Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 12

Twelve

Mount Olympus:

I had been living at Kalogiros’ apartment for several weeks waiting for my Holy Mountain visa when he suggested I visit Mount Olympus since it was also an ancient sacred place also worthy of pilgrimage.

He recommended that the best way to make the pilgrimage was for him to take me on his motorcycle to a climber’s hospice near the summit. This was the highest point which could be reached by road—then I should spend the night at the hospice and continue on foot to the summit very early in the morning to enjoy the dawn.

He himself would spend the night at a monastery he knew about on the lower slope of the mountain since he didn’t feel up to the strenuous climb to the summit, then he would pick me up at the climber’s lodge later in the day.

I had wanted to climb Mount Olympus for a long time. In fact, I had wanted to climb Mount Olympus so much several years earlier while still in America that I drove to the Olympic peninsula of Washington State one vacation and hiked on the slopes of the American Mount Olympus; though I never made it to the top. I never imagined I would ever see the original Mount Olympus in Greece.

But, thanks to “Good Priest”, I did.

Kalogiros took me, riding behind him on his motorcycle, first to see the a partly ruined monastery where he planned to spend the night and then on up to the climber’s hospice near the summit.

That evening, eating a hot meal with the other prospective Olympus climbers, I made friends with a small group of Greek Air Force men who invited me to join them before dawn the next day for an “assault on the summit” as I guess a real climber would call it. I slept well enjoying the cool, thin mountain air and woke with the first pre-dawn movements of the day’s other Olympus climbers.

We hurriedly dressed and followed a clear path for most of the climb but near the summit the path ended at some steep rocks. The air force men showed me dim painted arrows marking the easiest climb up the rocks and then, since they climbed very swiftly, left me to find my way alone.

But soon I joined them and some other early birds at the top to watch the sun rise in magnificence over the seacoast and the lower slope of this “holy mountain”.

Sometimes I think I was just born lucky!

Tomasito, 2009


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