I grew up in Natria, a small village twenty miles off the outskirts of Colohoro. Life in Natria is little different from how one may imagine life in a small village to be.
As children, we would scour the nearby forests in search of imagined adventure. In adolescence we’d gather by the lakeside to cool off and catch some glimpses of the girls we liked. By adulthood, I was on a train to Colohoro. People don’t grow old in Natria anymore.
Uneventful and frankly boring as village life was, I found that city folk did not share some of the customs I had assumed a standard fare of life. The people in Colohoro spoke like we (the young folk) spoke in Natria. They ate many of the same foods, though it did seem to me as though the food was often laden in salt. Many of the people I met in Colohoro, upon having gotten to know me and where I grew up, would pick up a habit of taking jabs at me over this. Countless friends and colleagues have asked me countless times, often in jest but sometimes with what felt like unwarranted concern, whether the food was too salty for my tastes.
They were not entirely wrong to do so.
Natria and Keiwen district were always an area of relatively low agricultural output when compared to the other regions surrounding Colohoro. The soil on our side of the mountains held less minerals and fine rock material, so the soil would drain and dry up faster. Due to the lack of water retention and adequate soil mineral content, little vegetation would take root, resulting in yet less soil regeneration. Of course there was agriculture, humans had settled and tended the land for centuries, but it was never much and never enough to support any population larger than that of Natria and the other small villages in the district.
However, our soil and our foods do lack one specific nutrient: Salt. Needless to say, this was an issue. Salt is essential to the human body, wherein it is (or rather, the ions in solution are) used to facilitate brain and muscle function. Salt is important for the body, no population can survive without it.
Natria did have an ample supply of freshwater, provided by nearby Lake Kibbe. Sunshine is also plentiful in Keiwen district. People of this land have always lived with ample water and sun, just no salt in their food.
Of course, as human populations in any adverse environment, the people of Natria had long adapted to this lack of salt in their nutrition. Natrian dishes do really have a salt content that is minimal to none. This is the circumstance which gave rise to one of our most important Natrian customs: The Salted Post.
The topography of Natria was such that the population congregated around three central areas of the village. In the direction of Colohoro lied the mountains that separated us from the city, on the sunbathed feet of these mountains lays the Nooba neighborhood of Natria.
Lake Kibbe stretches under the flatlands of Mount Nooba, adjacent to the lake lay the Kibbe family home, as well as the other houses that formed Kibbe neighborhood. Finally, at the deepest part of the valley lived my family in Geeba Fields, right across from the village’s central plaza.
Most of the families living in the village had been there for centuries, the Nooba family, the Kibbe family and the Geeba (my) family had their claim thereto grounded in the village records and, perhaps more supportive of their claim, in village tradition.
Like any village with centuries thereof, tradition was (and still is) a serious matter in Natria. All the more so in my, our, families. The Nooba, Kibbe and Geeba resembled more of a family of families, a clan to ourselves and an inbred cabal to those who’d gossip behind our backs. However, we took great pride in preserving our traditions.
In the central plaza of Natria stands a post that is taller than any man of the village. The height of the post exceeds the height of any combination of two men, even when one is sat on the shoulders of the other. The height of the post has only ever been exceeded whence one man help his arms upward and outstretched and a second man stood upon his hands. In this formation, the upper man could reach upward yet more and touch the very tip of the post. This caused quite an uproar at the time, many considered it disrespectful to attempt to exceed the height of the post, though perhaps it was just some old folks discontented murmuring, nobody attempted such a feat again.
The Salted Post was a near-sacred object, for many good reasons. Many men did much work to maintain and protect the salted post, with a set of unwritten but nonetheless very clear and well-understood rules governing how and when we were to interact with it.
Every Spring, all the men of the village would gather and camp around the Kibbe family home for three days. The Kibbe family in turn would prepare a great feast for each of the nights. During those three days, the men would gather all the receptacles, bottles, jugs, animal bladders in the past, empty PET bottles by the time I was a teenager and bring them to the shores of Lake Kibbe. There, they would fill all the receptacles with water from the lake and then carry them up the foot of Nooba mountain, to the Nooba neighborhood.
Come Summer, all the men of the village would gather on Nooba mountain and pour the water into “drying pits”. We just called them the pits. The water would soon evaporate on the sun-struck mountainside, within a few weeks of hot weather the water would be gone, and left behind a deposit of minerals and salt. Relative to the amount of water used, it was little, but for our village it was enough. The Nooba and surrounding mountains kept rain to the other side. Even when it did rain, the weather was fair more often than not and all water would be evaporated before the end of summer.
Come autumn, come harvest. For Natria this meant both agricultural harvests and harvesting the dried salt from the pits on Mount Nooba. All the men of the village would gather again and carve out the pits. Any sharp and solid implement was permitted, but many men fashioned themselves decorated carving sticks for the occasion.
Following the harvest of the salt pits (The “Harsalling”) we (the men) would finally gather in the village plaza down in Geeba. Protection and administration of The Salted Post was the responsibility of the Geeba family.
Being the middle child, I never took any special position in our families duties surrounding The Post, as was tradition, my father and my youngest brother took on these tasks.
Gathered around The Salted Post, the bags of harvested salt were placed in a circle between the post and the men. All men present donned masks which covered their faces, however providing cutouts for the eyes (for practical reasons) and a cutout for the mouth and chin. The masks were typically painted in the family patterns or elements of family crests, however creativity with mask designs was also permitted. I’ve heard that more recently, they began to hold a competition for the best mask paintings.
Wearing their masks, the male patriarch of each household would step forward and take turns to lick the post. The post was covered in a thick crusted, presumed to be centuries old, layer of salt, men would spit any saliva produced in a wooden bucket that was carried by the youngest male of their respective household.
All other men were holding torches. Following the licking of the post they would step forward and pinch some salt from the bags. The men would then throw the salt at the post. Once every man in the torch group was satisfied that the wet layer produced by the patriarchs had been sufficiently coated in fresh salt, they would hold their torches close to the post as to make it dry faster.
This would be repeated until the patriarchs began to feel sick from their excess intake of salt, at which point the mood grew festive and the post became a free-for-all to everyone present, licking it and enjoying the salt until they were satisfied. The only rule was that any man who licked the pole also had to spit in the buckets. At the end of the night, once everyone had their fill and the men of the village started to return to their respective family homes, our family would gather the buckets and bring them into the cistern below our house. It was a great communal bonding experience, I remember it fondly.
Throughout the year, my family would take out the spit buckets and regularly coat the post in fresh salted spit, as to maintain the salt layer(s) between the yearly ritual. Whenever a village resident passed by the post, they would approach it and lick it before continuing with their business. It was held as a superstition that any man who passed the post without licking it would not have bear any male heirs. Occasionally, someone broke a chunk of salt off the post, usually children, this behavior nonetheless strongly frowned upon. Anyone caught in commission thereof would be excluded from the ritual for the next two years, having to spend that night doing whatever it was that the women our village did at such time.
It is this peculiar ritual by which the people of Natria maintained their salt intake despite the pedological conditions of Keiwen district, and the reason why city folk could not help but remark on my tastes. Natria has been connected to the world by road and rail and the tradition is no longer born from a need for survival but maintained simply for the sake of tradition itself. Maybe one day I’ll return home to grow old in Natria, I hope that when I do, there will still be a salted post to lick.