Before September, from train window, I last saw Sevastopol sitting sadly on its harbor under an overcast sky.
The next time I saw Sevastopol it was from a Brazilian regional jet. It had begun its decent very gradually from the mainland, probably from around the departure point above the marshy shores of Kherson near the Dnieper delta, over the sandy starfish-arm of Chernomorski peninsula, over the minnerets of Yevpatoriya and down along the coast. I could only guess, since the clouds were thick with rain. But the plane finally broke through the layer directly west of the shores of Kacha and I recognized the cliff shore north of Sevastopol immediately. The Dniproavia plane took a low approach south past the Belbek airport located on a well-trodden plateau which 19th century British and French soldiers fought their way over in vain, only to be turned back the impossible fortifications of the Imperial Russian Army a little further on.
Then the plane banked, and I saw it all unfold in one gorgeous gasp; the harbor, the hero city, the cliffs of Balaclava beyond, the fields of grape vines and orchards, the Crimean Mountains in the distance. A deep sense of deja vu came over me, but not a déjà vu in light of my return to a place I lived for two years, but a déjà vu for the feeling I had when I returned to Kyiv three months earlier and felt myself a stranger in a familiar place. I was back to "the same old used to be", but just like Kyiv, I was seeing a place in a completely different light. The light had changed. The place had grown, and so had I.
Not only that, but I was in arriving in an airplane and would stay at the Best Western, the hotel chain that'd taken over the Hotel Sevastopol since I'd been gone. From the airport, which was just a building the size of a country schoolhouse along a military runway lined with mothballed MiGs, I hopped a cab to Severnaya, the north shore of Sevastopol Harbor. The car sped past the hills south of the Belbek airport, which 20th century Nazi soldiers clawed their way over in vain, only to be halted by the impossible fortifications of the brave Soviet Red Army a little further on.
Back at the port, I walked on to the ferry, a mighty iron trolley bus for the water, that I'd taken so many times. But now I was just a tourist. Bereft of change, I paid the 2.50 hrivnya toll with a 200 hrivnya bill, apologetic.
Too early to check in, I left my bag with the luggage storage and went out to do some sightseeing and souvenir shopping.
The first new thing I noticed was that the concrete construction nightmare on the Art Harbor was now a glass-walled mini-skyscraper. It's still vacant, but I was so happy they'd finished it.
A swim off the concrete sea wall in the cool, clean harbor: it was a quiet and cloudy day, and unfathomably relaxing. In the evening, I met with the first Peace Corps volunteer back in Sevastopol proper since I’d left and we chatted over Russian cuisine in the naval themed restaurant, “Traktir.”
Throughout two days and two nights were crowded beaches of Balaclava and Fiolent, and two perfect starlit evenings in Sevastopol, strolling along the waterfront watching the carnival atmosphere; the kissing couples on benches; the pensioners singing Soviet anthems; the teenagers laughing over the backdrop of mobile phone music; all while a tropical storm rolled over my family on the Gulf Coast.
On Sunday night I met up with friends and former colleagues for a great harbor side dinner of fried fish, vegetables and sea fare. No one had aged a day, not a millimeter off. How do I explain to my friends in their language that if language is a bread, then my Russian is beyond stale, it is moldy black croutons?
Mark Twain wrote about the south coast of Crimea when he visited in 1867, “To me the place was a vision of the Sierras. The tall, gray mountains that back it, their sides bristling with pines - cloven with ravines –here and there a hoary rock towering into view – long straight streaks sweeping down from the summit to the sea, marking the passage of some avalanche of former times –all these were as like one sees in the Sierras as if the one were a portrait of the other.”
And there I was – back on the long windy train along the cliffs that reminded me of Colorado when I first saw them. Like Mr. Clemmens said, the Crimean Mountains are a picture of the American West. And if Sevastopol and Kyiv both held some contrasting feelings of familiarity, when the natural world bends and shapes, absent the apocalyptic ax, torch and shovel, its metamorphosis is not so readily tangible to mortal men. The lizards ever run the lichened rocks, the warped, bonsai and twisted bark of the windswept miniature pine are immortal spiny monuments and the smells and sounds of these forests will forever be a threshold to my senses on at least two continents.
One then turns around to look at what he’s been neglecting by studying the mountains and the brush forests. Colorado has lacked a sea for millions of years, but Crimea lies perched like a rocky front porch over looking a most serene body that spreads out like a magnificent deep, deep blue field that stretches out from Foros to Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria and Georgia. Lazy waves rarely break, the water sways like blue-white grains of wheat.
The sea is the beginning and the end, and every time and place in between. And if the sea is exactly that, then here at the precipice, one can see everything and forever all at once.
Exactly where I left it, is where it is, on and off, and on again, that dusty trail, heading south, to the Sea.
