Spanish views from a small town

I've really been remiss about writing recently. There have been days I vowed to stay home in the morning, write a post, continue editing my story, and simply lose myself on the keyboard, but life snuck in and upended my plans. Life continues submerged in much the same chaos, and the pandemic numbers are slowly ticking upward, and all I care about is the beauty of the days I am living. Apart from errands that seem never-ending, I have been going for my walks in the woods. Yesterday, taking advantage of the fact that our daughter was home, I went to half of a talk about the tumuli on the other side of the highway that runs beneath the hill behind our house. The talk began down in the parish cultural center of Leiro, but it seemed too long to walk for me yesterday, so I walked to the tumuli, and waited for the appearance of the group around twelve, which was their scheduled time of arrival. I got there early, and sat on a stone, waiting for them in the warm sun, with a cool morning br...

This morning, I went walking after a hiatus of almost a week. Between errands, laziness, and rain, I had been putting off walking. Partially, also because I thought I had found most of the interesting spots within ten kilometers.  So, I strode off in another direction, which involved crossing a busy road, something I have tried to avoid until now. In the end, it was over a seven kilometer round trip, and worth the exertion.  I decided to visit a hill top that was supposed to have the remains of an Iron Age hill fort. The entire area of the Castro de Bexo had been consumed in the atrocious fires of March of 2019, and loggers had been cutting and removing all the eucalyptus. When I got to where the lane upwards begins, I gulped. It looked like something had taken huge bites of earth, chewed them, and spit them out on the lane, again. The tires of the tractors on the wet ground had gouged out long lines in the earth, rising and dipping again. It wasn't the easiest lane to follow,...

In eastern Galicia, where this region meets León, there are mountains that reach 1500 meters, with soaring summits, and plummeting valleys with wild brooks that meander down ravines. There are no commercial pines or eucalyptus planted on their slopes, and the local flora flourishes. Chestnuts, oaks, walnuts, maples, birches, hazles, heather, all kinds of Mediterranean and Atlantic flora, depending on altitude. It's a beautiful, yet rough land, through which there are lanes that in winter snows become impassible, obliging the dwindling residents to be resilient and prepared for isolation.  The Romans reached this area, and, of course, exploited it. They took iron, gold, and antimony back to the Empire. There are still abandoned mines to be found, including tunnels near the village of Romeor. To get to them, you need to cross the village, and walk just over a kilometer up the mountain. We got to the stepping off point, but it was beginning to rain, we weren't in possession of a...

This afternoon I decided to go up to the plateau formed by the hills that bisect our little peninsula. I haven't been up there in over a year and I had a yearning for a little solitude with the only sound of the wind and distant mooing of cows.  The road up goes through a lookout point that overlooks all the Ría de Arousa, the bay that reaches inland where I live. When I got to the top it was wall-to-wall cars. None were local. Okay, not here. I continued along the road until the asphalt ran out and it became dirt and gravel. If our cars could talk about all the places we've put them through, they would shame a four-wheel drive. But the road is still quite good for a ways into the plateau.  No dice. Solitude? In August? The tourists that weren't at the beach were all up there. Walking along the road. Hunkered in cars under pine trees. Throwing a frisbee to a dog next to a pristine stream. I decided to turn around and head home. Next month is my vacation month and I can ...