Café Longing:
Or how the author traveled halfway around the world and back,
only to lose and gain his head 350 miles from home

JOHNSON’S CORNER, A truck stop – Forty miles north of Denver, I25 forces its way to Wyoming past periodic roadside attractions, billboards and outlet malls.  At diners and dives along the way, all-night coffee and conversation is promised for the truckers who spend long days talking only to themselves.  It’s midnight now and I’m in just such a place.  Sunday evening clouds have grown indistinct in the dark and the skyline has blended into a silence that is gripping and consequential.  Photographer Aaron Huey is filling his VW van with precious petrol and preparing for another night in its shell.  He throws one last smile through the plate glass windows, shattering my efforts at an early calm, and he and the van pop-pop into the silence, trailing that patented VW sound behind them as they head for the fields nearer to Denver. 

My table is laid simply: scattered piecrusts, a couple of coffee cups, an ashtray with one cigarette.  Against Aaron’s unfinished coffee I take special care standing an 8”x10” cardboard sign.  Its message: North. Worland, Wyoming.  The waitress smiles.

The plan was simple enough.  Our flight into DIA would drop us into Colorado early enough in the evening to pursue the road north to Johnson’s Corner, where some pie and coffee would put me in the right mood to go thumbs-out the remaining 350 miles home.  Aaron would be able to camp somewhere between the Rockies and this interstate oasis before getting to work on developing the images that we traveled so far to find.  The way I figured, I’d be waltzing into my hometown long about the time Aaron was waking from his first night’s sleep on American soil in some two months time.

* * * It’s funny how we come to places anymore.  In this age of global culture and counterculture, shifting and shrinking boundaries, it seems no place and no person is very far from reach.  I was working a cattle ranch when Aaron asked me if I wanted to do the writing for a project that would take me halfway around the world, to one of the most isolated regions in the Caucasus Mountains.  Funny, I thought.  Funnier still Aaron said, how he had learned of this utopian frontier from a German in a Damascus café. 

“Syria’s not too far from Wyoming,” I said.

“Svaneti’s a bit farther.”

Resting in between Europe and Central Asia, the former Soviet Republic of Georgia is stepping into the 21st century the way many of its neighbors are, gingerly.  At a geographic and political crossroads, Georgia finds itself in a position rather similar to the one I’m now in.  The race is almost over, the finish line in sight. 

Having survived the greater part of a millennium, the last 70 years of which were beneath the yoke of communism, the now Democratic Republic of Georgia can envision the end of a painful and hard-fought journey.  One that took the people of this Caucasus region from the oppression of the Soviet order to the chaos and uncertainty of liberated policy and independence.  Reacquainted with freedom in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union, Georgia’s most recent past is a patchwork of political decision and indecision, ethnic infighting, and economic slow-down.  Gone are the days of government supply and demand, Georgians now force through a present of increased individual responsibility, where an emerging free-market has resulted in gross unemployment.  The violence inside the autonomous regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in the early part of the 1990s and the resulting IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) crisis hasn’t made the job of an adolescent democracy any easier.

So Georgia is a long way from Wyoming.  And the Georgian region of Svaneti, tucked inside the Caucasus Mountains between Abkhazia and South Ossetia and just beneath mother Russia is, as Aaron put it, a bit farther. 

2:05 am
No place and no person is very far from reach.  At this hour, the distance to Wyoming’s beautiful border and home-fired meals is stretching the limits to that logic.  In fact, the week it took Aaron and I to get to our Svanish destination should have had me rethinking my quaint aphorism long ago.

As clichés go, so goes Georgia.  A member of the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) for the might offered by Russia’s military occupation, the political upheaval of the early 90s has resulted in a collection of ornate checkpoints along Georgia’s internal borders.  Russian soldiers sit atop camouflaged tanks, shirtless and smoking cigarettes beneath steel eyes and closely cropped heads.  Georgian soldiers man their share of checkpoints as do UN forces along the Abkhaz border.  Policemen take to the corruption that was so rampant inside the Soviet system.  IDPs panhandle the only obvious travelers, Aaron and I, and pickpockets and petty thieves quickly take their turns. 

The scattered boulder and blacktop roadway that courses north-northeast into the Caucasus Mountains led us to a region well off the beaten global path.  Svaneti, consistent with Georgia’s presentation of post-Soviet stereotypes, offers a collection of images long established in the realm of old-world ways.  Subsistence based living has dominated this mountainous region for centuries.  Always isolated despite the government systems that surrounded it, Svaneti holds to the rich traditions that defined it so long ago.  In addition to Georgian, the Svans speak a language indigenous to these 3045 square kilometers.   Forcing up the same paths their ancestors trod, the men of these villages still utilize the technologies developed and refined in the 11th and 12th centuries as they carve native grasses from mountainsides and work ox teams up and down the steep slopes. 

Inside the Soviet universe, Svaneti saw its mountain villages turned to a hotbed for traveling Russians.  Like the beautiful Black Sea coast Georgia boasts, its quaint mountain ways were a constant draw for the not-so-accidental tourists.  Svaneti saw the development of a uniquely abstract industry where work suddenly became linked to survival in very indirect ways.  No longer were the men and women of Mestia, Svaneti’s provincial capital, toiling in subsistence driven means.  Commerce was being developed alongside a market driven division of labor.  However, when communism closed its doors in the former USSR, and Georgia found itself alone in a turbulent and independent sea, Svaneti was left to consider itself against an already barren canvas.  Somewhat like a hitchhiker on a stale stretch of interstate, a great journey behind, the greater though shorter journey ahead.

Svaneti had been on the move, enjoying the spoils of Soviet development – roads, hospitals, schools – but as independence took hold and Georgia’s burgeoning democracy created bedfellows of former communist bureaucrats and businessman, the future turned a dirty shade of gray.  The amicable union of nationalists and egoists would last only so long given the turmoil in Abkhazia and South Ossetia and a skyrocketing national debt.  The honeymoon was soon over and Svaneti, like many of Georgia’s more rural regions, found itself married to an abusive spouse and suffering a terrible hangover. 

* * * Getting through the night is one thing.  Getting through the morning after is something different.  And while Svaneti has weathered the obvious storm, the passage ahead is one through an ambiguous political and social frontier.  Like the Svans, I’ve my own deceptive night to pass. 

The stars in this western predawn sky are as bright as those ringing out above Svaneti during its darker hours, but the chill in the air is distinctly American.  My blood too is patriotic, enjoying the cool air my arms and legs revel together that this is American calm sending them to shivers.  Perhaps too the adrenaline that has sustained me to this point is even now out-sounding reasonable thinking.  Which is why my lighting out for the darkened interstate a mile up the off-ramp hasn’t yet struck me as odd or irrational. 

There is an irrepressible silence governing this giant world I now find myself in, shattered only periodically by the rush of a semi in pursuit of some other frontier.  My backpack slung over my shoulders; there is only a meaty furrow between me and I25’s promise of transportation.  I blunder through the brush, down 25 feet and then back up and alight atop the interstate’s comfortable shoulder.  In an instant my thumb is up and out and the push of air from a passing rig blows me to recollection.  At 75 mph, eighteen wheels move into and out of sight in a hurry.  And silence.

3:20 am
The hour spent questioning the gods beneath a beautiful blanket of stars is behind me.  The two waitresses inside Johnson’s Corner size me up as I walk back through their door.  Their curiosity abates when my cardboard sign is pulled from my book and set against a syrup server. 

“I thought you was outa here?”

“I was.  Not a whole lot happening out there though.”

“Gotta be patient.”

Patient, I think.  I’ve been patient enough.  I’ve been traveling for 43 hours.  The last time I slept was on the linoleum floor of Moscow’s international hub.  I can’t even remember when that was – was it yesterday or was it last night, or are they the same thing?

Like between sleep and wake, Svaneti sits between past and future atop an unsteady present plane.  Surrounded by an environment born of fiction, Svaneti is nestled in the belly of a mountain chain as domineering and demanding as any.  Granite peaks packed against the horizon with snow and glacier look over villages in this region with practiced calm.  That is not to say that these mountains are without breaking points.  Heavy snowfall each winter limits accessibility to the villages and makes avalanche a reoccurring threat.

In the spring, the Enguri River sprints southwest through the canyon it still cuts, charging to the Black Sea and broken only by one of Europe/Central Asia’s greatest dams.  The summer and fall present pristine though still volatile worlds.  Nature at this altitude remains master, there is still little the Svans can do to thwart her efforts.  Even more modern attempts at mastering this environment have been met with failure, strengthening the Svanish hold to environmental reverence.  In February 2000, seven climbers became forever hidden within Mount Ushba’s many folds when an icefall buried their camp.  Efforts to recover, even locate the bodies have been unsuccessful.  This is a mountain range with secrets as any other.

* * *  At this hour, I don’t think I myself could rest more precariously between sleep and wake.  Unlike Svaneti however, guarding me in my conscious-post-conscious state is not a mix of serene natural splendor and aggressive mountain terrain, but a hefty farmer in search of his morning coffee. 

I’m telling the man of an increasing despair among Svaneti’s citizens with regards to government assistance, though in reality I’m voicing my own sense of alienation and abandonment.  They’ve come so far, I say, having seen the virtues of development and modernization and to settle within sight of the finish though not having crossed it.

The man shakes his head.  “It’s a wonder why they can’t keep going.”

“Tell me about it.”

* * * Urbanization, modernization, globalization.  While there are veiled evils in the processes that bring cultures nearer to crossroads, there are undeniable advantages nonetheless.  Schools with heated classrooms and pencils to spare would be a start.  Safe roads and a reliable distribution of energy, communication networks and responsible government.  Police.

Svaneti has none of this.  And yes it is with mixed emotions that I call attention to a world undiscovered.  While adulterating the community with western intrusion would illustrate the great failure of our all too tidy buzzwords, calling attention to basic industrial needs touts only the fact that humanity has at its disposal increasingly valuable commodities.  Those being democracy, human rights, and an incredible freedom that each of these are predicated on.

I’m free.  I couldn’t be more so.  And right now I’m conscious of the fact that my freedom may be the reason I can’t get from point A to point B.  Like Svaneti, I need some prompting and a proper nudging.  I need a ride down the road the same way the Svans do.  I could sit here all day; I’ve enough cash to sit here until next week.  Svaneti has enough resources to remain cutoff not only from mother Georgia but from the global community for some time to come.  And people like me, with enough cash and patience to reach the remote area will continue to go there, continue to question its underdevelopment despite its years in the Soviet system and despite its new “representative” democracy.

When it comes down to it, perhaps it’s the incredible responsibility that freedom, democratic or otherwise, engenders upon its bearers.  I am responsible for my getting home.  The Svans are responsible for themselves; no system makes that more apparent than democracy.

The Svans find themselves coming to terms with that the same way I am.  Having witnessed the workings of communism, its ills and various spoils, the Svans find themselves ever more responsible for the world in which they live.  Isolation doesn’t work the way it did in the 11th and 12th centuries, when a Svanish family relied on the stone fortress it built as both protector and representative of the end-all-be-all.

Despite my undeniable freedom, I couldn’t be more dependent upon outside assistance.  I need a ride, a rig trailing cargo north, a family on the move, anything covering ground faster than my foot’s pace.

4:11 am
I’m so close to home I can taste it.  My lungs are filled with western air and the Wyoming sky is distinct to the north despite the unending stream of stars that run to a black and uncertain horizon.  Like many of those coursing through their regular and centuries-old Svanish toil, I’ve seen the future regardless of whatever the present situation may portend.  Mine is the long ago felt though not forgotten warmth of family and friends, a shower and a comfortable bed.  Svaneti’s is the development of industries catering first to a community deserving of progress, second to a world of conflating borders; a development that embraces the world as it is as well as what it will be.

Svaneti’s beauty, its granite fortresses and abundant waters, has long contributed to the definition of Svanish character.  Mount Ushba and its sister peaks, Tetnuldi, Shkhara and others are more than iconic, they’re godlike.  According to legend, Ushba and Tetnuldi, separated by the lush Mestia valley, are forbidden of each other’s company unless under cover of night and Svaneti’s never ending stars.  Cursed lovers, these mountains spend their days alternately cloaked in cloud.  Conflicting stories also provide that Amiran, the Promethean son of the goddess Betkili and her hunter-lover is shackled to the brilliant apex of Ushba’s stretching heights.

That Aaron and I traveled to Svaneti in search of its history – the oral mythologies and legends that helped define the region so long ago – and have come back rather with an appreciation for political and socioeconomic reform presents an irony I haven’t failed to notice.  So bent on the past, I’m concerned now only with the future: understanding Svaneti’s need for the economic and industrial resources that presage community progress; and getting me home.

Now a solitary figure cutting no great shape against this black but starry night, I am reminded again of the difficulties facing cultures the same as individuals.  Striking balances between peoples and places has long proven a pressing catch 22.  Progress at the expense of tradition.  Shrinking borders in exchange for distinct culture.

8:10 am
A white sedan with Wyoming plates pulls into Johnson’s Corner.  Even before the car comes to a complete stop I’m on the move.  Cornering an elderly woman as she slides out of the passenger-side door I struggle to get a few sentences in before she excuses herself to the restaurant and safer company.  My story is short and simple, like the sign tucked into the waist of my tired pants: North. Worland, Wyoming.  But in my telling there is a subtext she is unable to ignore.  Perhaps it’s the charm in my dewy eyes or the greased hair and beard.  Either way I have her attention and soon her permission to stow myself in their northern bound Nissan.  No, I don’t need anymore coffee I tell her husband.  No, no breakfast thank you.  I’ll just wait in the parking lot while you enjoy the innards of a truck stop I know far too well.

In route to Wyoming I feign sleep.  After some fifty waking hours, rest comes as easily as my ride did.  Perfect.  Still I’d rather not talk, rather not tell how so many miles east of us a collection of people are going about their day in a bucolic world still hitched to the stagnation that first defined it.  And how tomorrow, as sleep and comfort finally reward my hard-fought efforts, the only rewards facing Svaneti are the prospect of an easy winter, an early spring, and another summer of post-Soviet alienation.

©2003 Adam Sopko