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 past week has gone by rather quickly. And late summer is back again, after the rains of the previous week. Though the nights are chilly, I've been wearing shorts these days. But you can tell we're not really in August because of the way the mornings take a while to warm up, and by how the light has changed. Afternoons are nicely warm, but only after twelve or so, and until five thirty, when the light starts to advise a waning of the day, even though sunset is still around eight in the evening. That will will move back an hour when we return to standard hour at the end of the month.  I have had errands most of these past mornings, and gone walking only one of them last week. Afternoons were occupied by my classes. So far, the afternoons have not dawdled, and I have reached eight o'clock a bit surprised on some days. The littlest kids and the oldest kids are the best ones. The littlest ones seem well-behaved and eager to learn. The eldest are also well-behaved, eager to ...

Yesterday, I went for one of my walks that turned into a three hour hike. I went in search of the chapel of San Pedro, above the village of Vilas, in my parish. I had assumed it would be about two hours going and coming, but it turned into a much longer walk. The next time I go there, I should go on a weekend morning, when the timing of lunch isn't as important. When I finally arrived at the chapel, it was deserted. It sits in the woods, on a small rise. Once upon a time, there used to be an oak grove surrounding it. After dozens of forest fires, and the dedication of woodland to growing money-making eucalyptus, the only oaks are those in front of the chapel. The last time I was there, well over twenty years ago, those oaks were the only trees, there having been a forest fire about a year earlier. The carving on the stone says that the Torrado family ordered the chapel built in the 1600's. But there's another, illegible carving on a stone beneath that, that looks much olde...

I went for my long walk this morning. It took longer than I expected, but I made ten kilometers. No marathon for me, but at least I'll move my body and bring my weight down to a more acceptable level. My daughter went part of the way with me, and I showed her the abandoned house in the wood, right next to the highway. On Saturday, when I had passed by, there was an older man in the open field next to it, burning refuse from cleaning out underbrush, in small piles. I asked him if he knew anything about the house. He told me that when the woodlands that stretched out behind him were fields, neighbors from the village of Isorna would bring up the oxen and stable them in there. The people would come and go during the week it would take to sow the fields in the spring. This way, they let the oxen rest, instead of making them walk both ways and pull the plow. According to him, this was in his grandfather's time, so it was probably a stable about a hundred years ago. Today, my nimble...

Last Thursday, on one of my hikes in the hills behind our house, I found myself facing a steep and rocky descent normally used by trail bikers. I'm not trusting Google Maps again. Since I hated the idea of turning back, I tackled it with the help of my walking stick. A couple of times I thought I would fall and eventually be found at the bottom by a biker the next day. But, I made it down safely and hobbled home. I hobbled because the muscles of my legs were aching at the unusual effort.  Yesterday, we ate lunch early and went out at midday for a drive nearby. So did everyone else, it seems. We went first to the Monte Curota, at the lower end of the peninsula of Barbanza, facing the estuary, Ría de Arousa. It was very windy, and the temperature had gone down since earlier in the week, but the air was sharply clear, and the views sensational. We left the car and climbed up to the lookout at the top. Going up, my legs bothered me, but not too much. When we came down, they were scream...

This morning, I went walking again.  For serious hikers, doing seven and a half kilometers in just over two hours isn't much, if anything. For me, serious potato couch, it's a lot. Right now, my legs hurt from the exertion, even though I did stop and contemplate and discover things along the way. Two years ago, in the spring, I would walk around eight kilometers in an hour and a half most mornings. I had a set route, toward the middle of the village, through it, back up our road, down to the church, and along the asphalted back lanes until I hit the road again and headed home. That routine helped me to get down to twelve kilos less than I weigh now, and I felt good. Then came winter and the pandemic, and I never got into that rhythm again. I did do part of the circuit last summer and fall, but then another winter came, with its corresponding rain and freezing cold mornings. In February, during my mini Carnival vacation, I felt curious about what was in the woods behind our hous...

I went walking again this morning, since weather and circumstances allowed. Again, I went into the woods, and along tracks parallel to the highway behind our village. I went in search of the Mámoas do Campiño . I found them, and it wasn't such a hard hike, at all. There are about six, though I only easily saw four. One looked like a bulldozer had mauled it, another looked like an open pit. Only two still had stones forming the funeral chamber. One of those was missing some stones, the other had most of them, including the small stones forming the entrance, facing east.  Mámoas , or tumuli, are Neolithic burial mounds. A hole is dug, stones quarried and set in place to create the burial chamber, and the entrance tunnel. Then, a large stone is placed on top, creating a dolmen. At the end, earth and stones are mounded over the dolmen. Archeologists estimate that the tumuli in our township date from between 6000 BC to 2000 BC.  Along my walk, I found myself with about four cyclis...

Yesterday, I went walking in the woods, again. I went down a dirt lane that leads to the highway that runs at the foot of the hill behind our house. That highway is both a blessing and a curse. It has taken traffic away from our front door, and the nearby main road, but it has obstructed easy access to the woods on the other side. Now, there are tunnels at certain intervals. I had tried to find one of them earlier in the week, and found that it was blocked by monstrous growths of eucalyptus, gorse, and broom. The other day, I backtracked and found an accessible one, though full of mud from all the rain this winter.  I decided to try to find a megalithic monument, which appeared on Google Maps. Whether or not I found it, I'm not sure. Right where the satellite put me, there was a glade next to the highway. It was surrounded by a stone wall, and had only a few young eucalyptus growing in it. It had obviously been affected by the great fire of 2019, with a lot of dead, grey and black ...

Yesterday morning, I decided to go on a hike. My daughter insisted on coming along, so we both set off along back lanes through the woods. Not that there are many woods, because the hill behind our house has been replanted since the fire a couple of years ago, and the trees are still more like sticks than trees. I climbed.  Looking back down, I was amazed at how high I had climbed. Looking up at what was before me, I despaired of ever reaching the top. Towards the end, I set my legs in short bicycle gear; short steps without stopping. Eventually, I reached the highest point of the lane, where my daughter was waiting. I am desperately out of shape. All winter, I haven't gone walking. Now, I'm paying the consequences. But we weren't at the top, yet. She showed me, through the incipient eucalyptus growing pell mell, a cement post. That post marked the highest point of the hill, 276 meters above sea level. Our house is around 60 meters above sea level, so we had climbed about t...

On Monday, some restrictions were lifted in Galicia. You can now shop till eight or nine, go to the library, the theater, or the cinema (at 30% capacity), or train individually in open air sports installations. Some special education classes also resume, and university classes will be going offline. But, we still can't travel between townships, nor get together with anyone we don't live with (those trips to the movies will be lonely ones), nor sip our coffee at a café terrace. There is talk that to open hospitality businesses, there first must be firm moves to determining how many people can be on the terrace with signs, and some kind of electronic registry of clients, so they can be tracked in case of an outbreak related to the establishment. Of course, this means I still continue with online classes on Thursday and Friday, after Carnival break. Next week, it will depend on what the experts decide on Monday, but I suspect that, at least until Wednesday, I'll still be doing...

These days are typical of July. Last night, it was difficult to sleep, even with the windows open, because there was barely a breath of air until close to dawn. This morning I got up just after eight and went for my walk at twenty to nine.  As I started along the lane to the village, the air felt pleasant, with a touch of a warm breeze. I realized that it was too warm. If I had felt cold starting out the walk, it would have been better.  I rarely encounter anyone along the walk into the village. It's just the trees on one side, and the fields on the other. Last year, there was a horse that grazed where it wished, and once followed me. This year, the owner seems to have taken it somewhere else. There are also some sheep that are in either one field or another, but not today.  Approaching the village, I cross over the brook that has gone down in size. At the beginning of the month, it was swollen from the rain we'd gotten this spring. Now, it still rambles a bit high,...

This morning when I opened my eyes, the sky was swathed in luminous mist. It wasn't the grey, depressing fog of a low cloud, it was the mist rising after the sun began to hit the wet world. Today I go walking! On my walk. So, after breakfast, I put on my sneakers and went for my walk. I only went a half hour, because my legs were beginning to ask forgiveness from the punishment. Other were out, too, though just cyclists along our road. There were extremely few cars, like every Sunday since this began, so whenever I crossed with an on-coming cyclist, he would pedal out into the middle of the road while I walked along the edge. Social distancing. Except for one who floundered by me, less than a meter away. Cyclists like this one are the ones that, when I'm driving, make me want to morph into the Raging Avenger, and send them skydiving into the ditch. Please don't be like that cyclist. Tomorrow, I'm returning, and over the coming weeks, I shall be extending my reac...

Yay! We're going to be let out of our gilded cages! Last night, the Prime Minister came out and said that, if the numbers of infected people keep going down, on May 2nd people can go out for walks and solitary sports. Finally!  I'm not really a sporty person. (I write that after eating a warm croissant my husband brought back from the bakery, along with the Sunday loaf of bread.) I hate bouncing my body back and forth in organized or disorganized sport of any kind. But I do like walking. Long ago, when in my early twenties I got angry at the clothing manufacturers for keeping only ugly clothes in sizes above sixteen, I decided to lose weight by walking. Instead of taking the elevator, I walked. Instead of taking the bus, I walked. I would go downtown on Sundays and walk. I even went on one of my excursions, to Ipswich, on the commuter rail. From there, I walked to Crane beach and back.  Since I've lived here (more than half my life, now), I've gone walking to lose...

Last month was like a month of spring plunked down in summer. Rain would show up out of nowhere, and temperatures, while not very low, were not as nice as they should have been. While other parts of Spain and Europe were sweltering in above-average temperatures, ours, in our little corner, were below-average. As a consequence, festivals were either rained upon or cancelled and re-scheduled. One of the events re-scheduled to yesterday, was a night walk in the woods up a hill. It was called the Andaina Santa Compaña, and was designed to be a fun walk to the top of the hill called the Castro Barbudo, along with a few scares straight out of folklore and Halloween. My daughter convinced me to sign up and go along with her and some cousins of ours. It was eight kilometers, and that wasn't so difficult for me to walk, though it seemed much more because of the terrain, all the people, and the three hours it took. We began at eleven, and when we arrived back it was two in the morning. I...