Down from the Mountain
The Black Cheremosh
Down from the mountain, early — a neighbour leading a cow on a rope.
We also went into Verkhovyna for the Thursday market.
The market takes the town on market day — cheese, wool blankets, vegetables, honey, boots, buckets, tools, clothes, new things and used things. People down from the side valleys to sell, to buy, to stand and talk.
Verkhovyna — the highland, the unofficial heart of Hutsulshchyna. They say there is no village higher.
Then the Chornyi Cheremosh. Boots off, feet in. The water comes off the high mountains and does not warm, even now.
It is the district's own river — eighty-seven kilometres, the whole of it in Verkhovyna, fed by rain and the last of the snow. Bird-cherry grows along the banks — cheremkha — white in spring. It carried the valley's timber once: men rode the log rafts down to the plains, and the last of them went in 1979. Downstream it meets the White Cheremosh. From there the water goes to the Prut, then the Danube, then the sea.
Day 5 — Räumen — Soil and Peace
Verkhovyna, Carpathian Mountains, Ukraine
© 2026 Michel Garand | Soil and Peace | CC BY-SA 4.0
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