Sometimes Athena, the crafty and cunning goddess who helped both Odysseus and The Idiot out of many scrapes during their Mediterranean odysseys, cracks me up. She really does.
The other day she firmly instructed The Idiot to scale Turkey’s renowned Mount Ida for a Q&A with Zeus, her father who is also the lord of lightning and the omnipotent king of all gods. But after The Idiot MedTrekked for half a day to the main gate of the Kazdaği National Park, he learned that he wasn’t allowed to enter or climb the magical, mystical, mythical and holy mountain without a guide. And that would take a day to set up.
The Idiot knew what Athena was up to. The wily and wise goddess would invariably appear in the guise of a tour guide, as she did recently in Troy (http://goo.gl/rRpqj) and before that in Rome, and, for a charge of $40, safely lead The Idiot on a twenty-five kilometer saunter up the 1,774-meter (5,820 ft) mountain to Zeus’ lair.
Yet when The Idiot met the tour guide at the entrance to the gigantic national park at 8 am he was astounded not to see a disguised and winking Athena, who frequently changes her shape and form, but rather a mortal called Usher (a corruption of his Turkish name Asir) Altinoz, a 48-year-old former biology researcher/translator and English-speaking guide who’s writing a book containing “everything you always wanted to know about Mount Ida but were afraid to ask” and other bits of wisdom.
The Idiot and the Wise Man at the Kazdaği National Park entrance.
Usher was a fountain of information and advice throughout The Idiot’s six-hour hike up Mount Ida.
He described the influence of women (including the white-armed goddess Hera, The Magna Mater and The Blonde Legend) and the world’s first beauty contest (Aphrodite won) on the mountain where the Greek gods watched and directed the war at Troy, which is visible from Mount Ida and other high peaks in the national park, around 1194 BC. He mentioned that Mount Ida inspired Koranic verses and that contemporary religious and spiritual ceremonies frequently occur on the holy ground and in the shrine on the mountain’s broad table-top summit, where there are the remains of an unexplained circular stone wall that was once four kilometers in circumference.
An ardent hiker who climbs Mount Ida one hundred times a year, Usher (a perfect name for a guide) chatted about the Kazdaği National Park’s wildlife (black and brown bears, wild boar, roe deer, wolves, rainbow trout and jackals); flora, including 40 different wild herbs, scores of flowers that blossom in May-June, and everything from pine, pistachio and plum trees to figs, olives and porcini; four different microclimates on a mountain range that’s 70-kilometers long and 30-kilometers wide; abundance of fresh water on the ‘mountain of 1,000 springs’; extraordinary quality of oxygen; and watchtowers for fires and the NATO radar for defense.
Climbing above the Mediterranean.
“The oxygen makes everyone feel young again and there are amazing fresh and unique smells on this mountain mecca that is an altar for women,” Usher said as he handed The Idiot some seductively scented samples of oregano and thyme. “Hera was able to seduce Zeus here, and influenced the outcome of the Trojan War, because she created her sensuous smell with oils from herbs like these. And did I mention that any wish you make on the holy ground or in the shrine at the top of Mt. Ida will come true?”
GPS at the summit of Mount Ida.
Mount Ida’s broad hilltop summit.
An over-oxygenated and wind-blown Idiot atop Mount Ida.
Usher was sure that The Idiot would meet Zeus, the lord of wisdom, and that one day he (Usher) would win the lottery.
“Just go into the shrine, light the candles, meditate or pray and it will happen,” Usher told The Idiot when he (Usher) stopped to have a drink of raki mixed with fresh stream water.
Athena, it turns out, had supplied The Idiot with a human guide who was perhaps more experienced than even a goddess.
She cracks me up. She really does.
The shrine atop Mount Ida.
Inside the shrine.
After The Idiot sent a GPS signal from the top of the mountain (http://goo.gl/UpE2h) and admired the view and terrain, he hiked across the broad hilltop to the shrine to meditate, pray and prepare for his meeting with Zeus. He was looking forward to giving Zeus — the gatherer of cloud and the lord of storm and lightning – the lowdown on his recent visits to Zeus’ caves in Crete, his not-so-wild night sleeping with Helen of Troy in the Peloponnese and his appreciation of Athena’s help in guiding him on his MedTrek. And he expected to learn a few more things from Zeus, the god of glory and power reigning from Ida, about Odysseus, the Trojan War, the pantheon of Greek gods, immortality, good and evil, seduction and thunderbolt tossing.
The Idiot entered the shrine, which may also be the spot where Hera seduced Zeus (in one of the best and most descriptive of the 24 books in “The Iliad”) in a successful effort to distract him from the battlefield in Troy. As he was admiring multicolored scarves, icons and candles left by pilgrims and visitors, he sensed Athena’s presence and expected her to immediately lead him to the undying ruler of gods and men who drives the clouds of heaven.
Instead she delivered a journalist’s equivalent of a Zeus-thrown thunderbolt.
“My father, the king of all gods benched high on Ida, is looking forward to sitting with you and speaking about anything you desire but I forgot to mention that, while everything is on the record, he wants his quotes to first appear in your next book (*) and not on your Follow the Idiot blog tomorrow,” Athena lamented. “I’m afraid he’s kind of old school when it comes to media relations but I’m sure you don’t have a problem with that, right?”
She cracks me up. She really does.
(*) “The Idiot and the Odyssey II: Myth, Madness and Magic on the Mediterranean” to be published, Zeus willing, in October 2012.
Text and photos by Joel Stratte-McClure
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