These three villages all lay on the road between Málaga and Cádiz, and make for very easy and pleasant stops along the drive.
Ronda
Of all of the beautiful villages in the south of Spain, Ronda may be the most famous. This is due to its dramatic location—perched high over the edge of a cliff.
Improbably, the two sides of this small town are separated by a massive gulf. For centuries, they were only connected by a relatively small bridge, built at a point where the height and width of the chasm are manageable, but far from the town center. It was only in 1793, after forty-two years of construction, that the massive “New Bridge” was completed, which spans the canyon at its tallest point. This was a major engineering challenge. A previous bridge, built in 1735, had collapsed just six years later, killing fifty people in the process. When the New Bridge was finished, it was the tallest in the world (98 meters, or 322 feet). Even for somebody used to skyscrapers, its dimensions are stupefying to behold in person.
More importantly, the bridge is beautiful. Made of the same rock as the surroundings, it seems to emerge from the landscape, as ancient as the cliffs themselves. The Guadalevín River flowing underneath it seems almost pathetic in comparison to so much towering rock—but, of course, it was the action of this patient little stream which cut this chasm in the first place.
My brother and I took the path down into the gully. The way down is relatively easy, the afternoon sun notwithstanding, and recommended if you want to get a real sense of the size of the bridge. I was disappointed to find that the path leading under the bridge and into the canyon had been closed off. On my previous visit, this was not the case. Once we had gone all the way back up to town, we were thirsty, sunburned, and exhausted, and decided to continue our drive towards Cádiz.
Jay, with mustache and bridge.
Me, with beard and bridge.
But Ronda has more to offer besides its iconic bridge. For one, the oldest bullring in Spain is in the city, and you can visit even if you do not want to see any animals slaughtered. There are ruins dating back to the town’s Muslim past, and lovely views of the surrounding landscape. Even without all of this, the town itself is a charming example of a whitewashed pueblo. No wonder that Orson Walles, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Ernest Hemingway were so fond of the place. Indeed, Hemingway set a major scene in his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls in Ronda; and though he embellished, it is actually true that prisoners were thrown into the canyon during the Civil War.
On that grim note, let us turn our attention to the next pueblo.
Arcos de la Frontera
We visited Arcos de la Frontera on our return journey to Málaga, when we did not have very much time to stay. Even so, it was a memorable visit.
The beginning was harrowing. My brother had innocently set the GPS to take us straight to the center of the village. However, this quickly appeared to be a bad idea as the road narrowed, twisted, and turned, leading us in a crazy labyrinthine path that was constantly diverted due to construction. Convinced I was either going to hit a pedestrian or scrape the side of a building, I was in a panic as we tried to navigate the tiny medieval streets. Finally, with some relief, I saw a sign informing us that only local cars were permitted to park in the center. We escaped the maze and parked the car in a grassy lot right on the edge of town.
The arches of Arcos.
A monument with figures dressed in Holy Week garb.
The walk up was considerably more pleasant than the drive had been. The center of Arcos de la Frontera is impossible, located as it is at the top of a large hill. In just a few minutes we had arrived at the church that crowns the entire village, the Basílica de Santa María de la Asunción. As commonly happens in Spain, this church seems unnecessarily large and ornate for a village of some 30,000 people. The façade is ornately decorated, culminating in an elegant neoclassical tower. Unusually, the building’s massive buttresses extend over the adjacent street. The inside is just as elaborate as the exterior, with several fine altars and beautiful vaulted ceilings.
The plaza in front of the basilica is taken up, rather prosaically, by a parking lot. Next door is the local “parador,” which is the term for a historical building which has been converted into a state-run hotel (normally on the pricier side). Across the square is the town hall and, right behind it, the castle, at the highest point of the city. This castle is not open for visits; but the lookout point at the end of the parking lot is fully satisfying. As in Ronda, you are treated to a wonderful view of the Andalusian landscape—fields of crops, rolling hills, and not a modern building in sight.
As we had to drop the car off and catch our train back to Madrid, our time was limited. I can say with confidence, however, that Arcos de la Frontera is worth a much longer stay.
Zahara de la Sierra
Our next visit was the briefest of all. Indeed, we had not even planned on stopping to see any more pueblos. But the sight of Zahara de la Sierra—perched, like so many Spanish villages, on a rocky hill, presiding over a sapphire-blue reservoir—convinced us to at least stop for lunch.
A rather touching sign, made by a child during the lockdown.
This little town (population just shy of 1,400) is known for its meat stews, and that is what we ordered. Indeed, we had time to do little else. But I think any visitor who is not in a rush ought to climb to the top of the ridge and see the old castle, which still stands guard over the village. And it would not be a Spanish village without a beautiful and historical church—in this case, Santa María de la Mesa, a rather joyful-looking Baroque temple.
Unfortunately for us, we only had time to glance at the main attractions before we got back in the car and kept driving. Yet the drive itself—on the rural highways which connect Jerez de la Frontera with Málaga—was extremely lovely, and a wonderful way to close our long trip to Andalucía.
The view during our drive.
Taken together, this was a special trip in many ways. For one, it was an amazing relief to travel after being trapped in our tiny Madrid apartment for months. And this was probably one of the few times in recent decades that such iconic sites such as the Alhambra, the caves of Nerja, and the beaches of Cádiz could be visited with hardly any crowds. This was also the last trip I took with my brother in Spain, before his return to the United States to study law. As such, it was a little sad—but only just a little, since we really had a wonderful time.
After our stays in Granada and Málaga, our next base of operations was Jerez de la Frontera.
If you know some Spanish, you may recognize that this name translates literally into “Sherry of the Border.” But this has an explanation. For one, sherry wine is named after Jerez, not vice versa; the original name “Jerez” goes all the way back to Phoenician times. And the place is referred to as occupying a “border” because, during the middle ages, this town was on the border between Christian- and Muslim-controled areas.
After dropping off our things, the first thing we did was to visit the city’s Alcázar. Now, there are “alcázars” all over the country. The name—like most Spanish words beginning with “al”—comes from Arabic, in this case from al-Qasr, meaning a castle or a fortress. This one was built in the 11th century, when Jerez was part of a small Muslim kingdom. The conquering Christians added to the fortress. Even so, the fortress—with its horseshoe arches and baths with star-shaped vents—is an excellent example of Moorish architecture. And the walls provide an excellent view over the city.
An ant in the alcázar
Next we visited the city’s cathedral. This is quite a grand building. But if you are used to the scale of European cathedrals, it may strike you as on the smaller side. This is because it was not originally built as a cathedral, but as a collegiate church which was later “promoted” to the status of cathedral in 1980. In any case, it is a lovely building with gothic flying buttresses and baroque decorations on its façade. Even lovelier might be the Church of San Miguel. If memory serves, the opening hours of this church are rather limited (and they aren’t posted online). But if you manage to get in, you will be rewarded with striking gothic vaults and richly-carved altarpieces.
A detail of the cathedral.
Jay navigating a staircast in the cathedral.
A detail from an altarpiece in the Church of San Miguel.
Another detail.
But the highlight of Jerez is not, in my opinion, any monument. Rather, it is the wine. We happened to arrive on a Sunday and most of the major wineries were closed. But after calling several in a row (getting through to a janitor in one of them), I finally reached a man who seemed rather surprised on the phone. He said he had a totally flexible schedule and that we could come any time we liked. Like an ignorant American, I suggested five o’clock, but he quickly told me that it would be too hot then, and that seven would be far better.
We arrived punctually at Bodegas Faustino González. An older man with white hair was waiting for us. He introduced himself as Jaime, and led us inside. It quickly became apparent that this tour was just for the two of us. And it was also quickly apparent that we had inadvertently chosen a beautiful bodega. (In Spain, a “bodega” is a winery, not a corner store.) In a simple white warehouse there were long rows of barrels, stacked three barrels high. Jaime explained that this is the standard way of aging sherry. The bottom barrel is known as the “solera,” from the word for floor (“suelo”). This is the basis for the wine, as the solera is never entirely emptied. Thus, it preserves the distinct character of any particular winery. Then the sherry is moved up to the next barrel, a “criadera” (literally a “breeding ground”), and finally to the last one. This process takes at least two years, often far longer.
(The barrels, by the way, are made of American oak. Once they are too old for sherry, they can be sold to Scottish Whiskey makers, where they continue to age fine spirits.)
Jaime took a device known as a “venencia”(basically, a cup on the end of a stick), stuck it into a barrel, and let us taste the fresh wine. It was fresh and quite tart. He explained that dry sherry is normally made with palomino grapes, which are white. There are several varieties of the wine, which can be divided into two main groups: manzanilla and fino (white, clear, plain), and amontillado, palo cortado, and oloroso. These latter three kinds are oxidized during the aging process, giving them a dark, rusty color and a far more aromatic flavor. (For my money, oloroso is consistently the best.)
The venencia in action.
Many exported sherries are basically sold as cooking wine, and taste like finos with added sugar. But if you really want to taste a sweet sherry, you’ve got to try Pedro Ximenez. This wine is made from the grapes of the same name, which are left to dry into raisins before they are turned into wine. This makes the final product almost black in color and incredibly sweet. The flavor is intense—almost too intense to drink, like maple syrup. In fact, I used the bottle I bought from the winery to pour over vanilla ice cream, and found it to be extravagantly delicious.
As you can probably tell, my brother and I were delighted by the visit. We emerged, about two hours later, very satisfied and quite drunk (we had been given about six glasses of sherry), and wandered off to find something for dinner. I have subsequently bought sherry from Jaime and can attest to its excellent quality.
During our time in Jerez, we managed to visit another winery: González Byass. Its name comes from its founder, Manuel María González, and his English agent, Robert Blake Byass. (There is a charming statue of Manuel near the cathedral.) This is possibly the biggest and certainly the most famous producer of sherry. The iconic Tío Pepe fino sherry—whose mascot is a bottle dressed in a red sombrero and jacket, holding a guitar—is from this company. Any visitor to the Puerta del Sol, in Madrid, will recognize it: an advertisement which has been elevated to a symbol of Spain. (An even more famous symbol of Spain, the Osborne Bull, also originated as an advertisement—for sherry brandy.)
The tour lasted about an hour and was with a group of about twenty people. I imagine that it is more difficult to secure a spot on a tour during normal times. Right after the lockdown, we were given a spot on the very next group. Compared to Faustino González—an artisanal producer, with a single warehouse—this winery was enormous. It is also, obviously, famous. There were bottles dedicated to heads of state and signed by celebrities (notably, Orson Wells). Indeed, according to our guide, the most attractive of the warehouses, La Concha, was designed by none other than Gustave Eiffel, on the occasion of a queen’s visit. (It appears, after looking it up, that this is not really true. Though commonly attributed to Eiffel, “La Concha” was designed by an English firm.)
La Concha
Finally we were ushered into a posh bar for a tasting. Though I can hardly be called an expert in this ancient art, the difference between the handcrafted sherry of the previous visit and this industrially-produced wine was immediately apparent. The sherry from González Byass tasted simple and even bland by comparison. In fairness, the GB products are significantly cheaper and easier to find. And I certainly would not turn down a glass of their oloroso.
The dark one on the right is Pedro Ximénez. The rust-colored one further down is Oloroso. One of the two clear ones is a dry fino, and the other is a sweet one.
Cádiz
Jerez de la Frontera is a delightful city by itself. But one of its best qualities is its close proximity with Cádiz. Indeed, aside from Venice, I would rank Cádiz as the prettiest city in Europe. And unlike that Italian icon, Cádiz is a place where people actually live.
Cádiz is located on a small peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic ocean. It is an extremely old place, inhabited since at least the 7th century BC. Arriving from Jerez is a breeze: the local train takes you right there in about 45 minutes—treating you to some arresting views of the landscape and the ocean along the way.
The first thing any visitor to Cádiz ought to do is to simply walk around. The buildings form a coherent color palette: made of tan stone or painted pastel colors. The inner streets are narrow and winding, like those of any city with a long pedigree. But go too far in any direction and you emerge onto the open sea. Even on a hot day, the breeze makes it tolerably cool, and if it is sunny the ocean shines a kind of delirious turquoise. (You can probably gather that I am fond of Cádiz.)
One of the most attractive parts of the city are the Gardens of Alameda Apodaca, which is located alongside the water on the Northern side of the peninsula. It is a kind of garden walkway, with flowers hanging from trellises. At the end of this garden you reach two strange and enormous trees. These are Australian Banyans, which have special supporting structures known as “buttress roots,” which spread over the ground to support the enormous canopy. An equally lovely park is the Parque Genovés, which is full to the brim with exotic plants, such as a Drago tree (from the Canary Islands), a Metrosideros (from New Zealand), and a Norfolk Island Pine (from Australia).
As you can perhaps tell from these exotic trees, Cádiz is (or was) well connected with foreign lands. Indeed, the city owes its wealth to being the primary port of trade between Spain and her American colonies for several centuries. Of course, this source of revenue abruptly ended when Spain lost her empire in the 19th century, which is one reason the city is still so quaintly beautiful. If that had not happened, then doubtless Cádiz would be full of modern glassy skyscrapers.
After a stroll around, my brother and I were in the mood for lunch. For the hungry or the morbidly curious, the Mercado Central is worth a visit. On the inside you can see an enormous collection of freshly-caught seafood, still covered in ocean brine. There are piles of squids and shrimp, and tuna as heavy as a person. If this whets your appetite, you can get something to eat in any of the dozens of food stalls running along the outside. I would certainly recommend sampling the seafood. Local specialties include tortillitas de camarones (shrimp fritters) and cazón en adobo (marinated dogfish)—both quite tasty, in my opinion.
After our meal, we visited the Cádiz Museum. Normally, this institution has exhibits which range from prehistory to the 20th century. But when we visited, it was under renovation, and the upper floors were closed. This was fine with me, however, as the section on ancient history was still open, and this is what I especially wanted to see.
As I mentioned before, Cádiz has a very long history, and the museum has artifacts dating from well before the era of Socrates and Confucius. But the two most famous artifacts are two Phoenician sarcophagi, carved in the form of a man and a woman, made some time around the year 400 BC. The male sarcophagus was discovered all the way back in 1887, with a well-preserved skeleton still inside. The corresponding female was found almost an entire century later—coincidentally just outside the former home of a museum director—during a routine construction job. The two tombs are quite lovely works of art, showing possible Greek influences but still unlike any Greek statue I have ever seen.
Perhaps the best way to get a tour of Cádiz is to visit the Torre Tavira. This is a former lookout tower, now the second-tallest structure in the city (after the cathedral). The views from the top are worth the fee to go up. But your visit also includes a kind of remote tour using a camera obscura, reflecting light from outside onto a large dish, while a guide points out all of the major landmarks in the city. It is certainly a touristy experience, but one I do not hesitate to recommend.
(The cathedral, I should mention, is also certainly worth a visit. Unfortunately, it had yet to reopen after the lockdown when my brother and I visited.)
The next site I want to mention did not figure on our itinerary. But as I visited two years later, with Rebe, I think it worth including here for the sake of information. This is the Gadir Archaeological Site. Gadir is the original, Phoenician name for the city, and this site takes you directly into the ancient past. As fate would have it, the site is located under a puppet theater. Visits are conducted by guided tour only, which means you must reserve at least a little bit in advance. During my visit, the tour was conducted by one of the archaeologists who actually did work on the site, which made for an especially interesting experience. The ruins are not visually impressive (consisting of the outlines of buildings and streets), but the information revealed about ancient lifeways was fascinating.
But of course, I cannot end a post about Cádiz without mentioning the beach. There is an extremely long beach—Playa de la Cortadura—running along the road that connects Cádiz with the mainland. Far more beautiful and iconic, however, is La Caleta, which is at the very end of the peninsula. My brother and I spent two evenings lounging under the shade of an old spa and taking dips in the ocean, from which I can conclude that it is a thoroughly lovely spot. (This spa building, by the way, is itself an icon of Cádiz. It was built in 1926 with long, sweeping arms suspended over the sand. The spa went out of business, however, and nowadays it is the headquarters of the Underwater Archaeology Center.)
The white structure is the former Balneario de Nuestra Señora de la Palma y del Real (a spa).
Under the spa, looking a little ragged.
La Caleta is made especially picturesque by being flanked by two castles. On the right is the Castle of Santa Catalina, built around the year 1600. There is a small exhibition center inside and a good view of the beach. (I also think there is a hotel somewhere in the castle.) On the left side is the Castle of San Sebastián, which is located on a small island off shore, and connected by a thin walkway to the beach. It is possible that a Greek temple occupied this spot millennia ago, but the castle was built around the year 1700. The last two times I visited Cádiz the castle was closed, though the very first time I went I could go inside (and there was not much to see). In any case, the walkway is attractive enough to merit a visit.
That does it for our trip to Jerez and Cádiz. As great as were Granada, Málaga, and the little towns we visited, these two cities were easily the highlights of the trip. There is little that can compete with a cold glass of exquisite sherry followed by a swim.
We arrived in Málaga in the late afternoon, reversing the hour and a half drive to Granada we had just done the day before. Compared with that interior city, the climate of Málaga felt cool and humid—no doubt, thanks to the Mediterranean.
The City of Málaga
Málaga is among the largest and most important cities in Spain. Populated since Phoenician times, it is also among the oldest. Even so, for me the city has a curiously un-Spanish atmosphere. This is due, I think, to the huge numbers of immigrants—from England and Germany, mainly—who live in and near the urban center, as well as the many tourists who stop through on cruises.
Yet this is not to say that the city is not a nice place to visit. Case in point: As soon as we arrived, we walked into the city center and ascended Gibralfaro Hill. This is a somewhat arduous trek, going up ramp after ramp, but you are rewarded with some truly terrific views.
The best vistas are to be found from the walls of Gibralfaro Castle, a fortification that dates back to the city’s Moorish past. Indeed, the history of the castle actually extends much farther back; a natural point of defense, a fortress of some sort has been here for over two thousand years. This castle is connected to a fortress lower-down the hill, the Alcazaba, which was another holdout against Christian conquest. The Catholic Monarchs starved out the defenders in a prolonged siege, which ended in 1487. One can easily see why it took the Christians so long: fortified with double walls, and in a perfectly defensible position, it is a formidable redoubt.
Another worthy historical site is Málaga’s cathedral. Though the building was not finished until 1782 (and arguably not even then, as one tower remains conspicuously incomplete) the church is made in a Renaissance style. Like any worthy cathedral, the place is filled with works of art, some of them quite wonderful. The wooden choir stalls are beautifully carved, there is a lovely neoclassical altarpiece, and hanging on one wall is a monumental painting by Enrique Simonet depicting the beheading of St. Paul.
But I suspect that most visitors to Málaga don’t come for the historical sites. Rather, they come for the seemingly endless beaches and its endlessly sunny weather. Dotting the shore are a certain type of restaurant called chiringuitos, which are distinguished by the large wooden fire outside, often made atop an old boat that has been filled with sand for the purpose. These are not just decoration: fish are skewered and fire-roasted for the guests.
And this sort of place is very popular among the locals, as my brother and I discovered when we tried to have lunch in Litoral Pacífico without a reservation. There was not a single spare table. Defeated, we drove to Chiringuito Mari Guitiérrez, another well-rated place a little outside of the city center, and did manage to get a table. There, we ordered the most famous regional dish, espetos de sardinas. These are little sardines which have been cooked over the fire.
Being novices in the world of fish and seafood, we were unsure of the correct procedure for this particular fish. Impatient, I decided to eat one whole—tasty, but also a bit crunchy and slimy. My brother, Jay, more observant, saw that the locals ate the fish like corn on the cob, picking the meat off and leaving the spine. I tried another fish that way, and found it considerably better. To round out the order, we have boquerones fritos, which are basically sardines which have been breaded and fried. (You do eat those whole.) It was a very fishy meal.
But the best part of eating at a chiringuito is, undoubtedly, the fact that you can lounge on the beach and go swimming right after you finish. And that is just what we did.
At this point, I would like to make a general observation about Spanish food. Virtually every region—sometimes every city—has its own culinary specialty that the locals are very proud of. Nevertheless, once you try a few of these famous local dishes, you realize that these are mostly just variations on a basic theme. For example, in Málaga we were advised to have “pitufos,” which we discovered was just a sort of toast with crushed tomato—a dish consumed all over the country—but with a slightly different type of bread. We were also advised to get gambas pil pil. But when the dish was served, we found that it was identical to the commonly served gambas al ajillo (shrimp with garlic in olive oil), except for the addition of a few red pepper flakes.
If I sound like I am complaining, I can assure you I’m not, since all of these dishes and variations are delicious.
There is a lot to see and do in the city of Málaga. But as we spent much of our time visiting nearby towns, we unfortunately did not see many of the city’s attractions.
We did manage to make it to the Automobile and Fashion museum. It is a rather long walk from the city center, but accessible with the urban buses. When we arrived, we were greeted by about a dozen young people wearing strange clothes, who were arranged in the walkway in front of the building—apparently, models in training.
As a person who has virtually no knowledge of, or interest in, fashion, I really cannot say anything about the fashion side of this museum. But as somebody who knows nothing about, but can at least appreciate a cool-looking car, I can give the automobiles my blessings. The collection of odd and historic cars is quite impressive. There are examples of some of the first commercially available automobiles; enormous luxury cars with plush interiors; sleek sports cars; and some novelty vehicles, such as a car with a propeller or one designed to run on solar power. Though there were little informational plaques about the vehicles, it was more pleasant just to wander from specimen to specimen, to witness how something as familiar as a car can take so many different forms.
Mariposario and Mijas
On one of our days in Málaga we got into the rental car and made our way to the Mariposario de Benalmadéna, a butterfly sanctuary a short drive from the city.
When we parked the car, however, we could not help but notice the very large and odd structure nearby. This is the Stupa of Enlightenment, a 33 meter (108 ft) tall Buddhist shrine that has a commanding view over the landscape. According to the website, this stupa is the largest “in the Western world.” As far as I can tell, this is actually true—the only competition coming from the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya, in Colorado, which is about the same height—though it is not, for my money, among the most beautiful examples of the genre. To enlighten you a little further, I will add that this stupa was completed in 2003 and consecrated by a high-ranking Tibetan lama.
Visible from the base of the Stupa is another odd monument, the Castillo de Colomares. This is the brainchild of one Esteban Martín, a doctor by profession, who decided to design and build a huge monument to Christopher Colombus. And while that explorer is no longer in such high repute, one must admit that this eccentric homemade castle is rather impressive. For some reason, this castle is the site of the smallest church in the world, with a total area just shy of 2 square meters (just over 21 square feet).
These silly buildings are interesting enough. But I think the real star of this area is the butterfly sanctuary. After paying the entry fee, you walk through heavy plastic flaps, and enter a tropical world—hot, humid, and full of exotic plants. Signs warn you to be careful where you step, so as not to accidentally crush any of the inhabitants. The air is teeming with life. Bright wings are continuously flapping all around you. The butterflies range in size from a postage stamp to a paperback book, and come in every color and pattern imaginable, some with long, slender wings, others with wings like flower petals.
To be honest, I had never taken much time to appreciate butterflies before this visit. But spending time with these harmless, dainty creatures was almost therapeutic. And butterflies weren’t the only animals on display: the sanctuary also had tortoises, exotic birds, and a wallaby.
After that, we went to the town of Mijas, which is right next door. This is a typical whitewashed Andalusian village, with excellent views of the Costa del Sol. We did our best to explore the village and to enjoy the vistas, but the tremendous afternoon heat was not conducive to calm enjoyment. So, after a short walk, we found a restaurant with air conditioning and chugged down a few glasses of water with our meal. Then, it was back to Málaga.
Nerja
Arguably the best day trip from Málaga is the small town of Nerja. We had our rental car, but I know from a previous visit that it is fairly easy to get to by bus.
On the day we visited, we headed immediately to the caves. These are located in the outskirts of the city—admittedly a fairly long walk if you arrived on the bus, but still doable. They are certainly worth the trouble of visiting. They are magnificent. After making your way through a few smaller chambers, you emerge into a series of caverns, each one bigger than the last. Elevated walkways make the visit quite easy to navigate, despite the slippery surfaces and dim light. The rock formations are wonderful—undulating, folding, melting, seeming almost alive.
It seems that earlier—much earlier—humans also found the place captivating, as the cave was used over thousands of years. There are cave paintings (in an area inaccessible to the visitor) made by prehistoric hunter-gatherers, as well as the remains of domestic animals, textiles, and pottery from later agricultural humans. Apparently, the cave was still used by locals up until the Middle Ages, but at some point knowledge of the cave was lost. It was rediscovered by a group of 5 locals in 1959 who, for whatever reason, decided to go catch some bats. For any visitors curious to learn more, I recommend the Cave Museum, located in the center of Nerja.
The skeleton found in the caves.
The cave thoroughly explored, we made our way into town, passing on our way the Acueducto del Águila, an enormous aqueduct made in the ancient Roman style, but constructed in the 19th century. We parked the car and had lunch in a restaurant called Dolares El Chispa. I imagine that it is a pretty crowded spot in normal times. Traveling in the wake of a global emergency, however, we almost had the place to ourselves, and enjoyed a feast of fish and seafood. Spanish cuisine at its finest.
Any visitor to Nerja will soon end up in the Balcony of Europe, an imposing viewpoint over the surrounding coastline. The name of this jutting cliff was given by the much-beloved king, Alfonso XII, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 27, but who still presides over his balcony in the form of a metal statue. Nearby are the town’s gorgeous beaches. Unfortunately, we had neglected to bring our swimsuits.
Me and the king.
On the way back to Málaga we stopped, briefly, at another beautiful village: Frigiliana. This is another very popular day trip from the city, and it is easy to see why. Frigiliana is a classic whitewashed Andalusian village, nestled on a mountain ridge. We arrived at the hottest part of the day, however, and only withstood about 10 minutes of walking around under the afternoon sun before we returned to the car. So I will leave this part to be filled in by you, dear reader.
It was the summer of that fateful year, 2020. In Spain, the major restrictions had just been lifted. Indeed, in retrospect this summer was the eye of the storm, as the first wave of infection had just receded, falling to very low levels; and public health officials were still unsure whether further measures would be necessary—and, if so, which.
My brother and I had weathered the pandemic in our tiny apartment in Madrid. He had been accepted into law school back home, so his time in Spain was coming to an end—time which had recently been spent doing pushups in his room and watching movies on his laptop. Now it was finally our chance to get out and have one last trip through the country.
Our plan was, as usual, rather convoluted. We took the high-speed (AVE) train down to Málaga, and then went to the airport to rent a car. Finally, we drove an hour and a half to Granada, listening to an audiobook about the Morgan banking dynasty along the way (random, I know).
We arrived in the middle of a typically hot summer day. It was around 38 degrees Celsius (100 Fahrenheit) and the streets were totally deserted. But like two dumb tourists, we decided to walk into the city. The whitewashed walls of the buildings seemed to reflect the sunlight into our faces. On the side of one building somebody had spray painted: Welcome to nueva normalidad (the new normal). And the city did have a post-apocalyptic feel, if only because nobody seemed to be living in it. The shops were closed; the windows and doors all shut; and a few lonely drinkers hid inside the bars.
We experienced some relief when we entered the Granada Cathedral. The cavern-like interior was reasonably cool. As you may know, Granada was the last stronghold of Muslim Spain to fall to the Catholic Monarchs (Isabel and Ferdinand), finally conquered in that other fateful year, 1492. This cathedral is, then, something of a triumphalist monument, having been built over the remains of the mosque that once occupied this spot. To add insult to injury, the Catholic Monarchs are themselves portrayed as figures on either side of the main altarpiece (a device later used by Ferdinand II in El Escorial), piously thanking God for their victory.
The cathedral of Granada
One can sense the symbolic importance Granada had to these two epochal figures, as they are buried right next door, in the Royal Chapel. Curiously, although the cathedral is built in a clean, elegant Renaissance style, this chapel—though constructed just a few decades earlier—is wholly gothic in style, bristling with spires and points. Photos are not permitted inside, but the main attraction is the beautifully carved tomb of the king and queen, carved by the Italian Domenico Fancelli.
Right next to these are the even grander tombs of Juana la loca (the mad)—daughter of the Catholic Monarchs—and her husband, the very short-lived Felipe el hermoso (the handsome). This unfortunate Philip, who died at the age of 28, actually was the king of Spain for a few months in 1506, but died in Burgos under mysterious circumstances. It is unknown whether, or to what extent, his widow Juana really was mentally ill, as the men in her life (her husband, father, and then her son) all had much to gain by having her declared unfit to rule and confined.
Next, we visited the Monastery of San Jerónimo, which was built at around the same time as the cathedral and the chapel, also at the behest of Isabel and Ferdinand. Like the cathedral, the monastery was constructed in the Renaissance style, which had just arrived in the country. By far the outstanding part of the visit was the main altarpiece, which is both enormous and enormously detailed. But I also enjoyed the statue of the maniacally smiling nun.
The church of the Monasterio de San Jerónimo
A detail of the ceiling above the main altar.
My brother emerged from the lockdown a little more put together than I did.
I am narrating these visits as if we were coherent. In truth, by this point we were sleep-deprived, hungry, dehydrated, and just worn out from the train ride, the drive, and from walking around the hot city. So, after a quick bite to eat, we decided to walk back to the Airbnb for a break. By now it was late afternoon, the hottest part of the day. Our path took us up one of the many hills in the city as the sun blazed down from above. The streets were still completely deserted. The only people stupid enough to be marching through the evening heat were the two American tourists. And we were regretting it. (If you think Spaniards are lazy because of the siesta, try staying active in the middle of an Andalusian summer day. There is a reason that certain customs develop.)
After what seemed an eternity, we arrived at the Airbnb and collapsed into the bed, falling asleep immediately.
We awoke two hours later into a different world. The sun was about to set (which means that it was around nine at night) and the city had come alive then. Every bar and restaurant was full, the plazas and sidewalks were bustling. And it was easy to see why: the temperature had dropped from hellish to perfectly pleasant.
Granada is really a city for the birds.
We had a quick dinner and then made our way to the famous Mirador de San Nicolás, a viewpoint on the top of a hill, directly opposite the Alhambra. As usual, it was swarming with people, though for a change they were mostly Spaniards (if memory serves, the country had not yet opened up to foreign tourists after the lockdown). We had a drink, listened to the locals playing flamenco, and looked across to that famous palace—emblem of Moorish Spain—which was the next item on our itinerary.
Even in the wake of the apocalypse, it is still wise to book your visit to the Alhambra in advance. We had our tickets to go bright and early. Now, I have already written a very long post about the Alhambra, its architecture, and its history, so I will not rehash that here.
I will only say that if you ever have a chance to visit this iconic site in the wake of a global pandemic, take it. The Alhambra is normally packed with people, which necessarily detracts from the experience—since it is hard to appreciate the mathematical elegance of its designs while elbowing fellow tourists. This time, there were perhaps a quarter of the usual number of visitors. It was incomparably better.
The famous lion fountain.
Contrast between Moorish and Christian decoration.
The Generalife
Washington Irving and me—two children of the Hudson.
Jay with mustache and Granada.
With our visit to the Alhambra completed, our short time in Granada was up. We ate a quick meal and then drove back to Málaga for the next stage of our journey.
This book is an excellent example of a text that is interesting as a historical document, but not as literature. To put the matter more bluntly, The Lotus Sutra has much to teach but is not very fun to read.
Having recently finished The Platform Sutra, I was struck by how different these two Buddhist scriptures are. The former is dense with doctrine and often quite deeply philosophical, whereas this text is full of revelations, miracle stories, and parables. And whereas The Platform Sutra accords pretty well with the Western conception of Buddhism as a secular, humanistic philosophy, The Lotus Sutra is frankly and powerfully religious.
This is not a world of quietly meditating monks, but of divine beings, hungry ghosts, endless eons of time, and extravagant promises of salvation. Indeed, the many layers of heaven and hell—the rewards and punishments doled out by Karma—reminded me very much of Dante’s cosmos (though here, neither state is permanent). Believers are promised to enjoy excellent senses of hearing and smell in their next lives, as well as good health and handsome noses; whereas nonbelievers will have crooked noses, bad skin, and halitosis. In short, no New York City atheist could really get behind the message of The Lotus Sutra.
One of the book’s most curious features is its meta-commentary. It is a story of itself—ceaselessly telling us how many sentient beings were saved by hearing its message. And yet, the book does not appear to have much of a message other than to inform us that it is very important. But I do think that The Lotus Sutra contains at least a few important doctrinal innovations.
Quite significant, for example, is the idea of “skillful means.” This is the notion that a Buddhist teacher may use any strategy to enlighten his pupils, even if that involves telling a lie. Closely related to this is the idea of the “one vehicle,” which holds that every strategy—meditating, memorizing sutras, repeating mantras, donating to monasteries, preaching sermons—are all merely aspects of one great effort to enlighten the world. This may sound harmless enough, but the implication is that the previous preachings of the Buddha were merely a half-truth, tailored to the low capacities of his first followers.
For example, the original doctrine held that the Buddha died and achieved enlightenment; that he was the first discoverer of the way; that there is only one Buddha; and that the path to enlightenment is to be attained only by those who diligently follow the path the Buddha laid for them. But The Lotus Sutra informs us that the Buddha never died; that there have been innumerable Buddhas; and that virtually everyone can become enlightened.
In other words, this sutra turns Buddhism into a kind of universalist religion, wherein merely repeating one line of a sutra or thinking one pious thought is enough to guarantee ultimate salvation. It reminds me very much of the transformation of the original Christian message (love your neighbor, abhor wealth, forgive your enemies) into the medieval Catholic church, wherein absolution could be bought and sins confessed away. In this case, Siddhartha Gautama’s demanding eightfold path is turned into an all-embracing highway, wherein anyone can drive straight to Buddhahood with a bit of goodwill.
This new, welcoming doctrine is not exactly so keen on women, however. The perfect future state of universal enlightenment is pictured as a world without women. And the one woman in the text who achieves Buddhahood—the daughter of the dragon king, Longnü—turns into a man the instant she does so. To be fair, Buddhism is hardly the only major religion with a misogynist streak; and I supposed it may have even been “enlightened” at the time to allow the possibility that a woman may transform into a man.
Thus, despite the text being rather repetitive and mystical, I would recommend it to anyone hoping to learn more about Buddhism. If you like it, you may have secured your future Buddhahood—though, I fear I may have attracted some grave karmic consequences with my review. If you meet a snake with very bad breath in the future, you know what happened.
I must begin this review with a kind of repentance. Many years ago, I made my way through The Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English. I figured myself rather clever and linguistically capable enough to handle the language. Indeed, I even felt no pangs about reading the book before bedtime, fighting through the morass of unusual spellings and unfamiliar words while I was at my drowsiest. Needless to say, I did not have an easy time of it. And this difficulty colored rather unfairly my opinion of Chaucer.
This time around, I opted for a modern “translation”—two, in fact: the first, a print version by Nevill Coghill; the second, an audio version by Gerald J. Davis.* Immediately the error of my first impression was apparent. When the obscurity of Chaucer’s English was stripped away, I encountered a thoroughly enjoyable and wholly interesting book.
Admittedly, the circumstances of my reading were also more propitious. I read The Canterbury Tales this time around while I was, myself, on a pilgrimage—spending a few days on the Camino de Santiago, in the north of Spain. Chaucer made for quite an excellent companion—more entertaining, in fact, than the real pilgrims I encountered. (The conceit of the book struck me as especially fanciful by comparison with my experience. Virtually all conversation between the real-life pilgrims consisted of the most predictable small-talk—where are you from, how many kilometers, what’s your job, etc. Certainly I was no better as a conversationalist.)
I was first struck by Chaucer’s obvious debt to Boccaccio. The basic device is the same: a group of people are stuck together, and must tell stories to pass the time. More than that, several of the stories in this book are taken directly from Boccaccio (who is not credited, though I think that was common practice at the time). However, the differences are important as well, and highlight Chaucer’s strengths. Most obvious is that Chaucer was not just a storyteller, but a poet, and his tales are written in brilliant verse. More important, however, are the characters Chaucer employs to tell his stories. While Boccaccio’s storytellers are all genteel aristocrats, Chaucer’s raconteurs come from all levels of society, the poor and the rich, the lowborn and the noble, the profane and the holy.
In these two great gifts—his poetic suppleness and his all-embracing social vision—Chaucer is a direct forerunner of Shakespeare. But the similarity does not stop there. While Chaucer’s characterizations, like Boccaccio’s, are often fairly superficial, at times he achieves depths worthy of the bard himself. This is most obvious in the acknowledged high point of the poem, the Wife of Bath’s Prologue. Here, it is clear that Chaucer realized he had achieved something of a breakthrough, since he allowed the prologue to run longer than any other—longer, even, than the story that follows. And like any of Shakespeare’s great characters involved in a soliloquy, the Wife of Bath comes wholly alive in a way that, as far as I know, was unprecedented for the time.
The content of the stories is varied, but some major themes stand out for comment. The most striking, I think, is that of women and wives. Chaucer presents several disparate views on the matter. One story, for example, advocates that wives be absolutely subservient and obedient to all their husband’s whims, while the Wife of Bath (among others) believes that marriages only work when the wife is in charge. Related is the question of women’s sexuality: Is it something evil or innocent? Is sex to be free and easy within marriage, or is virginity the ideal state? A secondary theme is that of religion. Chaucer, like Boccaccio, makes fun of monks and clergy outrageously, but this does not stop him from being extremely pious in other moments.
This brings me to the low points in the book, the two prose pieces: the Tale of Melibee and the Parson’s Tale. Both of these are not really tales at all, but moralizing essays, full of Bible quotes and references to Aristotle and Cicero. (Indeed, they are wisely omitted from the Coghill version, but I suffered through the audio.) Here, we see that Chaucer could be dreadfully boring in certain moods. These two pieces have no humor at all, and are full of the stuffiest, most pedantic piety imaginable—solemnly concluding, for example, that temperance is the opposite of gluttony, or that good advice is preferable to bad advice. After the ebullience of the Wife of Bath, it is puzzling that Chaucer could have written such tedious pettifoggery. Did he intend these ironically, or was he protected himself from damaging accusations, or did he undergo a religious awakening halfway through writing the tales?
Whatever the case may be, the rest of the book is good enough to forgive him these trespasses. To state the obvious, this book is a classic in every sense of the word. Perhaps I ought to try the original once more? Or should I not press my luck? ___________ *For what it is worth, I liked the Davis version, and noticed no difference in quality from the esteemed Coghill version. However, I find it odd that Davis has translated books from so many different languages: Gilgamesh, Don Quixote, The Divine Comedy, Beowulf… Either he is a linguistic genius or is getting some help.
This book is a headache-inducing mixture of contrary qualities. My emotions swung wildly as I read, from pleasure to exasperation, from wonder to annoyance.
The subject of the book is fascinating. Gould here sets out to tell the story of the Burgess Shale, a site discovered in 1909 by Charles Walcott in the Canadian Rockies. Owing to unusual conditions (an underwater mudslide, 500 million years ago) fossils of thousands of ancient organisms were preserved in excellent condition—not only the typical hard parts that survive fossilization, but their soft tissue as well. This was an unprecedented and highly significant find, as it provided a kind of snapshot of life shortly after the famous Cambrian Explosion (when macroscopic animals suddenly become common in the fossil record).
Amazingly, though the importance of the find was widely understood, most of the specimens collected remained unanalyzed and poorly understood for decades. Their discoverer, Walcott, published a few preliminary studies but nothing of significant depth. It was not until the 1970s that a team of researchers—Harry Blackmore Whittington, Derek Briggs, and Simon Conway Morris—started reinvestigating these samplings and publishing long monographs on their findings. Their research and conclusions form the core of Gould’s book.
It is when Gould is describing the story of the shale’s discovery, and especially when he is describing how the scientists went about their work, that he is at his absolute best. And I think he deserves all the praise in the world for this. Few books for the general public, if any, take the reader so intimately into the process of paleontological research—collecting specimens, dissecting samples, debating taxonomies. What is more, Gould manages to make a book about fossilized worms into absolutely gripping reading. There were times when I felt my heart swell with admiration for these scientists hunched over a microscope, scratching through the exoskeleton of some three-inch creature in order to write a 100-page monograph to be read by a handful of experts. This is no small accomplishment for an author.
Where Gould falters, for me, is in the interpretation he gives to this story. Gould argues that the Burgess fossils completely overturn our notions of evolution and constitute a breakthrough comparable with Darwin’s theory. He bases this grandiose claim on the amount of taxonomic diversity encountered within the samples. Now, when Walcott first analyzed the fossils, he classified the animals as members of modern groups. But when Whittington, Briggs, and Conway Morris re-examined these fossils, they found a great many organisms that did not fit into any modern classification.
From this, Gould draws two conclusions. First, he asserts that this was a particularly fertile time for evolution; and he bases this claim on the large variation present in the fossils. Second, he makes the grander claim that the large number of viable organisms whose descendants did not survive to the present day proves that the history of life is highly contingent.
Now, let me explain why both of these claims are frustrating.
For one, there is a perfectly obvious reason why the Cambrian period could have involved more evolutionary “experimentation” than the present day. This is that, when organisms are first evolving to occupy previously unoccupied niches—as the first macroscopic animals were doing—there would be comparatively less environmental pressure to do so in the most efficient possible way. The first freely swimming animal, for example, did not need to swim faster than any other animal trying to eat it. Gould himself eventually gets around to this explanation, though he seems not entirely satisfied with it.
But the other—and even more obvious—explanation is that these animals are only more varied in a limited sense. As Gould himself admits, modern animals occupy more varied environments and exhibit a far large range of sizes and behaviors. What the Burgess animals possess is taxonomic variety—requiring the creation of new phyla, families, or orders to accommodate them into our filing cabinets. However, what he fails to mention is that this is exactly what one should expect from such ancient fossils. Our taxonomic categories were developed to classify modern animals, so why should they apply neatly to animals living half a billion years ago?
I think this point deserves further elaboration. Our modern categories were purposefully defined using the traits which remain invariable over the largest number of extant species. They would be useless otherwise. It is thus nonsensical when Gould wonders why there should arise so many new phyla in the Cambrian, but not today. This is like wondering why there are so many strange words in Chaucer but not the newspaper. In other words, the huge taxonomic variation Gould discusses is largely an artifact of our own categories and not an actual property of the animals themselves. A foreign language does not have an objectively more complex vocabulary just because there are more unfamiliar words in it.
Ironically, some of the taxonomic weirdness that Gould discusses has since been revised away, as the “radical” interpretations of Whittington, Briggs, and Conway Morris were themselves re-interpreted, placing many animals in more familiar categories. To take just one example, the Burgess animals hallucigenia is here presented as a truly nightmarish creature which walks on spikes and has tentacles sticking out of its back. Most concerning of all, it has a formless blob for a head! This animal was, understandably, at first given its own genus; but it has since been recognized as a lobopodian when a more accurate reconstruction was hit upon. (It turns out that the spikes are on its back and are not its legs; and that its head is, in fact, not a formless blob.)
Of course, Gould can hardly be blamed for basing his book on outdated science. After all, it was published over 30 years ago. But I do think that Gould, of all people, should have known that interpretations of fossil remains are frequently contested and revised, so it seems unwise of him to have based such grandiose conclusions on such a shaky foundation.
Now for Gould’s second claim, that the Burgess fossils prove that the history of based on chance—or, in his words, “decimation by lottery.” He repeatedly states that no modern scientist, if transported back in time, could have selected which lineages would survive to the present day or would end in extinction, since there is no obvious anatomical flaw in the extinct lineages. And he argues that this proves chance, not superiority, determined evolutionary survival.
This strikes me as a completely bizarre argument, since I am not sure who Gould is even arguing against. What scientist believes they could pick out evolutionary winners and losers 500 million years from now? Or even 500 years from now? Virtually every organism is well-adapted to its environment. If you traveled to the previous ice age, could you find an anatomical flaw in the woolly mammoth? I doubt it. But does this prove that extinction is totally random? Hardly.
Indeed, Gould eventually admits that even he himself does not believe that extinction is a truly random process (though this makes his use of the term “lottery” rather puzzling). Instead, he adopts the wholly conventional view that extinction occurs when the environment changes too quickly for a species to adapt, and that the species which do survive environmental shifts are able to do so because of traits they evolved under different circumstances.
In other words, yes, luck is a factor in evolutionary survival. Indeed, considering that evolution is a physical process, one could argue that it is completely a matter of luck which species survive or perish. In a general sense, luck determines whether an asteroid will hit, whether an invasive species will outcompete you, or whether hairless primates will destroy your habitat. But what biologist would deny that? It strikes me that the only people who seriously object to this do so for religious reasons, seeing the evolution of human life as something pre-ordained or divinely guided. Yet Gould acts as if he is arguing against the dominant view in his field.
To sum up, Gould is grandly making a non-controversial point using evidence that does not even prove his point. The burgess fauna were not necessarily more varied than today’s; and even if they were, that would not prove that evolution is random.
I am sorry to be writing such a critical review of this book. It just seemed such a shame that such a great story could be weighed down by so much unnecessary intellectual baggage. If this had simply been an exploration of the Burgess fauna it would have been delightful. Indeed, though perhaps outdated, the many illustrations of ancient creatures are still charming to contemplate. And though I found the book quite frustrating, if read in the right spirit, I still think it is wonderfully educational about the process of science—though, perhaps not in the manner it intended to be.
(Cover photo a reconstruction of hallucigenia by Martin R. Smith and Jean-Bernard Caron. Taken from Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.)
As a lamp, a cataract, a shooting star an illusion, a dewdrop, a bubble a dream, a cloud, a flash of lightning view all created things like this.
This is a fascinating group of texts. The first in the book is the very brief Heart Sutra. It is short enough to be memorized and recited, like the Lord’s Prayer; and true to its name, it contains the “heart” of much Buddhist teaching, specifically with the famous lines “form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” The sutra is, in essence, a giant negation of conventional reality—all that can be perceived and conceived. The reality of the senses is superficial, transitory, and illusory; and recognizing the emptiness of this reality is fundamental to achieving enlightenment.
The Diamond Sutra is somewhat longer, though still short enough to be easily read in one sitting. Exactly when it was written down is unclear, though it has the distinction of being the printed book with the earliest known date.
This manuscript (now in the British Library) was printed on May 11, 868, about 600 years before Gutenberg’s bible, at the expense of one Wang Jie. Indeed, this good man even specified that it was “made for free universal distribution,” thus putting it into the public domain. The frontispiece—a line drawing of the Buddha surrounded by his disciples—is a lovely work of art in itself. Even the story of the book’s discovery is interesting. The manuscript, along with many others, had been preserved in a section of the Mogao Caves which had been sealed off since the 11th century—perhaps to protect them from plunderers—only to be opened in the early 1900s.
The text consists of a conversation between the Buddha and his disciple, Subhuti. The upshot of this conversation is very much the same as the message of the Heart Sutra: that everything is fundamentally unreal. Thus, beings are beingless, and the dharma is without dharma. (The word “dharma” can apparently mean a great many things, from “the nature of reality,” to “the right way of acting,” to “phenomena.”) Even the Buddha’s own teachings are unreal. But, paradoxically, though all beings are beingless, for this very reason they should be referred to as “beings.” Apparently, this is an attempt to maintain the practical use of language without attributing reality to what our words refer to. In other words, we must use words to communicate, but we should not mistake our statements about the phenomenal world as having any absolute validity.
The Diamond Sutra is praised and referred to in the last text in this volume, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch. Written around 1,000 years ago (it doesn’t seem clear when), it is attributed to the sixth Chan patriarch, Huineng, who preached to and instructed his disciples from a raised platform (thus the name). Unlike the other two works, then, which may have been written in India, this one is certainly Chinese in origin. The book is divided into ten sections and, rather like the Bible, is rather miscellaneous in content, containing stories, poems, parables, preaching, and philosophical discussion.
Despite this variety, I thought that the basic message of the sutra was fairly clear. It expounds a form of Buddhism based on introspection. Well, perhaps “introspection” is the wrong word, since it is a basic tenet of this doctrine that everyone’s fundamental nature is the same, and it is only delusions and confusions that make us lose sight of this. As a kind of substrate of the mind, below our attachments to the external world, we all share the same Buddha-nature. Indeed, in this sutra, Buddha is not so much a man as a state of being, and anyone who attains it is fully the equal of Siddhartha Gautama.
The story of Huineng’s ascension to the patriarchate is deservedly famous. The fifth patriarch decided to have a kind of poetry competition, to see which of his disciples could create the most instructive verse. Shenxiu, the leading disciple, came up with this: “The body is the bodhi tree. / The mind is like a bright mirror’s stand. / At all times we must strive to polish it / and must not let dust collect.” Yet the illiterate “barbarian” from the south, Huineng, upon hearing this verse, came up with a response: “Bodhi originally has no tree. / The mirror has no stand. / The Buddha-nature is always clear and pure. / Where is there room for dust?” (Once again, note the emphasis on negation, the message that reality is insubstantial.) This was enough to secure him the position.
As you can see, it is a curious feature of Buddhism that it requires the paradoxical use of language to express its tenets. For example, as the sutras repeat, enlightenment consists of seeing the world as “empty” of form—that is, of seeing past the superficial differences that separate one thing from another, one person from another. It means seeing beyond dualities such as bad and good, beautiful and ugly, as these are only expressions of our own egotistical desires, and the enlightened one is theoretically free from any selfish desire. It is, in short, a kind of ego-death, the conquering of all attachment to external goods, in which only the purest form of consciousness remains, seeing the world exactly as it is.
Indeed, there is an interesting metaphysical view inherent in these statements, though as far as I know it is not made explicit. It is that the apparent reality of people and things is due to our inability to come to grips with the passage of time. Everything that exists once did not exist previously and will someday cease to exist. Furthermore, all of the matter and energy in the universe swirls in an enormous cycle, generating and destroying all phenomena. In this sense, a mountain, say, is “unreal” since it is only a mountain at this moment, and its existence depends on a host of other factors. Its existence is conditioned and impermanent, and thus superficial.
There is also, arguably, a philosophy of the mind inherent in this doctrine. It is that our conceptualization of reality ultimately warps it to such an extent that we merely delude ourselves. In this sense, Buddhism has something in common with Kant’s system (which Schopenhauer would be the first to point out, of course). Thus, when we call a big pile of rocks a “mountain” we are often attributing certain other qualities to it: natural, big, beautiful, and so on. But what is considered “natural,” or “big,” or “beautiful” are highly subjective qualities, which say more about our own perception than the thing being perceived.
In sum, then, conventional reality is “empty” for two reasons. First, because our minds attribute permanence and self-subsistence to things which are, in actuality, impermanent and conditioned. Second, because our desires and opinions do not allow us to perceive things as they really are.
For this reason, language is a source of delusion, since words create a sense of fixity in the mind—a word picks out an object and treats it as if it were stable. Further, the definitions of words often rely on contrasts (hot and cold, old and young), which are expressions of our subjectivity. However, the Buddhist preacher is forced, by the nature of communication, to say that enlightenment is better than delusion, that meditation is good while attachment is bad, that trying to achieve enlightenment through meditation is correct while doing so by reciting sacred texts is wrong. In short, the doctrine can only be expressed using the very dualities that it purports to move beyond. As a result, the sutras are full of seemingly nonsensical statements, such as that an enlightened one both feels and doesn’t feel pain.
The logically-minded reader thus may be repelled by much of this. After all, the content of a self-contraditory statement is precisely zero. And one could easily make the opposite of the above arguments. For example, just because something is conditioned or impermanent doesn’t make it unreal—indeed, that is arguably the very definition of what is real. The fact that our perception of the world is warped by our subjectivity does not make it unreal—indeed, arguably our subjective reality is the only one we can be sure of. And anybody who has read a scientific text knows that language can be a very useful tool for understanding the world.
But this is all probably beside the point. To begin with, I think a Buddhist would likely object to my attempt to formulate this doctrine as a metaphysical system. To the contrary, such a system would be antithetical to the entire spirit of the enterprise, which is precisely the attempt to move beyond intellectual attempts to understand and rationalize reality. Rather, I think these paradoxes and negations should be read as attempts to inculcate an attitude, or to induce a mental state.
If I have any criticism of this doctrine, it is that it seems—to put it bluntly—rather defeatist. All human striving is vain; all attempts at satisfying our desires are vain; every effort to understand reality is vain. A Buddhist may disagree with this assessment—and, in truth, my understanding of these sutras is undoubtedly superficial—but seeing the world as unreal and freeing myself of all desire seem rather like death than something to pursue. That being said, like most people, I certainly err in the opposite direction: getting too swept up in trivialities, getting upset over things beyond my control, seeing my world from the narrow perspective of my short-term desires. As a corrective to this unhappy state of affairs, I think there is a great deal of value in this school of Buddhism. I look forward to continually failing to apply it to my life.
I have finally done it. Eight years, eleven volumes, nearly 15,000 pages and millions of words. It is certainly the longest thing I have ever read as well as the most educational. I have already left a review of every individual volume. Some are stronger than others—I would rank Volume 1, on Asia, as the worst, and possibly Volume 4, on the Middle Ages, as the best—but in general the quality is consistent and the books have the same strengths and weaknesses.
(Though half of the books are credited to both Will and Ariel Durant, I think it is clear that Will did most of the actual writing, so I will be referring to him. However, I do not mean to diminish the great contributions of Ariel to this project.)
First, I want to emphasize that these books are not a history in the conventional sense, as an attempt to understand the past on its own terms and explain why it developed in the way it did. Judged as such, the books are certainly a failure. And, in any case, Durant did not do any primary research for this work and makes no pretentions to original findings. Yet whatever might be his professions to the contrary, Durant is really writing as a popularizer—specifically, as a popularizer of European capital-C Culture. Enough political, economic, and military history is given to serve the reader as a basic background. But the central figures of the book are artists, writers, poets, musicians, scientists, historians, philosophers, as well as the rulers who directly or indirectly promoted these creators of Culture.
Judged as a popularizer of these figures—from Plato to Voltaire, from Homer to Lord Byron, from Palestrina to Beethoven, from Giotto to Goya, from Pythagoras to Newton—Durant is remarkably successful. And this is due as much to his strong mind as to his fluent prose. His books, though long, are well-organized and well-written. His prose is urbane without ever being taxing to read, and each page has at least one unexpected detail, one memorable anecdote, or one amusing aside. He is, in a word, companionable. While he often veers into abstruse territory his writing is never dense, yet neither does he give the impression—as so many current popularizers do—of writing in a dumbed-down style.
And, somehow, Durant’s writing is also extremely easy to remember. I have gone over sections long after reading them to find that I had retained a great deal of the information. Thus, reading this books gives one the pleasant sensation of downloading information directly into one’s brain.
Durant is also versatile. The number of topics covered in these books is innumerable—architecture, fashion, music, war, the list goes on—but Durant always succeeds in making the subject interesting and transparent. And he is reliably amusing when writing of the eccentricities and personalities of the legions who march through these pages. This, indeed, is what makes the books so readable: it is not a series of processes, epochs, or events, but of individuals actively shaping their own lives. (This is also, of course, what makes the books questionable history, as the wider social, cultural, and economic forces at play are given little consideration.)
Durant begins the series by examining what he regards as the elements of “Civilization.” His list is not surprising (or entirely convincing): writing, morals, government, religion, laws, etc. Yet for most of the series, his main theme—if he can be said to have one—is the conflict of religion and reason. As the thinkers of the series gradually lose their respect for organized religion, Durant continually wonders whether society can function if the populace loses their belief in hell, since the basis of morals will be removed. To me this seems somewhat insulting and, in any case, rather uninteresting. As a general rule, the most secular countries enjoy relatively low levels of crime, so the idea seems to be obviously untrue.
There are some other peculiarities of Durant’s writing. He often discusses “sexual morality,” and takes care to note how frequently this or that person committed adultery. True, the many tales of unfaithfulness to add the only dash of scandal in these otherwise staid pages. Even so, I found Durant’s tendency to judge his subjects based on their love lives to be rather distasteful—and ironic, considering that Durant’s own marriage would certainly not be considered “moral” nowadays. (He married Ariel when she was 15 and he was 28. She had been his student.)
The series has other shortcomings, of course. The most glaring is that it is Eurocentric; and, besides, it is a classic example of a “great man” history (the vast majority of the protagonists are men).
Even so, I do think that, read in the right spirit, The Story of Civilization is a tremendous resource for those, like me, who were not taught any of these things—the history of art, literature, philosophy, among much else—in school. It is a kind of remedial education, and a very good one.
Durant is not the same sort of writer as Gibbon, Burkhardt, or Thucydides—a scholar who shines new, unexpected light on the past. He is, strangely, far more akin to Rick Steves. This may sound slightly insulting, and the writer certainly provides more breadth and depth that the tour guide. But the two of them have the same mission: to allow people (mainly Americans) to appreciate the wealth of Western culture. Indeed, The Story of Civilization was extremely useful to me as I traveled around Europe, just as it helped in my journeys through literature and philosophy. Durant will not make you an expert but he will at least point you in the right direction.
In this way, these books were created in the same spirit as art museums or public classical music radio: to bring Culture to the people. The idea does seem somewhat antiquated now. Collectively, we have lost faith in Culture. And I can see why. Highly cultivated men have committed atrocities, while the most ignorant have led saintly lives. And, in any case, our definition of what counts as Culture has widened so much—has been so thoroughly democratized—that it hardly specifies anything now.
Even so, it is worth remembering that everything we enjoy today is the product of a long and rich tradition. And even if it seems stuffy or snobby to say so, I think it is still very much worth it to acquaint oneself with this heritage. Not to become “better” people, but to fill our lives with beauty.
Spain’s response to the pandemic was much like other European nations. However, there was one notable difference: for almost three months, the vast majority of the population were only allowed outside to go to the supermarket. Businesses were closed all over the world, of course; and people were urged and even compelled to stay indoors. However, most countries to my knowledge made an exception for outdoor exercise. Not Spain. We could not take a walk, ride a bike, or go on a jog.
As a result, by the time we were allowed out for a breath of fresh air, I was intensely nature-deprived. Indeed, during the lockdown I began obsessively buying plants from the supermarket. I even bought a zoom lens for my camera to take close-up pictures of the neighborhood trees. Now, I normally like the outdoors, but it is surprising to me how debilitating it felt to be totally cut off from trees, grass, and sun. Admittedly, it is impossible to determine how much of my anxiety during this period was due to nature-deprivation, and how much due to every other disruption (social, professional, personal) that took place. Suffice to say that I felt withered.
Under normal circumstances I get my fill of forest from the Rockefeller State Park Preserve, behind my house in New York. However, the restrictions on travel that year made it impossible for me to go home. So I decided to travel to the lushest part of the country: Galicia. This region is famous, among other things, for being the end-point of the Camino de Santiago—the network of walking and biking trails that start from all over Europe and converge in Santiago de Compostela. I had walked parts of this trail on twoseparate occasions, but much of it remained unexplored. After a bit of preparation, I had my pilgrim’s passport and a plan. But it was not exactly simple.
Day 1: Arrival in Las Médulas
Las Médulas is the name of a former Roman gold mine. It is a tremendously important archaeological site and has been declared UNESCO World Heritage. It is also, as it happens, on one of the branches of the Camino—though not on a much-traveled one.
Determined to visit, I decided that I would start my Camino there. But there was a problem: getting to Las Médulas from Madrid on public transportation is not easy. After a week of investigating, I figured out a viable route. First, I had to catch a fast train from Madrid to the city of León, which left at 5:30 in the morning. (The seating system put the few passengers on the train all close together, in flagrant contradiction of social distancing.) Once in León, I had to walk quickly to the city’s bus station to catch the morning bus to Ponferrada, a nearby city. Then, in Ponferrada, I had to immediately get on a local bus (more of a van) to a small village called Carucedo. Finally, I walked about an hour from the bus stop to Las Médulas. I note all this for anyone tempted to follow in my footsteps.
I arrived at my hotel in time for Spanish lunch, having had almost nothing to eat all day. Luckily, there was a table available at the hotel restaurant. I ordered the local specialty: botillo del bierzo. This is a very heavy dish, consisting of pig intestines stuffed with spiced pork, with a side of potatoes and cabbage. The Mediterranean diet, indeed. After so little sleep, and such a hearty meal, a nap was irresistible. I lost consciousness as soon as my body touched the bed. It was only thanks to multiple alarms that I awoke in time for my evening tour of the Roman mines.
Unless you were told, you would probably never suspect that the landscape of Las Médulas was man-made. A collection of orange cliffs jut out from the forested valley, with no obvious sign of human manipulation. However, these jagged ridges were not worn away through natural processes, but with a Roman mining technique known as ruina montium (destroying the mountain). The first step was to dig a network of tunnels into the mountain (by hand of course). Then, enormous quantities of water were transported via aqueduct up to the top, and poured into these tunnels, eventually causing a kind of avalanche. This way, the Romans accessed the large stores of gold in the mountain’s interior. According to our guide, the workers responsible for this were not exactly enslaved, but were indentured servants. In any case, it was brutal and dangerous work, and our guide informed us that many miners ended their own lives.
This story of Las Médulas—a story of environmental destruction and worker exploitation—is, thus, not exactly the most charming story of antiquity. It is a strange irony, then, that this rapacious extraction produced such a picturesque landscape. The faces of the cliffs are so orange that they seem still to be imbued with gold. The surrounding forest is full of chestnuts, heather, holly, and rock rose. After spending the whole morning in a rush of anxiety and impatience, the valley was almost supernaturally calm.
Day 2: Las Médulas to Ponferrada
I awoke early and set out before the sun. I was nervous. Las Médulas is on a leg of the Camino that is seldom traveled under the best of circumstances. During a pandemic it was deserted. The EU’s borders were (mostly) closed to travelers, and in any case most Spaniards still thought it unwise to sleep in bunk beds with strangers. Thus, the albergues (pilgrim’s hostels) along this route were closed, so I had to spend one day going the opposite direction on this route, in order to link up with the more famous French Way where things would be open.
The region is strewn with dilapidated houses.
Normally, when you walk the camino, a series of yellow arrows and concrete markers guide you along the way. But now, I would have to find the arrows and try to intuit where the pilgrim was supposed to be coming from. This seemed rather difficult. I soon found, however, that the route was nearly as easy to follow backwards as forwards, and I relaxed into the rhythm of the road. I was not yet in Galicia, but in a part of Castilla y León called El Bierzo. The landscape was hilly, with a light covering of trees, and the ground dry and rocky. In the morning hours it was cool enough for a jacket. The route took me through several small villages, each full of houses that featured a distinctive kind of wooden balcony that I found quite beautiful.
As I went along, I listened to an audiobook by Jonathan Haidt about how to be happy. I suppose I was in an introspective mood. Yet all of Haidt’s advice seemed trite compared with the simple experience of walking and observing. If you can take an interest in your surroundings, then there is little else you will need to be content. And I was fully absorbed. So much time staring at the ceiling of my apartment had made virtually anything wild and green fascinating. The countryside here had a sort of rugged beauty, which culminated in the Castillo de Cornatel. This is a fortress that sits on a hilltop, believed to have been originally built in Roman times to defend their goldmines. In any case, the castle is now little more than an eloquent ruin. I peeked inside and carried on my way.
Descending the hill, I found myself in wine country. Virtually every region of Spain has its own variety of the drink. The grape from here is called mencía. As I walked, I was passed on a road by an elderly man driving a tractor; his wife sat in the trailer, alongside several buckets of grapes. What a life. Now I was getting near Ponferrada. In the distance I could see the strange geometric form of the Torre de la Rosaleda, the tallest building in the city. My legs and back were aching now. Six hours of walking had gone by and I still had an hour to go. The path took me alongside the Sil River, across it, and then finally to the municipal albergue.
Once there, I was amused by the reception. The institution had developed a kind of sanitation ritual for all incoming guests. My whole body was sprayed with a disinfectant; my backpack had to be kept in a trash bag; and even the soles of my shoes were chemically cleaned. Meanwhile, guests were not required to wear masks indoors, though of course the virus is primarily transmitted through the air. Even at the time, it seemed rather silly.
I ate two hearty meals and passed the time by reading Monkey—a delightful abridgement of the Chinese classic, A Journey to the West. (The story concerns a Buddhist pilgrim, so it seemed rather appropriate.) Unfortunately, I was much too footsore to do any sightseeing, and so passed up the chance to visit the city’s impressive Templar Castle or the Fábrica de la luz, a museum of industry in a former power plant. I suppose I will just have to go back.
The Templar Castle of Ponferrada.
Day 3: Ponferrada to Villafranca del Bierzo
I awoke early, before my alarm, at half past five. Outside it was calm and black. The route took me along the river Sil to the outskirts of the city. On the way, I passed the Fábrica de la luz and once again regretted not having been able to visit. It was not long before the western clouds were tinged with gold, and the gray dusk began to dissipate. Behind me, in the morning mist, a rainbow hovered over Ponferrada.
The first half of the walk was not especially interesting. I slowly made my way through suburb after suburb. The residents were just beginning to stir—walking their dogs, making their way to the local café, doing yard-work. Finally, the suburbs gave way to a beautiful stretch of wine country. The sun was shining strongly now, and the vines were an ocean of bright green. I did my best to walk slowly, to take in the scenery. Agricultural country has a particular charm—at once natural and cultivated. I felt a pang of envy for whoever was living in the fine white house among this little paradise.
At about two in the afternoon I arrived in Villafranca del Bierzo. It is a surprisingly beautiful place. Though scarcely three thousand people call it home, it is full of impressive structures: a romanesque church, a large monastery, and even a castle. Being a Camino town has its advantages, I suppose. Better still, the town was full of excellent bars and restaurants. After seeing so many grapes, I could not resist a sampling of the local wine, which I found to be excellent (though I am hardly a connoisseur). By nine I was in my bunk bed. The only other residents of the albergue were two quiet Spanish men. We all said goodnight and turned off the lights.
Day 4: Villafranca del Bierzo to O Cebreiro
I awoke full of excitement. According to gronze.com (a great resource for anyone considering the trail), the next stretch of the camino was both among the most beautiful and the most arduous. The trail would take me up into the mountain range that separates northern Castilla y León from Galicia. For those completing the entire Camino, the entry into Galicia is a special occasion, since that means they are in the final stretch. For me it was special, too, since I just generally love Galicia.
The beginning of the trail was disappointing. Far from beautiful, the trail ran along a highway and there was little in the way of scenery. I had (happily) finished the book on happiness and began an audiobook by David Attenborough about life on earth. His resonant voice soothed me as I made my way under overpasses and through small villages. In one village, there was a woman with a clipboard waiting for pilgrims passing through. She told me that in the villages I had to wear a mask (I already was, though it was a cloth mask that looked rather like a diaper) and that I had to register in a government website before entering the province of Galicia (I already had). She also told me that the village of Ponfría—which was on the route—was under lockdown because of a local outbreak.
Armed with this information, I kept on going. The sun climbed in the sky and it got hot enough for me to stop and change into shorts. Finally the landscape began to bloom as I left the highway and made my way into the woods. Cows abounded, often sunning themselves on the grass. And every village had its colony of stray cats. About three-quarters of the way there, I was accosted (in English) by a shirtless man asking me for some change. I didn’t have any and told him so. But I was taken aback at the request, as we were really not near any village.
The next thing I knew, I had hit the mountain. The trail led up and up, through a dense forest of oak and birch. It was hard going and after a few minutes I paused to catch my breath. When I did, I looked back to see the shirtless man not far behind, and I got the strange notion that he was after me. This caused me to pick up my pace, and I started rushing up the mountain almost at a run. Besides being irrational, this was a shame since, in retrospect, this was one of the most beautiful stretches of the walk. I climbed and climbed until, near the top, I was surprised by a man on horseback, who was making his way down the steep, rocky path with a great deal of care.
Then the trees cleared and I found myself on the top of a series of rolling hills. Nearby was an elaborate sign that announced my official entry into Galicia. The trail led up and down over the gentle ridges until I reached one of the infinite small Galician settlements which dot the region. This one had an attractive restaurant and I immediately decided I would stay for lunch. I ordered caldo gallego—the regional soup—and chicken. Several tables were already occupied by other pilgrims. As I ate, the shirtless vagabond arrived, and seated himself at a table with a woman, who seemed to know him. They commenced to talk in German. She bought him a beer and let him finish her meal. A group of cows walked by on the street and, of course, some cats were sunbathing.
My entry into Galicia. Note the pandemic beard.
Walking on a full stomach (and several glasses of wine) was not pleasant. Thankfully, my destination was very close. O Cebreiro an attractive little town (population: 121) situated on a hillside. There are wonderful views from every corner of the town and a few well-equipped shops for pilgrims, who constitute the economic basis of the village. Though tiny, there is some sightseeing in O Cebreiro. There are four examples of pre-roman buildings which can be visited, presumably reconstructions of the sorts of buildings in the ancient “castros” (Celtic settlements). There is also the church of Santa María, an ancient building with a legend attached to it.
As it happens, the legend was told to me by a Polish woman staying in my albergue. It goes: There was once a very devout man who never missed mass. One day the weather was terrible, a storm was blowing, but he still came to worship. The priest was surprised and amused by his devotion and joked that mass wasn’t worth all this trouble. Then God, to humiliate the priest, turned the holy wafer into real, bleeding flesh. Catholic legends are always a bit macabre. Anyway, this Polish woman was among the minority of truly faithful pilgrims. She said that she had sold everything in her country to walk the camino and devote herself to God. I declined her offer to accompany her to mass.
A traditional Galician dwelling.
Day 5: O Cebreiro to Triacastela
The sunrise was particularly beautiful that morning.
I awoke late the next day, at 6:30. But that was alright, since I only had 22 km to trek that day, a relatively light day on the Camino. The path took me further up the mountain, until a sign informed me that I was 1300 meters above sea level. There, a statue of a windswept pilgrim presides over the road, providing a kind of solidarity to the passing traveler.
Then I began to descend into the heartland of Galicia. The landscape became ever greener as I went along. The countryside was at its most bucolic, with winding dirt roads cutting across fields ringed with forest. Cows were ever-present, as were there droppings. David Attenborough continued to amaze me with his stories of the natural world. I also listened to some broadcasts of Alistair Cooke’s Letters From America—the British journalist’s reflections on American life. In my diary, I remarked of Cooke: “He is like a village priest, weaving together history, folk wisdom, penny philosophy, and current events.” For the record, I have never met a village priest.
The tree is apparently 850 years old.
Finally, I arrived in Triacastela. On the way in I passed the famous Castaño de Ramil, a famous chestnut tree that is a major landmark on the Camino. Apparently it is about 850 years old; it certainly looks like it, at least. The town of Triacastela is small and lovely. It is situated in a valley, surrounded by the woods on all sides. I checked into an albergue owned by a very pleasant man from Ibiza, and immediately went to the restaurant he recommended for a hearty meal. My hunger slaked, I spent the rest of the day just lazing about. But I was extremely happy. In my diary I wrote:
“I feel as though today I found what I was looking for. Galicia always does it. The landscape could easily be upstate New York. The weather is almost perfect—sunny, but not hot. I love the vibrant lushness and the bucolic charm. As I write, I can see cows grazing and hear their bells tinkling. A mother and daughter are nearby, playing on some swings.”
What I was searching for was, apparently, nature and peace. And, truth be told, I can remember few times when I was so absolutely content. This did not make me, however, any more willing to socialize with my fellow pilgrims. Many people love the chance to make friends on the Camino. Not me. When I walk, I want to be alone, and I make sure not to invite any unwanted conversation. I suppose this makes me antisocial and unpleasant. But there are not that many opportunities in life to be really alone.
At least the beard made me look more like a pilgrim.
Day 6: Triacastela to Sarria
This day I had a decision to make. The Camino here forks into two roads: one leads to Sarria via Samos, and the other gets there via San Xil. The path through Samos is attractive because it passes by the Abadía de Samos, an impressive historic monastery. This seemed like obviously the better option until I found out that the monastery did not open until noon; and if I wanted to get to Sarria at a reasonable time (in time for lunch, and before the heat of the day) I would pass through Samos in the early morning. Perhaps I should have done what many other pilgrims did, and go straight past Triacastela to see the monastery in the evening. Having missed my chance, I decided to take the San Xil route, since it is supposed to be the more picturesque.
It certainly was. The morning mist rolled up through the valley, obscuring the landscape in a white fog until the sun was finally warm enough to break it up, revealing the ever-green Galicia underneath. Vines clung to trees and moss to rocks. Birds called in the canopy overhead. I shared the road with cows and watchful dogs. Sometimes the path took me up on a hill, offering me a view of the sweet, almost innocent landscape all around me. It is the sort of place that makes city-dwellers want to move to a farm and start milking cows.
I arrived at Sarria feeling a little sad. This was my last day on the journey. Though I was enjoying it immensely, the news was increasingly alarming: levels of COVID were spiking once again. It was possible that the different regions would once again go into lockdown (and they would, though about a month later)—which was not good for me, as my identity card was expired and awaiting renewal. Getting back to Madrid felt urgent. So I tried to savor my last day in Galicia.
Compared to the little towns I had been staying in, Sarria, with a population of 13,000, felt like an actual city. It is not a place devoted exclusively to pilgrim tourism. There are high schools and pet shops and locals eating in the restaurants. After lunch, I tried to do a little sightseeing by walking around the Fortaleza, a ruined fortress, but my sore feet made me give it up. So I went to bed early, with a full belly and an empty mind.
Day 7: Sarria to Madrid
Accustomed to my Camino schedule, I woke up in the early morning, even though my train back to Madrid left at noon. With nothing to do, I decided I would hike part of the next section of the trail. So, with my backpack on my aching shoulders, I headed off into the early-morning fog.
I crossed a stone bridge and then found myself in the countryside once more. Further on, the trail crossed a local railroad without any gates or lights to warn of an oncoming train. A little dangerous. It was remarkably misty that morning. The landscape was entirely invisible. The sun was just a vague yellow blotch in the sky, as in a painting by Turner. I could hardly even see ten feet in front of me (that’s about three meters). Out of the sea of fog a flying magpie appeared and disappeared. Somewhere nearby a dog started barking at me. Spiderwebs were covered in water droplets. And then, seemingly all at once, the fog cleared away and I was once again in the beautiful green of Galicia.
After passing through some small villages the trail took me alongside another highway. A truck passed by, carrying live pigs—spreading a stench so bad that I was only too glad to wear my cloth-diaper mask. Finally I decided that I could not afford to go any further and so turned back toward Sarria. All the savoring in the world could not make time stand still. I said a long and sad goodbye to the Galician countryside. I arrived back in Sarria in time to eat lunch before my train ride.
And then it was time to go. This was the seventh or eighth time I had been on this train back to Madrid from the north, and each time it has been a mournful experience. In the five hours of the journey, the landscape dries out; the trees disappear; and the green of Galicia is transformed into the straw color of the interior. But this time was different. More than any vacation I have ever taken, I had achieved a state of blissful peace during my walk. It was a very good Camino.
Lotz in Translation 
