Step by step

As my stomach growls at the winding roads, my heart beats faster: It's my first time. The first time I'm heading to a place everybody told me there was nothing to see, and about which my travel book tells - nothing. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him: Misho, a local working at Ohrid’s tourist information, who offered to take me to Konjsko. “The village doesn’t even exist any more. The name was already given to another town nearby“, he explains, squinting.
The fields around us are alive with spring flowers showing off their exuberant violet and yellow colours. “There is no time like May to come”, Misho tells me while my glance wanders to Lake Ohrid below us, glistening in all tones of blue and green in the watercolour box. The lake remains behind along with flocks of tourists.
The first step I set into Konjsko, the village that no longer is, I walk into the backdrop of a ghost town film. A muddy path leads through stone walled houses resisting the claws of time, their red roofs having conceded to the wind’s pranks. The village stopped pretence a long time ago, dared to pause in the middle of the race - and was punished by the humans it once gave birth to. “Not enough water”, explains Misho the state of complete abandonment.
As I walk in wonder, I hear fanfares of children’s laughter descend upon broken roofs, trickling through the cracks of crumbling balconies. I see horse-drawn carriages, farmers sitting on stacks of hay as they roll home with sun-burnt faces. Suddenly, something breaks through the veil of the past overlaying my senses: A column of smoke arises from afar.
Drawn towards the sign of life, I hasten on, curiosity aflame. At first I spot a cock strutting through the courtyard, chasing an unwilling bride. Then I see her. She bends over the fire, nourishing it with wood. Resting one hand on her lower back, she rises. Gracefully she turns around, showing me a face sketched by the unvarnished maelstrom of nature and time. I expect her to shrink back, to shun the intruder. As I want to walk away, she endows me with a smile undistorted by mistrust or fear. She does not approach, only kneads her swollen, rugged hands.
Long after having left Konjsko, I remember her. I remember her smile and what she symbolises to me – life at its purest, the picture of which is engraved on my mind and needs no photoshopping-over. The memory has encouraged me, wherever I go, to hit the road as soon as I am told ‘Don’t go to that place, there is nothing there’.