A visit to Silky Soul’s homeland among the hills and deep forests of the Carpathian Mountains in the easternmost corner of Slovakia near borders with Ukraine and Poland, where you can still run into wolves, European bison, or a bear…
This bear representing the Carpathian Mountains is one of the symbols of the local ethnic minority called the Rusyns or Rusnaks or Carpatho-Russians or Ruthenians. One of the most well-known Rusyns was Andy Warhol whose mother came from near the town of Medzilaborce in this area, now the seat of the Andy Warhol Museum with the second largest collection of his works.
Rusyns are of Greek Catholic or Russian Orthodox confession and built purely wooden churches in the past without metal nails because they refused to use the same tool that nailed Christ to the cross. Some of these churches have been preserved and now are inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list.
As always, I was on the lookout for cats and small gardens:
Feeling healed by beauty, on our way back we carried along with luggage also this picture by a Ukrainian artist that now hangs in Silky Soul’s consulting room, hopefully contributing to the therapeutic processes taking place there…
Yuri Behas, Thirteen Poplars
