My foot sinks slowly into the warm, caressing sand. A ticklish thrill spreads through my whole body at the touch of its shifting, granular give. I slow my pace to savor it, to feel every grain, the way one might parse an orchestra's score in an effort to hear each instrument's separate voice. I'm on Velika Plaža — "Great Beach" — the ocean-wide, endless, sandy shore of Ulcinj, the ancient Montenegrin town where Don Quixote once seduced his Dulcinea. This place is entirely unique. Here, the full-flowing Bojana River, descending from the Dalmatian mountains, empties into the Adriatic Sea. Here the desert meets the sea, the wind lifts the sand, and the two spin together in a wild dance. Here you step into another reality, a world that scorns convention, a world of freedom and self-expression. Under the hot Balkan sun, surfers laze in wait for the wave they're after, while kitesurfers fly across the water, driven by the wind. Watching their swift flight over the sea, where two elements merge — water and air, wind and sea — I freeze in admiration and understand there is no limit to what a person can do. I want to be like them too, to learn to fly on the waves.
Evening falls. I wait for the magic of sunset, settled on the riverbank at one of the local restaurants renowned throughout Montenegro for their fish specialties. From here I can watch the river merge with the sea. The sun slips slowly toward the horizon… Like an echo taking physical form, the fiery solar disk spreads from the sea up along the river, staining the water in a red-gold palette. Everything around you — and you yourself — become part of this fiery phantasmagoria.
I make my way back to the beach. As darkness falls, the shore lights up with bonfires, and there's something pagan and mystical in it — in these free, open, friendly people, firelight flickering on their bronzed faces, in their inner strength and pull, in the night itself, steeped in sea salt and the sound of waves, lit by fire and stars. The stars here are countless. You won't need a telescope to make out the constellations. The map of the sky opens before you with surreal clarity. Without any special knowledge, you can pick out the stellar dwarfs from the giants. Once, like so many Soviet children, I wanted to be a cosmonaut. Never before have I been so close to that dream.
This place is magical — steeped entirely in the here and now, as if nothing else were possible. Every moment is felt with extraordinary sharpness and holds its own irreplaceable value. Here, you feel with absolute clarity — and so, you live with absolute clarity.