Dearest Hydra,

You enticed me first with your short ferry cruise from Athens… and curiously, the mention of mules on your small island. No cars, only mules, and of course the promise of an island haven on which to repose, to relax.

What I couldn’t have known until I was ensconced in your soulful presence, is that your beauty is partly due to the quiet – the absence of engines, of horns, even of the tinkle of bicycle bells.

Except for sharp hoof strikes on polished cobbles, goods carried along narrow tidy lanes, the dissonant soundtrack of daily life is soon a distant memory. A feeling of tranquility and joy seems to pervade me, to pervade everything.

Straining against a heavy load, a porter breaks the silence, taut muscles in practiced manoeuvres, smiling new arrivals walking expectantly beside the laden cart. His gentle exertions fill the ancient lanes with purpose, echoes of your long continuous existence. I marvel that even the colours of these indespensible ‘vehicles’ blend prettily with your hues, Hydra.

Indeed your island is a perfect paint-by-number of myriad soft colours against a backdrop of dazzling whitewash. My favourite palette of blues and greens, gracing doors and shutters, even those wagons which often mirror the establishment they’re parked alongside. Brilliant splashes of bouganvilea complete the picture… as do ‘pops’ of plump lemons, milky greens of olive trees, and soft pinks of oleanders.

“Torrents of colour,” is how I believe Nikos Ghika, the Greek painter, referred to your charming, colourful canvas.

 

Ghika is one of many artists who spent inspired years in your embrace, as did some of his creative friends: Craxton, Leigh Fermor and Henry Miller. From the 1930’s, those years of visiting and living in your embrace were undeniably their muse, “…the courtyards, the gardens, one above the other… the long and narrow walls which followed and embraced rocky land beyond, the prickly pears, and the wild greens and the thorns. The fig trees like chandeliers. The almond trees like thin scarecrows,” Ghika wrote fondly.

Most certainly, your tranquil beauty beckoned from far and wide, including Canadian songwriter and singer Leonard Cohen, who penned his beloved ‘Bird on a Wire’ from the window of his island villa. Like many artists in the ’60’s and 70’s, he claimed your bohemian paradise as home. Didn’t he once endearingly quip, “There is nowhere in the world where you can live like you can in Hydra… and that includes Hydra.”

Like Ghika’s home, Cohen’s abode became a retreat for creatives and still today people arrive to your island – to write, to paint, or like us, to seek a tranquil interlude.

A repose found often in the shade of the majestically old tree in our preferred spot at the Xeri Elia. The storied restaurant and taverna welcomed Cohen often and we’re told his melodies filled the restaurant’s charming square. Photographs inside recall those happy times.

Even Sophia Loren smiles from the taverna’s lively photo gallery. Her ’50’s portrayal of a brash, beautiful Hydriot sponge-diver, propelled your island onto the international stage. I know that sponge farming put bread on the tables for your islanders in those post war years, your sea-given harvest reaching the far corners of the earth. Your merchant fleet had answered the call and turned its expertise from trade to war – it was sponges that then kept your maritime economy afloat.

Yet now dear Hydra as we lunch in the languid afternoon stillness, despite the import of tourism, we sense the intimacy of the island. Children pass through the square, a  confluence of narrow lanes – a dutiful kiss for a grandfather lunching with a friend. Tethering his mule, a porter breaks for refreshment, delivering the day’s happenings from the harbour. Children clutch precious art work, mothers converge, chatting briefly before streaming off to their familiar lanes.

Pushing my open journal across the table, I revelled and relaxed in the dreamlike silence as my partner’s pen captured the scene.

” We lazed in the heat of the day, cat-contented in the dappled vine-shaded square, half-heard music washing over the flagstone courtyard, gently lapping against white-washed walls, doors and windows picked out in cobalt blues and hunting green. The noise itself seemed hushed and chastened by the midday sun radiating from your cloudless Hydra sky. We sit dream-like in this noon idyll, words half-heard, music and muffled chatter, weaving  the fabric of our day.”  

You captivated us both dearest Hydra. And oh, how I’d love my fedora to hang here for a tranquil season of writing, a celebration of your treasured stillness and your inspiration… until we meet again!

Fondly, Terry Anne