forgotten valley
Dear friend,
Last Saturday, I took the maxi taxi (a sort of mini-bus that runs back and forth through the whole valley) to meet a friend in Petrosani, and from there we drove up to Parang, the massive range of mountains above Petrosani that I’ve been admiring from afar all winter long for their thick coat of snow. Apart from Straja (the mountain above Lupeni), this is the only other ski station in the valley, and while it’s not nearly as developed as Straja, it’s still quite nice, and the view of the valley here is unparalleled.
As we took the long chairlift up the mountain to the ski station, we could see that the snow wasn’t at its best—it had gone through a stage or two of thawing and refreezing and we could hear the scraping of ice under the snowboards that passed below us. In some places we saw that there were even dark patches of vegetation peeking through the white, and because we had become quite cold on the chair lift and we didn’t have our own gear, we decided to save our money, forgo the rental shop, and go straight to a lodge for hot chocolate and tea.
We spent a good amount of time on the mountain afterward, hiking up the sledding hill, walking through the clusters of cabins, restaurants, and ski rentals, and ultimately heading up towards Parangul mic, or small Parang, the peak nearest to us. Ultimately we decided not to go all the way to the top—we were already rather tired from our hiking in the snow, and eager to get some ciorba de fasole (bean soup) for lunch, but we did get high enough to get an unobstructed view of our valley.
We could see, curving out below us, the five major towns of the Jiu Valley. Petrila bending up to our right, the bulk of Petrosani laid out in front of us (the largest city in the valley, the one that you have to pass through to exit the valley, or to catch a train), and then the depression holding Vulcan, Lupeni, and Uricani curving left and right back towards the foreboding snow-capped Retezat mountains. We could pick out certain familiar landmarks made miniature by our height: there the unbelievably tall smokestack that dominates Lupeni, there the neighborhood of Dallas on the outskirts of Vulcan.
My friend and I took it all in, grateful for the chance to get above it all for at least half a day. We love this valley, we really do. Her born and raised in it, me a foreign transplant, and yet both of us motivated by such a love for the place, its people, and its potential.
The Jiu Valley is not beloved by many in Romania. It is often seen as a pretty terrible place to live—both by people within and outside of it. Its history has been long and complicated, dominated by the harsh realities of coal mining, and then by the harsh realities of the loss of coal mining. What we see today is a stretch of towns that are noticeably underdeveloped and unequipped to offer stable, well-paying jobs to their inhabitants. An astonishing number of Jiu Valleyers will go find work (driving trucks, picking fruit, working construction, etc.) in Western European countries, taking their families with them or, more often, sending money back to their wives, husbands, children, or parents, and visiting when they can.
That evening we went to the theatre in Petrosani to see a piece about the history of the valley: “Petrosani 100”. The stage was set up to look like the mouth of a tunnel leading into a mine. In a bold arc at the top of the tunnel were the words “noroc bun”: good luck. This is how miners would greet each other at the beginning of a day’s work, and families would pray daily that their husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers would make it back home that evening. It’s hard to imagine the collective anxiety that was written into the very DNA of this region just by nature of the labor available. And when the coal mines closed one after the other and much too little came up to take their place, I’m afraid that collective anxiety was replaced with collective hopelessness.
It’s a sentiment I see expressed by many. It’s a sentiment that I feel too sometimes, when I walk the drafty stairs of an apartment bloc that seems to be cracking apart at its seams, or when I see small children roaming unsupervised, begging for 10 bani coins or cups of instant soup from the corner store. And yet, I think that more and more valleyers are choosing to hope for the future of this place. There is much to love in this place, and indeed much to hope for. I saw this in the actors at the theatre dressed in drab mining uniforms and headlamps, and I saw it in the skiers in Parang with their bright jackets and goggles.
I realize now that there is a certain significance in this unique joining of two worlds—the dark shadowed underworld of mining and the snow capped, sun bathed peaks. And here, in the middle of these worlds, a mix of dark and light, new and old, suffering and joy—a stretch of towns suspended between their volatile past and their uncertain future, and all of us who call this place home making sure that it won’t be forgotten.
With love from the valley,
Jenna
