When the journey's nature is to end expectations.

Sorry for my absence while life knocked me sideways.

I’m sitting at the Dublin airport pre-clearance gate, waiting to board the airplane that will take us back to the USA. During the last month we’ve been in France, Italy, and the UK, I stopped being able to write this newsletter. I thought about this wonderful, supportive community, yet I was only able to experience what was happening. I couldn’t post because I could only be with life as it is. I could be present, and I could manage the logistics necessary to feed our bodies and then arrange the next movement. That was it.

Once we arrived in Sardegna, I gave myself time to explore an unexpected and potent magic that moved me entirely and caused my body for a time to unwind from its habits. This is still so fresh that I can barely communicate the details of the events and their impact on me. Perhaps this is why many of us travel—to allow the unexpected to alter our lives. What I didn’t know was how this shift would impact my physical body, and how long it might take to integrate the effects. I hope to write about this event, and I’m recognizing that I don’t control the pace of this process. I spent seventeen glorious days in the maestrale winds of this blue zone island only doing what grounded me. I edited my novel. I swam in the sea. I ate fruits and vegetables. I got very quiet.

St. Teresa di Gallura, Sardegna, Italy, October 31, 2023.

Out there, I felt like I was changing so radically that I no longer knew what was important. Though I’ve been sometimes overwhelmed by the stimulation of ancient places, languages I don’t understand, foods I don’t prefer, strange weather patterns, lack of sleep, unpredictable transportation, and the upset of illness far from support, my tendency for coping this time wasn’t that old favorite, exerting control. Instead, I sat in silence and watched what I’d been hiding from myself be revealed. I kept asking the question, what am I? even when the answer didn’t come. And sometimes the answer showed its unruly head. My self is a flux, a flow, a meld, a merge, a movement, an unrest. My self is not the character and narrative that my society has trained me to believe is me. More on this as it becomes able to be told.

In the meantime, I’m posting an interview with an Ikarian woman I met when we spent three weeks on that remarkable island. Thalia grew up in a small town in Ontario about an hour from where I was raised. I learned so much from her. May you get to know another way of living through Thalia Karakalpakis's sharing of her rhythms in Greece’s most laid-back place.

Mostly, I want to say thank you for reading Wanderland — your support helped me when I was out there, making my way. I received letters from many of you, words that sustained me and helped me remember that I have a generous and kind community. Your support also allows me to spend time on this newsletter, and to share it with people who can’t afford to donate. My travels are entirely self-funded and do not use monies from this newsletter.

Every couple of weeks, I’ll be posting about my experiences in Puglia, Italy; Lisbon, Portugal; rural France, Sardegna, Italy and London, England. Very little happened was what I expected.

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Evdihlos sea, Photo by Christian Burri.

Nine Questions (and then some) with Thalia Karakalpakis

I met Thalia Karakalpakis when we stayed at Kerame apartments in Evdhilos, Ikaria, where Thalia works and where I had the privilege of living for a few weeks. One day, we began speaking about where we were raised, and I discovered that she was from Cambridge, Ontario, about 150 km south of where I was raised in Collingwood, Ontario. We took a moment in the little living room at the front of the hotel to talk about life on Ikaria and her journey here.

How did you come to live in Ikaria?

I was born in Greece with my family. We immigrated to Canada. My father was from Crete and my mother was from Athens, and my mother was a refugee from Asia Minor. My father’s family went first and then they invited him, and then we came after about a year. I was the smallest, of the children, and left when I was 4. All my schooling was in Canada. My brother and sister were older and had schooling here in Greece before we arrived in Canada. Every other year we came for holidays in Greece because my mother’s family was here. I got to see what it was like, and when I finished high school, I decided to come here. I decided to stay. I was eighteen.

On summer holidays here in Ikaria I met my partner. He came to Athens for a time, and then we moved here 15 years ago.

What attracted you here in Ikaria?

The way of life, the people. I like the quiet here after Athens. In the winter it’s really quiet, you have to have your circle of friends. The people here are hospitable, friendly, very open to new people. It was welcoming in the village. I liked a slower kind of life.

I heard about Ikaria from the coverage of its remarkable longevity of its elders and its slower way of life.

You get into a mood, like everyone else. You rarely stress about anything. You wouldn’t be able to live here if you were stressed out. I say Ikaria is a place that you love or hate it at first sight, no in between, because for lots of tourists, who are used to other islands and tourism there, it’s slower. Our season was for 1-20 August for years, then Ikaria became popular with the festivals. Then the longevity story made people more curious.

You still do see older people here. They ate what came off the land, nothing in a can or bottle, and they did a lot of walking. My mother-in-law when she was 95 walked twenty km a day, and they’ve done that since they were five years old, they were sent to get water on the mountain. It kept them to this way of life.

Do you mean that for some visitors there’s not enough going on?

It’s a basic slowness. If you go to a café, take your own pace. If you come from elsewhere, there’s a feeling of where is everybody? What’s going on? If you come here stressed from a fast-paced life, the island is not for you.

We are in the off-season. So this is definitely a slow pace of life.

It would be busier in August.

I come from a tourist town in Banff, where sometimes the intensity of tourism can be oppressive to people, and not center the residents.

Ikarians don’t let anything get in their way. If they don’t want to do something, they don’t do it. It’s that simple. They’ve had to improve some things in tourism, but they set boundaries for the tourist. Here, we don’t have the means to satisfy everyone.

What would you say to the tourists who come to Ikaria?

There’s so much green, so much natural beauty. You can really enjoy it if you open your eyes and see what it’s like.

1912 was the Revolution. Then came communism.

Ikaria is known as the ‘red island.’ They’re mostly left-wing here. More modern communism. Ikarians were farmers, they left to work in the sea, captains, engineers. In the old days, they worked with charcoal. Men often had to leave to get jobs. The women left with children, plowing the fields, a difficult way of life. On the islands, you can have animals, plant gardens, you’re trying to work off the land. We grow year-round. If you have goats, you make your own milk and cheese. Almost everyone makes their own wine. If you have olive trees, people make olive oil.

Villages haven’t been touched as much by culture because people on the island are able to sustain a basic but nice way of living. Because of taxes, things can be expensive here, but we don’t live with the same kind of need that people in Athens do, for example. It’s difficult to have more than the basics, and you graduate to not needing more. You have to know this is it, this is what we can offer, and you either like it or you don’t.

How does modern communism affect daily life?

In the old days, if you were building a home, everyone came and helped and that’s how everything got done around here. Festivals were started because all of the money was put into the village, and before the municipality existed, the communities had to fundraise. The feasts and festivals pave roads, construct delipidated buildings, and maintain the needs of the village. Tourists can join in and help around the time of the festivals. People enjoy the dancing, music, and food.

You spoke Greek at home?

My parents wouldn’t let us speak English in the house. That made it easy to learn Greek, and after I moved here, I started reading it.

Do you wander places? Go somewhere without knowing where it’s going to lead?

The paths here . . . my mother-in-law used to come down from Evdhilos on foot, travel 10 km, on these pathways for the inhabitants. They’ve been kept up by residents. Beautiful for hiking, we’ve found more people coming for the hiking. Even going up from the villages to the mountaintops. I used to like walking all over the place, getting a feel for the land by wandering all over. To get to know the island. I’m a curious soul, so I like doing this wherever I go. Going to see what I see.

Do you like to travel?

I like to go in the winter to northern Greece. I like where it’s colder. Before the season begins, I also like to go to islands I haven’t seen yet.

What was your last wander?

I was in Thessaloniki. I hadn’t been there for 20 years. I liked to walk through the villages. In the winter, we go to some medical treatments in Athens, and to get culture, theatres, art.

What’s your idea of the perfect wander?

I’m open to anything.

Any fears about wandering?

In Athens, I may have fears at night. Here you’re protected because everyone knows everyone else.

What are your favorite things to pack?

I like to pick up things from other places. I travel light so I can bring things back.

What should I bring back from Ikaria?

Pick some herbs.

So many great herbs on the trail.

There are so many here, and teas too. I like objects from older days, casks and vessels, traditional things are harder to find now.

What do you value in a travel companion?

I don’t like sitting around. I want to see everything. I like the person next to me to truly enjoy, not to do it for me.

It’s nice for people to take a chance, to see somewhere you wouldn’t have imagined you could live. It’s good to take a risk to see where life could lead you.

I tried to go back to Canada five years ago. I was so used to the Ikarian way of life, too much for me. You have to be a masochist to live here, but I like my way of life. Canada was a culture shock. Sometimes you think about the future, what are we going to do? Why not enjoy the way of life that you enjoy?

For more on our time in Ikaria, see this post.

Next time, I’m writing about our experience on a working olive farm in Italy.

You can find Sonya at~

My Instagram.

My Website.

The podcast I did with my kid.

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