"Menk enk mer lernere"

May 28th – My first morning in Stepanakert, we woke up early and decided to head to Gandzasar Monastery and Dadivank. And while I'm sure Gandzasar is popular with the tourist crowd due to its close proximity to Stepanakert, Dadivank is surely less visited (though perhaps one of the most enchanting sites in Artsakh). And while I really try to travel the less beaten path and journey to lesser known locations while touring here, I once in a while can't help myself and have to stop at the touristy sites. And so it was that on our way out of town (after purchasing 3 highly detailed maps of Armenia / Artsakh that one simply cannot come by anywhere but Yerevan or Stepanakert) we slammed on the breaks at the Tatik - Papik monument on the outskirts of town.

Now before telling what happened there, I should emphasize one point. The very first thing I noticed the day before when we arrived in Stepanakert was how incredibly clean it was in comparison with Yerevan. Not to say that Yerevan is filthy (after all, I see more trash on the 10 fwy in L.A. and 57 in Orange County during my daily commute) but our friends in Artsakh seem to take an exceptional level of pride in keeping their neighborhoods cleaned up. (I would again confirm this the following morning when taking a 5-6am walk to buy Hatz. As I walked down the side streets parallel to Vazgen Sargsyan St and into Republic Square I saw people everywhere sweeping, shoveling and detailing everything.)

So when we climbed the hill from the parking lot to the rust-colored monument of Tuf I was disappointed to see trash on the ground. Now please don't be mistaken, I don't mean there were garbage bags dumped everywhere and heaps of refuse – that's reserved for the eyes of a driver on Brea Canyon Road in the second wealthiest county in the United States – Orange. No, this was more like bottle caps, empty "Masis Tabak" cigarette boxes and butts, used tissues (which in Armenia are used as table napkins…) and the occasional plastic NOY or Kilikia bottle.

I spent a little time soaking up the beauty and importance of Tatik – Papik, and was inspired by the inscription "Menk enk mer lernere" ("We are our mountains") located at the back of the structure. Those simple yet profound words made an impression on me. If we are our mountains, then why should I walk past a piece of trash on our mountains? So I decided to occupy myself while waiting for the rest of the group, with picking up as much trash as I could. As good spreads quickly it wasn't long before another member of our party decided to help me, then another and another. Before long we had filled several plastic bottles full of trash, and the whole place was, as far as we could tell completely clean. We took pride in leaving Tatik-Papik even better than we found them. Any day you can enjoy your environment and have a positive impact on it, is a good day.