Lake Cerknica. an intermittent lake which – as the terminus technicus suggests, and as you can see – isn’t always there.
Summer is a tough time for the lake that is so magnificent in spring, mysterious in autumn, and ice-bound in winter. This marvel of Nature can cover almost thirty square kilometres at its greatest extent, but now the rains are gone and its otherwise vast Karst catchment area cannot keep up with the thirsty ground, which greedily gulps all the water through countless sinkholes.
The lake’s last hurrah is this artificial, temporary refuge for the numerous fish, mainly pike, that are desperately trying to find at least some depth in the shrinking puddles. Only an earth berm keeps the last precious drops of water from disappearing into Hades.
And it feels strangely surreal, walking along the bottom of this extraordinary lake, now covered in flowers and tall grass …
A great many strange stories have grown out of this strange lake. Over the millennia, people imagined and invented all sorts of explanations for the unique, semi-regular ebbing and flowing of Lake Cerknica.
Blind ducks living underground. Three hidden lakes above and below the visible one. Mysterious flames on Mount Slivnica where the witches gather for their feasts. The Lady of the Lake and her tragic fate.
But as people seldom master the art of flight, they missed the true monster lurking in the waters of Lake Cerknica. Because when the water level reaches a certain magical point, a giant emerges – visible only to those that can fly.
The Giant of Lake Cerknica is not some lame aquatic cryptid, a timid Nessie-type pussy, or a Bunyan who dares reveal himself only to children, the drunk, and the insane. No. The Giant of Lake Cerknica is real. And huge.
He is 600 metres tall. His humongous head, complete with piercing eyes and a gaping mouth, measures more than 200 metres across.
You really do not want to mess with the Giant of Lake Cerknica.
Yet we went and flew a kite, two kites actually, complete with cameras, right over his resting place, snapping away like a mad paparazzo.
No wonder the Giant got absolutely livid. And a serene kite aerial photography session went awry really fast.
A father and son from Germany, came by, admired the kite, became excited about this wonderfully nature-friendly way of taking aerial photographs, and the young lad was eager to try holding the line.
As he held it, the kite swooshed upwards, the camera followed… and suddenly met something up there rather violently.
In a remarkable stroke of bad luck, this photograph was taken at the exact moment of impact, just as the shutter opened. Some heavy (and slimy) flying object must have smashed straight into the lens, shaken the whole camera, a Nikon P330 suspended on a sturdy wooden picavet, and thoroughly messed up both the shutter and the internal workings of the camera. The focus was gone, the tilt was completely off the scale, and the exposure wayyy too high.
And whatever hit it also left several serious stains on the lens, only discovered later during post-processing. Every photograph taken after the collision was unusable unless cropped extensively.
There is only one possible explanation.
The angry Giant spat at the camera!
He did not stop there, though. As a long-time resident of the lake, the Giant is well known and respected by the locals – that is, by those who can see him. The water, the forests, the mountains, the clouds are all his good friends.
And so is the wind.
The flight started innocently enough, with the Venerable Blue Rokkaku rising effortlessly in a soft but steady south-easterly wind.
Soon the camera was dangling high above the fish refuge, some 300 metres away.
The Original Blue Rokkaku joined its older role model in the sky, carrying a camera shooting in top-down mode for a change.
The Venerable Rok was happily snapping away, but as the Original Rok did not have the useful Suptig rotator attached to its picavet, we had to pull it down to change the camera angle. When the kite was only about 50 metres above the ground, the line suddenly went taut, as though the wind had vanished completely, and the Rok settled onto a bend of the Stržen Creek, coming to rest gently in the tall marsh grass.
When the wind started acting up, the Venerable Rok was almost at the very end of its line, some 300 metres away and 150 metres high. Its line suddenly went taut as well. The kite was going down fast.
Janez stood there, unsure what to do, as the line was falling much faster than he could haul it back in. Disaster seemed inevitable, until we both realised that something entirely different was happening.
The wind had not stopped. It had merely changed direction so quickly, and by such an enormous angle, that the kite simply could not keep up. At first.
When the wind direction passed ninety degrees from its original course, we realised we had entered completely unknown territory. Stop doing random panicky things. Wait. Observe.
The astonishing speed of the wind shift eased slightly, and the old Rok began climbing once again.
The wind turned a full 180 degrees.
And then some.
It was quite incredible. Never had we witnessed anything remotely like it.
The start and the end of the Great Cerknica Turn, less than 10 minutes between the photos:
Only much later we understood what had happened.
The Giant of Lake Cerknica had swatted the pesky cameras away from his face!
The rest of the kite aerial photography session passed peacefully. The beauty of the lake remains soothing even when the waters are gone, and the views from above are endlessly fascinating.
Yes, this must have been the umpteenth time we had flown cameras over Lake Cerknica, yet the results are different every single time, and amazing every single time.
No matter the light, the water level, or the season.
You cannot plan a shot. You cannot organise a photo session. You cannot aim for one particular view. Lake Cerknica is always almost, but never quite, entirely unlike itself from a month, a week, a day, or even a minute before.
High above this liminal place, a kite becomes liminal too. No longer merely a tool, an extension of our eyes, it gains eyes of its own that can see the underground ducks, the mysterious flames, the witches, the Lady of the Lake …
And the Giant.
The Giant was certainly annoyed by the camera, but he moved the kites gently out of his sight, for they both inhabit a universe orthogonal to ours.
When those worlds intersect, when you dismiss the Giant as nothing more than a trompe l’oeil or a pointless pareidolia, he will smack you.
And then you will know why.
The fairy tales, the legends, the tall stories told across the chasm of time are not fiction.
They are all true.
Kite aerial photographs taken with a Nikon P330 mounted on the Original Blue Rokkaku, and with an Insta360 mounted on the Venerable Blue Rokkaku, both crafted by master kite maker Janez Vizjak.