When I walked through France in 2015 the attack at the Bataclan took place. I asked myself then if it made sense to walk while horrific things are happening in the world. If I shouldn't be doing something more useful.
Last Thursday the Ramblas in the city where I live and had left that same morning turned into a bloodbath. I am reading the news every day after having arrived in again another idyllic place.
If heaven would exist it might look like the place where we ended today. Prat d'Agilò, at the foot of the Cadi mountains. The only way to get here is by foot and it isn't easy. Stale blue skies, majestic mountains, the sound of cowbells. Horses wandering around, fowles practising their first jumps. I sit in the fields and stare. So much beauty.
If heaven would exist it might look like the place where we ended today. Prat d'Agilò, at the foot of the Cadi mountains. The only way to get here is by foot and it isn't easy. Stale blue skies, majestic mountains, the sound of cowbells. Horses wandering around, fowles practising their first jumps. I sit in the fields and stare. So much beauty.
Is it naive to say we have to be reminded from time to time that the world is a beautiful place? Would it make a difference if we would spend more time in nature? If we would slow down more? I don't know if the answer is in the walking but I know I walk to find the right questions, I walk to know I can trust the world. It is the only home I've got, with all its terrors, its disasters, its magic and its wonders. It is all part of the same thing.
While writing this it has turned dark already. The stars are popping up. The mountains have turned black and small now the focus is on the sky. The dog that came with us all the way from Pi is still trying to convince me I have to throw away his stick. I thought he belonged to one of the new people who joined the group today but he didn't. He just chose to walk with us for 16 kilometers and is unstoppable. I figured we weren't the first group he chose to become friends with and the enthusiastic welcome by the man who is running the refugio confirmed it. The dog is a regular visitor and probably knows the route back and forth better then anybody else. I was welcomed just as warm, with pink comfortable slippers, a cold beer and a big smile.
I laughed when he asked me if I wanted a cold beer. I had already drunk that beer when I walked today's walking day virtually in May but then it came in a glass, now it came in a can. And it tasted so much better today than it did then. You can imagine how it feels when you sit down after a long walk up the mountain and take the first sip from your beer but you can't taste it if the beer only exists in your imagination.
We lost some people today. Franco had to go see a doctor in Barcelona because his ankle hurted too much after three days of walking. Imma needed a few days of rest before coming back. I am not surprised. This first part of the 18 day tour is the hardest part and only on day 9 we will get an easy day with a 7 km walk. No resting days.
Other people join. We are 12 today (plus a dog of course), after a start with 14 and a short walk with 17 people.
To makes things easier this morning we skipped the first couple of kilometers from Bellver to Pi, being driven there with the car after coffee and croissants, yoghurt and peaches and big slices of ham at the breakfast buffet in the hotel where we slept in a soft bed after having used the turbo shower. I am being treated well and I enjoy it a lot, although I can get just as much but a different kind of pleasure out of sleeping at the edge of a forest in my sleeping bag after having eaten a cold tin of chickpeas and waking up with the sunrise.
Two of my trees went missing. The people carrying them went home yesterday and left them with the bags in the transport car. I didn't know. I hope they won't be crushed. The two we carried today are sort of ok, but the twin tree seems to have focused its energy on only one of the two trees that grew out of the acorn. My fellow tree-carrier, who is carrying it in the small backpack, originally on his back but since day 2 on his chest, "like a baby" as he said, was worried. He wants it to do well and it touches me to see how he cares. They got some new soil today and fresh mountain water.
Water comes out of the rocks everywhere. Cold spring water, a weary walker's wet dream. Sometimes there is a tube sticking out of a stone wall, sometimes it is caught in a basin, sometimes it just flows down from the rocks. And sometimes there is a stream with big boulders and small pools and we can fill our water bottles first and then float around for a bit. How nice it would have been to take little samples of all the water we passed, stuck our feet in, ate our food next to, dipped our tired bodies in. A water walk. Although I wouldn't be surprised if I'm not the first one thinking this.
After the villages of Pi and Nas there is only forest and narrow paths. I leave the group behind when the speed gets to slow for my itchy feet. Big pine trees block some parts of the trail, the sun is burning. But when I arrive it is only the middle of the afternoon and all I do until dinner at 7.30 is nothing in the best way possible. There is music after dinner, a young singer-songwriter. I can't sit inside while the mountains change colour though. And there is work to do. There is this to write. And maybe this is just as unreal as the story I wrote after having imagined to make this walk.
All the lights are switched off now. The dog is resting next to the door. Upstairs my fellow walkers are asleep in the giant 15 person bunkbed. If the cows wouldn't still be walking around there would be complete silence. A cowbell soundtrack for the nightsky spectacle. New moon, too dark for a little midnight strole but my eyes wander from star to star. And if this would be a perfect day there would be a shooting star to finish things off. So there it is.
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