The Wanderer and His Dog: A Chance Meeting on the Road

Quite a few hours had passed since I woke up, along with the sunrise, in a random field somewhere in southern ex-Yugoslavia. After enjoying a cup of coffee in the company of the waking world, I set off pedaling right away. I had covered many kilometers and surmounted many hills, defying the extreme summer heat throughout the day. And now, in the late afternoon, with the heat still as relentless as ever, I was toilsomely pedaling along a long, straight road, at the end of which lay Lake Doiran, the Greek border, and the close of yet another tough cycling day.

Several hours had gone by since I last noted any signs of human presence. The entire surrounding landscape, with me in the midst of it, felt utterly desolate. It was then that I discerned what I first took to be a single black dot, and then two—a taller one and a shorter one—moving figures at the far edge of my vision.

I was moving slowly toward them, and they even more slowly toward me. We were only a few meters from crossing paths when I finally could distinguish them clearly: a man and a dog.

We stopped beside each other.

“Hey there,” I said.

The man greeted back with a Slav-accented “hello,” and the dog with a curious, intent look, a slight snort, and a delighted wag of the tail.

During the half-silent minute that followed, we examined each other while catching our breaths. The man was exceptionally tall, dirty and drained, with a long, scruffy beard and a serenity-radiating countenance. He wore a torn, unwashed-for-weeks set of black clothes and carried an enormous backpack with a tent and mat strapped to the outside and cooking utensils dangling from it. The dog was an all-black, phlegmatic Miniature Boxer carrying a pair of panniers loaded with gear that seemed nearly as heavy as himself.

“Where do you guys come from?” I asked.

“From the Czech Republic.”

“Where are you coming from, and where are you heading to?”

“We started from home four months ago. We walked to Istanbul through Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. Now we are on our way back home, through Greece and Yugoslavia.”

That was pretty much all we said. We stood in silence for a few more seconds, wished each other good luck, and then resumed our paths in opposite directions—me, pedaling; they, walking.