Lens-Artists PC: Wilderness

• Manja Maksimovič

How few are photos of this planet in my archives with no humans, pets, roads, houses and other human influences! Must be because I am one myself. Croatia and Slovenia, no matter how tiny, provide some wilderness though.

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“I don’t want to see groomed gardens or animals in the zoo. No people or signs of people.” Thus writes former ranger Dianne, the guest host of Lens-Artists photo challenge this week. Her blog might be called Rambling Ranger but she is nothing but. Everything is to the point. Her love of wilderness is palpable and no wonder she called Let’s get wild! for this week’s Lens-Artists theme.

And yet, as I read the above instruction, my rebel yell was felt building as it tends to when facing the absolute. No people? How can there be no people if “there are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer,” Ansel Adams said. And he must have been a mighty smart guy, seeing that he managed to make black and white photos interesting.

So I will keep combining humanity and nature because it’s our only hope. I used to think that we needed to worry about wilderness but no. Without us, wilderness will be alright. We have to worry about ourselves.

Still, today’s photos are of places where it was the wildest I’ve been with the digital camera (certain wild things came before that).

Mind you, I’m from one of the smallest countries in Europe. I got wobbly legs when I saw the Pacific for the first time. And it was in Santa Monica. I wouldn’t know wilderness if it smacked me on the head.

In fact, when I played an online game and a place called Wilderness was where you went to fight other players and it was the only place where you could die? I never went in there. Nah-aa. I didn’t want that, fight nor die.

And when a Slovenian woman I know almost drowned on a beach in Mexico, the first thing the life guard said to her when she came to was: “Adriatic sea?” That’s us. We have no idea.

So my wilderness images are rather tame but still quite impressive, I like to think. There may be a town, a road or a path in the distance but I had to get there somehow.

First comes my tiny Slovenia in this order: the mountain called “Chair” (Stol, 2,236 m) that I climbed in 2009, the Soča river, the Boka waterfall, the Zelenci nature reserve (Does that count? Too close to a zoo? Does water know it’s held captive?), and some more glimpses from the Julian Alps.

The neighbouring Croatia follows. We used to spend our summers in Duba on Pelješac peninsula, and in 2009 (a good climbing year and the last too) I even climbed Mt. Ilija, towering above the sea, from the pathless, wild side. The last photo is of the waterfalls on the Krka river near Šibenik.

I love all these memories. Welcome!

  • Towards Stol, the highest peak in the Karavanke mountain chain (2,236 m). I did Triglav, the highest Slovenian mountain at 2,864 m, some years before that.
  • The view of a portion of Slovenian mountains.
  • Still grateful to my friend for spurring me on to do this hike.
  • River Soča (or Isonzo), famous for the WWI Isonzo Front and its colour that keeps eluding my camera.
  • The same Soča river lower down near Italy.
  • Boka waterfall. Once I climbed very near it in my Doc Martens. Do not recommend.
  • Zelenci nature reserve, one source of the Sava, the longest Slovenian river. A rare phenomenon, unique in Slovenia. (Nothing is really held captive here, it was a joke).
  • This is not a snake, see the legs? Spotted during our last family hike to the Javorca chapel three years ago.
  • Last August we spend three days in Kranjska Gora under the Julian Alps with my parents. This is the Vrata valley. Vrata means door.
  • The weather was not really cooperating. At lake Jasna.
  • On our last day in Kranjska Gora it brightened.
  • On return to Piran by the sea we decided to car-climb the Vršič pass. The view of the Trenta valley.
  • A hop to Croatia now. This is the beach of my childhood. Duba on Pelješac peninsula with the view of Biokovo mountains.
  • Its neighbour is Divna which means “magnificent”. Indeed.
  • Mount St. Ilija rising 3,153 ft above the sea. (See what I did there? Before it was in meters.) 😀 We went straight up.
  • Like goats. The wildest thing I’ve ever done. Do not recommend.
  • We didn’t know what was coming and just had to take it all.
  • But we knew that once we reached the top, we would descend on a well-maintained path to Orebić on the other side. This island is Korčula, I believe.
  • The part to the top was full of sage and much easier than before.
  • Wild horses. We’d heard of them but never seen them before.
  • Another wild guy, stag beetle.
  • The beach called the Lake near Duba with a sweet-water source.
  • And finally, the waterfalls on the Krka river near Šibenik. I was in Plitvice once too, the most famous Croatian landmark (besides Dubrovnik), but it was predigital. I remember the crowds most of all.

For Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, guest-hosted by Dianne at Rambling Ranger: Let’s Get Wild!

One more thing: the first item in my today’s blogging history is a bit special. The link under the song leads to the post in which my 230 favourite songs of all times are listed.

They made up the soundtrack of my first visit to amore, Rome and Tuscany back in 2012. He bought the MP3 player, double headphones and little speakers, and we had our (rather eclectic) soundtrack whenever we wished. So cinematic.

I’ve just gone through all the links to replace those that stopped working and only now realised that I could create a YouTube playlist with all the songs (minus one. Michelle Shocked doesn’t cooperate and there is no video for her Anchorage).

The song below is the first one on the list. The playlist is called Soundtrack 2012. First come the Slovenians, then other brothers from ex-Yugoslavia, then the Italians, and finally assorted worldwide tunes. I recommend random mode. Happy listening.

This day in my blogging history

38 thoughts on “Lens-Artists PC: Wilderness”

  6. It looks plenty wild to me, Manja! What a beautiful country you call home! Thank you for sharing it with us. I especially like your opening waterfall shot.

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    1. Thank you kindly, Dianne. Well, I’ve been living in Tuscany, Italy, for the last eight years but I chose my country of origin Slovenia (and its neighbour Croatia) for this post. I’m glad you like it. Excellent theme.

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  9. Manja, as shakespeare once said “thou doth protest too much”! Your wilderness images are glorious and as wild as any we’ve seen this week. And I did love your closing comments about your amore, very fun!

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    1. Thank you, Tina. 🙂 True, especially for such a small country. Just not sure which comments about amore you mean. How he bought the speakers for our holidays? Or maybe you were thinking of another post?

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  13. The first thing on my mind – that was the wildest ride I’ve ever taken. Up and down and all around in places most people couldn’t ever reach. I couldn’t pick a favorite. They were all so beautiful, how would you choose. How did you carry any kind of camera with you, and find time or place to use it? Just amazing.

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    1. Ah, Marsha, thank you for your enthusiasm! I must confess that some of these were taken off bridges with the car waiting for me a few steps away. 😀 Only the two hikes – the first three photos from Stol and the ones to Mt. Ilija – were really wild and I had to walk for hours to get there. Back then I still had my bulky Canon, my first digital camera ever, and I had it safely tucked in my waist bag. I wonder myself sometimes how I managed to walk so much and so high but I was young… 😉

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      1. LOL. You are probably still young. What is old anyway. The numbers meaning old just keep getting higher and higher all the time. Canon was my first digital, too. I just bought a new Sony that is mirrorless, and it is so light. 🙂

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  14. These photos take my breath away. Every one of them has me in awe. The world can be such an astoundingly beautiful place. The lizard I assumed was a snake until I saw your caption, isn’t that funny it looks so much like a snake? The wild horses – did you love them? I was high in the mountains once, all by myself sitting on a rock eating lunch, and a wild horse family came by: male, female, and colt. For some reason it seemed more amazing to me to see wild horses than wild deer or elk. Anyway, the MOUNTAINS. Oh gosh, I am in love. ❤

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    1. Oh, Crystal, you could move to Slovenia and only explore all our mountain trails for about a year. Father will help. 🙂 He had done most of them, and took us along often even when little. Nowadays I can walk very little. You will need to go without me. We knew about the wild horse up there so we weren’t very surprised. They were beautiful to see. The highest Slovenian mountain Triglav and many others I did before my first digital camera. The craziest thing I did (with father and sister) was to walk for a week in one piece between 2nd largest city Maribor and Ljubljana over the mountains. I was spent and could barely walk after that. But it was highly memorable. Thank you!

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      1. Ha! I know what you’re talking about. After that much hard work I am spent, too. But grinning. 🙂 How fun that your dad has hiked so many of the mountains. I’ll bet he has stories to tell.

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  15. The Slovania mountains are beautiful. The hiking looks fantastic. I too would love to try to get to the waterfall. That was breathtaking. Sounds challenging, but I can imagine the beautiful view from there as well.

    You live in a beautiful country.

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    1. Thank you, Donna. I lived in Slovenia for 43 years but the last 8 I have spent in Tuscany, Italy. I miss the mountains so much! But Tuscany is beautiful in other ways. The best thing is to be able to move between the two (until a pandemic messes this up). Slovenia is beautiful, diverse but also really tiny, three hours across by car.

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Happy to learn the first thing on your mind.

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