| Wounded Eye Article and photographs by Cemal Gulas A long walk along fog-covered hills, through deep forests, shepherds with rifles strapped across their chests, and Mount Yaraligöz (Wounded Eye), the highest peak of the Küre Mountains. Atlas searched for un-charted ruins in the Black Sea province of Kastamonu. |
My goal was to reach Mount Yaraligöz, at 2,019 meters, the highest peak of the Küre mountain range in the Black Sea region. Also known as the Isfendiyar range, the Küre range begins in the Kizilirmak Valley, rises in elevation after the Kocaçay (Big Creek) Valley, and extends toward the Bartin Creek Valley. |
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From Isirganlibel (Poison Ivy Bend) the mountain looks like a horse with its dark green, almost black, forests. Those traveling from Bozkurt to Devrekani wind up watching it for a good long while. |
Karamanlardagi Hill, to the northwest of Yaraligöz, is one of the prettiest hills that reach towards the sea. It's meadows are used as a pastures by many of the surrounding villages. |
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From the Ulu (Mighty) Plain on Karamanlardagi Hill, which is under the jurisdiction of the Çiçekyayla village, you can see most of the valleys that run perpendicular to the sea. The evening breeze and the puffy clouds that collect above the water add a mystical feel to the area. |
Water buffalo around Çamurlu (Muddy) Creek help out the workers in the forest. Gigantic trees are hauled to the sawmill with the help of these animals. They are shoed like horses here. Despite their size, they are obedient animals. When given the chance, they submerge themselves in the muddy waters. |
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I walked around a bit. As I was trying to decide whether to stay around the houses or return to the forest, I saw a man approaching. He has a rifle on his shoulder. We greeted each other. Apparently, a bear had stolen one of his sheep the night before. The flock was alarmed and now six sheep were missing as a result of the commotion that followed. I joined him as he continued looking for his sheep. We walked together for about a half-hour. On the way, we met someone else walking in the forest. This was the second human being I had seen in three days. He was also holding a rifle. He was a friend of the first guy and was also looking for the sheep. "He got to the herd at dusk. And as if it were nothing, shouldered one of the sheep and away he went," he said, speaking of the bear as if it were someone he knew. They told me that I could spend the night in their shack. Four shepherds lived in this forest shack. It was a makeshift building, thrown together from nylon and some wooden planks. There was a strong smell of manure in the air. I was reluctant to spend the night with such a stench hanging over my head, especially in this forest where the air was so clean and crisp. I thanked them and left. I started walking towards the hills to get above the dense fog hanging over the forest. The fog here is like clockwork, you can count on it every evening. I found a suitable campsite and surrendered to the falling night. The moon was full. Suddenly, I noticed that the moon was growing dark. This was the most incredible surprise of all: a lunar eclipse. I had spent the first night in Abana, which is part of the Kastamonu province. When I got up that morning, the sun was not yet up. There were cushions of fog above the sea. It was nippy, especially if you weren't prepared for this kind of weather. I was happy to have managed to wake up before the sun. The Küre Mountains, also known as the Isfendiyar Mountains, were formed some 225 to 65 million years ago when the basin of an old sea , Tethys, rose as a result of ground pressure. The range begins in the Kizilirmak (Halys - Red River) Valley and extends towards the Bartin Creek Valley after picking up elevation after the Kocacay (Big Creek) Valley. My goal was to reach Mount Yaraligöz, at 2,019 meters, the highest peak in this range. The hills that stretched parallel to the sea hid the mountain from view. Before it got light, I had already left Abana and Bozkurt behind and returned to the road that led inland towards Devrekani. The sun began to shine on Yaraligöz peak when I was approaching the Ortasökü Village. I went to a small coffee-house and had breakfast, all the while wondering about how my journey would unfold. Then I became aware of a strange but familiar feeling experienced by many a traveller: I had become the center of attention. It is painfully obvious to the locals that you aren't from around there. You are in an unfamiliar setting surrounded by people you don't know. Everyone keeps staring at you. Hidden behind these looks is suspicion more than curiosity. They seem to be trying to figure out who you might be, whether you might be dangerous, and what you're possibly doing here. Then one emerges from amongst them. They don't choose this person, but he is someone who is a bit more gutsy, somewhat more extroverted, and probably someone who wishes to make a mark by displaying his communication skills. When you start chatting, it is always this person who asks the questions. This conversation can make or break the visitor. Here in Anatolia, the first thing that occurs to the villagers is that this outsider is probably a treasure-hunter. They can't understand why else someone would leave the city and come out here. Anything can be regarded as a find here: any ruin that the villagers can't seem to trace to anything they know, any stone that looks like it is from some other time, any hill and any cave fuels the imaginations. It is irrelevant whether these finds are historical or not. Even though the artefacts may be hundreds of years old, they lie around pointlessly since the locals don't know what to do with them and don't take them seriously. I came all the way here to check out Mount Yaraligöz. Its curious name caught my attention. Why was it called "wounded eye"? I had visited Fort Doganlar, which is close to Küre, a while back. Fort Doganlar is a series of manmade caverns on an un-named hill on the Küre Mountains. These interconnected holes continue to perplex historians to this day. When I was walking around there, a villager who worked for the Forestry Directorship told me that he had once come across the ruins of a very old village in a forest on Yaraligöz. What's more, these ruins were on steep bedrock and the village has an icy-cold spring even though there were no other hills around. As far as I know, the ruins of such historical settlements could be found in the caves scattered around on the mountain ranges of the Western Black Sea region. This pattern extends eastward where you can see the remains of old monasteries and fortresses. To date, there has not been any serious research done on these ruins. All we have are various informal interpretations. Unfortunately, as if to prove the locals right, many treasure hunters have destroyed a good bit of these ruins looking for who knows what. |
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After breakfast at the coffee-house, I left Ortasökü and that evening met the rifled guys looking for their sheep. For some reason, the eclipse that I watched that night made me relive the past few days. During the eclipse, the sky turned a brownish-blue. I was lying on the ground and had inadvertently allowed my body temperature to drop. I got up to get my rain jacket. Right then, I heard strange sounds coming from behind the pine trees. It sounded like the sound a tire would make if it were rolled from behind the trees towards the opening where I had been. Just as I was beginning to think that I was dreaming, I saw the second tire shoot by me. It was light in front of my tent so I could see what these tires actually were -- they were two bear cubs. "Oh, no," I thought to myself alarmed, "their mother must be somewhere around here as well." Before I could even finish my thought, she followed her cubs down towards the plain. A bear with cubs and a wounded bear are both very dangerous, especially for someone who had just set up his tent in the forest. If you enter the animal's territory, and especially if she thinks you might harm her cubs, she could attack. There are only two creatures that can scare a bear off its territory: wolves, and humans. Two hungry wolves can easily hunt down a bear. Even though their population is dwindling, bears are also hunted by people because they sometimes cause damage to the gardens and herds around. I knew that the bears in this area were mostly vegetarian but once they somehow got used to eating meat, they can become a real threat to the flocks around. I hoped that these three bears would not run into the shepherds who were looking for the bear that stole their sheep. Unfortunately, I could not do much more than to hope for their safety. When I got up in the morning, I ran into villagers climbing the hills to collect rosehips. Because the hills get more sunshine than the bottom of the forest, the bushes growing here were already ripe. The villagers would collect the rosehips by the armful and them take them down to he village to be sold. They told me that one person could pick up to 20 kilograms a day. I needed water for breakfast. I asked a boy, who seemed to be around 15 years old, where the closest source of water was. This was how we got into a long conversation. I asked him whether he would accompany me and he agreed. But he must also somehow make money. I offered to pay him and asked how much he wanted. "Five million lira," he said without hesitation. "Isn't it a bit much?" I ask. "It's equal to ten buckets of mushrooms. I hunt five a day." I ask him whether he could sell all five every day. Apparently, he could. "They buy it and then take it to Kastamonu, Abana, and Devrekani," he explains, "The restaurants over there cook a lot of dishes with mushrooms and the customers like it." "What about winter?" I ask. The winters here are tough. "The snow is about a meter deep. It's hard to even go from one house to another. We can't go to the forest anymore. All we do is to wait around for the evening." This young man is responsible for making his own living. He graduated from junior high last year. His dream is to find a job with benefits in a city. That's when he can feel a little more secure. As I continued toward ? the forest got denser. In order to ease the march, I started walking towards the northeast. As I walked briskly down the slopes, I paused to pick some raspberries. At this time of the year, they are the tastiest fruits in the forest. You must be careful, however. Some might have worms. I had been walking for a few hours but it was still early in the morning. I came across a muddy riverbed and decided to follow it. The river had very little water, and it was much easier to walk in its bed than in the forest. The elevation to my left was Tepelice (Hilly) Hill. I climbed it and took my lunch break. After lunch I headed for the plain that I had discovered the day before. I walked west towards Büyük (Big) Creek and south towards the plain. In the evening I returned to the two houses where I couldn't see anyone the day before. This time they were at home. A friendly man who must be about 45 or 50 seemed a bit surprised to see me there. I greeted him. He must not have been expecting anyone, his house was a tiny bit messy. What's more, he was wearing a skirt! "Don't be surprised," he explained, "this is the only way to avoid getting dirty." The place is called Erçik. Sevket, the friendly man I just met, spends four months of the year here. He makes cheese and yogurt. He had a friend there who appeared to be a bit older. They wanted to invite me in. I told them that I still had a ways to go, and that I must return to my jeep as planned. After walking for an entire day, I got back to the Abana-Devrekâni highway which cuts through Çiçekyayla (Flowery Plain) Village. I got on a minibus headed for Devrekani and got off at Yaraligöz where I had left my jeep. I started looking for someone who may know something about those ruins I heard about two years ago. On the morning of the fifth day of the trip, I found one such person. Muharrem Börekçi is a retired agricultural technician who lives in Bozkurt. After a brief exchange of greetings, he decided to join me. He did not know about the hole in Yaraligöz' peak. We ran across another Muharrem, this one picking rosehips in the forest, and took him along. After three hours, both Muharrem's pointed to the tangle of vegetation at the foot of the hill and informed me that this was the village. If you looked carefully, you could see the bricks that were once walls. Treasure-hunters had dug many holes around here in search of valuables. When we got to the top, we realized that the water source had dried out. And we finally got to the hole which was the purpose of my journey. Some time ago, the villagers tied a rope around Muharrem's waist and carefully lowered him into the hole. "I went down 15 meters and stopped. It was very cold inside and there wasn't enough light." I had a 70-meter rope with me and all the other equipment necessary. I got ready and began descending. During the first 15 meters, the hole kept getting narrower. There was a small ledge formed by a falling rock. But the hole went down another 45 meters. There was a sizeable pile of stones at the very bottom. If Muharrem had accidentally gotten past the overhanging ledge last time around, he would probably not have been there to guide me then. In order to measure the depth of the well, I tie a knot where the rope hit the bottom and climbed out. We lay the rope out. That's when I noticed that a falling rock had made a 7 or 8 centimeter-long cut on my thigh. We calculated that the well was 60 meters deep. "Had I known how deep it was, I would not have gone down," Muharrem says. He went down tied to a ordinary rope with no other precautions. He went down to the ledge, and thinking that it couldn't be much deeper, he was about to go further down. Küre and its environs are full of such holes. Most of them are covered by plants. Sometimes oxen fall into these holes. We headed back and started hunting mushrooms on the way back. I dropped both Muharrrem's off at their houses that night. I was alone once again in the depths of the forest. The ruins on Mount Yaraligöz unfortunately could not withstand the destruction of time, but they were still visible. Despite the development evident in the area, the standard of living for the people is still very low. "What makes them want to continue living here? I asked myself. We can only leave badly preserved clues for the coming generations. These lands on which we live are the source of many riches which we should share with humanity. Instead, we are like passengers who gild the walls of their rooms in a sinking ship. |
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Photographs and text copyright © Atlas Travel Magazine. |
