(From Zakopane): Return to Rynias

(on Friday)

Each time I see it, I am overwhelmed. Rynias: it’s not even a village. Just three homes in a hidden valley, at the foot of the Tatras, near the Slovakian border.

Pan Stas and Pani Anna

I have to bribe someone to drive me from Zakopane to the village from where I can begin my hike to visit my aging Rynias highlanders, P. Stas and P. Anna. Easy. People need cash. My driver is a highlander himself. Nie boji sie pani niedzwiedzi (aren’t you afraid of bears)? – he asks. Damn! What I didn’t know wasn’t going to hurt me. Now I find myself listening for bear noises as I walk through the deep forest.

We had a feeling you'd be coming this week!

Such joy to see them! And it’s mutual. I had been here in December, but I had missed Pani Anna, who had gone off for the day to the store. But today both are there – just finishing their drugie sniadanie (second breakfast).

I eat eggs and bread with them as well as her baked sugar cookies, along with a glass of tea. A pang of guilt hits me: I almost did not come. Were it not for my father in Zakopane, I may have neglected this promised visit. [Did I promise? I must have.]

What can I bring you next time?

They have so little! They eat and cook in the little hut, on a wood-burning stove. Their lives do not vary. She has to hike up the mountain and down the other side to get supplies: an hour trek for me, but getting to be two hours each way for her. And so they buy almost nothing.

I bring them sweets and food treats, but this time I feel that maybe I should look for something that would make their lives just that much easier and so I ask – what do you need?

Good scissors for shearing sheep! They show me what they use: paper scissors, cheaply made at that. Once, our uncle found a pair in America, he said they were cheap, and they were wonderful! [Does Menards carry sheep shearing scissors??]

Do all good things come from America?

Yesterday I wore my flowered skirt to church, Pani Anna tells me. The highlanders all dressed in colorful clothing. They sang our old songs. But you know, I bought the skirt in town and they told me it was made in America, not here! And so I paid a fortune for it! After all, it was imported.

Oh, Pani Anna, I don’t think so! You’ve been had! I’m thinking this, but I say nothing. I admire it as she puts it against her middle, the rubber-band waist extending over her hips.

A sad good-bye

I walk with them as they send their sheep out to pasture. I listen to them talk about the absence of mushrooms in the forest, about who died when, about the wheat that will grow in their small field this summer. They don’t complain, they just tell me things, matter of factly, earnestly.

When will you come for a longer spell? When will your husband come? Your daughters? Oh, I cannot be honest now! I cannot say “never.” And so I say, as I always do – soon. Next year maybe. And here comes the promise again: I’ll come next time. Really I will..