A corner of the mind's topography ...

25 December 2006
Langoria

Atop the mountains the view eastwards was of a desolated high desert valley of scrub and sterile earth. To describe it required a palette of browns and tans. There were dry ravines and sandy, sere riverbeds that flowed only occasionally when the rains spilled between the frigid peaks and the ridge beyond which lay Langoria.

North and south of the saddle that formed the only entry to the desert and, ultimately, into Langoria, the peaks curved, ever higher, until they reached the sea, trapping both the desert and Langoria in a giant horseshoe shaped promontory.

To reach the ridge required a descent, at times nearly vertical, down the rock mountainside. Once at the base, the high desert spread out for three days, rough and scarred and permanently parched.

Only near the sharp edge which defined the top of the ridge and marked the border of Langoria did the earth become gentler and more giving. Behind lay the hot, killing world of the desert.

From the ridge Langoria spread out below towards the sea. The land dropped through a mix of oak and pine and then through fields of oats, barley, hops and wheat, separated by orderly rows of apple, pear and peach trees. Still lower there were grape vines spreading their low green canopies, ripening in the dry sun and the cool air, thickening the fruit until it produced a deep, rich purple wine which the people drank before fires on cold winter nights. Scattered amongst the wineries were groves of olives.

From the wine country the land sloped further towards sea where the altitude and the weather combined to create an unvarying cool, misty world of grazing sheep, peat bogs and windswept shores. The small harbour of Langoria, the eponymous capital of the country, had been formed by the laborious placement of riprap rocks to convert a gentle indentation along the coastline into a small, safe-haven where coasters and fishing boats were moored.

For miles both north and south of the capital there was little in the way of variation to the coastline. It formed an even line between land and sea; sometimes the boundary varied a bit, from sandy, straight beach to cliffs where green fields simply terminated and the land tumbled precipitously a hundred or more feet into the sea.

Eventually the coastal strip that marked Langoria narrowed and terminated where the mountains reached the water, marked by towering precipices, shelves that stretched to the north and south nearly a hundred miles, an impassable, unconquerable barrier between tiny Langoria and the hostile lands beyond those impenetrable mountains.

And so Langoria slept. It was a gentle land. Far from the rest of the world and its conflicts, the tiny country prospered in its own way, leading a national life that was in harmony with the gifts given it by the earth: a temperate climate, a beautiful, rolling terrain and a variety of foods, from land and sea, from vine and field, that gave Langorians long lives, even temperaments and a capacity for calm reflection and tolerance that scarce occurs in more heated climes, whatever the temperature.