When we headed from the coast into the Croatian hinterlands we had only a sandwich the hotel in Trogir had made us for lunch. We expected the trip to take about two hours to get to the Raftrek Adventure Travel outpost, but we'd also expected more road signs, and pavement all the way.

We drove west through several larger villages with orange-tiled roofs and simple traffic round-abouts as the highway forked into a network of smaller routes. Soon the interior was as starkly beautiful as any I've ever seen. The rolling country opened up and dried out, covered with brush and gray limestone outcrops, bisected by a grid-work of old dry-stack stone walls. At the two-hour mark we were on a gravel road in the mountains waiting for a herd of goats to cross.
We drove on hope and intuition, two elements common on the periodic table of exciting travel. Finally the Zrmanja River valley opened up before us, but there was really no way of knowing it was it. We had a Google map pulled up on the iPad but no cell service and for what-ever reason, the steep sage-green country we were negotiating showed up on the screen as white empty territory, with no village names or locations. We could have been driving through Siberia.
"This looks like good adventure camping country," Betsy said and we descended to the valley floor in dusty switchbacks.
A good paved road bisected the valley, and we crossed it and entered the village called Kastel Zegarsky. Betsy pointed out the stone cottages were mostly abandoned and many had been blasted from above. There was a burned-out school, but in several of the yards near the river we saw inflatable kayaks, so we followed the raftrek signs to the Raftrek Adventure Travel outpost, a rebuilt country house surrounded by colorful kayaks. A young slender man with blond dreadlocks saw us drive in and greeted us warmly. This would be our guide, Philip.

We'd signed up for a day of trekking in the Krupa River canyon and a kayak trip down the Zrmanja the next day. Raftrek would rent us a tent and sleeping pad for the evening and we could camp next to the river. We told Philip we had no food beyond the sandwich and he said not to worry, Bobo, the neighboring sheepherder, would make us another home-made prosciutto sandwich dinner and breakfast and then a prosciutto sandwich for the second day for a small fee.
Philip had work to do to prepare the day's river trip before he took us trekking, so he pointed out our campsite and also where we could get fresh water-- a spring bubbling out of the river bank. "Fill your bottles there," he said. Walking to the spring is where I noticed for the first time that the banks of the Zrmanja were lined with wild figs trees. They weren't ripe yet, but they were everywhere. I felt like I'd fallen into a Mediterranean survival fantasy-- water bubbling from an ancient spring in the very earth, figs, and an outpost of young men and women living happily in tents.

Once Philip finished his preparation he drove with us to the trailhead, on the next river over, the Krupa Canyon. We would begin our trek at an ancient monastery. On the way Philip explained that Kastel Zegarsky once had 3,500 living there before the war. Now there are only 300 inhabitants. The village inhabitants who stayed had been caught in the middle of fierce fighting. Once the industry was agricultural-- sheep and goat herding, grapes, olives. Now it was mostly tourist adventure based on the rivers.
Three more young guides met us at the monastery. They would accompany us on the trek and learn the route. They piled out of the Raftrek landrover and we walked up to tour the old monastery next to the river.
A monk answered the door, a jovial man in a black hat named Father Gaurio. He explained in broken English he was now the only monk left. I kept thinking of how they say being a monk is really not about solitude, that the monks in their daily habits of work and prayer "polish each other, like pebbles in a sack," and how sad it was that Father Guario had no other pebbles to polish him. He toured us through the 13th century church, and then the empty cloisters. He pointed out old murals found under new paint, and new murals he'd commissioned for his chapel. He apologized all along the way for his English, though he made several jokes we understood. This he liked, and it gave satisfaction that we laughed about vampires and garlic hanging in the kitchen without anyone having to explain.
We walked the old stone paths of the monastery and I thought how for many centuries the feet of believers had smoothed the stones and now it was mostly tourist feet. Father Gaurio unlocked the treasure room for us. There was an exhibit of the icons that had once been in the church. I was struck by how now the treasures, locked away in the small museum, are for visitors to see and not for use. He showed us two bells, also not in use, and explained they had been shot up, one in the Second World War and one in the more recent war that had depopulated the valley. Before we left we had our picture made with Father Gaurio and we were glad to know our entry fee would help with the upkeep.

Later the trek through Krupa Canyon was like entering another sort of sanctuary. I carry John Muir everywhere with me, and so all bold surviving stretches of nature are holy. The limestone walls mounted upwards and the cliffs narrowed the deeper we walked. The blue water of the river was other-worldly and frogs called from the figs and reeds along the banks like a vastly ancient choir predating the monastery. Flood plain fields alternated with steep washes of limestone scree tumbled in fans from above. We crossed another small stunningly blue river and then began an ascent of a ridge pinching the river, straight up, jack-knifing back and forth across the face of the cliff.

At the top of the ridge there was a goat-herder's cottage and we stopped to rest there for a few moments before descending. The herder Pajo introduced us to his 50 goats. "Do they have names?" I asked. Philip translated. "Yes," he said. "Pajo says their names are 'that one' and 'that one' and 'that one' and 'that one.'" Pajo scratched the nearest goat under his bearded chin with tenderness.
After Pajo's we walked down to the river and back. Philip diverted us to see a cave, a dark cavity halfway down the steep gorge wall. "Listen," he said, once deep inside, and we bent our ear to a cool dry crevice and heard bats squeaking even deeper down.

At the bottom of the trail there was an old stone foot bridge we crossed to fill our bottles at another ancient spring. We ate our prosciutto sandwiches there in the shade. In the shallow estuary where the spring ran a snake was having lunch too, eating a fish.

These were only a few moments in a two-week trip, but they are some of the most memorable. They are still layered and luminary in my memory, though we have been back now a week.
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