hideout in the Pyrenees

This post will best be conveyed in a picture series, although no picture can adequately convey the essential beauty found in Nature. Two days ago, we travelled a few hours north to Torla, and then to the Parque Nacional de Ordesa y Monte Perdido. I urge you to click on the link to see the location on Gmaps. For another interpretation, view the map as terrain and see the mountains and valleys. The mountains of the Mediterranean are interesting enough in themselves: wild, independent places full of backwards people who were unable to be forced under the influence of any majority ruling the region--even when a Roman, Catholic, or Muslim empire was able to take hold, the Mercurial people could switch sides at any given moment during any given battle. There is freedom in this wilderness of isolation.

Tired (exhausted) as though I was, I found myself completely unable to sleep on the bus ride there for all the views. Driving from Zaragoza, I at first thought that a deep fog or dark clouds was in the distance.

Soon, it became clear that these were, in fact, the Pyrenees.

We wound (quite fast--our bus driver was on some kind of medication and was passing kidney stones or whatnot, but I thought less that he was speeding and more that he was driving like a local) around mountain paths--they cannot be called roads--and watched scenery and old stone structures pass by. We stopped at one point for stairs to nowhere and fields of yellow flowers that made the air smell like dandelions and daffodils.

The roads became more and more perilous, and I thought of you, Daddy, as I pressed hard on the pressure point (three fingers down from my wrist and in between the two ligaments or tendons there) that keeps me from feeling motion sickness. There were little Meaghan's-nails claw mark impressions left for hours. Driving, on one side, rock cliffs started straight from the path, and on the other, hundreds of meters fell vertically in only three or four horizontally.

We arrived at Torla and explored the town. I was particularly happy to see a man tending his garden; people have to provide for themselves here, and not depend on other people making all of their clothes and food, as we are so accustomed in America. There was a French woman selling her cheeses and meats as she does every day, and I spoke with her a little. The town seemed completely made of stone, and I envied the Spanish-speaking villagers who made their homes here. (Side note: it has taken me about a week, but I no longer associate hearing Spanish with thinking that the person speaking is a poor immigrant to Lawrence or Haverhill, especially with the unique little Castilian accent.)

We took another bus (more scary roads, more marks on forearms) to the national park.

After a brief fields, a path lead through coniferous forest. It wound along tributaries of the Rio Arazas and stepped up and down alongside termite mounds and falls. We somehow managed to mis-manage time so as to have only two hours to wander, which was quite unfortunate, especially for me, who finds such peace and balance in the middle of this unadulterated verdancy.

Buttercups and thistles, like running through Seven Gables at Farnsworth (C-H-E-N-O-A, Camp Chenoa stinks and FARNSWORTH ALL THE WAY, HEY! FARNSWORTH ALL THE WAY!)

Feel free to click on any of the above to be linked to the album and thus more pictures.

I will note that my Casio EX-Z1200 is one of the best investments that I have made of late. Jeremy's suggestion of a 4G card and card reader has also proven its worth, as my pictures are uploaded to my computer in record time. The detail that my camera provides allows me to shoot (in 'text' shot mode) a picture of an informative board or something of the like, and I can zoom to reference later all of the text in perfect clarity. As Aunt Lydia suggested, praps I will have to set up a slideshow on the television at home in order that everyone can witness these shots in at least a little more resplendent beauty, as these smaller files cannot do justice.

We stopped at a small restaurant only a hamlet away from Torla to eat. I had a delicious salad with some kind of fruit--strawberry?--dressing and then, because there are two courses and then desert here, wild mushroom something or other that resembled meatloaf in its composition but, with whatever the orange creamy sauce was on it, tasted like perfection. The option being wine or water, and having my Sigg, I opted for wine, and when no one else understood who had already poured their water, they had to order another bottle. This bottle, which provided probably six or seven glasses, cost only 1,28€. And this was locally-made, quite deliciously smoky, almost like wood, wine that came in a green, unlabelled bottle--not some cheap boxed something. O, different cultures, how I envy you. I finished this meal with the world's most perfect desert, natilla (nah-tea-ah). It was like pudding, but not so sweet, and came with a biscuit on top so as not to form skin. It was creamy and complemented the meal perfectly. I definitely finished last.

On the way back--the few minutes of it that I wasn't asleep from a full, happy stomach and exhausted body and mind--I saw such things as a random castle in the distance. This happens in Europe.

Also, Emily, I saw you in the vast stretches of wind farms in the distance, and I wanted you to be here holding mine hand after wandering in the wilderness of the Pyrenees. I'm sure that we would have been invited back to France with the lady selling her cheese, and o, would we have gone.

All in all, and especially after hearing in lecture the next day that many of these Pyrenean hamlets have had homes abandoned, I propose that our Spanish, French, and other-language-speaking children be raised, at least in part, in some lost hamlet that gives its loyalty not to France or Spain but to its own heritage and the Nature around it.