Honoring the Living and the Dead in Crete (in 4 Parts) --- Part One: Finding my Water Tribe and the hike to the ancient city of Lissos

During my last month in Crete, I finally dropped into the sacred territory of what we in psychosynthesis call “sitting in the seat of the largest sense of Self.” 

I felt like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, observing puzzle pieces clicking together, creating a larger picture, an intricate story. I fell slowly, moment-by-precious-moment through deep, watery, mystical, majestic, clear, past, future, and present experiences. Through it all, Grief gently, tearfully, and compassionately held and then landed the fall. Grief continues to be my most sacred teacher.

Precious little things took my breath away and then handed my life, more fully, more meaningfully, back to me.  Precious little things dotted the walls of the rabbit hole, the seacoast, the mountain paths, and the roads of Crete.

First, there was Elena.

“I’m interested in the Love Challenge,” she texted, “Do you want to meet…go for a walk?”  We walked along the Koum Kapi boardwalk, talking intently about our experiences, beliefs, dreams and desires. At one point, Elena stopped and said, “I’ve been waiting for someone to talk to like this.”  Her words were simply stated, though I felt the depth of lonely longing and hopeful joy in them. I felt the echo of her sentiment in my own heart space. A young adolescent-aged voice in me emerged and said, “Me too.”  We decided at that moment that we were Soul Sisters – reunited.

Later that day I got another text about the Love Challenge, this one from Niko.

Niko and I met at my place that night, and a similar, deep and mystical heart-centered conversation unfolded. I felt like we were twin souls, reunited. Niko asked about my astrological chart. Turns out, we were both water signs. That did not surprise me. Water signs tend to go deep quickly. I told Niko about my day with Elena. “Is she a water sign,” he asked. I texted her. “Yes,” she texted back, she was a water sign.

That was Monday. The Love Challenge was scheduled to start the next day, Tuesday. I had explained that The Love Challenge would be “a conscious effort to focus on moving into, accepting, expanding, and sharing - from heart-space, consistently (for a designated period), to strengthen our neurological pathway to Love.” I had also explained that each time we met, we would “start with an energy cleansing tool (releasing stress and trauma into cleansing material), meditate (using a guiding in/focus/prompt to start, then a  20-minute silent sit or moving meditation, and then a guiding out of meditation)… [have time for] individual writing, and a time for sharing.”

The next morning, on Tuesday, Elena, Niko, and I sat together on Koum Kapi beach, directly across from a place called Maiami. We did all of what I’d said we would do. During our sharing, I heard the angst of either/or thinking from both Elena and Niko. “Can we try something” I asked and then guided our triangular circle into a Both/And exercise. Moving from either/or thinking to Both/And thinking is expansive on a mind-blowing scale. It was mind-blowingly expansive.

On Wednesday, Niko picked me up on his scooter before our Love Challenge, to attend a 5 Rhythm Dance at Studio Oxo Nou. There was a good crowd at the dance, and, though after the dance participants ordinarily met downstairs in the café, Niko and I left immediately, scooted back to Koum Kapi, and met with Elena for the hour-long Love Challenge. After the Love Challenge, Niko and I both felt a pull to return to Oxo Nou, so scooted directly back to where we had been that morning.

The dancing crowd was still in the café, sipping and talking, and that’s when we met Nora – the fourth water sign. On Thursday, Nora joined the Love Challenge at my place in Koum Kapi.

5 Rhythms Dance happened every Wednesday. The following week, after the dance, Niko, Nora, and I held the Love Challenge by the beach outside Oxo Nou. Elena was unable to attend most of the rest of our 3-week Love Challenge. She had two small children and one-by-one, everyone in her family became ill, in what seemed a rotating circular kind of germ sharing. On this Wednesday, after meditating, Niko went into the café and Nora and I remained outside, talking with others from the dance community. When we went into the café, Niko was working at the corner table by the wood stove, with two young women. Niko moved to the next table, and Nora and I sat with the two young women, Ellie and Vanessa.

Ellie and Vanessa became the rest of our six-pack.

Nora, Ellie, Vanessa, and I started talking and quickly dropped into places that not many public conversations with strangers go. The ancestors were present. Spirit was palpable. Nora and Ellie dropped into having been sisters in a past life. I dropped into being the soldier who killed one of them, leaving the other lost in grief.  I felt the depth of ancient regret and apologized to them. We were laughing at the absurdity of what was happening and crying at the profound healing we were experiencing.

We were experiencing a kind of magic in the present moment, talking about dreams of a shared future we had all hoped for. Of course, Ellie was a water sign. Though Vanessa was not, of course she had a watery moon.

We began to refer to ourselves as the Water Tribe. I felt that Niko and I were the Mama and Papa – birthing something that would grow beyond us.  Unfortunately, one-by-one, Niko, then Nora, then I left Crete, before our fetus had time to gel. Still, something started...

Over those three weeks of the Love Challenge, other people, (Ancestors and Spirit) dropped in and out of our circle.

When Andrea dropped in, we discovered a mutual longing to explore the south of Crete.

I had taken a day trip with Ole to Lefgogia, close to Plakias. Ole had just purchased an electric car and it needed a road trip. I needed to start exploring Retreat sites and felt an energetic pull toward the south. I had met Cathy, an Australian living in southern Crete, who had invited me to visit her and tour a nature retreat center nearby. The whole affair was a match made in Crete.

There were many moments during that day with Ole and Cathy that were lovely, beautiful, and meaningful. The most magnificent part though, was before we got to Lefgogia - the drive through Koutalioti Gorge. A picture may be worth a thousand words, though the one picture I will post here depicts one of those precious moments that left me speechless.

During the Love Challenge, in my apartment in Chania, Andrea and I talked about visiting the town of Sougia and hiking the Cretan Way through the Lissos Gorge to the abandoned ancient city of Lissos. Ellie told us of her experience of the abandoned, remote, ancient city of Lissos, that being there "will be a magical, spiritually charged experience." I booked an Airbnb.

Though it was a cloudy, cold, and rainy day, the next day, Andrea and I started our road trip. We drove through small villages on winding mountain roads. Once, we had to stop because the road had been taken over by mountain goats. We got out of the car to fully take in the majesty of the mountains around us, and utter cuteness of the baby goats. 

By the time we arrived at our Airbnb to check in and drop off our bags, it was after noon. We drove a short distance to Sougia, parked, and walked to the beach. The sea was a sublime turquoise color, so clear we could see the rocks on the seabed far below the surface of the water.  It was still cold, cloudy, and rainy. “Should we hike,” we both wondered. We were so inspired by the absolute essence of beauty before us, we decided “Yes,” we should hike to a magical place.

We walked in the rain through the town of Sougia, to Sougia bay where the road stopped, and onward to the trailhead to Lissos. We began our ascent into the mountain woods, following a well-marked narrow path. It was a challenging trail. We were made aware, through many unstable footfalls, that we needed to stay present. Eventually, we entered what must have been Lissos Gorge.

I tried to capture the utter magnificence of this extraordinary place, though it is difficult to capture depth and the nuance of colors and patterns on a phone camera. Looking at my videos now, I can see that it was impossible to see on digital film just how steep the gorge was and how awestruck we felt inside of it. Phone cameras cannot capture some things, like depth, though I would later learn that they do offer their own kind of magic.

I had the little jars of Michelle’s and Jessica’s ashes in my pockets and left some of them in a little cave inside Lissos Gorge.

When we had caught our breath, we continued hiking through the woods and mountain – all the time looking for painted markers on rocks and trees. We often reveled out loud in gratitude for those painted markers.

One section of the hike was especially steep, with loose rocks under foot. I heard a clear inner voice say, “Keep her safe.” I knew that I had an inner voice that kept me safe. This voice, though, was telling me to keep Andrea safe. “Make sure your foot is secure on the ground before taking the next step,” I told her. I started sharing all my internal hiking safety tips out loud.

After reaching the top of that steep trail, we traversed a flat path that led us through a higher section of the gorge. It opened to a view of the sea in the distance. At some point, the rain had stopped – a gift from the heavens. While standing, overlooking the stunning view, we realized that we were wet from both rain and sweat, and happily took off layers of clothes. It felt like a well-earned moment, standing in sunshine, on this mountain top vantage point, looking at Lissos Gorge and the Mediterranean Sea.

We continued our hike through rain-drenched, sticky, muddy red earth that was like traversing slippery quicksand. The soil stuck to my sneakers and Andrea’s boots in layers that we would continually need to scrape off using sticks.

We hiked through a little wood where I saw a tree that caught my eye. When I got close enough to look inside the opening in the tree, I saw two painted stones. “This is a good place to leave some of Meesh and Jess,” I said, and sprinkled some of their ashes over the stones in the nook of the tree.

We continued our hike along the Cretan Way, across terrain dotted with goats. Everywhere, it seemed, there were goats. At first, we didn’t see them all. I was taking pictures and videos, and it wasn’t until I zoomed in that I saw them. Zooming in to see things like naturally camouflaged goats on a mountain plateau is phone-camera magic.

We wondered if we would find Lissos in time. It was late in the afternoon, and we knew that as the sun set, the challenging hike back would become dangerous. We almost decided to turn back. We were both very glad we hadn’t because, come to find out, we were very close. When we got to the edge of the cliff, overlooking Lissos, we knew there wasn’t enough time to hike down to it. That is when my phone camera once again worked its own brand of magic.

I zoomed in on what looked like caves all along the mountainside. I read later, while doing research for this blog, what we saw were most likely chamber tombs. I zoomed in again, this time on the remains of an ancient outdoor Roman theater. I zoomed in on what looked like it may have been a church. After researching Lissos, I believe what I was zooming in on was the chapel of Agios Kyrikos. Neither of us had done research before arriving. Now, after doing some research, I realize there was so much there to discover that we did not take (or have) the time to see.  After probably 30 minutes of viewing Lissos from afar, we turned around and hiked back.

Back at Sougia Bay, Andrea washed her boots in the sea. Recently, she texted that she had been thinking of me because she still could not wash the red earth stains out of the pants she had worn that day.

At the time, while Andrea washed her boots in Sougia Bay, I looked around, more closely, at where we had started our hike. I noticed one of the little shrines I had seen all around Crete – what I have learned are “Kandylakia.” Check out the next blog: "Honoring the Living and the Dead in Crete (in 4 Parts) --- Part Two: Kandylakia, Memorial Posts, and Cemeteries" to read more about these unique little shrines.

In the meantime, enjoy this "Hiking to Lissos" video...