Gordon McKechnie

This article was published by Hungarian Review in its March 2018 issue (Volume IX, No. 2) One of the many memorable scenes in Patrick Leigh Fermor's wonderful Between the Woods and the Water involves a haystack, laughter and "those marvellous girls". Then without exchanging another word we struck out for the shore [of the river where he and István had been swimming naked] as fast as crocodiles and, tearing at poplar twigs and clumps of willow-herb, bounded up the bank. Gathering armfuls of the sheaves, the girls ran into the next field, then halted at the illusory bastion of a hay-rick and waved their sickles in mock defiance. The leafy disguise and our mincing gait as we danced across the stubble unloosed more hilarity. They dropped their sickles when we were almost on them, and showered us with the sheaves; then ran to the back of the rick. But, one armed though we were, we caught them there and all four collapsed in a turmoil of hay and barley and laughter. ...

The church of St Michael the Archangel at Uličské Krivé "The New Rusyn Times" of Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania ,  published my travel essay, "Nová Sedlica", in its Spring 2017 (Volume 24, Number 1) issue. The essay concerns the Rusyn lands in eastern Slovakia . "The New Rusyn Times" is a hard-copy-only journal without an on-line presence. I have reproduced the essay here, with minor variations. The wooded ridge rising to the east of us forms the end of Slovakia , the end of the European Union. Beyond is the Ukraine . From the other side of the border, the sun is rising into a cloudless sky. It burnishes the early autumn colours of the forest on the western hills and turns the morning mist that still lingers there pink. A cock crows. A vague scent of wood smoke hangs in the still air. Nová Sedlica is the easternmost village in Slovakia and the highest settlement in the valley that runs south from here - through Zboj, then a through a g...