What else can I show you, what more should I say: I lived the simple life of the old days with the islanders and it was without the comfort as it is common nowadays. And yet, the people I knew, we all did’nt want more, we were content . And there were no TV adverts, no foreigners buying land and building their villas, no holiday-makers bringing along an image of endless desirables. Then, all that changed and at once desires popped up, with no limits.
With developments getting faster, expectations were growing bigger and bigger. Some locals got rich that way, by selling their island’s beauty. People soon had to live up to their new status as compared among themselves: they got too busy, too occupied, had no sense any more to appreciate the wonderful Alonnisos landscape and the ingenious ways of traditional life.
Are you aware: creation of this Alonnisos landscape was a human achievement over millenia. And it was again a human impact that managed to destroyed so much of it – within a fraction of that time.
Some one brought the disease phylloxera to the island in the early 1960s. The bottom right picture shows the vineyards in 1958, prior to the catastrophy. A few endemic limnia vines survived in a remote part of the island (at Gjéraka). They could be propagated. But who wants nowadys to work that hard…