Bulgaria Is Full of Kind Strangers & Bears

Here you go: a lively, descriptive, sometimes deceptively cheerful recounting of a time when my well-being (and maybe even my life) was at the mercy of winter storms and rugged strangers.

 

Like the actual experience itself, this section of Soul Shaping Tails will end too soon.

 

Enjoy.

 

We were rescued by a mountain of a man—a self-proclaimed champion of the 100-mile barefoot race in Japan back in ’92. Or maybe it was South Korea. His English was bad; my Bulgarian was worse. But he was strong and eager and drove a car that could outrun the bears.

 

By the time we’d met him, I’d been reduced to a tear-stained, soggy human being. Everything ached. Finally sheltered from the brutal winter storm in a small cantina which the British would have called a canteen, I held the hot tea in my pink and clammy fingers. I had pulled my unsteady metal stool as close as was possible to the warmth of the cracking fire licking the inside of the stove. Len did the same, and we watched as steam rose from our soaked-through jeans. We still had over 13 kilometres to walk toward the only village that we hoped would offer a bus ride home. We hoped that Kostas, boisterous and big, would be our saviour from the many unexpected challenges we’d experienced so far on our hike through the Rila range.

 

He was the second Bulgarian—the second human, in fact—that we’d seen in days.

 

Both Len and I had kept our spirits up throughout the freezing trek down the mountain with the memory of the canteen we’d just left that morning. A corner stove had warmed the aroma of spices and roasted dried fruits. The scent infused the air, and cloves and apples had settled over us like a warm blanket.

 

Half a day later, bloodied and thirsty, we were desperate. The elements had been unforgiving, and I found myself trying to remember basic survival instincts: Keeping my chest dry, wiggling my fingers and toes despite reopening wounds, keeping our path close to the slopes and steep rise of the hills when the trees were too sparse for shelter, eating frozen snow to keep hydrated. Reminding myself of these simple survival skills kept my mind from despair. My nose was red and numb and could smell only the bitter cold.

 

Somewhere on the mountain between the clove-scented cantina and Kostas’ “chay”, we had frozen and become soaked to the bone, wandering without a clue as to when we’d reach the next hut and uncertain whether it would be open or abandoned for the winter.

 

But I digress. The memory of overwhelming helplessness I felt keeps overtaking my story. It wasn’t this bad from the beginning. The trip began with high spirits and lots of enthusiasm, if not with lots of supplies.

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