Crete-Discover the Unknown Crete

C H A P T E R 2
Stone as art
Far from the
beaches a
completely
different world
appears with stony
fields and old
abandoned houses.
After the seaside resort of Plaka
we can abandon the beautiful
beaches to search out the quiet of
the hills, the villages and the great
empty spaces where nature has reappropriated
the land. Many people
have abandoned living here, be it
for poverty and hunger, be it for
lack of natural resources or lack of
work. Where once there grew
immense fields of corn and where
olive trees were cultivated with
their small green fruit, to be
savoured with a few drops of lemon
juice and raki, now there often remain only
stony outcrops and the outlines of
windmills that have fallen in on themselves:
they seem spectres, from the past, of a hard
and laborious life, pierced by the lances of
an invisible Cretan Don Quixote doing battle
with time and nature. Great halo-like marks
appear alongside the windmills, like magical
circles from an archaic ritual; these are level
circles of stone raised slightly higher than
the surrounding terrain that served for the
threshing of the grain with mules or oxen.
Between Kato and Epano Loumas the
mills are made of an ochre-coloured stone,
with the remains of steps that follow the
curve of the roofless circular buildings:
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