A lot of you might be wondering, where I’ve disappeared in summer. You’d have a valid argument, because I really haven’t been much online except for the little I’ve needed to be in order to do some work for my jobs. You see, the way I am, is that when I go somewhere and especially if I enjoy it very much, I disconnect myself from the rest of the world. The reason why I do that is because I’ve found that I’m much more invested in whatever I’m doing, even if it’s just life, when I’m disconnected than if I was tied to the global web all the time. Furthermore, I don’t spend ridiculous amounts of time to moderate my online presence or rather checking how present other people are online.
But still… what have I been doing? I’ve had a very busy, wild even, summer; full of action, friends, solitude, horses, nature, youth,… full of the best things I can imagine. In the last quarter of June I packed a car-full of my belongings (like a third of what I own) and essentially moved to Škrabče, Nova vas close to Cerknica, where I would stay for the better part of the summer and would leave just before autumn fell.
For a few weeks non-stop I had helped on horsecamps (photos from the camps themselves you can see here), then there was a short pause for school stuff and then it continued. Overall I shot for about one terabyte of data just this summer. When the camps came to an end, Darja (the organizer) had lots of things to do at her home where some construction projects were in order, and two other staff also left the premises for some job opportunities. Thus I was there alone (occasionally a friend Kevin showed up and we did things together, once for example I helped him move, because his mom and him moved just before September to another location). And so that’s what it was: just a house, 12 acre piece of land, a farm, 4 horses, 6 rabbits, a cat and I remained. Some might say that that’s lonely, but I actually really enjoyed it.
For over a month I was there pretty much alone. And I must say that I really really like that. Because for the first time in my life I had to “survive” completely on my own. That meant that I would have to actually cook completely for myself (not that I haven’t done it before, I have, it’s just that there was always a full fridge near by at my home and I didn’t have to go to store a lot) and I have to say that I actually started to enjoy cooking as well (in the past I did it as fast as possible because I tended to not like cooking… it takes too long to do and I could do better things with my time).
Furthermore I never had the same exact thing twice on my plate, there was a lot of variety that I would normally at home not bother with. So even though I had mushrooms several times, the siding and the salad for example was always a tad different. Or when I prepared the rabbit (I didn’t kill it, I can’t; but I was there when it was done and would clean it up upon instruction), the three times I did it it was always a bit different and once I even managed to make a sauce to go with it (it was the first time for me to make a sauce at all). Rarely did I check online for the recipes. I did it from what I had lying around. It’s funny actually: I went to the store twice, maybe thrice, and altogether I didn’t spend more than 14€ and yet the fridge had too many things in it most of the time. Granted, often eggs came from a neighbour kid in exchange for something else and Darja did sometimes bring a thing or two from home (which would often have been unnecessary, since there was a lot of things, as I said, in the fridge for starters from what I have bought). One might wonder “how is that possible, that one can live for so few euros?” and I would say that it’s actually quite possible and easy if you know where to find food in surroundings (supposing that there’s a forest near by or that you’re not in a city). Thus I had little to no need for meat because I had mushrooms for almost three weeks and when those ran out, quite conveniently the rabbits had to go. Both of that didn’t cost me a dime, only time. One time also we had helped out with getting the potatoes out of the ground (manual labour) and were paid with a bag of delicious potatoes. Had I had access to a garden, there would be even less cost associated with it all (one of the things I had to buy was vegetables). Also every now and then we got free milk from the other neighbour who had cows. So in reality… the costs of food really were minimal.
Another reason for having enjoyed the time alone so much is because I got something wonderful to look forward to wake up for. Horses. I got to take care of these wonderful elegant animals. One of the first things in the mornings (this was the first time in my life that I actually started to love mornings – I’ve always hated them in the past) that I did was going out and feeding the horses with hay and giving them water (supposing they had drunk all of it during the night, which was often the case). I got to clean them up every now and then. I guess it’s odd for someone who spent the childhood in the city and most of the teens in the room with his computer to say that, but I actually really enjoyed putting on boots and stepping in that gooey muddy dirt that’s mixed with horse manure, hay, dirt and probably some other things too. I even liked that smell. God, I love horses. And you know what… Now I can ride ’em too.
Furthermore, in all of that time I had an excellent opportunity to just go with it and explore. To make stunning photos that I would hope you would love. Sometimes I just went out and explored. There’s always something new to discover if you don’t confine yourself into predetermined spaces.
By the end of September I had so gotten used to being alone up there that I wouldn’t hesitate to ever come back, or rather, live on my own. Now I know I can do it and after seeing how incapable, messy and disorganized some people are, I now know that I can do it and that I’ve got what it takes. So when the time to leave came, it was actually quite difficult, but I guess that’s what sometimes has to happen. Sometimes you have to leave in order to move on.