G
reeks use the name ���Anafi��� to evoke remoteness much
like Timbuktu or Juneau is often used (both places I am keen
to visit). Gibraltar might have world acclaim as the great,
penultimate, rock island citadel but Anafi is home to a rock
even higher���in fact, the highest in the Mediterranean. In
splendid isolation, Anafi contains the remarkable.
Castle-like rocks have been a fascination of mine since my
youth. Across the street from our house in Marblehead, I spent
years climbing over our own ���castle rock��� made famous by
several 19th-century American painters and by the Harvard
geologist, Louis Agassiz.
From the base of Anafi���s castle rock, starting at an ancient
monastery built on the foundations of two even more ancient
temples, a twisting path offers panoramas that would send the
hearts of 19th century Romantics soaring. The highest point
is so miniscule that the prerequisite whitewashed chapel precariously rests on concrete and steel supports that cantilevere
into space.
From this summit, situated at the extreme eastern end of the
small island, the view of the setting sun in July is framed by a
gaggle of small alps. A few moments in the presence of this
view, of this milieu, could make a mystic out of the most unmovable skeptic.
With the possible exception of a night I spent in Jaisalmer,
India, in the 1970s on the edge of the Thar, the Great India
Anafi
