I Met a Girl Once. She Said She Loved Mountains

Lucid dreaming…A sound. In my room. Shuffling and movement. Awake now.

Awake but not startled; my room is a dorm. Stay Hostel, Athens.

Athens? Athens wasn’t my plan, how’d I get here?

That’s right…A 1:30am ferry from Patmos earlier that morning. Tempted to stay on Patmos to see the full moon rise over Saint Paraskevi Church, the urge to move won.

“I can watch the moon rise over The Acropolis, instead” I reasoned. 

Before Patmos, Rhodes. Before Rhodes: Fethiye. Before Fethiye: a bus over the Taurus Mountains from Antalya—none of it planned. Just a chain of impulses and misadventures; flights missed, and ferries caught.

Exhausted after a sleepless night cuddling a vinyl sofa on the Patmos-Athens ferry, I caught an afternoon nap at the hostel.

Then her. She apologised for waking me.

“No problem, I was stirring anyway”.

We chatted. She was light, charming. Cute. Very.

American. Denver, Colorado.

Travelling solo. Unplanned, since the start of May. Me too.

“For how long?” I asked.

Three months for her. I’d done a three month, go-where-the-road-takes-me, May to August journey just a few years earlier. “Only two months this time.”

“Where did you start?” she asked.

“Turkey, Cyprus, and now here” I replied, adding the misadventures and impulses.

She started in Italy and was winging the whole trip. She’d just got into Athens; it wasn’t part of her plan either…

Hmmm. “Me. Too.” My mind clocked the parallels. I almost commented but let the conversation flow.

Would I like to walk Athens with her, she asked?

Of course!

“How about we wander for a bit and watch the moon rise over The Acropolis?” I suggested.

Agreed.

We walked and talked through the cobbled backstreets of Plaka. Knowing she wasn’t in Athens for more than an evening, I asked what she might like to see, or do, or…

“No this is good. This is what I want to be doing” she replied.

If it wasn’t those exact words, it was close to that. It felt a touch personal. And disarming.

“But I could do with a coffee and snack” she added.

“Ever had Greek or Turkish coffee?”

She hadn’t.

We found a café in the cobbled backstreets of the hillside under the Acropolis, covered by vines growing over and above the path and street.

Sitting on the shaded sidewalk, we ordered Greek coffees. She took my suggestion of Greek yoghurt with walnuts and honey. She enjoyed both. We enjoyed both; two coffees, two spoons, a shared bowl.

The details have blurred, but I think it was the hunger for travel that led the conversation to a time in her past.

She was sixteen, working in a gym. A former US Marine, whose name has also been lost to time (Derek?), encouraged her to do the things she dreamed of. He challenged her excuses, and changed the course of her life.

She tried to find him, enlisting the help of her sister, so she could say a simple and sincere ‘thank you’. But she couldn’t remember his name or anything else that might lead to him.

She became part of a ‘big sister’ mentoring program to pay it forward, hoping that she too could have a positive impact on someone else’s life and change it for the better, in some small way.

She had. Whether she knew it or not.

“Ever had something like this happen?” she asked.

I’d been biting my tongue.

“When I was sixteen, my parents had separated and were caught up in their own hurt and confusion. I was definitely in ‘wayward teenager’ territory. But I had a girlfriend whose parents and family were more…stable. Her father was a strong male role model, I needed that. I think it stopped me drifting too far.”

“Twenty years later I found myself in their area. I knocked on their door, said hello, reminded them who I was (!), caught up on life, and then thanked them for the people they were, the stability they gave my life, and the example they gave me for my own family.”

“Not long ago a friend invited me to join a mentoring program for struggling teenagers. I figured if I could be there to stop someone else’s drift, then...” I paused without finishing the thought, then “Yes, something almost exactly like that has happened to me.”

I wish I could remember her exact response. The parallels were now stacked too high to ignore. And too…specific. What was this?

Better not ask aloud - this day now needed to unfold on its own.

She was reflective and thoughtful. There was a back story to her journey, an aim to the adventure, for sure. But I didn't need to know, she didn't need to tell.  

The past is heavy. This was light. Funny. Lovely and uncommonly easy.

We made our way to the hillside below The Acropolis to watch the sunset before the moonrise.

We made small talk as the sun sank below the western hills of Athens, The Acropolis above us, the Agora below.

I took some photos of her that caught her playfulness. And one or two more intimate; caught in reflection, in the golden light of an Athens sunset. 

Athens sunset

We shared our future travel plans and the details of our lives, large and small...

She had a large family scattered throughout the USA, liked hiking (a big part of living in Denver) and being active. She’d been married, she wasn’t religious but used to, she’d taken her mum to Italy, didn’t know how to pose for photos, despite doing it well.

And mountains. She loved mountains.

More details were shared, some remembered but not written, others forgotten.

We straggled off after sunset; she wanted to get back to get some sleep. And I didn’t need the moon anymore.

The conversation slowed, time enough for a question to take hold; this was something, but what? For sure, she was something.

A self-contained moment or the start of something new?

The self-contained story would be good enough; every impulse and misadventure that led both her and I to that city, that hostel, that room, at that time in the afternoon - so we could sit in a conversation a lifetime in the making about our sixteen year old selves, the adult reflections, and efforts to pay forward.

A ‘you have kindred spirits out there’ kind of thing.

She was leaving for Naxos in the morning; I was headed for Georgia.

Maybe the Greek gods with their wicked sense of humour did conspire to put us in that room solely for me to introduce her to Greek coffee, and yoghurt with honey and walnuts, only to snatch her away again!?

We’d swapped numbers, but what next?

Should I let chance (fate?) put us together again or introduce intent and try to make something happen? It was too much to imagine those Greek gods would put us together again. And what if this was somehow earned?

“Just don’t fuck this up, Michael” I thought to myself. 

I fumbled some sort of ‘that was lovely, maybe think about Georgia after Naxos’ invitation.

If only the smoothness of my invitation matched the grace of her reply.

We had different paths and that was probably the way it would stay. She loved the meeting and sunset but needed to be solo - for now.

‘For now,’ cushion for a soft landing or sliver of hope? It was just there, hanging over this encounter like the sword of Damocles.

“Goodnight, goodbye…whatever it’s meant to be” she said, laughing at her own fumble.

It was funny and sweet. She was still just a girl, after all. 

I dozed off only to be woken early morning by her shuffling as she gathered her belongings for Naxos.

I thought about getting up too, but for what? Another goodbye? A hug? No, that would be too much and not enough, all at the same time.

I closed my eyes and drifted off to ponder a traveller’s dilemma - pursue with intent or surrender to chance and fate?

Or maybe it was a nudge from the Gods…something I hadn’t quite worked out yet?

No, let’s leave the story as it is - for now.

I met a girl once. She said she loved mountains. She slipped into my world in my slumber and slipped out the same way.

In between, something near perfect.