Do Not Disturb
Caucasus Mountains, Georgia 2016
Only one Orthodox monk lives in the small house on the top of the rock pillar. He is old and perhaps he will be the last monk to spend his life praying and fasting in self-imposed solitude. He has lived there, about 140 feet above the ground, for twenty years. He does come down now and then. (Maybe to check his emails???…joke.)
You can see the winch and a ladder, which looks very rickety, in my larger photo. His food and whatever else he needs are hauled up by the winch and maybe he is as well. I’ve seen photos in National Geographic of monks in Meteora, Greece being hauled in a large basket to a monastery on top of a rock pinnacle. No one else in the group thought he would be winched to the top. They thought he would climb the ladder.
What is a stylite? A Christian who spends his or her life in prayer and fasting on top of a pillar as part of a self-imposed penance. This practice was common during Byzantine times.