Searching for Narcissus
A visit to the Karaburun Nergis Festival and an Adventure that Echoes
Travelogue: Searching for Narcissus
My favorite flower is the narcissus. On winter’s coldest days, it sends up green shoots. Neither snow nor ice can stop its progress.
And it blooms a beautiful yellow more than a month before the end of winter, a month or more before the first buds appear on the trees. The narcissus is the first of the year’s blooms.
Here in Izmir, narcissi bloom in early December after the first winter rains have fallen.
But the narcissus isn’t just an important part of Izmir’s flower markets. Izmiris claim that Narcissus, legendary lover of his own reflection, was a boy from the town of Mimas, an hour’s drive west of the city.
The center of the narcissus harvest lies in the Karaburun Peninsula which juts into the Gulf of Izmir about 40 km west of Izmir. And the second Sunday of January is the Karaburun Nergis Festival, a two-day celebration of Narcissus and his floral namesake.
A visit to the Daffodil Festival
I went early on a Saturday morning, after taking the bus out to Mordoğan the night before and spending the night at a hotel near Ardıç Beach. Mordoğan is 8 km south of the town of Karaburun, a detail which would pay off for me later.
I arrived to Karaburun around 9 a.m. and made my way to the town square where a program featured a traditional Turkish dance, speeches by a handful of local and regional notables, and two living statues, Echo and Narcissus, the latter of which spent the program frozen in admiration at a mirror he held in his hand. An imitation of the Waterhouse painting, "Echo and Narcissus" (1903) was a popular backdrop for portraits nearby.
As the program ended, performers on stilts waded through the crowd and a band struck up a song, leading a parade from the town square to the fair entrance.
The city of Karaburun is built on the side of a hill – the peninsula is one of the hilliest areas in the Izmir area, with gray cliffs soaring 1200 meters above the stone beaches. The entrance to the Nergis Festival was lined with foot booths selling a wide array of foods. I bought several pieces of spinach & cheese börek, some freshly harvested mandarin oranges, and a couple pieces of baklava.
The festival had all manner of daffodils and crafts. I stood outside the entrance to the craft area and breathed the intoxicating smell of thousands of cut daffodils. I don’t think I will ever forget the scent or the high that came with it.
Besides selling them by the bunch, there were daffodil crowns, daffodil-scented soaps, and many different kinds of crafts, from pottery to paintings.I left with some soap and some woven daffodil hangings.
As I walked through the festival, my attention often drifted upwards to the beautiful mountains behind Karaburun. If my friends were telling the truth, Echo had wandered those hills – I might find her myself if I called for her there – Narcissus had hunted there. No doubt there were pools, It was winter in Izmir. The streams flowed, and green grass grew everywhere.
A Hike for Wild Daffodils
As midday approached, I set off to hike the Efes-Mimas Trail, a northern extension of which goes from Karaburun to the fishing village of Yeniliman at the northern tip of the peninsula. Drunk on the scent of daffodils, I fancied that I might find Narcissus’s pool, or hear Echo calling somewhere in those hills.
The trail wove through a few outlying farms to a path that went along an easy, green ridge that lay between the cliffs and the beach. The views were stunning. I found my way to a spring, where I filled my water bottle, but there was no pool to be found. I also realized that I hadn’t seen a single wild Narcissus flower since I had left Karaburun. All the flowers must have attended the festival!
I made some friends at a picnic area, and they pointed out to me an island just 100 meters off the coast where the villagers stabled a herd of goats. Further off to the north, they pointed out the Greek Island of Lesbos. I asked one of my new friends, Bilal, about Narcissus. Had he really lived near Karaburun?
Bilal insisted that Narcissus was from the area. “There is a Narcissus fountain,” he told me. "You can go to it.”
I explained that I was looking for pools on my trek this afternoon. Bilal took out his phone and gave me a map coordinate. He even sent me a couple articles about the place. Mimas, the end point of the Efes-Mimas Trail that I have been hiking in segments since last August, was the present-day town of Mordoğan. I realized, as I checked his coordinates, that the pool was about 4 km from the Deniz Hotel, where I was staying.
The trail climbed from here, skirting a mountain that still bore the bulls-eye scar of an old mine. The song of the muezzin rang out from an old mosque, its recording the only sign of life in a complex that has been abandoned for 70 years.
The trail widened, and I came upon a stream. Detouring from the trail, I followed it down a series of falls and found a pool. I inspected it carefully. I found my shadowy outline looking back. But the spirit of Narcissus was not yet with me. I felt little desire to stay longer. I took a pool-selfie anyway and rejoined the trail.
In the skirts of Bullseye Mountain, I found an abandoned stone village: a graveyard, and six or seven stone structures. In America, we would call this a ghost town. Here in Türkiye one thinks of the population exchange of 100 years ago, when Christian residents were shipped to the nation of Greece in exchange for Muslim residents there. This brought to an end a traumatic quarter-century of ethnic strife among Greeks, Russians, Turks, and Armenians. This town, I assumed –I could find no name or description in the trail guide – had been a Greek settlement, abandoned in 1923 and never repopulated. I noticed a real-estate “for sale” sign along the trail as I left.
Further on, I came down a mountainside into the village of Bozköy (“gray village”), where I found my first wild daffodils of the trip among the grass in a beautiful olive orchard. Bozköy sits on the edge of a wide valley that links the interior of the peninsula with the sea. As I descended into the valley, gray clouds blew over the gray hills on the other side. Soon I would be caught in a rainshower.
The last village before my destination was called Tepeboz (“gray hill”). It felt strange to me to travel through a gray village and a gray hill, I thought. Who would want to live there? But one look up at the cliffs gave me my answer – and I would love to live on the Karaburun. It is one of my favorite places near Izmir. With a population of about 400, Tepeboz is one of the most scenic villages I have ever walked through. About half of the centuries-old stone buildings were unoccupied. Those that were had a special charm, including the one pictured below with a beautiful şahnişin window on the upper story.
At the bottom of the hill below Tepeboz, a farmer slowed his truck, waited for me, and drove me into Yeniliman, a fishing village on the northern tip of the island. As I walked to a restaurant on the waterfront, I saw a man chopping up a fish. I went inside and ordered the fish, enjoying a delicious meal near the wood stove, where I tried to dry off after my hike through the rainshower.
Searching for Narcissus
The next morning, I went down to Ardıç Beach, about 200m from my hotel. The waters there are clear as a lake, and gentle waves lapped the shore. I had seen fishing boats going in and out of the bay the night before, but the waters were empty. It was a warm day, but it was still January – Ocak as it is known in Turkish.
This was not to be a day at the beach. Not in January. I remembered my quest. I was searching for Narcissus. I crossed the highway and hiked to Old Mimas, a village about 1 km inland from the beach. There was a market in Old Mimas with bunches of daffodils for sale, as I had seen in Karaburun the previous day. Regretfully, I failed to buy some flowers to leave at Narcissus's fountain. I had expected to see them growing there in great bunches, leaning over the rim of the pool, just like their namesake.
I followed a winding road about 2 km up from the village to the top of a ridge that lies midway between the beach and the mountains. A walk of about 300 m down a side road led to a sign and the infamous pool, set against the hill, looking out onto an olive orchard. A tree that hung over the pool had the year’s first collection of prayer rags. I imagined lonely hearted Echoes leaving prayers for vainglorious Narcissi – for the latter exist even today. Surprisingly, I did not see any flowers, Nergis or other varieties. Perhaps they were also attending the festival. I am tempted to plant some bulbs there the next time I visit.
A grotto has now been built around the pool there. It is dark inside – too dark to see one’s reflection. Green moss and hanging plants line the walls of the fountain. It is a magical place, still haunted by nereids, perhaps, definitely haunted by the legend and made immortal by the Roman poet, Ovid in his Metamorphoses (8 CE).
Just to be certain, I snapped a pool-selfie just outside the cave. I am a divorced man, and I have noticed that divorced women tend to refer to their divorced men as “narcissists.” I don’t think I am a narcissist – save in my preference for my favorite flower. But I am now the only man on the planet with photographic evidence. If I were a narcissist, then I wouldn’t have made it back from Narcissus’s Spring. There!
It had taken me two days, and I had found Narcissus.
But my adventures on the Karaburun had raised other questions. Who was Echo? What had happened between her and Narcissus both to make her fall in love and for her to fall into such enduring, legendary heartbreak?
And I thought of Narcissus, who had been a hunter in these hills. He was from a seaside town, yet he took to the hills. There was a story there, I thought, and I might just be the person to write it.
That led to my latest Aegean Tale. Sadly, I am out of room on this newsletter to include the tale, which stretched to eight pages. I will include it in a separate off-week newsletter next Thursday to give you time to read this.
Remember, a subscription to my newsletter is free.
Thanks for reading.
A few notes this week:
Türkiye is still reeling from last weeks devastating earthquakes in southeastern Türkiye and northern Syria. If you haven’t donated, consider donating to IHH, a regional NGO that has been at the forefront of recovery operations and providing relief to the many victims. This was the Big One. The power of the quake and the death toll are sending the area’s seismologists to the history books to find comparisons.
I have been out of school all week as schools across Türkiye after the quake and will remain so until the 20th. There is no plan for returning the children in Gazientep Province to school, as that area is still digging out the rubble and tens of thousands of children and teachers were victims of this devastating quake.
I booked my first tickets to Istanbul. College friends are coming in April, and I’ll be visiting Türkiye’s largest city for the first time. I can’t wait!
Even though I’ve been home from school for almost 10 days, I have stayed at home. It’s really too cold to do much outside, and I’ve been catching up on writing projects.
It should be in the mid-teens (Celsius) this weekend, and I hope to reach the halfway point on the Efes-Yolu Trail with hikes on Friday and Saturday. Expect a travelogue about the trail later in the summer.
What brilliant storytelling. Thank you, J.D.!
Let me know if you need any Istanbul recommendations!