One Friday morning we packed our luggage for a three day trip and boarded the train from Athens to Thessaloniki. We would go visit two friends of ours who had recently moved there, following the general trend, so characteristic of our times, of movement from any place to any place. Radical changes are implemented when conditions become unbearable in one way or another, something that happens lately too easily in various ways and various magnitudes. Within this frame, our friends had decided last year to negate all structures they had developed over the years, and venture towards an unknown and more basic form of living. They would get involved in agriculture; they would exchange city life and Academia with the task of developing a self-sustainable agricultural environment within the principles of permaculture. With the growth of their trees and plants, they would reclaim the lost ‘meaning’. When we arrived at Thessaloniki, we decided to visit together the piece of land that would be the field of their dream. It was winter, the perfect season to plant cherry trees and pear trees and with this task at hand, we started driving up the mountains. We knew that the field was partially forest, home to boars, along with their accompanying hunters. The planting would take place in a clearing. Fog had set down upon our arrival and we walked through the forest, with our shovels and the young trees in hand. In the clearing, we dug large holes on the ground and planted all the trees. I was taking pictures of our small pagan feast. I saw these photos after we returned to civilization and realized it was not a feast I had captured. A record of clues from a crime scene would be a more appropriate description, where something already dead or killed on the spot was buried. Our previous ways, our outdated aspirations, our trust on things. We were told later that our trees were uprooted by the boars, which like eating young roots; nevertheless, our friends would replant them. —Nikos Kachrimanis
Publication designed and edited by Studio Lialios Vazoura
Text by Nikos Kachrimanis.
