A foggy day in February 2005 in the steep hills surrounding the Town of Petroshany, Hunedoara County, Romania. A town hospital emergency helicopter sorted out for an unusual mission: to carry some food and salt for the chamois flocks trying to survive a harsh winter. Aboard the chopper there were four people: the pilot, a flight engineer, the local head verderer, and a local moorman. Rumors are, however, they also were going to make a kill, which would have been illegal. The flight cut short about ten miles away from Petroshany. Was it a human error, an engine failure, a sudden weather change or maybe a combination of all three? The chopper crash-landed and broke apart its tail in a five feet deep snow. Two fatalities: the flight engineer and the moorman. The other two survived with serious injuries and were carried to the Petroshany Hospital by the mountain rescue service.
At some point during the moorman's funerals that took place at the local village graveyard, the assistance turned their eyes toward the edge of the hill. The priest himself stopped from singing the holy service for the dead and looked too. On the ridge, a chamois row (wild mountain goats or black goats, as they are called in Romania) were standing in the twilight looking at the people assisting the funerals. The exchange of looks lasted just a few seconds, and then they resumed their climbing in the thin air of the rocky heights. Any regrets among the goats? Should I say a hunted hunter? I recall the words of the Psalmist saying, "Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found."[1] Or was it intended for humans only? After eight days the police quit the watch over the accident area and the local gypsies picked up what they could of the wreck (The gear was removed before by the aviation authorities, for the investigation.) Mr. Culitza, a local farmer who also rushed up to the accident site when hearing the crash noise, picked the broken apart tail section, as left behind by the gypsies a few days later. He dragged it with his horse to his farm, a few hundred yards away, through deep snow, just to have a souvenir of the crash. He proudly showed it to me this summer, leaning against a primitive wooden fence, chocked up by the hill weeds.
[1] Psalm 37:36
