Marko and I started climbing the Slovene Alps in 1984 or 1985, when he was nine or ten. Lauren joined us in 1989 and 1990, the last two years we went to Slovenia. In 1991 we had to cancel our trip because of the so-called civil war. This summer we did not even consider Slovenia, or any other part of the erstwhile Yugoslavia. Who knows whether and when we will see the Slovene Alps again? Anyhow, these excursions usually took four days. We would climb to the first mountain house, where we would get some food and a place to sleep, and we would then walk from one house to another at roughly the same altitude. After four days in the wild, the return to a hotel in Ljubljana would be a bit of a shock, although not altogether an unpleasant one.

In the early afternoon of the first day of one of our mountain-climbing excursions, Marko and I got to the mountain house at Kamniško Sedlo, situated in the saddle between Brana and Ojstrica. It was too late to continue to another house, and we thus decided to climb to the peak of Brana, an hour or so from Kamniško Sedlo. The day was still young when we returned to the house. We had something to eat and drink and then we lounged in the still-empty dining room of the house. It was rather hot and the place was abuzz with large flies. They were a bit of a nuisance, so Marko and I started catching them. Soon afterwards one of us had a bright idea: we plucked their wings and watched them walk about the large dining room table. We called them “walkers.”  After an hour of intense competition over who would catch and render wingless more flies, the table in front of us was crawling with buzzing walkers.

For a few years afterwards, Marko and I would brag about our great exploit, but a vague feeling of remorse gradually set in. I am sure Marko would agree with this. Most likely he is occasionally visited by the walkers, too. Chances are that he has gradually developed a certain love for, and a certain gentleness toward, the flies. And especially the big ones.