here goes...

abandoned

My host has gone to Belgium for four days, leaving Onur, Claudia (two other volunteers) and me alone with no car. He’s given us a list of chores to complete in his absence, but it seems we’re having a hard time finding the motivation to do them. Onur and Claudia seem only to be interested in smoking our host’s weed and wasting my computer’s battery. I’ve managed to get a total of 45 minutes for myself the whole four days. Now, my laptop’s battery is dead and the solar panel has failed, too. We have no electricity and no internet. Thankfully, the water is heated by gas and we have propane ranges and wood stoves for cooking and warmth. I can handle a little blackout, I think.

spanish cowboys

Our host hadn’t been gone six hours and we received visitors. Two strangers on horseback appeared, looking for the man. They told us they were traveling around by horseback for the weekend and were hoping to stop here for the night for respite and a visit with their friend. Well, we called the man in Belgium and decided, why not? What could be too difficult about two Spanish cowboys?


Two Spanish cowboys may have been easy but suddenly at sundown we were nine people on this host-less farm. What to do? Do they speak English? No: so poor Claudia, the only woman and native Spanish-speaker must play host alone. Are they going to eat with us? Maybe: so Onur and I better prepare enough food. Will they be staying? Hopefully not: the four others will leave, but the two cowboys need beds.


All was quickly put in order. We settled into our host’s bedroom with a big fire, plenty of beer and wine, and marijuana for the masses. Onur and I whipped up some veggies, dip, and a quick pasta stir-fry. Claudia got the conversation ball rolling and directed us through several courses of tea, coffee, and joints. Every time we thought the hour had come for the end, we wound up just boiling more water and rolling more fatties. It was 2:30 before everybody staggered back to town and the three of us were able to clean up and get our guests settled for the night. What is this place?

wild horses

Two new WWOOFers arrived from the town last night. Our host is still gone and had instructed them to walk. Apparently, he gave them terrible directions and they arrived in the dark after asking several people for help.

Sasha and Phoebey are from the States—the San Francisco Bay area—and have just come from what sounds like a WWOOFing paradise. The place is a short walk from town (there is no road access), uses solar power, and seems pretty self-sustaining. The work is scheduled and varied, plentiful. The host has clear expectations and demands. I wonder what they’ll think of this place.

Today, four healthy-looking horses showed up. These creatures wander free here, having no stables or feed schedules to confine them. They’re in much better shape than the two emaciated mares and the one with a large open wound who’ve been here the past two days. Nifty coincidence: one of the new WWOOFers knows how to ride. Onur and Claudia think this is serendipity, a gift from the universe. I think it’s a disaster waiting to happen.

We took some time to corral, feed, and get acquainted with the horses. They were saddled and mounted. And they stood in one place. Well, at least we didn’t have to treat anybody for a fall with no way to the hospital.

the serrania de ronda


This place is unlike any other I’ve ever seen. I’m living on a mountain range tucked away in the South of Spain, a park in the Sierra de Grazalema. On all sides are tall mountains, the tops of which have been shrouded in clouds for the second week of my stay. Even the valleys are dotted with hills and small towns perch on the hillsides. The cortijo itself is pretty isolated, situated along, winding dirt road that passes few houses (most abandoned) on its way to town.


Distances here are misleading. To reach a ridge a stone’s throw away by foot can take a half-hour or more along meandering goat paths, sometimes having to hop a fence or descend into a ravine before climbing back up.

I wish I had better pictures to share, but this place is just too big to fit inot a camera. And mine seems to be dying anyway, having lost its shutter button during the olive harvest in Villamartín, and now displaying a multi-colored blob where the display should be.

Trees cover most of the hills, but even bare places are peppered with oaks and shrubs. Streams cut across sections of the wilderness, often crossing the road leaving shallow arroyos, as there hasn’t been much rain this season.

In addition to the horses, there are a few flocks of sheep that wander their favorite corners of the countryside. I often hear the bells around their necks clanking across the valley from a nearby ridge.

This is the cortijo where I’d been living for most of December. For all its oddities and annoyances, I must say you can’t beat its location. It’s plopped right in one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen.

the funky bunch

Our host returned with four new volunteers, all from the States. They’d been studying in Belgium and were now doing some traveling before going home for the holidays.

The other two Americans, Onur, and Claudia have all gone, leaving me with the youngsters. In a spat of cosmic humor, Sasha told me to “look after the kids.” She is the same age. So there I was, indeed looking after them. I felt like I was spending the weekend with ‘fresh air kids,’ urban youth come into the country to escape the hardness of the city. I’d taught them to build a fire, cook, and bake from scratch. They too, would go soon, leaving me alone with Theo. It was too bad they didn’t teach me how to humor him—they learned to like it here almost overnight.

and then there were two…

For the past three days, it’s been Theo and I, with occasional Marco (Theo’s brother) sightings. I’ve done more sanding than I thought possible. In addition, I’ve run to town a few times with the man, meeting friends, having drinks and tapas, taking out the trash. The truck ricochets down the hill like a dull silver pinball, threatening to roll down the hillside.

Tonight, we roasted a leg of goat. Ok, I roasted the goat’s leg. Theo had a goat slaughtered to share with all of his volunteers and then everybody bailed. Oops. Well, between the two of us, we ate the whole damn leg anyway. It didn’t take as much effort as I thought, first to roast it then to eat it. I merely poked it in several places, shoved in some whole garlic cloves and threw the bastard in the oven. Two hours and a smoky kitchen later (oops, again), we had a tender piece of meat done just right. I hastily boiled some potatoes and sautéed some chard from the garden (Theo thinks I’m a good cook because I taught the four kids), and dinner was served. It was a short night for my host—an early dinner and some brief conversation sent him to his bed and me up the hill to my cold house.

Strange, but I never thought I’d enjoy a wood stove as much as I have the past few nights. Of course, it keeps me warm, but before I would have chosen a different heat source. Growing up, it was more often drudgery than entertainment for my brother and me to spend a weekend gathering wood with my father. And we always touched each log at least twice: first to bring it in from the forest and second when we brought it to the house from the barn (often through snow that we first had to shovel). Then there was the dust—fine layers of ash covered everything all winter. If my mother didn’t do weekly battle with the particulate matter, we would’ve been overcome, Pompeii-style.

Here, however, bringing in firewood presented a challenge—first I had to find it and then bring it in before the sun sank. Do I have enough? Are there enough different sizes to build up the fire? Then came the nightly game of actually getting the thing started, followed by regular feedings through the night. All this to raise the temperature in my little cottage a few degrees. And I’ve loved it!

And that’s where I find myself now, having fulfilled the ritual and taking time to remember these two bizarre weeks and look ahead to the events coming.



horse sense

Living at the Hacienda taught me a little bit about horses, but mostly I learned that they are not the dignified, stately creatures we often believe them to be.

As I walked out to the olive grove on my third day at the Hacienda, I was still naively viewing these creatures with a slightly mystified respect. A white mare was steadily gazing at me as I approached. I wondered what she was thinking of me, so deeply she seemed to be peering into my being. I walked a little farther and noticed that she was merely scratching her behind, quite obviously, on the tree next to her.

While ridding the corrals of manure (a job that can be done with dignity but is never stately), I tried to count the number of times the horses passed gas. I couldn’t do it, that’s how often it happened in the fifteen minutes each corral took.

The occurrence that cinched it all for me, however, was something I couldn’t have expected. And this wasn’t even one of those times that just looked comical because I caught it out of the corner of my eye. This event was actual and I swear the equine perpetrator laughed. Several horses are stabled in stalls that stand next to each other and are separated by fences between the runs on the outside. As a stallion unsuspectingly stood outside watching us walk past, the one next door craned his neck over the fence and totally goosed his neighbor! I truly believe the gooser was neighing with impish glee afterward.