I loved walking around our land with my father. Grandpa had several plots scattered around different parts of Vrebac, which were used either as meadows or arable fields.
Rašnovac was a hay meadow, but because the meadow extended from the high bank right up to the Jadova, that part had been used in earlier years as arable land for crops that were sensitive to a lack of water. I heard that cabbage was sometimes planted there and, in dry years, watered with water from Luka Stolina.
At the other end of the village, when you leave the school and follow the gently sloping road toward the Popović Bridge, we had two plots on a section of village land that merged with the Plantation on the horizon.
After crossing the bridge and turning right, you came to a large, gently rolling field—the Brda Borića—on the crest of which we had a plot where potatoes were mainly grown. I remember that grain or rye was also sown there.
They say that this area is the most suitable in Lika for growing potatoes. Because of the loose, sandy soil, potatoes could grow there to an enormous size, with individual tubers weighing as much as a kilogram—enough for all of us to have a good meal.
If, after crossing the bridge, you turned left, you came to Đurđeva Greda, a beautiful meadow that was either mown for hay or sown with some kind of grain.
To reach the plot, you had to cross the shallow bed of the seasonal Crni Potok, which flowed into the nearby Jadova. The lower part of the plot was poorly cultivated because during the spring it was often waterlogged.
On Đurđeva Greda and the surrounding meadows, fragments of pottery and objects from the distant Japodian period and from the later Ottoman period could sometimes be found.
At the other end of the village, below the first slopes of the mountain, beside the Tunjevac stream, we had another meadow of the same name, which, as far as I remember, was used only for haymaking.
The stream would dry up by spring, and I could enter its bed, with its rocky bottom and shallow banks. I knew that its source was not far away, emerging from a deep cleft in the rock, enclosed by a stone wall, with steps descending through it to the water. But at that time I never reached it.
When the spring waters came rushing down from melting snow and rain, and the underground watercourses filled up, water would burst violently from the cleft, spill over the steps, and rush down into the streambed, continuing toward the Jadova, into which it flowed at Rašnovci.
We also had several plots on Lisina. I rarely went into the mountains. I remember going once for firewood, and another time with my father, on bicycles.
Three of our plots were on a part of the mountain called Tavani, along the road about one or two kilometres westward toward Velebit.
Libinja lies above the road and was covered with forest. Immediately below the road was a large hay meadow beside which our ancestors had built a stan—a simple mountain shepherds’ shelter where they stayed when, after the haymaking, the flock of sheep and livestock were taken to the mountain for summer and autumn grazing.
Grandpa and his family stayed in that shelter during those wartime years when they had to flee the village to save their lives.
Today, all that remains of the stan are traces of its stone foundation and some scattered stones, now overgrown by dense forest and thick undergrowth. It can be found only through the stories and memories of the older people of Vrebac.
Somewhat lower than Libinja, just below Pundre’s Well, lies another small hay meadow of ours—Čistulja.
Pundre—I do not know his first name—lived sometime around the turn of the two previous centuries. They say he was a short, strong, persistent, and hardworking man who dug out and lined with stone a hollow in the mountain, which was later named after him. In an otherwise waterless area, especially during dry summers, this allowed precious water to collect and be preserved.
I saw Pundre’s Well several years ago. It is still there, partly collapsed and partly filled in because no one has maintained it for many years. But it is still there, and along with the little water it preserves for foxes and bears, it also preserves the memory of the hardworking Pundre.
And higher up, below the summit of Lisina, we have another plot, partly a hay meadow and partly covered with forest, which I did not set foot on until only a few years ago.
Most of the plot is a deep, overgrown hollow, now filled with lush beech trees, along with some hornbeam and oak.
As we walked around our land, looking for boundary markers and making our way through sharp, thorny grass and bushes, my father would tell me his memories at every piece of land. His stories transported me back to another world and another way of life.
Stories of haymaking and hard, exhausting work, but also of the joy of tending the livestock together; of small shepherds’ fires that, on cold and foggy days, brought life back into frozen fingers; of roasting potatoes and corn; of journeys into the mountains and sleeping beneath the open sky; of encounters with all kinds of wild animals, even dangerous ones, which still abound in the mountains—all these stories conjured up for me another, distant and difficult life, which nevertheless was not without its pleasures and joys.
From those stories, and from the way he told them, I came to understand his attachment to his village and his desire to return to it someday.
And for me, Vrebac was never again simply a village. It became something living, something with a soul that drew me into every corner of it, something I loved completely, without reservation or second thought—a village of my roots, of past events woven into me, of my ancestors and all the dear people who surround me. All of this makes me feel calm and whole whenever my path takes me back there.
Željko Narančić