I was a little closer to it at every break in the thick layer of mist that had settled over the mountains. The sun had saved its red tinge until the very last. Just when I reached Çamlik Yayla and sat down to rest beside a spring, the valley and all the mountains were suddenly bathed in cotton candy pink.
One by one I tried the doors of the yayla houses of wood and stone built on the slope. Finally I found one that was open. I immediately tried to start a fire in the fireplace to warm up. The yayla was 2400 m above sea level, and the water started to freeze as soon as the sun went down. There was no one on this yayla yet. For two days I wandered in the surrounding hills, gazing for hours at the snow-capped mountains, the frothy rushing streams and the emerald green forests far below. I quenched my thirst with the ‘water of life’ from ice-cold springs that burst from beneath the rocks. The Çaglayan, whose real name is ‘Abu Hemsin’ or Water of Hemsin, is the purest and bluest of all the rivers that empty into the Black Sea. At the end of the second day Uncle Osman showed up with a heavily laden mule at his side. He was as happy as a boy.