The mark of a good book is that it changes you. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Nan Shepherd, Robin Wall Kimmerer and Jay Griffiths have all wielded that power over me, but I’ve rarely been so aware of an internal change being wrought, word by word, as I have these past days immersed in Kapka Kassabova’s alchemical prose. I fancy she had me under her spell from page one, with reference to the “smiling gallop” of rivers flowing downhill.
Geographically, the valley of the subtitle is that of the upper Mesta river and its tributaries in Kassabova’s native Bulgaria. Ecologically, it is classified as montane, and by British standards, enviably rich, with plants that have become rare elsewhere still thriving and providing the basis of an international trade in medicinal herbs. Historically, the communities Kassabova visits in the years straddling the pandemic have been traumatised and tempered over centuries by waves of invasion and persecution. Religiously, they are syncretic. When speaking to non-Muslims, the long-suffering Pomaks use a term equivalent to “Allah-God” to downplay their separateness. Economically the story is one of exploitation by one murderous kleptocratic regime after another, and now by international dealers and distributors of tinctures and teas. For a product on the shelves of health-food shop or chic UK herbalist you might pay 200 to 300 times what an expert forager in the Mesta valley receives.
