We spent the first 2 days and nights in Mallorca hiking the 'Ruta de Pedra en Sec'. Eicher, Rick, Kyle and I stayed in refugios -- bunk bed hostels that cost 11 Euros a night where you are surrounded by people in expensive hiking gear and screaming children. But they were both in amazing locations; the first one up high in the mountains but overlooking everything as it slides down and spreads to the ocean below. The second refugio sat next to a lighthouse on a cliff, a kind of daunting edifice when you gaze at it from Puerto Soller. The hiking was the best part -- we went 18 miles the second day (probably half downhill on stone stairs). We went around dams and did night hiking above the clouds. Aqueduct and terraces everywhere, weird ahistorical evidences that seemed to exist forever, demanding constant inhuman amounts of work. Almost every single path that we walked on was a part of a terrace, and I could not get one question out of my mind -- why are these here and where are the people that built them?
Everything exists in strange groups in this island. We walked through the middle of a race, hundreds of spandexed and highsocked people running and drudging and dragging through the entire 180 kilometers of the trail in 24 hours. In 1 hour we passed maybe 50 oil painters, all sitting with matching easels and brushes, everyone trying to mimic the impossible patterns of stone. At the end of the hike, we made it to the beach. We drank boxed wine with lemon soda; ate bread, tomatoes, anchovies and oranges; played paddleball and juggled; and created Burmese Tiger Traps in the sand. My word for this trip would be recharging. In the exhaustion and openess of the mountains you empty yourself and make it easier to stretch and grow.
No comments:
Post a Comment