A day of extraordinary natural and human creativity. The natural part is the rock spires or “fairy chimneys” of Cappadocia, where volcanic eruptions left layers of soft ash that hardened into “tuff,” a somewhat soft, porous rocky material, often topped by layers of harder rock. Then millennia of wind and rain eroded the softer tuff, leaving behind weird and beautiful formations.
The high plateau of Cappadocia feels a lot like the U.S. southwest. Even our hotel looks Santa Fe-ish. Instead of Indian dwellings they’ve got the Goreme Monastic Center, with frescoed caves and chapels dating as far back as the 11th century, carved into the soft rock. Take the open vistas and high-altitude clarity of Santa Fe or Utah, and substitute the free, simple, nature-attuned spirituality of the American Indians with the more strident and struggling near eastern spirituality, with its perpetual attempts to impose or escape from centralized power structures, and you’ve got the general feel of this area. It’s Santa Fe minus the Indians, or Utah minus the cowboys.
Then in the afternoon we visit “Chez Galip” where Galip Korukcu, a master potter with magnificent David Sand hair, demonstrates how he works. (He also created a hair museum with locks of hair from all over the world, which is in the Guinness book of World Records.) There are demos by his assistants as well. There’s a lot of laughter, wine toasts, and shopping in a labyrinth of rooms stacked with his incredibly intricate and colorful ceramics.
Evening is a sharing with John Morton.
