A Conversation with Julian Hoffman, author of “Lifelines: Searching for Home in the Mountains of Greece”

“It’s one of those sharp winter days that make the nights tremble with light. When no clouds conceal the vastness to come, so that the gathering dark is shot through with a cold so deep and clarifying that our galaxy seems sleeved in winter ice. When stars shine with the intensity of fireworks.”
from Lifelines: Searching for Home in the Mountains of Greece

Soon after I spoke with Julian Hoffman, author of Lifelines, he received wonderful news. His book has been shortlisted for this year’s Anglo-Hellenic Runciman Award, which is given annually for a book in English inspired by Greek culture and history. (The final will be announced in June in London.)

On our online interview, ,Julian graciously answered my many questions about the book and his life in the mountains, specifically the Prespa lake area in northwest Greece, where he and his wife Julia have been living since 2000. They decided to move there from London, after reading a book on the Prespa region by Giorgos Castorakis, Prespa: A story of man and nature. After staying up all night reading and many glasses of wine later …

You really made a leap of faith in moving to the Prespa area. It’s amazing to change your life from a book that you read! Do you think it was almost your destiny to find Castorakis’ book that totally changed your life?

Well I’m not a big believer in the idea of destiny, but i think when we open ourselves to the world around us, when we’re receptive to what’s going on out there, we make it much more possible that with the discovery of a book, a place, these great leaps of faith can actually happen. A line from Rainier Maria Rilke I hold close, “everything beckons to us to perceive it, murmurs at every turn.” In other words, we need to live attentively with purpose and listen to the murmurs.”

Just to add something Julian for a moment, living with “purpose” reminds me of Henry David Thoreau when he went to the woods and said he wished “to live deliberately…and as he said, “when I died not to discover that I had not lived.” So it’s the idea of living attentively and deliberately.

Yes, Thoreau very much also expressed this idea. And as Rilke said, it’s when we attune ourselves to those murmurs and open our heart, then a book can suddenly be seen in the path in front of you. This also speaks of the power of the written word, the power of books. In this incredible account, Castorakis threw us a lifeline describing this place we’d never heard of. It definitely seemed like the kind of place to make a leap for. These paths we’re following ultimately have led to a richer life.

So you’ve never regretted your decision?

I like to stress to people that we’ve never ever regretted this decision 26 years ago but that doesn’t mean of course there haven’t been a lot of challenges, pitfalls in the road in that time, because of course we’ve brought all kinds of issues with us, struggled economically at times but this fundamental leap of faith, we’ve never regretted it for a single moment making a home here in the village of Agios Germanos, in the Prespa lake area, this amazing place.

In “The Road Not Taken,’ Robert Frost writes of a decision:

“Oh I kept the first for another day / Yet knowing how way leads onto way / I doubted if I should ever come back.”

Can you comment on these lines?

Those lines are incredibly powerful, “way leading onto way.” What Frost articulates so well is that from a decision you make, paths necessarily close behind you, and you can’t go there…  But ‘way leading onto way,’ opens the possibility of so many other ways that you may not have thought of. His words remind me of a Scottish writer, Nan Shepherd in her book called “The Living Mountain” some decades ago. She writes of “the thing to be known grows with the knowing” that the more we learn about a place, the more we want to learn. This chimes with Frost’s idea, once a decision made, it deepens other possibilities that you might not know at the time and makes those roads taken or not taken even more manifold.

Would you say you’re an impulsive person? I mean you’ve also traveled and spent some time in India and Morocco. So perhaps you were willing to take some risks. 

I”m a bit impulsive, but I’ve always had a deep fascination too with other cultures and languages. Those travels deepened my desire to explore elsewhere. I think What fuels the desire for elsewhere is a love of differences. One of the joys of living here in the Balkans and northern Greece, is that it’s a small place geographically, but with untold differences with ethnicities, languages, religions and landscapes too from mountains to coast, countries to cultures, wild species. I choose to celebrate differences to enrich your life rather than see it as a point of division.. Those travels you mention in some respects led to my trying to put down roots in northern Greece, but there’s no comparison from passing through temporarily, engaging in something new and different, but temporary. So different from the idea of trying to make a home here. Making a home, that’s the real difficulty, but that’s ultimately what’s nourishing, putting down roots. Settling into a place, that’s what’s rewarding, a journey, not just to a place, or between places but into a place.

What impressed you first of all when you first arrived and is it the same thing that impresses you today?

I have to travel into the past to remember those first moments. Definitely two things come to mind that continue to this day. To arrive in the Greek part of the basin, [note: the Prespa lake area is shared by three countries, Greece, North Macedonia and Albania] you have to cross the mountains. A winding corkscrew road, over mountain paths, affords you this incredible view into the lake basin. So over 25 yrs ago we crested the path in a taxi, holding everything we thought we might need in two rucksacks and here down below were these two glittering blue summer lakes, surrounded by deep forests. So first it was the physical majesty and essence, and sense of a world apart, in this bowl of mountains that has held 25 years later. When we go shopping and leave the basin, I never fail to be amazed by how majestic it always is and I never tire of that immense view looking down at the waters of the lake.

And the second thing that impressed me most was the extraordinary kindness and generosity. We arrived knowing no Greek and no idea of what to do, no home to live in but many villagers offered their help and guidance. It was an incredible welcome for us as they opened their hearts. That sense of hospitality and kinship ultimately made it possible for us to find a home in Prespa. So, sheer astounding beauty and generosity.

So very much present was philoxenia (a very special word meaning hospitality)

Yes, philoxenia is the key to our presence here today.,,, my sense of wonder has never changed. Like Shepherd’s book, the more I see it, the more wondrous it is to me

This wonder at a place you never get tired of seeing is how I see Hania, which has a different sort of loveliness but every year when I see the Venetian port, I stare in wonder. Nikos Kazantzakis describes this …. “The ability to see all things as if for the first time, to see all things as if for the last time and bid them farewell.” In other words, how important it is to keep this sense of wonder.

Home and finding shelter are important themes in Lifelines. We find this idea vividly in your three chapters about the wrens, that are really a framing device in your book. Your descriptions are particularly beautiful in these chapters.

“The wrens  marked our evenings with intimate wonder… In some languages the twilight time between day and dark is known as wolf light, or hour of the wolf.  A time when all that is solid becomes mutable, when the world for humans tilts from the visibly familiar to the mysteriously wild. A time between times… This winter I’ve known the gloaming as wren-light…” Why do the wrens have a central role in the book?

The wren is a small beautiful brown bird, one of Europe’s smallest, they’re very isolationist in their personalities, monkish in character, they dwell on their own. Roosting with us 3 consecutive winters, these tiny birds used an old abandoned swallow’s nest no bigger than my hand…this is when the wren moves from its individualistic life style to bonding together. Because Lifelines is about home and the search for shelter, I realized how the wrens story fits. When it’s so cold, wrens abandon their solitariness and see the importance of roosting together, For three winters, I’d count as many as 14 of these tiny birds nesting together for warmth. In the morning, they would jump like parachutists out of the nest and continue their solitary day foraging, and in the evening, come back. This story resonated with me not just as a search for safety and shelter. I recognized a greater story, or parallel, in a human sense, birds recognized danger, that cold could kill them. On the human side, we recognize the dangers of climate change in fires, droughts etc. As I say throughout the book, for us not just to recognize dangers, but to take heed of these dangers, something humans are not currently doing to ensure our safety. These tiny birds are showing us humans what we need to do.  Through working together in communities and states.

Much in your book is about birds of course. You write, “[The birds] arrived in days of dancing light, when the oak leaves were so thin that they glowed like stained glass.” In Lifelines, you describe vividly the pelicans dying but they have returned and are stabilized again. And about the swallows, you describe their return in spring as “rituals of return to stabilize our place in a shifting world.” Can you explain this ritual of return in connection with the swallows.

We have a connection to this mosaic of life. [On the screen, Julian showed me his martis (month of March) bracelet which is string entwined of red and white]. The bracelet is really two simple lines, but in braiding them together, we show that we’re intricately interwoven with other species and communities.

As soon as a I see a swallow returning usually near the end of March, I’ll snip it off and use in a shrub or tree for nesting material. It’s a wonderful symbol of our connection to other species.

What I love about this custom is that it involves us with other species …in other connections, shepherds still refer to the Egyptian vulture, a wonderful but rare bird, as tirokomo (cheese maker) and in the Vlach language, it’s markat (fat yogurt.) This time of the vernal equinox, the birds’ return from their migration register with us on a deep level, for example, there’s cheese or yogurt to be made at this time,

I think of the lines fromTed Hughes’ poem “Swifts” about swifts that travel from South Africa to Northern Europe.

They’ve made it again,
Which means the globe’s still working, the Creation’s
Still waking refreshed, our summer’s
Still all to come –

[Three days after our interview, Julian excitedly told me the swallows had returned. Time to cut the bracelet and give it to the birds for their nests.]

And speaking about birds, you worked as an ornithologist after your adventure in farming and canning preserves. What is your background, how did you get your knowledge about birds?

Simply being out in the wild. With a love and passion for all the living world, but birds are especially close to our heart. We’re completely self taught with no training. We were hired by Greek NGO’s. This work was an extension of our love to be out in the landscape. We did learn more about bird calls to identify species more exactly. We’re not doing it any more but if another offer comes up though I might be interested.

[Note: Before working as an ornithologist, Julian and Julia worked successfully in organic farming, selling their produce to restaurants as far away as Thessaloniki, and then went into canning /preserves for a while, until the pandemic hit and halted their business]

So, now that you’re not farming or bird watching, how do you spend a typical day in your village?

Mostly at my desk! I’m now a full time writer. Before moving to Prespa, I had done some writing but it was very scattered, i struggled to find time & energy and committing myself. I was younger then and still had a romantic notion that writing emerges from some great inspiration. But that’s 95% rubbish, a great myth. I was more in love with the idea than the actual commitment. Once we arrived in Greece, I wanted to commit and it was trying to put down roots here, I found a landscape I wanted to engage with and write about.

But I try to get out for a walk every day in the valley, to be aware of my surroundings and see what’s different from the day before, flowers, prints of bears, bear tracks because they come here in the valley. There’s always something new out there to observe.

This fire salamander and newt were rescued from a shallow sewer, along with a numer of other salamanders, frogs and toads.

Let’s go to the bears now that share the area with you. Besides footprints you mention, you also had the never-to-be-forgotten experience of seeing a brown bear nearly face to face! And I liked your description, that “something stepped

into the sunlight ahead of me” and your first thought some giant feral dog but it just didn’t fit with anything familiar and your “sudden blaze of clarity” of what it was….I wonder, if it’s one thing to say yes bears share the area with us but another then to actually see a bear in front of you?

That’s a really important issue. It can be easy for us to say for example we live in coexistence with beautiful butterflies in our garden, but another matter entirely living with brown bears, encountering one on a mountain, that’s the critical key to coexistence, not when it’s easy but when it’s challenging. And with those challenges, it’s important to acknowledge there can be fear, sometimes danger, sometimes wonder.

I can’t imagine now living in a place without bears because they beneficially enlarge the whole sense of this shared landscape though we hardly ever see them. Within that framework, we need to acknowledge how we normalize so many other dangers. Since we’ve moved here, there have been a huge number car accidents in Greece, many people die from air pollution. I was astonished to discover that between 2000 and 2015, 74 people in the UK were killed by cows, making them by far most dangerous animals! Some victims were farmworkers, but some were simply out for a walk in the countryside! 

So when we talk about apex predators like bears and wolves, nobody in the last 5 decades has been killed by a wolf, so put this into context. Bears are the smallest things to worry about, but simultaneously, there is potential danger and we need to be “ecologically literate,” know how to behave if we encounter a bear, be aware of places we shouldn’t go to decrease the conflict potential. Coexistence is not only an ethical relationship with the animal world, but a practical one as well, to ensure both people and animals are safe. First is a fundamental feeling of respect, to live together and give them space.

And with regard to respect, the bear you referto that died from finding poison shows a fundamental lack of respect.

That’s right. There are unfortunately too many cases like this. In Thrace recently, somebody’s use of poison killed at least 9 black vultures (raptors) very rare birds. The casual or deliberate use of poison shows a disrespect for the species we live alongside of.  How we treat other species mirrors how we treat each other …

To change the subject a little, this area is rich in history, especially from Byzantine times. Are there Byzantine churches and monuments?

Right here in our village we have the 10th century church of Agios Germanos ….

And a popular place for nature and history lovers is the island of Agios Achillios, that you reach from Lesser Prespa lake by walking across a floating bridge.

A main attraction are the ruins of the Basilica of Agios Achillios, built in the late 10th century by Czar Samuel of Bulgaria, back when the island had sigificant religious and political importance.

Concerning this ancient and profound lake area, estimated to be 3 to 5 million years old, what’s the cooperation like among the 3 countries,Greece, Albania and North Macedonia, who share the lake?

The Prespa lakes indeed are among the oldest in Europe. We’ve seen some encouraging signs in how cooperation has evolved among the three countries. At a state level, not really enough but at a local level, incredible amount with municipalities on each side of the lake. There have been a series of People’s forums: the first one on the Albanian side of lake, the second in north Maced and later in spring will be one on the Greek side. there’s been a lot of cross border work tourism: in water management, joint environmental monitoring, cultural exchanges — a lot happening at the local level, a good model for bringing people together.

The State hasn’t picked up the baton as they should. We need decisive change.   Environmental organizations, like the Society for Protection of Prespa (SPP) a Greek organization that has played a critical role since the 90’s. Their efforts to protect pelicans has led to monitoring among the 3 states, part of an important  initiative called “Prespa net.” Organizations in 3 countries work together with climate issues around the lakes.. We see how these shifts are taking place at local level… It’s been wonderful, transformative really. The SPP is what my wife Julia works for, in a neighboring village.  Kalisto is another Greek NGO, also involved with mostly bears and wolves, with sharing knowledge and working together

That often happens, when the municipal level is more active. States have their political issues that prevent them.

About the ending where you talk about homecoming, were you thinking of the Odyssey at all where homecoming or ‘nostos‘ is such a strong force?

Yes, I’m not sure if I had specifically in mind, that whole idea of nostos, the whole effect of the Odyssey as a piece of literature. It’s incredibly powerful dealing with the big question, what is home, where is home and how do we get there? The reason Homer’s Odyssey resonates so richly and has for 2,500 years is that we all know something about that search. We’ve all asked where is home? Not necessarily making your way back from Troy, but there are multiple meanings and questions: should I make a family for example. Do I feel at home with myself, am I okay with my place in the world?

The idea of home is rich, we’ve all wrestled with it. So many of the characters in Lifelines, pelicans, Egyptian vultures, swallows, wrens, Sarakatsani nomads, are all on the move. Movement and migration after all is part of the human condition ever since we first made our way out of Africa, it’s the center of who we are as a species …and I think to ignore movement is at our own peril, We live in an age where we’re increasingly obsessed with borders and keeping people out ….

Migration is a fundamental part of who we are as climate changes, drought, more land unable to be used, inevitably forces more of us to move. When I first met the Sarakatsani in the mountains above Prespa lakes in 2000 or 2001, I realized they were going home in different directions, spring, leaving their lowland coastal villages, moving northward, in reverse..Home was at both ends of their journey, Home is a key theme for me, not only the place we are, but where we’re going, the journey itself, going back to Rilke: .as we journey, if we’re open to those “murmurs’ at every turn, the journey beckons us…

[At this point in our interview, Biscuit the cat wrapped herself around his shoulders and climbed down as if to say “don’t forget about me.”.]

She’s resilient this cat. At six weeks, living wild in the village square, she was hit by a car and had to have her leg amputated and we took her in, She’s a survivor.

Julian, it’s been such a pleasure to speak with you about your life in the Prespa lake region and some of the themes in your book of home, shelter, and coexistence. Best of luck for the award!

Thank you! And I’ve enjoyed our talk immensely.

As Lifelines is a book rooted in the sense of place, it’s not surprising that it is also nominated for another prize; it is longlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, an award that celebrates place.”The spirit of place has always been my great fascination as a writer,” writes Julian, “how deeply we experience it, how at sea we feel when it breaks.”

Released with a new cover emphasizing the pelicans:

Lifelines is available online and in bookstores. Signed copies can be found at Booktique bookstore in Athens.

To learn more, visit Julian’s website: https://julian-hoffman.com/

[All photos courtesy of J Hoffman.]

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Sherri Moshman Paganos is a writer and former educator, inspired by her life in Athens, where she and her husband are happily retired and enjoying their travels in Greece and abroad. You can check out her writing — fiction, non-fiction, poetry and articles here.