Meteora

The Rocky Forest of Greece

Rock pillars emerge like dark zombies from the flat earth below. The yellow Mercedes bus putters up the mountainside as I try to stare straight ahead. I am scared to look out the window because I know if I do a car coming down the mountain will drift into our lane, the bust will swerve, and myself and the rest of the passengers will plummet to our deaths. I hold my stomach and clutch a plastic bag as I will my body not to throw up.

Meteora means “suspended in the air.” The structures that protrude out of the ground with monasteries on top, just outside of the little town of Kalambaka in northern Greece are awe inspiring. The rocks of Meteora are said to be formed by huge masses of river stones, sand, and mud which formed into one huge mass. Throughout the years the waters of the Thessalian Lake ran into the Aegean Sea and the united mass of stones and sand and mud was split apart due to the environmental elements of water, winds, rain, and earthquakes. All of these elements combined created the rock pillars known as Meteora.

Once the bus reaches The Holy Monastery of Great Meteoron I stumble down the stairs and I am finally able to exhale. I stand there, stunned, as varying heights of enormous gray pinnacles rise towards the sky. It is strange to think that these have been sculpted over thousands of years and they will continue to evolve over other thousands of years, while in less than one hundred years I will be gone. And really it won’t matter. The monasteries on top that blend seamlessly may dissolve and the monks and nuns will evaporate but the rocks will keep living. And it will matter.

It is disturbing how limited human beings are in comparison to the enormous conglomerate rocks that rise from the ground. The rocks have the uncanny ability to make one feel insignificant. They seem to be aware that they have to power to make humans feel this way. We always think that they are able to be in charge of everything and that we have the ability to control everybody and everything, but how silly must we seem to the towering rocks formed by the wind and the rain. Like the ancient Greek Gods the pillars stand and chuckle at humans for thinking that we are in control. They would think to themselves that horrible human powers such as coercion are nothing compared to the wind and the water that shaped them into the rocks of Meteora.

In the ninth century hermit monks settled within the caves in the rocks to pursue a life of asceticism and to get away from the expanding Turkish occupation of Greece. The monasteries that they constructed on top of the rocks appear as if they are growing out of the top. When the monks came to Meteora there were no steps cut into the rock as there are today. The only possible way to gain access to the monasteries was by a net which was placed over a hook and pulled up by hand above 1,800 feet of the seemingly loving ground if only your feet were placed firmly on it. The monks of the ninth century seem to be one of the few groups of human beings that realized the significance of the rocks. They understood that material objects were not everything and nothing can stay forever.

Looking at The Holy Monastery of Great Meteoron on this June day it becomes apparent to me that just like the majestic conglomerate rocks of Meteora, human creations will be whittled away by the wind and washed away by the rain.