#women who write

I haven’t written everyday since January. I second guess everything even my own skin - should it look this way? What could I do to change it? Why do I think like this? Shouldn’t I learn to love myself? When do I find the soul hitting questions to help myself solve all the “hard” questions? Why haven’t I found “my people?” Why didn’t I spend more time finding my place on the East Coast, in New York? Why are there so many writers but so little conversation? It must be me. I’m always avoiding. Always running away. Always afraid that I’m not who I am. I read books and I cry. I watch movies and I cry. I wish I could write again and I cry but I don’t write. I wait. I listen. I cry. You hold me sometimes, sometimes you don’t even know. I’m sneaky when I want to be [ashamed of how I can never seem to pick up the pieces]. I’m trying to find happy in myself instead of finding it in those around me. When they don’t understand me I break- I feel they must be right. I must be so hard to fucking love. I must be so god damn difficult… I don’t see it. He doesn’t see it (or he does but he doesn’t care, I think…) I don’t know.

ReBecca DeFazio

More Than A Flower

poetry by Lucy Whitehead

Once there was a woman whose sadness overflowed.
She cried for hours, days, weeks until her face became a waterfall.
Her cheeks permanently pink.

Sick of buying tissues, she started to use
two silver buckets she’d found one day
in a neighbour’s abandoned shed, not knowing

they belonged to a magician (now dead).
She’d sit stroking her cats, buckets nestled
about her feet, listening to the plop, plop, tap

and rattle of tears hitting the metal. When
the buckets were full of silvery water, she poured
them into her flowerbeds and a large empty pond.

All winter, she staggered with buckets swinging
to her old dried-up garden. Even in dense blizzards,
she watered the earth with sadness, til

her tired heart let go. One warm spring day,
she wandered out in bare feet, buckets
only half full now. Such a song greeted her.

Flowers of every hue grown tall overnight
unfurled bright petals beneath trees laden
with ripe fruit, plump and glowing.

Butterflies danced in a dazzling blur
of hummingbirds, as burgeoning bushes dropped
swollen berries into impossibly green grass.

The pond was brimful and luminous,
bustling with a rainbow of sea creatures
frolicking in its salty waters, phosphorescent.

She assembled a deckchair in the centre of it all,
settled her tired body down and, smiling,
opened herself up to the sun.

Lucy Whitehead’s poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Amethyst Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Barren Magazine, Black Bough Poetry, Broken Spine Artist Collective, Burning House Press, Collective Unrest, Electric Moon Magazine, Ghost City Review, Mookychick Magazine, 3 Moon Magazine, Neon Mariposa Magazine, Parentheses Journal, Pink Plastic House, Pussy Magic, Re-side, and Twist in Time Magazine. She lives by the sea with her husband and cat. You can find her on Twitter @blueirispoetry.

Creative Non-Fiction by Maggie Edinger

My twelve-year-old self danced in the woods behind my creepy neighbors house, in long pastel dresses that I would find in cardboard boxes at garage sales. I would gather my supplies of love notes written on white college ruled paper, stolen coffee grounds from my mother’s morning fuel and a lighter… you always need a lighter. I also always brought my mom’s old paper prayer books. They reminded me of the Riot Grrrl zines, the way they had stories of archangels and women who were burned at the stake for their ideas, their beliefs, their dreams. I would trace my finger over the pencil drawings of saintly women and wonder what they had wished for, because my spells were just fancy wishes. They always had the same two themes–boys and wishing for my mom’s happiness. 

One spell would be a love potion for the boy next door, sticky red and full of sweet smelling perfume, bubbles popping on the surface like kisses. The other one was a feeling, an almost desperate plea to end the curse of sadness that landed on my mother and buried itself into her hair. I used fortune cookies for my happy spells. They seemed to hold such drama in the black words scrolled across small, white tabs of paper, with lucky numbers and symbols. Sometimes I would eat them and swallow my magic like a pill, letting it soak in and travel through me hoping that the next time I touched my mother I would infect her with my fortune.

•

My seventeen-year-old self still did the witch dances, just more secretly. The woods were darker, the spells filled with more lust and insecurity than before were still being said. My witch wishes for my mom felt more hopeless. I started to think she was a witch too. How else could she repel my spell for so many years? Her darkness was deep, and isolating. Her brewing storm was a war against what was real and what was only in her head. I burned sage on altars of dead tree logs and held hands with other girls in pastel hues whose parents had lost their powers. When no one notices that you carry prayer books full of scrap paper and harvest people’s hearts for blind love you can hide in plain sight. No one knew I had secret powers that were tucked inside my pockets, filled with dead flowers and garlic.

My hiding places were hang outs–the simplicity of having friends that believed in the same craft. We braided each other’s snarly hair and whispered of romances we had not felt yet. They made me feel alive. Alive with a twirling of my stomach when I tried to do a handstand without one of them holding my legs, alive with the promise of lips actually feeling love, not just speaking of it. We practiced the art of never feeling alone. Loneliness was my enemy, I had seen it wreck havoc on my mom. I could not and would not allow loneliness to steal my soul. I only felt powerful when I was around the other girls–I fed off them; I loved them; they were my icons, my sisters, my true coven. My own cure for breaking the cycle that I was now fighting against. My physical saints, with real hearts and good grips.

•

My twenty-three-year-old self lost track of my childhood spells, misplaced my paperback books, and was trapped in the real world. My relationship with the most important woman in my life was so fragile that if I breathed too hard, too close to it, it could unravel in a million, trillion, tiny specks spread across our past lives. Mental illness is a spell itself. It’s sneaky and smart; it gathers your pieces and mixes them with dust; it confuses you and misplaces everyone around it. I forgot my mission to wish away her sadness and moved away from what scared me. She scared me. I wanted to understand her, I wanted to help her, I wanted my love to save her, but it didn’t and it wouldn’t no matter how many goddesses held my hand and recited words that were born from cookies. She was my connector to the feminine, the rope holding my spirit; she was casting secrets to the same woods, with the same creepy neighbors. I had to learn that she and I had different struggles: as I was trying to fit in, she was trying to tune out. Our genes had split…she went one way and I went another.

•

My thirty-one-year-old self found my old pastel pink dress. Everything was still there, smeared on top of tulle. Old dirt, grass stains, ash–it smelled like coffee and when I closed my eyes, I saw my mother. I saw my saint-girls, and my circles of rituals. Magical powers swirled around my eyes. I missed her, I missed them all. My curse to entice happiness had exploded in my hands. I watched her grow older, not happier. Depression seduced her like a child lured into a car with promises of candy. I was tempted to forget my witch that lived inside, but it was my animal guide, it was a part of me, it’s the only part that danced. My paranormal double life made me question if I was doing enough to help her; what else could I do, when I had tried it all. I had outgrown the dresses–I would need new ones if I was going to wake up the witch. I was going to need supplies and the woods and a lighter…can’t forget the lighter. I was going to have to startle her awake so she would pop up quickly and not have time to reflect or second guess. I was worried she might never wake up…what if she never woke up? I had to try, I had to try one last time to see if it might work with older and blacker magic. But the most important thing I needed to do was find what each girl had given me in the past and track those traits down in myself. I had been away for so long, would they remember me? I would track them down one by one, asking each trait to help me. They came, like true blood, never missing a beat, pumping life into the trees like rain. I was back to being superhuman, back to drawing circles in the dark and lighting candles for the living to talk to the dead.

I needed my mother, but she wasn’t there. I think she wanted to be but emotionally and mentally could not be. I saw her as Joan of Arc, having visions of archangel Micheal instructing her to support Charles VII and recover France from England’s domination late in the Hundred Years’ War. My mother saw visions, heard voices, felt panic. She was trying so hard to fight, but in the end it was too hard. Her sorcery was poison, mine was freedom. Magic can come in many forms, many feelings, many shapes. I loved her and my love would be my spell, the only one that can survive this. I would hold on tight, close my eyes and sage the shit out of my bedroom, chanting for the right words to fill my mouth so I could finally get her to see that I love her. I have always loved her. A witch’s love never dies–it swirls. It lingers in a bright cloud above our heads, feeding us at the right time.

Just because my charms did not work didn’t mean they were broken. I wasn’t a kid who only wished for love at first sight and sweet kisses, I had darker spirits to chase out of my family. In the end I knew I didn’t need the physical charms, or the pastel rainbows…I had to embrace what my spells could not make disappear. I had to give my mother room to live, in whatever world that was. As an adult I still needed cosmic spirits, I still needed caldrons of hot love brewing secretly in my basement.  Only this time, the wishes were for hope–not a cure for sadness–but a small, glowing orb of hope, that mixed together with the steamy air like smoke in hopes that it would make its way to my mother’s breaths. In. Out. Releasing my connection to her, giving it to her again and again…never giving up. I never grew out of being a witch.

Maggie Edinger has a BA from Columbia College Chicago, where she majored in Art Entertainment, Media Management and minored in Woman’s Studies She published her first body of work last March called Bubble and the Invisible Ghosts, a journal. She has been published in the Remington Review and is currently working on her second book, a memoir. In 2010 she started Lipstick Dinosaur, which she owns and operates, a web based fashion brand that has been featured in Nylon magazine, Time Out Chicago, WGN News and many more. Maggie lives in Philadelphia with her husband, daughter and pit bull Bubble.

Creative Non-Fiction by Exodus Oktavia Brownlow

Instructions: Fill in Your Name/Personal Pronouns

An undergraduate professor was explaining the word iconoclastic to the class. As an example, she used ______.  

The professor, “______, would you stand up, please?” 

______, “Seriously?”

The class, laughing.

The professor, “Yes.”

______—standing, fearing, waiting for all the blows, and more. 

The professor, “Now, there’s a ______ who marches to the beat of ______ own drum.” 

Praise? 

Foreign. 

Somehow drastically more terrifying. 

___

In ______ fantasies, ______ are/am/is on stage. Fully-bloomed. Performing with exquisite execution. Receiving endless applause. 

It wasn’t supposed to feel like this. 

Desiring to die as an imposter. 

Needing to live as a believer

Exodus Oktavia Brownlow is a Blackhawk, Mississippi native whose writing aesthetic includes purposeful horror, character-driven fiction, and nonfiction writing that aims to create a healthier world for us all. She is a graduate of Mississippi Valley State University with a B.A in English, and Mississippi University for Women with a MFA in Creative Writing. She is published with Electric-Literature, Barren Magazine, Valley Voices, Luna Luna Magazine, X-Ray-Literary Magazine, Jellyfish Review and more. Exodus has a healthy adoration for the color green.

We spend our whole days moving. Scenes and images flitting past us in a blur of motion, trying to ingrain as many sights and sounds into our memories as we can. So much to take in, so many moments to keep.⁣ So when we finally settle down for the day, on whatever nameless piece of land, or road, or body of water we find, I like to sit with myself, and just be.⁣

I listen to the sounds of birds or bells or the cry of the muezzin, I watch the sky fade from blue into purple then from fiery gold into black, like the extinguished flames of a fire. If it’s cold I’ll wrap a blanket round my legs to sit in the doorway for as long as I can stand until the night air creeps indoors and I am forced to close it. This silence allows me to take it all in, to digest the many experiences a life of travel hands me like gifts.⁣

I wouldn’t want to waste one second of the time we’re on the road, this time we’ve worked so hard to earn, and this is my small way in which to appreciate it all. My memories are worth more than all the money I could earn, pressed safely between the pages of a book and encapsulated in photographs forever.

Not every day on the road can be an adventure. We need rest days, van repair days, life admin days.⁣

Days where we just chill, where we sleep in late and sip coffee gazing out of the back doors. Days where we clean the van from top to bottom or catch up on our work. Rainy days spent cosied up under blankets trying to catch the various leaks in our roof.⁣

Contrary to our little highlight reel on here it’s not all epic roadtrips and new discoveries; for every day of exploring there’s a down day closely following behind (or two, or three…). Constant motion is exhausting; travel sometimes overstimulating. We need time to process and digest just as much as we crave new experiences and changing scenery.⁣

As with everything in life it’s all about balance, and the days spent sipping coffee in bed are just as important as the days we’re out scaling mountains.

Driving down these lonesome dirt track roads, icy waters below us, empty mountains all around.⁣

Miles and miles and nothing but silence, nameless peaks stretching toward the sky dusted with patches of white. Those sunset clouds splashed unusual shades of deep purple and dusty rose pink casting a colour haze across the landscape that’s hard to describe, the fleeting kind that comes only after rain and lasts just a few minutes before it’s gone again.⁣

Our tyres ploughed through deep, sticky mud to reach the small ridge that would become home for the night. We wrapped our faces in scarves against the cold and scrambled down the bank to skim stones across the lake’s frozen surface; they bounced and echoed with a bullet ricochet sound that reverberated around the valley and clattered through our ears.⁣

These were the only noises we would hear all night; no birds, no cars, no wind or rain, just us above this frozen lake as the colours slowly melted and the stars came into view.⁣

So much of Albania was just wild land, beautiful places that would not appear on any hiking trail or in any guide book, free to explore, yours to enjoy. With no fences or barriers to hold us back we could pitch up and call anyplace home for the night, and that was just the kind of freedom we craved.⁣

Oh how good it was to be back in this land again.⁣

There’s something about a dirt track road which never fails to excite us. It holds within it the promise of adventure, a challenge, and no guarantee of if we’ll make it to the end.⁣

Driving around Albania is very much a game of chance; sometimes you’ll find yourself on the smoothest paved road, other times that road will unexpectedly run out and you find yourself bumping down miles of relentless gravel and rock. Sometimes we’re up for the challenge; sometimes it proves too much for our old van and we are forced to backtrack.

We alternate here between the desperate need to escape from civilisation and the sweet relief that tarmac provides.⁣

But the Balkans offer everything we lack back in England; unpaved roads, a slackening of regulations, the freedom to roam. There are rules but nobody pays attention to them. There’s a general lack of fucks given. Nobody’s all up in your business telling you where you can and can’t be or what you can and can’t do. For some the craziness may be overwhelming; to us it’s a breath of fresh air.⁣

We find peace amongst the chaos, freedom weaving through rough dirt roads, and adventure waiting for us around every turn. And that’s just the way we like it.

When we arrived in Albania on an unseasonably warm January day our hearts were fraught with a mixture of emotions: comfort, familiarity, but also a degree of hesitation. We had fond memories of our time in this country, but were they simply painted bright by nostalgia, and would our second visit live up to expectation?⁣

Our answers to these questions came on just our second day here.⁣

We’d spent the day basking in sunshine, washing our van and dipping our bodies into the icy waters of Lake Prespa, and were just beginning to enjoy one of those spectacular Albanian sunsets which painted the mountains the particular shade of purple that was so ingrained into our memories. We went to fire up the engine but our van refused to start; the batteries were too flat, the air too cold. The engine got slower and slower until it had no juice left to give. We were now faced with the prospect of a night here with no power, no heating and no light; we’d seen approximately three cars all day and the light outside was rapidly fading.

Yet somehow, whether by miracle or fate or pure coincidence, a car approached just two minutes later. We waved them down, explained as best we could what had happened, and the man along with all six members of his family came over to help us. We had no jump leads but this didn’t deter him, and in the most Balkan display of ingenuity and problem solving he had our van running in no time by swapping our battery with the one from his car, starting the engine then swapping them back around while it was still running. He even fixed the loose positive terminal with a screw.⁣

Feeling like we’d been a burden we offered him a shot of rakia as a thank you and his face lit up; they then immediately invited us to join them for their son’s birthday party at a nearby restaurant. Instead of spending a cold, dark night in our van we spent the evening drinking, sampling local cuisine, having conversations via Google Translate, eating homemade baklava and birthday cake and toasting each member of the table with a hearty, “ë!”⁣

What a welcome back into Albania.

Our last few days in Macedonia were spent enveloped in a freezing fog which shrouded our view and promised snow which never came. We woke up daily to frost inside the windscreen and icicles hanging off our van. The fog wrapped itself around every plant, every rock and every being, leaving each wrapped in thick kisses of ice, turning the entire landscape silver and white without a snowflake ever falling from the sky.⁣

We were camped up on the peaceful shores of Lake Prespa, undisturbed by anyone, wrapped up in thick layers of blankets against the minus temperatures outdoors.⁣

Truthfully, the Macedonians were used to colder climates this time of year, and -7°C at night was the result an unseasonably mild winter; we had returned to the country expecting snow, and we were leaving disappointed on that front.⁣

But we were leaving confident that we had made the right decision to return; after cutting our time here short to leave for Greece in December we’d been aching to explore more of the country, and we’d been fortunate enough to enjoy an extra two weeks here getting to know the southern regions and the Macedonian way of life.⁣

We’d met some lovely people, experienced welcoming in the Orthodox New Year with rakija and fireworks, witnessed the crazy tradition of jumping into ice cold water on Epiphany Day, sampled delicious food and learned so much about a country that had never even been on our radar.⁣

That morning we left for Albania with conflict in our hearts; we were leaving for a country we’d long since fallen in love with, but we were leaving behind a blossoming romance with a land that had stolen our hearts and captured our souls.⁣

⁣Truthfully we loved the entirety of the Balkans, but we had found a special place in the very heart of the Balkan Peninsula, and when our trip was finally over Macedonia was where we’d be yearning to return.

Another day of life in the wild.⁣⠀

⁣

One of our last few days in Bosnia, spent amongst snow and pine, sprucing up before our big journey home-bound. We’d be returning worn out and penniless, with a broken van and a clutch of precious new memories, yet we did not regret a single moment of the last six months.⁣

It’s a taboo subject to talk about money, but we left for this trip with just a few grand between us. For six months of living and travelling over 15,000 miles- that’s not a lot.⁣

And so to anyone who says that we are privileged: you’re wrong. Our lifestyle is not a privilege, it is the product of hard work, ruthless saving and months of rigorous planning. All in the name of following our dreams, all in hope that someday we might be able to make the money to sustain doing what we love. All for that little taste of freedom.⁣

And it was worth every freezing night, every stale loaf of bread, every skipped meal, every dinner scraped together out of leftovers, every push to get to the next fuel station and every questionable road. We have not lived well but boy have we lived.⁣

We’ve driven spectacular roads, spent evenings in the company of welcoming locals, sampled cuisines and cultures from all walks of life, been to unbelievably remote locations and captured it all through the glass of a lens.⁣

See we’re not just doing this for a jolly, to escape the 9-5; we’re doing this because we have a passion and the tenacity to chase our dreams. We sacrificed comfort and security for the promise of something so much bigger.⁣⠀

You don’t have to be rich to travel; we’re proof of that. All you need is a dream, and the desire to chase that dream.⠀

Our van wheels crunched over unpaved road after unpaved road, kicking up mud and gravel as we bumbled along a series of winding dirt tracks which wove their way through endless pine forest.⁣⁠

This was the face of Bosnia & Herzegovina’s interior, a world away from the bustle and bullet-strewn concrete structures of its capital Sarajevo. Here, pretty little stone houses were strewn across scenic plateaus which seemed to appear mysteriously out of the dense thicket of trees that surrounded them and crept up to their doorsteps. Wild animals were known to roam these forests, and we wondered how humans could live so close to them without conflict.⁣⁠

We were still carving our route home out, ever Northbound, savouring these last few days in the Balkans before we would hotfoot across Europe back to England. We slept soundly that night, cradled by the forest, and coaxed our van into life with jackets bundled against the icy morning air. This was our pattern of travel these days; squeezing the most of every moment, battling with our van to get it home, the road our only constant as we went.⁣⁠⠀

As the forest dwindled and eventually gave way to civilisation we followed a winding little road partially covered by snow up to a ledge, where we spent the night sleeping underneath the remnants of Tito’s fist. Now a crumbling concrete structure, this bizarre object known as a spomenik had once been a monument to the Partisan soldiers who fought in the Battle of the Wounded in the valley below, but was nicknamed for its uncanny resemblance to Yugoslavia’s former leader ad the iron fist with which he ruled. However, shortly after the Bosnian War, a group of vandals planted dynamite inside and blew it to pieces, although its skeleton still dominates the skyline for miles around.⁣⁠

We were beginning to understand more of Bosnia’s chequered past, evident in every bullet-strewn building and every crumbling ruin we passed. Twenty years was not enough time to heal, but even after the visible reminders had long since been repaired, the memories would not fade for generations yet to come.⁠⠀

⁠⠀

I wash everything by hand in our van- underwear, tops, cardigans, you name it, using whatever river or lake water is available nearby. We take a trip to the laundrette once every two months for our bedding and that’s it. It saves money, but I also enjoy doing it in some weird, old-fashioned way.⁣

Maybe because it reminds me of when I was younger. We were always moving between houses, hauling all of our stuff in this big old yellow Mercedes truck to and fro across two countries. I got used to washing my clothes by hand in the sink of whatever house we were in that month, always a different bedroom or kitchen to get used to.⁣

Maybe that lack of permanence in my formative years is what drove me to eventually get a van. Those memories of brushing my teeth in a lay-by or sleeping in the footwell of our truck seemed like hard done-by times back then, but I look back on them now with a sort of fondness and nostalgia at my unusual childhood.⁣

There are many hundreds of little reasons that made me want to travel; moments that seemed innocuous at the time now resonate with a deeper meaning and inspire me to push on further. Movement is in my soul; it makes my spirit restless to sit still.⁣

Often challenges can be the most defining points of our lives, whether we realise it at the time or only once they have been overcome. Maybe one day we’ll look back at these times we’re living now, cast a fresh gaze upon old memories, and I wonder which of those will stand out, and which will fade away.⁣

, , , …⁣

⁣

Our boots crunched over loose, rocky scree and a vertical incline that threatened to topple us over at any minute. The track we were following was unlike anything we’d hiked before; less a path and more a trail carved out by the resilient villagers who lived at the top of this mountain.⁣

We had journeyed to the Northernmost corner of Albania until the road could take us no further; here we left the van and met our guide who would take us to meet the villagers living in some of Albania’s most remote regions, places only accessible on foot or by mule.⁣

At this altitude in the Albanian Alps there was no vegetation, nothing to suggest this area would support life; the closest thing to trees were the makeshift poles supporting a thin electricity wire than ran from the bottom of the valley to the peak above us. We followed the path arduously, gasping for breath and legs screaming in protest while our guide, who’d been traversing these mountains since he learned to walk, sailed ahead of us.⁣

Men twice our age passed us with ease, taking their mules to the top to fetch hay, and we doubted whether we’d ever make it to the end of this 2km near-vertical climb.⁣

But then, mercifully, the ground began to level out, and a luscious green pasture spread out before us, covering the plateau. This was the last place on earth we’d expected to see people living, yet unbelievably a dozen or so houses were spread out across the vast fields where horses and sheep grazed.⁣

It took another hour or so to reach a homestead which looked like it might be inhabited; many of the rest were crumbling ruins, long abandoned as their owners headed for the city. A middle-aged woman greeted us at the door, wearing a white head scarf and modest clothing; she was clearly surprised and excited to have visitors. She immediately invited us inside for coffee, and set about pouring glasses of rakia from a bottle shaped like a crucifix.

We were in awe of her home, which was furnished with beautiful polished wood items and an ornate wood burner in the center. We inquired how she had managed to get it up here, and she recalled hauling it up the same track we had taken, carrying it on sticks along with her husband on their shoulders. The same would’ve been true for every item of furniture in their house, making this otherwise ordinary house suddenly look quite impossible.⁣

After drinks, Age (Aga) happily showed us around her property; she had vegetables and dried mountain herbs in her larder, dried cuts of meat in her barn. She kept sheep for their milk, churned this by hand to make butter, and knitted clothes and rugs from their wool. Her water came from a spring and her income came from raising cattle. Every part of her life was fascinating to us; our minds boggled at the length and difficulty of the journey we had taken, hours from the nearest city with amenities, right up to this woman’s house that would be ordinary if not for its exceptional location atop a mountain.

It was still incomprehensible, even though we’d completed the journey ourselves, and we imagined her and her husband making their monthly trip to Shkodër then hiking back up the vertical path with their supplies; it was a world away from simply visiting the supermarket. From this vantage point we could see dozens more houses scattered across the mountains in even more unlikely places, and we were curious whether anyone still lived in them and what their stories were.⁣

We said goodbye to Age, who still had much work to do before the sunset, and began our painstaking journey down the other side of the mountain left in complete and total awe.⁣

This is an excerpt from an ongoing documentary project about the residents of the Albanian Alps, one of the most inaccessible regions of Europe. The video of this adventure will be out on YouTube on Sunday, and the full photo essay will be available to view on @lbjournalssoon.

The distant sounds of the Call To Prayer rang out across the steely waters of Lake Skadar, crackling out through distorted speakers atop the minarets of several mosques, clashing and vying for dominance like the howling of street dogs. The sky was reflected in the glassy lake surface as it turned slowly from blue to purple to an electrifying red which set the clouds ablaze. And we were making our preparations to head deep into the mountains.⁣

We’d been parked up amongst the waterlogged trees and lake reeds for several days, a furtive little spot accessible by driving through a shallow river that had swollen to twice its size following the rainfall on the day we arrived. But now the blissful sunset colours cast down onto the distant mountains of Montenegro and all was calm in the far North of Albania again.⁣

Of all the lakes we’d camped by in recent months, Lake Skadar was easily the largest and most impressive.⁣⠀

While we’d stuck religiously to our inland route around the Balkan Peninsula these lakes gave us some comfort and a gentle reminder of the ocean’s edge we’d left behind in search of provincial adventures. Although we’d grown up a stone’s throw from the sea and these country’s coastlines provided an easily navigable and scenic route, we’d been drawn to see more of Europe’s hinterlands, a world away from glitzy seaside resorts and tourist attractions. In the heartlands of Albania we’d discovered spectacular mountainscapes, empty lands, impassable roads and an authenticity, warmth and unrivalled hospitality from its people. The same was true of the Balkans’ whole interior, and in fact we’d only briefly touched the sea in Thessaloniki since our departure from Calais many months prior.

These lesser-visited areas are what we live for; places you won’t find in any guidebook, unblemished of tourist attractions. Just raw and honest countryside, nothing more.⁣⠀

We finished packing up our backpacks just as the last of the light was fading, ready for our journey tomorrow into the most remote corner of this country. ⠀

⠀

When it rains in the mountains, it really rains. Not a fine mizzle or the odd shower like we get in England, but a biblical, all-engrossing rain that pelts down from the sky and sends rivers running down the mountainsides in great waterfalls that flood the roads and make planning any sort of activity quite impossible.⁣⁣

Such is the unpredictability of the Accursed Mountains, a corner of Albania whose curious histories and unique way of life woven amongst its limestone peaks will forever keep us coming back for more.⁣⁣

This fascinating mountain range was so named for its wildly inhospitable conditions, and is one of the rare mountain ranges in Europe that is yet to be fully explored. But mountaineers with their compasses and maps will never truly conquer these mountains, for the only way to truly navigate them is with a lifetime of muscle memory, ingrained into mountain men from the age they learn to walk. There are few roads, no signposted trails, and no forgiveness; if you get lost and the weather doesn’t get you then the wolves surely will.⁣⁣

But while the mountains may ward you off with their inhospitality the people will surely not, as they are perhaps some of the warmest and most welcoming in all the Balkans. With no fear of strangers and no reason to lock their doors some three hours away from the nearest town, they will happily invite you into their home for a coffee and a rakia before you continue on your journey.⁣⁣

The Albanian Alps possess a deep sense of mystery that fascinates us and seems almost tangible as we pull off the craggy SH25 alongside the Drin river, unwilling to drive any further in the torrential downpour. The thunderstorm would not pass until tomorrow evening when we would be rewarded with another spectacular Albanian sunset, but before that we would endure a night of lightning strikes powerful enough to knock out the area’s only phone mast, and thunder that shook us violently inside our van; if you’ve never heard thunder in the mountains before, imagine someone dropping about thirty dustbins off the side of a cliff at once. It booms.⁣⁣

It felt all at once overwhelmingly exciting and familiar to be back in the North of Albania once again, parked up so close to an area we’d become so affiliated with that had played home to one of our favourite travel stories. But now we were about to make more, as we were set to be heading off the road and into the furthest reaches of these mountains on foot, a place where vehicles could only dream to go and mules were the primary mode of transport.⁣⁣

Soon we were going back into the heart of the Accursed Mountains.

It’s all too easy to simply pass through somewhere, admiring the scenery from a distance through dusty window panes like the hollow eyes of a TV screen.⁣⠀

It’s much more complex and infinitely more rewarding to engage with life in other countries, to meet people and experience small snippets of culture through them, to learn what it means to be a local in even the most mundane sense, to really a country in a richer, more wholesome way.⁣⠀

When you’ve assimilated into the local way of life, when you’ve learned things that could never be written in any guidebook, that is when one graduates from a tourist into a traveller.⁣⠀

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The people are their country; a country is its people. And to pass through a place blissfully unaware of the locals and their customs is in our eyes to waste an opportunity.⁣⠀

Without those chance encounters, without delving into new cuisines, without saying yes and throwing ourselves into whatever comes out way, how could we ever truly say we’ve seen the world?⁣⠀

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When you travel you open yourself up to a wealth of experiences the world has to offer, both good and bad. But through these experiences you realise that the world isn’t such a dark, scary place as we’re led to believe. Most people we’ve met on our way have been good and kind, hospitable and welcoming. And the bad experiences are just lessons learned for the future.⁣⠀

After all, we wholeheartedly believe that what you put out into the world, is what you receive back.⁣⠀

Be good, be honest, be curious and be kind. And just see where the winds will take you.⁣⠀

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P.S. This might just be my favourite photo from this trip, taken in one of my favourite corners of the world ⠀

On a particularly frosty Monday morning we rose earlier than the sun did, cameras in hand and blankets around our shoulders to capture the sunrise and encapsulate it in our memories⁣.

The watercolour sky was awash with pale pinks and dusky orange, the jagged mountain peaks shrouding the horizon beyond. Below our camp spot sat the most pristine lake of emerald water, clear as glass, and a thick stream of cloud scooting across its surface before being sucked down into the valley below.⁣

We stood patiently, cameras poised, as the fiery sunlight licked the tops of the mountains and slowly made its way down to their base. Finally, after what seemed like hours, the golden rays filtered through the peaks and burst through the chill in the air. The snaking dirt track beneath us was all of a sudden bathed in gold, the fog clouds set ablaze in the sky, and the warmth of a late winter’s day kissed our cheeks and unfroze our hands.⁣

It felt like an achievement for us, a rare gift of total aloneness after several chaotic days amongst the city folk of Tirana, long before the first commuter minibuses would rumble their way down this track. We retreated to the van to reward ourselves with coffee, watching the sun scatter the orderly clouds into a haze of fog that enveloped the landscape and licked at our van.⁣

An early start and a little less sleep had been a fair trade to enjoy this moment all to ourselves. We cradled our coffee cups and pored over maps, planning the day’s adventure ahead before the rest of the world had even pulled back the covers and risen out of bed.