A Week on Ikaria: And Why I Still Haven't Left

The ferry arrives at Ikaria's port of Agios Kirykos at a time that depends entirely on the weather, the mood of the captain, and the patience of the other passengers. When I arrived for what I planned to be a four-day stay, I had been on the boat for six hours from Piraeus and the island had kept itself invisible in sea mist for the entire approach. This is Ikaria's characteristic entrance: it makes you wait for it.

Ikaria is a long, narrow island in the eastern Aegean, mountainous, densely forested in the west, bare and volcanic in the east, with a coastline of such geological aggression — sheer cliffs, narrow inlets, beaches accessible only by path or boat — that the entire road network was built as a single switchback that takes 3 hours to drive the island's 40-kilometre length.

The panigiri — the village festival — is Ikaria's defining social institution. They happen throughout summer, announced only by word of mouth, held in village squares and church courtyards, and they typically begin around midnight and end when the musicians stop or pass out, whichever comes first. The music is traditional — tsampuna, violin, touberleki — and people dance in the old circular style for hours. Wine and food are served without charge; expenses are covered by the community. The philosophy behind this is that a festival from which someone profits is not a festival.

The food: local wine from the barrel (a specific Ikarian wine with a particular tartness and a reputation for causing memory loss in the morning), wild horta (greens) dressed with local olive oil and lemon, fresh fish from the boats that come in at Agios Kirykos in the early morning, and revithada — the Ikarian chickpea soup, slow-cooked overnight in the clay pot, eaten at Sunday lunch. The Ikarians eat very little meat, a great deal of legumes, almost no processed food, and they take a long afternoon rest as a matter of serious cultural principle.

I stayed for twelve days. The reason is not complicated: Ikaria is the only place I have been where the pace of life makes immediate, visceral sense. The urgency that animates most of the places I live and visit — the sense that time is finite and must be managed — simply does not operate here. This is not laziness. It is a different, arguably more accurate relationship with the fact of being alive.