| Expeditions |
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There’s no need for well-laid plans when you’re traveling with companions well-versed in life’s battles  The English love an expedition. That word—redolent of imperial exploration, fragrant with Earl Grey, with canvas tents shouldered by native porters and walnut tumbler cases for the 6 p.m. G&T—sounds a lot more alluring than “group travel,” after all. I haven’t been on many trips that remotely merit the designation, but I once had the good fortune to be invited on a kind of expedition to Mount Athos by an old-school Brit, the remarkable George Jellicoe. The older I get, the more unsure I am about whether the chief pleasure of a journey is where you go or whom you go with. Case in point: Jellicoe, whose life was straight out of Boy’s Own Paper. After a first at Cambridge, he joined the British army in the thick of World War II and was recruited into the Commandos. Those were the days of blacked-up faces, of grenades and tommy guns, Mosquitoes and Hurricanes, and parachute drops to contact the Partisans. By the end of the war he had blown up German aircraft behind enemy lines, evaded capture by posing as a drunk Greek peasant, liberated Athens on a bicycle, and paddled many a dinghy from shore to a waiting British submarine across a nighttime Mediterranean. Nietzsche said war is the greatest adventure, and in spite of the death and loss, the type of warfare those World War II heroes engaged in—if they survived it—could become a kind of lifelong blessing, at least for some. An early acquaintance with death, coupled with the classical learning drummed into him from an early age, could set a man up for life. You felt that with George. His joie de vivre was boundless. When you sat with him, you felt good. He read voraciously, ate sumptuously, and traveled exhilaratingly. For his kind of Brit, travel was a way of life, and there was always an exotic trip in the offing: Georgia, Cambodia, Jordan. Mount Athos is on a peninsula in northern Greece that has been closed to all females—bovine, ovine, caprine, human—for a thousand years. It’s a community of some 20 Orthodox monasteries perched around the cliffs. There are hermits in caves with matted dreads, dusty robes, and sparkling eyes, and black-gowned monks pacing the solitary paths. It’s not exactly John the Baptist austerity, but it’s hardly grand luxe. And though there’s not much exploring to be done, the trip still had to be properly organized. Beforehand, Jellicoe sent circulars about our itinerary with ETAs and ETDs, ferry schedules, and permit-collection times. Various tours of churches were planned. This wasn’t just a pleasure jaunt, we were warned—we were entering hallowed ground, a land of ascetics and mystics. Appropriate abstention was expected. On Mount Athos we were an ill-sorted gang: a mountain man from the Alps (one of Jellicoe’s sons); a playwright son-in-law; an art historian; a poet and travel writer (me); an Orthodox monk from New Zealand who made his living painting icons; and the war hero himself, who loved nothing better than a bottle of Naoussa, a mildly psychotropic Macedonian red. The Orthodox Church has a complex calendar of fasts, and in the ringing refectories of Mount Athos there always seemed to be something prohibited: no fish, no meat, no wine. Staples were hummus, olives, and pita bread. That may not sound austere, but on an elderly man accustomed to the finer things it began to take its toll. The abbots knew of Jellicoe; his wartime exploits made him famous in Greece. So as we pilgrimaged from monastery to monastery, there’d be formal welcomes by the senior clerics. We’d sit around on stiff chairs while a tray of raki shots arrived, which Jellicoe would eye longingly throughout the speeches. It was the third day when Jellicoe’s son discovered the bar. It served beer, wine, and excellent spinach pie and was frequented by Albanian laborers doing restoration work. Suddenly the son was absent from the tours of the chapels and churches. The next day, I hiked up there myself and found father and son deep in a bottle of something. Here was the old gent, who had organized everything so meticulously, goofing off. “It’s really rather good,” he declared, offering me a slice of pie and a glug of wine. The café became a fixture. Instead of a week of contemplation, Jellicoe hosted an impromptu salon up there, regaling us with tales of his life of adventure. At trip’s end, as we sailed across the Aegean with the smoky hump of Mount Athos behind us and bouzouki music screeching out of the wheelhouse of the ferry, I couldn’t help reflecting that although I’d thought I wanted to soak in the atmosphere of the monasteries, I may just have learned more about life and how to live it by quaffing wine with George Jellicoe, who died last year. On Homer’s old sea, birthplace of Western civilization, cradle of wine and war, he was a natural denizen, every bit at home as the silent monks on their hill. |
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