When I think of home, I hear crickets chirping and the gentle humming of the river near the house. I can smell coffee and my mum’s plum cake, cows and freshly cut grass. I can feel wet soil under my bare feet and the special kind of tiredness after a long hike, the kind that makes you collapse into bed.
'Chestnuts'
Photographer : Michal Narozny
Words : Julia Gebhard
When I was a kid, I used to hide from my mum to read.
After school, she would make me do my homework and a million chores to help with. I couldn’t wait to get back to my book - there was always a book.
One of my favorite spots was near the cross, where a landslide had cut a little valley into the hill. I would sit in the shade of a chestnut tree. I would drift off into daydreams about things that were important to me back then.
Every now and then, people would walk past on the lower path. I knew most of them, or at least I had seen them before; neighbors or people from the village. The ones that I didn’t know were tourists, those were easy to spot. They would wear extensive hiking gear and mountain boots that were way over the top for those kinds of paths.
The clattering of their hiking sticks cut through the quiet long before they came around the corner.
