Jeremy Hastings

A 20 day walk crossing borderlands in the Balkans, beastly encounters everywhere, 2019

30 June

Storks high in blue
Water finds its route
The dust of a truck
Full of transient workers

Honey sits on a self
Old men play cards in the shade
Beans in full flower
Corn is ripening

Vlach, Slav, Albanian
Greek, Bulgar, Balkan,
Macedonian, Hellenistic,
Byzantine
These border lines flux

V v hot today, walked through hours and hours of beans. Each supported by 4 pyramidal reed sticks- 2 metres each
Flies all over but wind keeps them in chiek
Follow water irrigation system for 12 km
Each field can dip into it
Workers everywhere – mainly Albanian – paid 30 euro a day.

2 July

Upward in the heat
Dust springs from boots
Follow my own steps forward
Flowers enjoy this heat
A cooling stream
Wild horses on escarpment
Trenches from another era scar this still contested land

Contouring beasts move feeding
A trough, fresh, clean and sparkling allows a cooling down
The old one-toothed cattle herder invites me into his simple home;
Stove
Cupboard
Bed

Here till December
Alone with his cows
3 loud dogs help him against wolves

Down the hill a dead cow
Split along its back
Fills the hot air with the sharp stench of decay
Flies busy doing their decomposition job
I’ll put my feet into the next cooling stream.