Of course I made images along the way, it's a hobby, but this was a visit designed primarily to catch up on 'home' and its history. Time flies and has been put off until 'tomorrow' for too long so, before it also relegates me to history, Eastwards we went in September.

No apologies for the length of this post, or for the number of its images as I hope that, while they're certainly not a showcase, they might at least encourage the newest members of my 'displaced' family to get a feel for their rich heritage and lost inheritance, all historically part and parcel of having family roots in this turbulent part of the world. My late mother came from the first couple of 'chapters', my father from a little way beyond the forests of the ones covering today's borderlands, historically fluid lines, all once part of a single 'Commonwealth'.

The region is richly represented in the nation's literature: bend a knee, pick up a fistful of earth anywhere along here and as it runs through your fingers, it's a safe bet that history will run through them with it. It's no easier to separate a people from their history than it is to separate them from their faith and, while the half-century of wilful destruction suffered by the redrawn country after 1939 tested them to the very limit, they've not forgotten their past and have, proudly, survived and put it all together again.

For forty-five post-war years, the system of government employed in Poland both regressed and depressed it. Money was not an issue as everyone 'worked' for the Good of the State and if one distinguished oneself in terms of above-the-norm output or threw something further, ran faster or jumped higher than someone from the West, one earned oneself a nice red flag, sometimes a stick to wave it with, or an enameled pin of a bald head with pointed beard and a month in an asylum somewhere not cloaked in industrial fog, often also referred to as a 'sanatorium'. Renovation or redecoration were removed from the economic agenda: they'd tell you that the Colosseum had also gradually fallen apart for lack of maintenance. And then, just about twenty-seven years ago, and with a lot of help and encouragement from a man in a white cap and cassock, fresh out of Italian language school, and another sporting a large moustache, clutching a fat pen with obvious intent and climbing a shipyard gate in Gdansk, the common man declared Enough to be Enough. Rewritten over the years to suit its ruling masters, sometimes for the sake of peace and political correctness, sometimes simply to represent current nation status, the original ending to the National Anthem, 'Dąbrowski's Mazurka' - penned by Wybicki in Northern Italy in 1797, two years after the Third Partition had liquidated the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth - called, over so many of its iterations, for "Enough of this captivity!" So, in 1989 the commune was dispatched, the road back to communion with Europe, rather than the Steppe, open once again.

A country of largely 'synthetic' comrades survived its long ordeal by never once losing its creative sense of humour, or its belief, by regularly saying 'No' and, just as regularly, turning out the heroes necessary to hold the national fabric together. Religion permeates that vary fabric of Polish history and, while staunchly Catholic, the centuries have seen it peacefully, and liberally, harbouring and tolerating other faiths, so that even in today’s more secular times it’s not possible, when journeying through the land, to separate faith from its history or culture, a faith that's seen it through countless invasions from every point of the compass, partitions and occupations, through effective disappearance from, to reappearance on, the map, its manifestation crystal clear, particularly so, one might say, in its modern history. How else does a country recover from losing 6m souls in living memory? Faith.

I therefore make no excuse for the recurrence of religious images in this post - they’re an intrinsic part of life here, a part of every road, every habitation, not always Catholic but always respected and treasured. This was certainly no pilgrimage but, as all faiths and spirit here are as inseparable as church and history, the memory of their many popular 'heroes' - religious, political and military - is honoured everywhere: the country is simply a living monument to its tumultuous past.

As inseparable for me as the above, is the landscape and Chopin, his Nocturne, Op.9: No.1 in B-Flat Minor floating silently but insistently through my sub-conscience - a second national language, no less.

N.B.:- Most of the images in this post are captioned but only become visible when the cursor is hovered over an individual image.

To isolate and enlarge the smaller images for a better, more detailed view on Mac, iPad, laptop or PC, please click once on the image itself. Pressing 'close' in the top right-hand corner of the screen returns you to the post at the place you left it. On an iPhone or Android handheld, one tap on image isolates and captions. Return to post as for desktops by clicking 'Close'.

APOLOGIES: this post, created on an iMac, was formatted, calibrated for colour and maximised for viewing on that equipment. Other desktops may lose some colour vibrancy while handhelds, remaining relatively true to colour, are reformatted, sometimes completely, which robs the image blocks of their original balance and shape. As the iPhone is designed for portrait orientation, reformatting will render the larger horizontal images smaller than the originally smaller portrait ones, which then fill the screen. On some devices, if the portrait orientation elongates or distorts the image, please view in horizontal mode. Sorry.

September 2018

one of us

Sun, wind, snow & the world's greatest fells