By now the plan had been lurking at the forefront of my mind for more than two weeks, since we’d first arrived here. Each time we headed out across the island in the car, we’d spot more of them. Apparently there are 1.7million of them on the island. I found that fact on the internet you know. Mind you, Crete has thirty million of them - according to the same source. That’s a harvest and three quarters. Olive trees are revered like demigods here - everywhere you look, no two alike, each of them bristling with age and charm. The oldest one on the island is an extraordinary sprawling specimen in the high ground hamlet of Exo Chora. Reputedly over two thousand years old, it looks more like an enormous snail. The trunk has grown into multiple sections, each of them twisted, belly to the ground, folding and notched in so many places. Parts of it look as if they’ve been dead for hundreds of years, yet the giant snail breathes, patiently bearing the weight of thousands of olives waiting to be picked at the end of the season. It seems that almost everyone on the island is an olive picker when the holiday season ends in late October. The snail is a magnificent sight at the edge of the village square. To stand at its side and feel the pulse of ancient history beneath your fingers is quite something. To think that it might have been there long enough to witness the Greek and Roman empires in their heyday. The birth of Christianity even. By the time some Norman invaders landed a long way north of here at Pevensey Bay kicked off a bit of a ruckus, and sent an arrow into King Harold's eye, it was probably already a thousand years old. It puts so much in context. Trees are wonderful things, whatever the genus - but olive trees, these gnarled guardians from another age; well they’re really rather special.
But if I wanted to photograph some of them, I was going to need to do so in suitable light. And being the pair of beach bums that we are, dragging ourselves away from the sea in time was always going to be a challenge. There was no point in trying to convince myself otherwise. Once we’re on the beach, we don’t generally leave until after sunset - almost always the last to arrive and the last to leave. Living where we do, the sea is practically in our blood. Another factor was that the best evening light wasn’t here, near where we were staying. For that we’d need to leave the beach quite early and head up into the hills to explore. We all know that photographing trees isn’t a case of plonking the tripod down and hoping for an immediate shot. So I resigned myself to the fact that I’d need to try and grab a sunrise one morning. But where? I was spoilt for choice really. There was that olive grove in the first village on the route into Zakynthos town. I’d also spotted a couple of appealing options on the high ground on the roads up to Maries and Volimes, but that was a longer drive and I wasn’t sure I’d remembered exactly where I’d seen them. And then there was the row of terraces along the steep road that began that journey up onto the high ground. That seemed the likeliest candidate.
It was only in the last few days, when we took the slow road up to the convent that we spotted a new area of Olive trees just above the sea, not more than a couple of miles from our apartment. Salted olives by the tonne right here. Just how I like them. By now there were just two mornings left, and so I finally resolved myself to crawl out of bed early the next day and make the short trip to the olive grove by the sea. As Ali stirred, muttered something about me having a nice time and turning over to sleep again, I crept down the steps from the apartment to the car and drove through the streets, where the day was slowly kick-starting itself into action. Here a cleaner on the way to tidy up after the tourists, there a barkeeper pulling up the shutters and preparing for the first hungry breakfast arrivals.
By now I knew the strip quite well, and the map had long since been discarded. Within a few minutes I was perfectly alone here at the olive grove, suddenly remembering how difficult the random nature of woodlands can be. But time was on my side and I soon found a group of three repeating forms cascading away from me. I lined up the shot and waited. And then I waited some more. Every so often a car would whizz past on the road above, or sometimes a heavy truck, rattling its way up the slope and shaking the silence all around me. I checked my watch. Sunrise was close now - all I had to do was stay here and count the minutes. But while I did that, I could quickly trot across the grass, leaving the camera where it was on the tripod, just to have a look.
It was the running and taking a look that unsettled me, but in the event that might have been a good thing. The composition I’d found was still worth taking, but not until some time later when warm light finally found its way through the grove. But in the meantime, I raced back to the camera on the tripod, dragged it back to a new and very hastily discovered scene, and just about caught an orange sun rising up over the headland on the far side of Alykanas. Somehow it told the story. The sea, the olive trees and the warm early light. An autumn morning in a peaceful Ionian idyll. Worth the effort of getting out of bed for I reckon.
