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A Trip to the Nation of
Georgia
June-July 2001
As told by Paul Saunders
On June 23,
Dr. Robert Wright of Virginia Tech, my wife, and I joined a team of four other horticulturists from the United States in Tbilisi,
Georgia. The purpose of our
trip was to find new cultivars of boxwood suitable for the United
States. Our group returned
with 82 lots of boxwood cuttings and seed for testing.
In the future, these will be evaluated as potential additions to
our boxwood industry.
Georgia, a nation comparable in size to South Carolina and once
part of the USSR, is situated east of the Black Sea, adjoining Turkey
and Russia. A mountain peak
towers nearly 16,000 feet, then there are surging glacier-swollen rivers
and thousands of acres of alpine pastures where shepherds tend their
flocks. Close to Turkey are
citrus orchards and tea plantations, thanks to warm winds from the Black
Sea.
Along the southern range of mountains near the Port of Batumi,
are forests and gorges with thickets of wild boxwood, similar to
the growth of laurel, rhododendron, and blueberries in the eastern U.S.
mountains. These natural
thickets of boxwood contain thousands, even millions, of plants growing
in some of the most rugged country imaginable—gorge after gorge of
boxwood, often growing along with rhododendron and holly, on nearly
vertical slopes made green with the varying shapes and shades of these
seedlings. Truly a boxwood
heaven!
We were searching for boxwood in a land made victim to Communism
for nearly 70 years, a place where some lived and died without ever
knowing freedom. Scars left
on the landscape include countless bulky unfinished buildings with
mammoth cranes alongside, a grim reminder of a failed system of
government. In the
countryside, hundreds of homes are perched on the mountainside where the
residents somehow find a way to survive in a nearly non-existent
economy. At one time, the
nation exported to the USSR over 90% of the food produced there, keeping
the rest for its own use. With
the breakup of the USSR, most of this trade vanished, signaling the
collapse of the economy. Yet
they told us so many times, “Freedom now in Georgia is better than the
old life as part of the USSR!”
In many places, we felt that we had stepped back into history –
50, 100, or even 500 years. A
rock wall stood at the edge of a half-acre field:
Was it erected 100 years ago, or 1000?
Was a rock fortification along a cliff manned by persons with
guns or bows? Ancient stone
smoke-signal towers used centuries ago to send warnings to leaders and
armies miles away still stood.
A
cute young girl having her pigtails pulled by her mischievous brother
served as a reminder of similarities among all people--and you have to
smile. Donkeys pulled
two-wheeled carts, yet the tiny stores along the roadside provided the
motorists with today’s soft drinks, cigarettes, and candy.
Near Kazbegi, we climbed to a mountain church built in the 1300s.
That day, a shepherd was using its protective bell tower and high
wall fence as a lookout point, watching his herd of 200 cattle grazing
above the timberline, where he brought the cattle daily to graze; the
short grass looked as though someone had sprayed lime-green paint on the
mountainside. Tradition
tells that one of Christ’s disciples, Andrew, came here in the First
Century, stuck his staff, and said,
“Build a church here!” They
did.
One day we rode in jeeps up a mountain hollow until a tree
blocked our way. As we
walked farther, en route to the boxwood thickets, we saw fresh bear
tracks in the mud, then droppings, we turned back.
The mountain shepherd had earlier told us that a bear had killed
a donkey in one of the alpine areas the previous night.
A trip to a remote treeless village, high in the alpine meadows
alongside a lake, gave us a chance to buy fish.
Older homes there were sod, similar to those in the early
American west. Newer homes
were crudely constructed of blocks of cement and tin.
About 50 families lived here--- no supermarket, hospital, or
short-order food stops here. Only
a jeep road into this secluded village 7000 feet in the mountains to
connect it to the world beyond. Schoolchildren
here are taught four languages: Armenian,
Russian, Georgian, and German. Similar
to the early American
Indian practices using buffalo patties on the treeless prairie as fuel
for campfires, they were drying cow dung into foot square slabs for fuel
for winter.
Our hosts in Batumi were excited about our being there for the
Fourth of July and gave us a party, complete with a cake.
Although the plight of the people seemed so futile, they treated
us with unsurpassed hospitality, poring their hearts in kindness.
I gained weight from their several course meals,
with soups, breads, fresh vegetables, meats, pastries, and ice
cream. At times they gave
us their own beds, as they slept elsewhere. When we left, both we and
our guide head tears in our eyes.
I was struck by the thought, “What am I, a 67-year-old
white-haired Grandpa, doing carrying a backpack for the first time in my
life, walking trails 6000 miles from home, looking for boxwood?
Am I crazy?” Absolutely
not! I had the experience of a lifetime. We had an appreciation for their “salt of the earth”
existence, and they had gained knowledge of us.
One Georgian told me as took his picture, “You may take my
picture. I will never go to
America, but you can take my picture there.”
He smiled and was proud.
Perhaps in my lifetime, I will never know the results of
this venture in terms of boxwood production, yet I do know that we found
and brought back a love for the people - and I would wear a backpack
again for such an experience.
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