention one of my favorite Athonite innovations: wine with breakfast. After trápeza, we were each given a small icon (mine was of Saint Athanásios, founder of Megísti Lávra) and a sack of cookies, and sent on our way. Most waited for the several buses that would take them back to Dáfni and the boat. I hiked the half mile to Karyés and hurried to the pilgrim office, arriving just as it opened. There, I was able to add another six days to my diamonitírion. The officer was not the one I’d seen on my last journey, but he was eager to ask the same questions his colleague had asked in September: Are you Greek? Is your mother Greek? This time my answers brought a handshake and a grin instead of a shrug.

  I turned from there to the café and bought a coffee (black coffee—no milk—because the Feast of Saint Andrew evidently didn’t figure quite so prominently on the café owner’s calendar as it did half a mile down the road). Sipping and resting, I studied the map to plan my next move.

  Father Iákovos had faxed my request for a night at Vatopédi, so pretty much all I knew was that I would need to arrive there on Wednesday. That left me two days and nights of meantime. I was also very sleepy; the coffee wasn’t making much of a dent in the fact that I had slept only a few hours the night before. So, not knowing much about nearby Koutloumousíou Monastery, I set out to walk the quarter mile or so that would take me to its gate.

  Koutloumousíou ranks sixth in the hierarchy of the Athos community and dates back to sometime before 1169. Among its treasures are more than 650 manuscripts (many of them illuminated) and more than 3,500 printed books. For this reason, it is a favorite stop for ecclesiastical scholars.

  For this reason, perhaps, the monks there seem to be somewhat protective of their enclave—as least insofar as pilgrims without reservations go.

  When, crossing myself, I entered the gate, I found the door to a very plush, very comfortable archondaríki immediately to my left. I entered, dropped my pack with a thud, and waited for the guest master to arrive. When he hurried in a few minutes later, he let me know that there was no room for me. I asked about other nights that week, and he said there was no room anytime soon.

  Still, he asked me to sit, and he brought me a tray of water, loukoúmi, and rakí. I took the chance to study the map, and realized that I’d need to hike for at least a few hours to get to Pantokrátoros on the eastern shore, where I might or might not find a place.

  As I prepared to go, I saw that the katholikón doors were open, so I asked if I might venerate the icons before I left.

  The change on the guest master’s face was immediate. He lit up, nodded, “Ne, ne! You come now.”

  I followed him into the glassed-in exo-narthex, entered the narthex, the nave, and moved from icon to icon, venerating each in turn. Like every Athonite church, it is cruciform, beautiful; it is slightly smaller than some, but wonderfully full, laden with a lush, sweet weight. This is especially true of the small chapel to the left of the narthex, dedicated to the Protection of the Theotókos and containing a very beautiful—and, I gathered, miracle-working—icon of the Theotókos.

  Evidently, something about my response to his katholikón and its icons gave the guest master a revised impression of me, perhaps a less jaded appraisal of this particular pilgrim. When we’d returned to the archondaríki, I bent to lift my pack and found his hand pushing it back to the cobbled walkway. “Óhi,” he said, “you have room here.”

  “Símera i ávrio?” I asked. Today or tomorrow?

  “Ne,” he said, “símera.” And with that he led me across the courtyard and up to the guest house on the second floor, opening the door to a lovely, cozy room overlooking the footpath to Philothéou. There didn’t seem to be many other guests around; I had the double room to myself.

  “I will tell you now the program,” he said. “The vespers is at 4:30, then trápeza. And we wake you at 2:00 in the night.”

  “Ne, ne, ne, efharistó,” I said, bowing to kiss his hand.

  He stopped me midbow, saying of himself, “Just the monk.” He closed the door behind him as he left.

  Surprised and happy at this turn of events, I relaxed enough to finally feel the toll of the vigil. My legs felt like lead, and my eyes were suddenly heavy. I washed my face, downed a full liter of water, knelt to thank Christ and the Theotókos for a shorter walk than I had feared, and settled in for a nap.

  The afternoon and evening went pretty much as expected, a lovely vespers—though there were, at most, a dozen monks and four pilgrims present—a meal of bean soup, stewed kale with vinegar, and bread, and after trápeza a chance to venerate the relics. Afterward, still somewhat numbskulled from the all-night vigil, I went directly to my room, said my prayers, and was asleep in minutes.

  As promised, the tálanton rang out shortly after 2:00 a.m., calling us to the midnight hours. These blended into orthros and then, as orthros was concluding, I felt a tug on my sleeve. The guest master was pulling all the pilgrims out before the Divine Liturgy began. I was pretty confused, and wondered if this would be yet another instance of my not being Greek leading someone to assume I wasn’t sufficiently Orthodox.

  Wrong. That wasn’t it at all.

  We were led across the courtyard, up three creaking flights of stairs, and into a tiny chapel at the top of one of the corner towers. Inside, we celebrated the Divine Liturgy in what was becoming my favorite fashion—an intimate chapel service with one priest and one psáltis. Unlike some liturgies I’d witnessed, here at Koutloumousíou the priest seemed to pause with the Holy Mysteries, seemed actually to invite us to the cup. Most of the pilgrims remained in their stalls, but five of us eagerly received.

  Frequent communion, to be honest, is a relatively recent return to an ancient practice. For most “cradle Orthodox” in most of the world, communion has been a once- or twice-yearly event. They—and their parents and grandparents before them—were raised to believe that receiving the Holy Mysteries was to be preceded by a week of strict fasting and by the sacrament of confession; to partake of the Body of Christ without such preparation was considered to be “partaking unworthily.”

  More recently, the thinking has emphasized that no one is ever able to partake in any state except unworthily; it is our partaking that assists in our worthiness.

  So while fasting before communion is encouraged (one does not receive any food prior to the morning liturgy), and while confession is expected (generally several times each year, and at least once during Great Lent), the emphasis has fallen upon the words that invite us to the cup: with faith, love, and the fear of God, draw near.

  With faith, love, and the fear of God, and quite unworthily, several of us accepted the invitation to receive the Holy Mysteries of Christ.

  After trápeza, I thanked the guest master and headed back to Karyés to make a phone call on the card phone. I reached the guest master at Pantokrátoros and asked about a place for the night. He said, “Yes, but hurry. We fill up.”

  I told him I’d be walking from Karyés. “Walking?” he asked. “Okay, give me your name; we fill up.”

  It turned out that I was in for another feast day, and another all-night vigil. This would be a vigil for the Feast of the Yeróntissa, a miracle-working icon of the Theotókos.

  Before any of this would happen, however, I had four hours of hiking ahead of me, about three of which would be in a light rain. Dreary as that may sound, for this Puget Sound native it was a savory trek.

  11

  Peace, be still.

  The hike took me, for th
e most part, along winding dirt roads, descending into misted valleys and climbing to high ridges, each of which offered successive vistas of the Holy Mountain’s interior and a startling number of hermitages and modest monastic enclaves.

  Any number of maps of Mount Athos are available, but only one is worth having, a detailed topographic map drawn by Reinhold Zwerger of Austria. I held this map in my left hand as I walked; I held my prayer rope in my right. At one comic moment about an hour into the hike, I looked up from my map to see a man approaching from, I learned, Pantokrátoros. He was bearded (like me), dressed in black jeans and a black shirt (as was I), and also carrying his prayer rope in his right hand and Zwerger’s map in his left. As we approached each other, it dawned on us what an uncanny, mirror image we presented. We met laughing.

  He was Father John, a monk maybe ten years my junior from Saint John the Baptist Monastery in Essex, England. He’d been sent to Mount Athos by his abbot to, as he said, “finally learn some Greek.” He told me about a fork in the road ahead that would save me some time—a narrow dirt road to the left that wasn’t on the map—and we parted wishing each other well.

  Two hours in, the road wound along the ridge above the northern coastline. I saw, some distance to the south, what I knew to be the monastery of Stavronikíta and realized that I must have missed the turn I’d been watching for. That’s also when the wind and rain picked up with surprising force; the sea was a wild gray-green expanse laced with whitecaps. The wind roared up—with alternating gusts of warm and cold—through the slope of pine, cypress, and chestnut. Scanning the seascape, I noted that the familiar fleet of fishing boats and ferries was nowhere to be seen. I wondered—for the first time, actually—if I would have trouble leaving as I’d planned to do, in five days’ time.

  As I followed the road around a major headland, I caught my first glimpse of Pantokrátoros, poised on a headland far to the north. The rain, I began to notice, now had snow in it.

  I was fairly soaked and chilled to the bone as I descended to the monastery grounds. I found a footpath that promised to save me a little time, wandered over a footbridge near the arsanás, then up several switchbacked slopes of cobbled mule road, and finally around the ancient wall to find the entryway. Pantokrátoros was noticeably under repair; much of the interior courtyard was skirted by scaffolding, and several lengths of the interior structure were without an inward-facing wall. The katholikón was about halfway into its new coat of wine-colored stucco.

  I found the archondaríki just across the courtyard from where I’d entered, but the door was locked. In minutes, however, a voice behind me said, “Íste Isaák?” It was the guest master, newly returned from depositing a group of pilgrims in their rooms. In English, Father Ioánnis said, “I have you a bed. This way, please.” Then he said, “Isaák, you all wet!”

  He did indeed have me a bed, up two flights in a room facing the sea, which at this moment was absolutely wild. My bed actually rested against the broad sill of the seaside window, and as I peered out, I could see the surf churning directly below the room, which hung out a bit over the granite cliff. Sea spray was being blown on a stiff wind directly up that cliff and up three stories of monastery to fleck the windows with foam.

  My roommates were three men from Thessaloníki and two from Romania. As we rested, stoking the in-room woodstove and sharing stories and family photos, each of my roommates took care to inform me that while they liked individual Americans quite a bit, they were very angry with America, specifically with our president. Once I’d made clear that we held these passions in common, the conversation moved on to other things, and the afternoon passed pleasantly enough.

  The call to vespers came around 3:30 p.m., and we all made our way to the katholikón, joined along the way by thirty or so pilgrims, nearly fifty monks, and a dozen or more young men in seminary cassocks. These last were here to serve as the choir for the festal celebration. Only twenty or so monks live here year-round, but their numbers were increased for the feast day by representatives from many other monasteries, in particular from Xenophóntos, with whom the monks of Pantokrátoros maintain a strong connection; the abbot of Xenophóntos, Yéronda Aléxios, would be celebrating the festal vigil and liturgy.

  The katholikón is relatively small but exudes—as, frankly, every katholikón on the Holy Mountain exudes—a lush presence, a fullness, even when few worshipers are within. This katholikón has, moreover, a split narthex, the smaller, left-hand side of which serves as entry to a small, powerfully full chapel dedicated to the Dormition of the Theotókos.

  It was in the smaller narthex outside this chapel that I was introduced to Father Zosimás. I had already found a stall inside the nave when Father Ioánnis, the guest master, found me, tugging on my arm to follow him. “American monk. You come,” he said.

  Father Zosimás stood among several monks who had just arrived from Xenophóntos; he had been assisting his abbot in preparations for the vigil. I could see that he was still quite busy.

  “I’m Isaac,” I said, “from the States.”

  He grinned—unsurprised, it seemed to me—and said, “Zosimás. I’m from Florida.” Father Zosimás appeared to be in his late twenties or early thirties, tall, kind-faced, his brown beard already showing a little gray. We spoke only briefly, but he asked where I would be stopping over the remainder of my pilgrimage. When I mentioned that I’d planned two nights at Vatopédi and two at Grigoríou, he said, “If you have a night to spare, please come see us at Xenophóntos.”

  I promised that I would.

  Back in the nave, the vespers continued, and I saw that while the young seminarians filled the right-hand choir, the monks of the monastery took their positions in the left. There were a good number of younger monks among the resident choir, so the contrast was not so great; still, one or two of the older monks appeared to be very old, and one in particular—who was asked to chant a number of hymns by himself—seemed ancient, like a small and knotty oak. He didn’t appear to have many teeth, so he clearly struggled to pronounce the words of the hymns; his voice, even so, was sweet, if a little shaky.

  Both choirs sang the other hymns with vigor and passion, and the service went by very quickly. I was surprised at how quickly.

  After trápeza, we were able to venerate the relics there, then were chased out so that preparations could continue for the vigil. I and most of my roommates lay down to rest for the long night ahead.

  At about 8:30, the tálanton called us to begin again. The two choirs led us through the night with hardly a letdown in their energy; even the subdued cycles of the vigil were passionately chanted. Yéronda Aléxios, whose tenor voice was like an angel’s, joined them and accepted the invitation to chant many of the solo hymns. The candelabrum were fully fired up, made to swing in their vertiginous arcs and circles, and the vigil was celebrated with astonishing beauty. Late into the night I experienced again the curious hallucinations that had troubled me—intermittently frightened me—during my first pilgrimage. I would close my eyes to find someone standing before me, speaking words I could not quite gather.

  This time, I was not frightened but tried to hear what was being said.

  At one such time, I must have fallen asleep in my stall. When I woke again—early in the morning—orthros was well underway.

  I felt a little embarrassed at having fallen asleep, but I also felt elated that I had stayed, surrounded by worship, throughout the entire night. Not long afterward, the liturgy began—a hierarchical liturgy with Abbot Aléxios and eight other priests—with renewed freshness, and it was as sweet a worship as I have ever tasted. When it was time for the creed to be recited, the very old and mostly toothless monk from the left-hand choir stepped forward and, taking great pains to speak as clearly as he could, recited the creed, “the symbol of the faith,” with a confidence and conviction such as I have never heard before or since.

  I was not the only one shaken by this. Where he sat in the stall near the bishop’s throne, the abbot r
aised a hand to wipe his eyes.

  I partook of the Eucharist in a flood of gratitude and, passing from the cup to the table of antídoron, stopped to venerate the icon of the Yeróntissa, whose vigil we had kept.

  From trápeza, I bid farewell to my roommates, saddled up my heavy pack, and set out for Vatopédi up the coast. The rain had stopped, but the wind was brisk, and the long hike itself—along a forested trail and a stretch of muddy dirt road—effected a wonderful recovery from the long night. Sleepy after breakfast, I was soon wide awake and savoring the damp air, the cold wind, and—gusting every so often—a warm breath of wet earth with a hint of spring in it.

  Just over two hours later, I began descending the crushed rock road of winding switchbacks that led to Vatopédi, an expansive fortress poised at the sea end of a wide valley sloping to the Aegean. From the top of that descent, I calculated that I had most of an hour of hiking yet to go. Instead, a Land Rover roared up from behind and pulled to the side of the road ahead of me. It was a Mount Athos policeman—a curious phenomenon, in any event—and he had stopped to offer me a lift.

  Officer Yórgos asked me where I’d walked from. When I told him I’d just come from Pantokrátoros, he said, “Dangerous, too dangerous to walk alone.” This was the first time anyone had said any such thing to me. “Here?” I asked. “Dangerous? Mount Athos?”

  “Anywhere,” he said. “Here is no different.”

  “Since when?” I asked.

  “Since the fall from the garden.” He was grinning.

  I figured he had found the right line of work.

  As we pulled up near the entry to Vatopédi, I thanked Yórgos for the ride and for his advice. He wished me a good journey, and strongly suggested I use the microbus for the trip back.