Plai

The path runs past the woodpile and on up the slope. Flat stone set in sand, grit in the gaps.

Over the summer it rained. Mud on the path. Mud on shoes, on boots. Cleaning here, cleaning there.

The guests had one wish. Away with the mud.

One stone at a time. One step at a time.

A plai is walked before it is built.

The shepherds who walked the polonyna into being laid no way. They walked one. Season after season the feet found where the ground would hold. The stone comes after, to keep what the feet already knew.

After a rain the plai turns to clay. The foot looks for what holds — a root, a stone. It cannot stand in yesterday, or in tomorrow. Only on this stone.

The monks in the forest sketes of these mountains had a word for it. Watchfulness.

The way down is the harder way. Going up, the height does the pulling. Coming down, every step is placed, and the knee carries everything gathered above. A path is laid for the one coming down — tired, loaded, in the rain.

Since last night the dark holds the longer share. Soon the herds come down from the polonyna.

Franko wrote of the stonebreakers — men with hammers on a rock, breaking a road they would not walk.

One night in August, coming up the mountain under a full moon, a warm wind stood on the path. As if someone were there. Fifty metres on, cold again.

A plai, for the ones who come after. I will not see them either.

It is not finished. Some days go to other work. Now the weather decides.

Screen time — or the hands in the ground.

Day 95 — Aufbau — Soil and Peace
Verkhovyna, Carpathian Mountains, Ukraine
© 2026 Michel Garand | Soil and Peace | CC BY-SA 4.0
stewardship@ubec.network