Uchisar : on top of cappadocia (and from there under the ground)

in cappadocia there are the valleys, the flats above, and there is Uchisar.

uchisar rises up over the flat lands and was once a defensive fortification. you can see it from everywhere in cappadocia except the deepest valleys. the wordless rain and wind have ground this fortress down until it had to be abandoned. the streets of the town stretch out below, up to the bottom of the rock castle. you can climb up through the inside of the castle, looking over the city: and on the top of cappadocia there are graves.

all of the cave churches you go to here have graves in the entrance, and there are always big graves and small graves, their coffin shape made imprecise from erosion, and often pistachio shells in them now.

from on top of cappadocia you can see the surrounding farmland divided into plots, with rows and rows of trees and low dark plants and ashbrown soil. you can see all the drip-shaped valleys, and one deep one cut with layers and layers of sediment. that is the pigeon valley where birds fly in formation. in the vista there is not a lot of green: there is some, but mostly it is the uniform low brownscraggle left after the goats move through. in one part the soil is yellower; elsewhere whiter. behind, the red tile rooftops of uchisar and a man chips at a stone block to make it fit in a wall he is working to repair. on the land you can see the shadows of the moving clouds, and the patterns of weather that the birds float on. people live under precariously balanced rocks as i play forward the rest of my time here.