Spanish trail

She unplugged the heater under the table, checked the gas cookers were off and locked the first wooden door with a heavy iron key. A remnant from the Moors. The kind of huge metal key she saw hanging from religious or military clothing in old European paintings.

The key to paradise was very heavy and carried by people with leverage demonstrating leadership potential.

Walking across the stone patio she hit her head on a low hanging winter orange, laughed, pulled it free from the tree, slipped the bolt on the second wooden door, locking it behind her and entered a courtyard. She walked over to a large single red rose beneath a lemon tree, inhaled deep fragrance, put an old fallen curled petal in her pocket and touched one thorn drawing blood for luck.

“Ola,” she said to the old petite smiling woman sweeping her stone steps. She worked from sunrise to sundown.

“Ola. You are going to the mountains, yes?”
“Yes. I will climb high today. Back in time.”
“The weather is good today. Clear and cold.”
“Yes, it looks fine. See you later.”

She passed the shuttered Municipal Bibilotech where she studied the history of Spanish art and Andalucia reference books on week nights between 6:30-8:30 p.m. as giggling elementary school kids scattered around tables made faces, did their homework and messed around.

They teased her about having sex using their fingers to show her what happened between men and women. Their behavior was direct and honest. They shared mutually whispered conspiratorial secrets until the middle aged librarian needing dental care told them to be quiet. She was an aberration in their youth.

The girls carried bags of pens and pencils giving them diversions and endless choices. Which color? A pen? A pencil? Ink? They did a lot of tracing animals, drawing people and copying Catholic lessons. The boys wasted time and the girls studied.

Passing tight narrow secluded white homes toward the mountains she read a poem by Manual Nogales from the El Gastor Pueblo. Every stone home was buried below rising geology. Streets were rough sharp jagged broken Roman stones sloping toward the middle for water runoff. They’d last forever.

Villagers looked up at Penon Grande seeing gray dolomite rock piercing the sky. They looked down at their feet to see where they were walking and gray dolomite rocks stabbed their eyes.

Nogales’s poem was about Andalucia. It was about rocks, pines, sun, water, clear mountain air, local pastries, simple men, beautiful women, 1,000 balconies with 1,000 geraniums, old Moorish and Iberian secrets, hidden treasures, red and orange Sierra sunsets, famous bandits, ancient myths, legends and stories.

She left Lacilbula behind to climb west of the Penon Grande. She stopped occasionally to catch her breath and thought about turning back. She took one step at a time and moved forward. The walking staff felt good in her hand. A metal point stabbed soil.

She knew it was always possible to stop walking, to avoid the path. She wasn’t out of shape but smoked too much and knew it reduced her lung capacity. Every kind soul in her life had warned her about the habit. They meant well. They cared. It was all you could expect from friends. They wanted to celebrate life with you at 80 going on 100. Age was just a number and hers was unlisted.

Friends said living well was the best revenge.

“The one who laughs, lasts.”

Her healer friend in Arizona remarked once, “I never heard a dying man say, ‘I wish I had spent more time at the office.’”

She climbed through her office. The elevators were down for maintenance. She was being transferred to a new branch on another level of experience. The branch extended its tributaries in all directions like veins from a heart. She trusted her direction, her way and felt blessed to be here now.

She stopped in a valley of Spanish pinsapar woodland fir to survey the massive ring of limestone peaks. The dark green fir was a protected national treasure and required a walking permit from El Bosque. It remained from the Tertiary Period which ended 2.5 million years ago, surviving in isolated parts of southwestern Andalucia and Morocco.

She hiked through the finest Spanish pine grove in the country, a veritable living fossil which only grew at altitudes over 1,000 meters in the Sierra del Pinar or Pine Grove Mountain Range. The rest of the park’s vegetation was Mediterranean in type including large areas of holm-oak woods. Cork, oak, gall oak and pine groves lived with carob trees, wild olives and blueberries along riverside woods and thick scrub.

Her staff was designed for this terrain. For a person facing a date with her destiny she took her time quickly. Step by step. Simple muscular skeleton bone skin steps. Her heart pounded, echoing through her ears as her pulse roared a wild throated sound.

It was magic. Every step revealed new peaks as distant valleys became miniatures, spreading fir ranges mixed with gray limestone rocks under flowing mountain ridges.

She climbed on sharp white and gray dolomite stones. They tore at her boots when she missed openings. She was a rolling stone. An occasional bright blue arrow painted on rocks indicated the way.

Moss at higher elevations was a clear luminous soft green. Small yellow wildflowers clung to stubborn roots. Fast western clouds were propelled by invisible perfection.

At the summit was a meadow of dolomite limestone rocks exploding from the surface. She’d climbed back in time. Patches of snow lay in shadows. Snow mirrors reflected sporadic mountain light rising in front of her. Peak shadows covered eastern valleys.

She’d reached another planet, a very old part of the universe. She was between peaks, feeling blue sky pressing her forehead as gray, white and dark blue clouds hurtled over rocky formations throwing shadows.

Time on a mountain top runs faster than at sea level because gravity is stronger at sea level and gravity slows time down.

Silence enveloped and welcomed her. A whisper of wind in a silent world. She was suddenly very cold then blazing hot as a sun exploded through clouds. She enjoyed long deep breaths.

Enjoying ice cold water and raisins sitting on jagged stones she read her compass instructions.

“You’re never lost, there’s only various degrees of uncertainty about your position.”

She laughed as vibrations of joy echoed a beautiful emptiness.