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kept for show and to make cheese to sell to tourists. We had seen them
on display that morning in the Trenta Fair, massive beasts weighed down
by trailing yellow coats. They had won first prize, and now a large gilt
cup stood on a table, glimmering in the low brown light, while he, in a
leather waistcoat and bushy side-whiskers, drank and talked with his
friends. From time to time he would stop talking and, almost as if he
were unaware that he was doing so, bend down to play the dulcimer on
the table before him, while the other men continued their conversation.
As we ate, Jernej explained that our host was one of the last shep-
herds in the region. Because there was no longer any arable production
in the valley, the few remaining sheep could stay in the lowlands and
were never led into the mountains. Here, by contrast to Ko cevje, there
had been no mass dispossession of local people. A different social tra-
gedy had been engineered. In the 1950s, he told us, Tito had banned
the goat. The ostensible purpose was to protect the environment, but
doubtless he also sought to drag the peasantry out of what Marx and
Engels called its 'rural idiocy' and press it into the urban proletariat.
(The peasants of eastern Europe had perversely failed to fulfil the
Communist Manifesto 's prediction that they would 'decay and finally
disappear in the face of modern industry'.) Without goats, which
browsed back the scrub, the pastures became unsuitable for sheep.
The rewilding of the western side of Slovenia, the rapid regrowth of
forests there and the recovery of its populations of bears, wolves,
lynx, wild boar, ibex, martens, giant owls and other remarkable crea-
tures, took place at the expense of its human population. This is not
to suggest that it continues to generate social tragedy. On the con-
trary, this region has become a lucrative destination for high-end
tourism, which supports what was, when we visited, a buoyant local
economy. Slovenia's rivers are said to offer the best ly-ishing in
Europe. I spent a day working my way up a few miles of the Soca, a
glorious tumble of turquoise water winding through limestone gorges,
watching a tiny dry fly bouncing down the glides and eddies. To get
back to where I had begun, I hitched a lift along the valley road. I was
picked up by a local van driver.
'You're fishing, when the water's so high?'
'It's the only chance I have.'
'It's unfishable today. How did you do?'
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