Even fewer of them do not require the assistance of a perfectly staged performance and a Wizard of Oz behind the curtain to achieve it. Guy Gavriel Kay, the great Catholic authors and mystics down the centuries, Woolf in her own way, a few others- there are not so many who know this spell and understand the proper way to recite it. He is able to section off a moment and a place and rope it away from the world and declare it Divine. One is a breathtaking capacity for rapture. There is darkness, but it is the kind of darkness that the story needs, a supportive depth that allows us to appreciate the worth of our Guide.įermor has two gifts that allow him to do this. He is the Guide, the Gandalf, the ghosts of Christmas Past, the curator, the Brothers Grimm, the wise child who knows the way through the woods. Who would question that in a narrative written about Europe of 1933, with the clouds closing in? But instead of touting himself as a prophet or a self-important chronicler of the troubles of the interwar years, Fermor makes himself a magician. This trip could have been a nightmare, or he could have sketched it as one. He slept in barns covered in ice, had his belongings stolen, had to go door to door peddling his sketching hobby in order to feed himself, and again, need I say it, NAZIS.

I mean, he tries his best to minimize the reality of it, but he walked across the north of Europe in the depression ridden 1930s in the depths of a horrible winter, where snow covered the otherwise picturesque scenery and where Hitler was in charge. Their minds are always working, and can always find something to think about, even at the most mediocre of tourist traps, even at the most average performance of the thousandth rendition of Pachabel’s Canon they’ve been forced to listen to.įermor is one of these people. You know those people who can make a thing, an occasion out of anything, out of doing errands if they must? It’s not just an Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (da da da dah dah da dah da!) thing, it’s a way of not letting a surface presentation of boring be the end of it. He represents something I've always envied.

Yeah, the one making the embarrassing noises and eating ambrosia without a care in the world.

Fermor a time of gifts