No man's land

"Take it easy, John. Life is too short."

Bobby Kennedy to his friend John Frankenheimer who drove the presidential candidate (too fast for his liking) to his appointment with death at the hands of an assassin on 5 June 1968.

Kosovo is perhaps the unhappiest reminder of the recent civil wars in Yugoslavia. A quasi-sovereign state, recognised by fewer than half the members of the United Nations, riven by internecine ethnic hatreds, with a president linked to drug trafficking and a landscape littered with landmines, it is Europe's Rwanda. I have never been there and don't suppose I shall ever pluck up the courage to cross the border.

Many years ago two galanthophiles, Joe Sharman and Alan Leslie found a colony of snowdrops near the Czakor Pass, which links present-day Montenegro and Kosovo. Bishop, Davis and Grimshaw (2001), in their monograph 'Snowdrops', describe this find as follows.

"In the late 1980s Joe Sharman and Alan Leslie collected a bizarre plant from the Czakor Gorge in Montenegro...It has four leaves per mature bulb, and applanate to weakly supervolute vernation. The margins of each leaf are subrevolute to slightly explicative...Further study is required to resolve the status of this intriguing snowdrop."

If this leaves you cold, you are not a galanthophile and I suggest you skip to the previous blog. When I first read this passage, however, I decided that I would have to see the colony for myself. Joe Sharman kindly gave me an accurate description of where it is and, armed with this information, I set off from Kolasin a few days ago to find it. The road over the Czakor Pass defies description. A bloke in a bar in Berane once told me that it is the highest made road in the Balkans. It is certainly the highest I have driven - the pass is at about 1800m. To the south the mountains of Albania are still snow-capped in June. To the west is Lake Plav, surrounded by a narrow belt of cultivated land and then beech woodland. The plants are extraordinary. I found and collected the loveliest Veratrum I have ever seen near the pass a few days ago and the meadows between patches of woodland contain Aconitum, Lilium and Thalictrum species that make me drool, alongside dozens of other I can't name.

Veratrum album on the Czakor Pass, Montenegro

Anyway, I arrived at the Czakor Pass in the world-weary red Chevrolet to be met by a police roadblock. I opened the window and smiled ingratiatingly. The policeman politely but firmly indicated with a circling motion of his finger that I should turn back. I explained that I did not wish to enter Kosovo but merely to take some photographs and then return to Kolasin (a town in central Montenegro) where I was staying. After some discussion the men graciously let me proceed. Would this happen in the UK or the USA? I think not.

The road descended swiftly towards the valley bottom and the Kosovo border and soon I was at the site that Joe had described to me. I saw the snowdrops immediately and started to search for seed capsules (at this altitude - 1300m - mid-June is the ideal time to collect Galanthus seed). Very few of the plants had set any seed but I was slowly accumulating a small collection when I heard an approaching vehicle. Peering cautiously out from the undergrowth I saw that the policemen who had allowed me to pass had followed me down the mountain. I emerged sheepishly, holding my small bag of seeds before me, and announced myself. The policemen seemed to be genuinely nervous. Their machine guns were un-holstered and they were glancing around, as though expecting unfriendly fire. They told me sternly that is was very dangerous to be here and that I must go back. Fine, I replied, politely, I'll go back. Open the trunk, please, one of them said. Now, the trunk was full of recently dug Veratrum and I wasn't wild about opening it but I saw no alternative. All that ensued was a lively discussion between me and the cops about the local name for Veratrum. Once they had checked my papers I was free to go. They waved me off with a smile and a shouted "Good luck!" and my enthusiasm for the Balkans and its peoples ratcheted up another notch.

As I drove back up the mountain to the pass I was in an uncommonly good mood. I am obviously mad, bordering on insane, to risk my life for a snowdrop in the dangerous no-man's land between two fragile states that despise one another but surely life is too short not to take such risks.