Caszh Blast 4 - Dead Goat Beach

Hello everyone. Please enjoy this story. I’ve told this one in person many times, but it felt nice to put it in more permanent words.

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At the age of eighteen after a cold and tumultuous year in London, Ontario, I revisited the long-trodden hills of the Balkans. I was staying a short walk away from the old town of Stari Bar in a hostel named «The Grove», an old olive mill reclaimed by a ragtag group of twenty-somethings—a diving instructor, a yoga instructor, a saxophone-maker, and a handful of ex-restauranteurs who dedicated themselves to curating an environment of rare peace and beauty. The Grove itself was incredible for a host of reasons that I will save for another letter, because this story takes place a short way down the road on a day trip out of the hostel.

Every day, a different staff member was responsible for leading a day trip with willing guests. Sometimes we would drive into town to see the shops, go on a hike to a hidden waterfall, or even go for a wine tour at various vineyards nestled in the surrounding mountains. We would stumble lazily out of our beds in the late morning, pluck some figs off of a nearby tree for breakfast, grab a couple beers for the road and pile into the rickety hippie hostel van they called “Steven”, which had far more seats than seatbelts. That morning, it was a beach day. The expedition was set for a hidden coastal inlet inaccessible by public road named Dead Goat Beach.

We sardined into Steven with our road beers and wound our way down the hill from the hostel. I sat at the back, sipping my drink and looking out of a hole in the shattered rear window. Shortly, we came to a stop along the edge of a drainage canal which flowed through a long, inky tunnel cut through the base of a looming black hill leading out towards the sea. We extricated ourselves from the jumble of limbs inside the van and, without much waiting around, began our trek into the darkness.

The daylight from the mouth of the tunnel faded quickly. The water in the tunnel was shallow, and there was a narrow sloped path on one side which was possible to walk along. Almost immediately we were walking in total darkness. Bats began to sqeak as they fluttered invisibly in front of our faces. Their guano slicked the narrow walkway and I struggled to keep my footing in the cheap flip-flops I had picked up at the corner store. The rush of the water made it difficult to hear anything and I found myself losing my orientation, trying hard to make out a shadowy figure in front of me. The darkness was oppressive, and my brain struggled to interpret it. My vision was filled with noise and wild, colourful hallucinations of arc lightning and fireworks as my poor visual cortex attempted to comprehend the utter absence of stimulus. We stumbled blindly along trying not to slip into the sewer water for what I later learned was an hour, though in the moment I had none of my usual facilities about me to understand the passage of time. Eventually a pinprick of light appeared on the other end grew in diameter, and the blinding light of the midday Balkan sun streamed over us as we emerged into the fresh sea air.

Waves broke against massive rocks piled near the tunnel’s outlet. I was surprised to see families relaxing on them, tanning, fishing, and playing. I wondered if they had followed the same treacherous path we had just taken, or if there was another secret avenue hidden from us pesky tourists. I was near the back of our pack of adventurers, and looking right of the exit I was concerned to see that the line of people ahead were scaling a rocky wall like a parade of ants. I wore the wrong shoes for this expedition. I gritted my teeth and stepped forwards, hoisting myself up the vertical and over the ledge at the top. The sun was beating down as I squinted ahead, noting the concerning slope of the landscape down towards unforgiving rocky cliffs over the sea. The soil was loose, rocky, and dry, with no great root systems to hold it together. The only vegetation on the slope were cacti and dry, thorny bushes which to stung and scraped my ankles. One misstep could spell a nasty, careening fall through sharp brambles and off the cliff onto the jagged rocks below. I proceeded with caution and exhaustion, tiptoeing my way across the unforgiving verticality.

Dead Goat Beach is a small sandy inlet nestled on the other side of the big black hill by the sea. It was cut into the surrounding rock with the deep, raging gouge of seaside erosion. It is so named because of the shocking slope of the rock wall at the back of the beach—so steep that even the goats fall to their deaths. This is of course hyperbole, as the wild goats peering over various craggy outcrops traversed the landscape with far greater ease than the pudgy flip-flopped teenager with knee problems stumbling and grasping at twiggy bits of bush to maintain their balance. Cursing my general physical ineptitude, I made it across the top of the beach’s cliff and wound my way down the left side (as viewed from the sea) toward the entrance of the beach.

I looked ahead and saw my fellow travellers bunched up on a rock above the sea. We were closer together now, and I followed the procession down the last stretch of cliff. Just before the rest point there was one final obstacle: an Indiana Jones-style gap across two shallow ledges above a long drop onto the rocks. It was only a short step above the void, but gut-wrenching all the same. I was so exhausted from the trek that I had no presence of mind about it—I just held my breath and stepped across.

Finally on stable ground, I immediately nestled myself against the cliff in a quickly-disappearing sliver of shade. I asked around for water, but the closest thing anyone could offer was a swig from their two-litre bottle of beer. As I sat collecting myself, the others began disappearing down to the beach. People seemed to be going rather quickly, and it was only after my spotty vision subsided and the rush of adrenaline was gone that I realized why and my face dropped. To get down to the beach, you must jump ten metres into the sea.

That was bad news. I did not want to do that.

I was paralyzed. I watched with wide eyes as one by one, the others leapt from the cliff into the waves below. I was horrified to realize that for any of this to be worth it, to not cook to a crisp on this craggy outcrop, I would have to follow suit. I cried, embarassingly snottily and with panicked tears. Some benevolent strangers tried to help me for a while before (very reasonably) giving up and leaping down to join the crowd. I was eventually able to lower myself over the edge to a lower outcrop and gripped the edge with shaking arms. I hung there forever, getting increasingly sick with vertigo and heat exhaustion. People above and below were cheering me on, encouraging me to take the leap. I closed my eyes and tried to follow their advice as they chanted:

ONE

TWO

THREE

…

and I didn’t jump.

I hung onto that rock snivelling and shaking for the whole afternoon as everyone else took the plunge. The joyous, free-spirited cheers of the partying beachgoers echoed around in my skull as I wept pathetically, clinging to the edge. When the afternoon began to fade and it was time to return, the swimmers below ducked out a little into the sea and scaled a hazardous route back up the other side of the rocks. Someone pried me from my perch and I limped downtrodden and overcooked back over the gap, up the cragged hillside, and over the mountain where a dirt path led us through clearings with goatherds, olive trees, and wild horses. I would have appreciated it, if not for the terrible sunburn and the crushing guilt of defeat.

We returned to the hostel. I was deflated. I made it all the way to the end and couldn’t take the final step. I spent the following days in a stupor, wandering wild-eyed through the surrounding olive groves and staring out through the hills. The next week, the cycle of day trips had come around and the gang was heading out again to Dead Goat Beach. I had a chance at redemption.

We piled into the van. I wore my flip-flops again. We trekked through the tunnel. We scaled the rocks. We scrambled along the cliff. We stepped across the gap. As I got closer to the jump I felt the nerves setting in. I shuffled up to the lip and tried to plant my feet, but my knees clicked and trembled. I closed my eyes in terror at the void I could sense before me. After standing there for some time shaking and sweating, a kind voice from behind me offered to count down. I recognized the voice from last time. I accepted. My heart raced and eardrums rumbled as they counted off:

ONE

TWO

THREE

…

…

and I didn’t jump. Again.

I gasped in exasperation. Gravity seemed to have an especially strong pull. I scrunched my eyes hard and my vision filled with noise and fireworks. I could barely open them, but as I managed to do so the wide, textured expanse of the Adriatic poured into my field of view and melted into the sky on the horizon. My heart skipped, and in a flash of clarity I counted softly to myself underneath my breath. one, two, three—

I was frozen in deafening terror until that very last moment when my toes left the rock. As soon as I was loose in the sky, I evaporated.