Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
While the uplands of Wales have been progressively deforested over
the past century, the vegetation of the hills and mountains of Slovenia
has shifted in the same period from grassland and scrub to deep forest.
So tall and impressive are the trees and so thickly do they now cover
the hills that when you see the old wartime photos - taken, in eco-
logical terms, such a short time ago - it is almost impossible to believe
that you are looking at the same place. I have become so used to see-
ing the progress of destruction that scanning those photographs felt
like watching a film played backwards.
We slid the raft down the bank, into the shallow water beneath an
overhanging beech tree. The ripples it made rocked across the smooth
water, furling up then laying out the early autumn colours  -  green,
ginger, yellow, blue - like a roll of psychedelic linoleum. We slipped
into the boat, paddled out into the middle of the river then stowed the
oars. As soon as the raft felt the current it began to turn, like a fallen
leaf, and to drift down the river. Neither of us said a word.
On the left, Slovenia glided past us; on the right, Croatia. Both were
cloaked in deep forest. Beech, maple and aspen overhung the water and
trailed their twigs in the current. On the steep limestone hills on either
side of the River Kolpa, silver firs broke through the canopy of decidu-
ous trees. Birdsong poured from the woods and rolled across the water.
Otherwise, but for an occasional car passing along the narrow road on
the Slovenian side and the distant rumble of a weir, there was no sound.
I lay back in the boat. The river and the sky were fringed by leaves.
Around the sallows beside the water, redstarts and wagtails flickered
through the mottled sunlight. A thrush passed across the river of sky
above us, its wings a silver gauze against the light.
Soon the current picked up, and the first weir came into sight. To
give ourselves time to inspect it before we went over, we pushed the
boat onto a gravel spit.
Though it could not be so, it looked as if no human had ever trodden
there. On the upstream end of the spit the smell of peppermint was so
strong that I fancied I could almost see the trails of scent hanging above
the bushes. It formed a hedge, waist high, that released a cloud of insects
as I brushed through it. The far end of the spit, which had built up against
the weir, was covered by a thicket of willow. Pushing through, I found a
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