Old country

I got lost in Crete once. It's easy to do if you just step off the road, which itself is barely signed. "What's the worst that can happen?" I figure they figured; you'll just encircle the island. But it's bigger than you think--bigger than it looks. The rental car company instructs visitors not to leave the main road. As if.

Zeus was born in a cave on Crete. The cave of Psychro. You get there and pay a few drachs and are handed a slim, square brown taper, and pointed up a steep hill. There are tour buses lined up--old people sitting on the ground at various stages of the path, heaving, winded. At the top there's an equally steep--and utterly dark--decline into the cave. It's wet and slimy--moss underfoot and on the walls--and you feel your breath on your face. It was magnificent: it felt like a womb; the walls looked fibrous and moist and torn, maybe from the arrogant, thundering birth of god, say. You can understand how the legend took root.

On the way back down to the car I overheard a guy talking about another cave, deep in the center of the island. The Idian cave--the place where Zeus was hidden from his father, Kronos, who intended to eat him.

God, I love divine drama. The Blue Guide had general directions. It was definitely off the main road. I decided to go. Four hours later I found it--unmarked by signs, untouched by tour buses. There was, in fact, no sign of human life anywhere near the place, except for one.

A small, old woman stood beside a mound of rocks that served as home, hanging the most delicate lace tablecloths on a string, drying them in the sun. She waved at me to stop when I drove by and so I did, because I couldn't figure out how on earth she manged to survive out there, surrounded for miles and miles by dirt and rocks. She pointed at her tablecloths. They were beautiful. Then she stepped closer to the car, and I was struck by her face: by her thick, leathered skin, and her eyes, black and glittering in a nest of wrinkles. She put her finger on my arm, looking at a ridiculous Mickey Mouse watch my little sister had given me to wear before I'd left. And it became clear that she wanted to trade: that silly watch for the beautiful table cloth.

I can't explain why I shook my head, floored the car and left. I think of her often, embarrassed; another fine American moment. But there was something about her, standing there in the middle of nothing but ancient myth, armed with nothing but rocks and lace, benign and threatening all at once.

Good hiding place.