τοπια των αλλων plus +
Δημοσιεύθηκε: 25 Σεπτεμβρίου, 2015 Filed under: choses vécues, hiking, ikaria, photography, travel, Uncategorized | Tags: aegean, angels' pools, atheras, Cézanne, eleni-in-ikaria, environment, flickr, general takes, Greece, hiking, hiking trails, ikaria, Αθέρας, ικαρία, μονοπάτια, landscape shots, landscapes of others, my-friends, OPS Ikarias, people in landscape, wild shots, wild swimming 5 Σχόλια.
Hello readers! ❤ 
Erietta’s latest visual commnent in one of my older entries was smashing! ⭐
Where do these new young girls come from? 🙄 To be honest, I feel the urge to assemble and post a 2nd part of «Who in The Where» only for their sake! Maybe I will do it later, for example in January or February, when I will have missed summer. Now I have stick to my schedule and to do the last of «Landscapes of others». Only that, to pay respect to the new trend, I have chosen landscapes which are not empty. Ladies and gentlemen, dear readers of my humble blog, please welcome 13 landscape shots celebrating the wild nature of Ikaria, 13 landscape shots which somewhere in their many pixels include beautiful human figures! In one of them I am included too, that was when I was young and wild enough to match the natural surroundings. Let’s see if you can spot me
Here we go! Go little poeple in the landscape!
Go Ikaria! ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
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You were bored because you have seen these pictures already?
I promise, my next post will be more original!
Follow me up!
Eleni Ik
❤
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Ακομα κι αλλα τοπια των αλλων
Δημοσιεύθηκε: 15 Δεκεμβρίου, 2014 Filed under: choses vécues, exploring, hiking, holidays, ikaria, photography, pleasure, travel, Uncategorized | Tags: aegean, atheras, Cézanne, eleni-in-ikaria, empty-landscapes, environment, flickr, general takes, Greece, ikaria, ikaria-in-winter, island in the aegean sea, Αθέρας, ικαρία, μονοπάτια, landscape, landscape shots, landscapes, landscapes of others, nature, photography, preservation, rocks, travel, wind turbines 2 Σχόλια.
Hello readers,
everybody is picking olives and this is going to last for many weeks. There isn’t much to say about life here, so let me go on blogging «landscape shots of others». You can read the outlines of this project in the first part of the series. which begins with a 
memorial gallery of my own Ikarian landscapes from the glorious past. In my previous entry I got carried away into metaphysics and escapist thoughts but I promise this time I will be more sober. No more rocks and cliffs where only eagles, hermits and crazy Ikarians would take their chances. The landscapes I chose today are smooth and reasonable, at least as smooth and reasonable as an island like Ikaria can be… 😉
The choice was made using the oh! so useful Flickr Search «Ikaria + landscape» (refresh if it doesn’t load) sorted by «relevance» giving results oh! so wonderfully untouristically random and magical almost like a crystal sphere.
Here are the 12 shots I chose: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
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This was the third dozen of my landscape shots of others chosen among the not so popular and less known pictures. I thought they deserved to be seen. We don’t live on the beach. We live inside of around these landscapes! So this is it. The fourth part which, God will, be uploaded in the New Year, is going be a surprise!i Wait and see…
to be continued…
Eleni Ik ❤
Thursday December 18, 2014
When I am tired of the world
Δημοσιεύθηκε: 23 Νοεμβρίου, 2014 Filed under: exploring, hiking, ikaria, photography, stories, Uncategorized | Tags: adventure, aegean, atheras, balancing rocks, empty-landscapes, enviro-lore, Greece, hiking trails, history, ikaria, ikaria-in-winter, ikarian-enigma, ikarian-legends, ikarians, χειμώνας, Ορειβατικός Πεζοπορικός Σύλλογος Ικαρίας, ικαρία, μονοπάτια, landscape shots, landscapes of others, lost-village, monasteries, my-friends, mystic, OPS Ikarias, photography, religion, rocks, thoughts, up-with-lonely-winter 11 Σχόλια ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
You know, the last thing Ikaria is known for is church life and monasticism. The people are very religious in a natural, casual way, indifferent of formalities, nevertheless always showing a sincere and full respect of higher forces which control our destinies. Whether one believes in the salvation of the soul or not, religion provides consolation because, salvation taken apart, it does speak about the soul while economics do not. And believing in the soul, the existence of a soul, whether this soul is immortal or not, is something very important in the life of the island. Religion also provides occasions for celebration and community gatherings. It also offers an explanation for natural things as well as for «luck» : God’s will. And natural things and lucky or unlucky circumstances are also important elements in the consistence of Ikarian life. To cut this short, we have churches – a lot of big and small churches. They are, so to speak, our guardians, houses of God, houses of the spirit (soul) of the community: «be good and be good to each other» (be good to God).
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But what about monasteries? Thereupon we are a failure. Although there are a few monasteries, there is no monastic tradition in Ikaria, at least none as strong as in some other islands. In my opinion, besides our natural dislike for discipline and formalities, the most important reason is that the island is poor and cannot sustain monastic communities. The rocky soil produces hardly enough for the population so the Ikarians, even though devout believers, could not afford, so to speak again, professionals in prayer, experts in salvation. Like everything else in Ikaria, the tending of the soul had to be done by the poeple themselves with the occasional help of an educated priest or solitary monk.
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Yet, there are exeptions. If monasteries didn’t thrive, small hermitages were abundant in the slopes of Mt Atheras. But let’s not think that these retreats were inhabited by anchorites who pursued unification with God like in Mt Athos or Sinai. Though little is known about the lives of these people, it’s obvious to me that they were more or less ordinary men and women who either by some misfortune or simply because of taste, discarded the joys of the marital bed and the comforts of village and family life. They walked away from the world, seeking solitude, entrusting their fate to their labouring hands, to good God and to Mother nature. I am all respect for them. It’s hard to believe that in am island as virgin and wild as Ikaria and in a time when most settlements were of the kind of «lost villages» (see, entry), there were people who sought even more solitude and peace! Out-of-the-worldness must be some sort of second nature to us. The outer the better, the further the better, the remotest and most inaccessible is the best, ask my friend Nana & co about it!
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Anyway, this entry was not meant to be a dissertation of the religious ethics of the Aegean. I have come to Ikaria for the winter and recently my friends, the explorers of OPS Ikarias, in the course of a project to create a long-distance trail from one side of the island to the other, have been in love with a wild area under the tops of Mt Atheras where according to local legends various groups of monks lived in different periods of time from the 15th century to the 1800s. I saw the photos and I found these landscapes absolutely enthralling.
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What made men and women walk out of the world and settle in places like this? What kind of experiences were they after? Were they looking for God? Did they want be gods themselves? Was it because of a practical reason such as piracy, oppression, social disorder and percecutions? Or is it something inherent to the human nature? Escapism? Some people just drop everything and go?.. Is that it? 🙄
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I have always been too committed to everything I do and to everybody I love to even think about escaping. But as I am growing older, sometimes I am tired of the world and this makes me wonder. Until I sort this out, you take a good look at those rocky wildernesses. Take a good look at those vast views to the mountains above, the sea straight ahead and the skies all over. I am inviting you to find your answer.
κι αλλα τοπια των αλλων
Δημοσιεύθηκε: 27 Οκτωβρίου, 2014 Filed under: choses vécues, exploring, flying, hiking, ikaria, photography, Uncategorized | Tags: aegean, atheras, Cézanne, eleni-in-ikaria, empty-landscapes, environment, flickr, general takes, Greece, ikaria, ikaria-in-winter, island in the aegean sea, Αθέρας, ικαρία, μονοπάτια, landscape, landscape shots, landscapes, landscapes of others, my-friends, nature, nature-culture, photography, preservation, rocks, travel, wind turbines 5 Σχόλια.
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Rediscovering the mountainous secret nature of my island through a series of chosen photos of landscapes -empty landscapes, as I like to call them- taken by others. You may read the basics about this project which is going to be deployed in several blog entries, in my previous post: «the landscapes of others» . After an introductory memorial gallery of my old landscape shots, that set contained popular high quality pictures of rather well known spots of Ikaria. Unlike them, however, these ones are practically unknown. They are pictures taken in obscure locations or at times of the year other than the two crowded summer months. So I suppose they were underrated because they were uninteresting to tourists. Yet, they are also quality pictures and have a lot to say about the island as it evolves through winter and summer, bad and good weather, rolling geography under dark clouds or bright blue skies. They are the unknown landscapes of others, the landscapes of us who love our island and never stop to explore it, us who live there all year long -or at least try. 😥
The choice was made using the oh! so useful Flickr Search «Ikaria + landscape» sorted by «relevance» giving results oh! so wonderfully and untouristically random and magical almost like a crystal sphere.
Here are the 11 shots I chose: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
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That was the second part of landscape photos from Ikaria with a stress on the mountainous nature of the island. The third part will be more or less in the same style. The land is closing in for winter and everybody is getting ready to pick olives …
to be continued…
Eleni Ik ❤
Monday October 27, 2014
Eleni's Blog in Ikaria 
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