And so, I am asked, what is happening up there on your mountain top? What has changed?
And I have to sit and think for a moment. Holding back my thoughts from taking flight with the birds singing is the oak trees, or the vultures circling high above the spur.
What has changed?
And I look around me and the shepherds are still leading their sheep out to the fields, and the wild horses are still fretting outside my door. And the paths are still lined with cherry blossom, and carpeted with daisies, and pale blue butterflies still shimmer above meadows of psychedelic flowers.
What has changed? What has changed?
Well, yes, there are no more aeroplane trails in the sky.
Poor old grandfather, I think, poor Manuel. Before he died he loved to ponder the aeroplane trails in the sky. Where did they come from? Where were they going? Aeroplanes were his favourite things as well freshly fried pig’s liver after the autumn matañza*.
Oh, and yes, (I am on a roll now), the sound of helicopters. Well, maybe not. It may just be the sound of my neighbour’s muck-spreader higher up the rise, but you never know, they say there are helicopters and drones over Pamplona, in Spain, in the other world on the other side of our mountains.
What more? What more? There must be more.
And I think hard, distracted momentarily by the donkey braying on the other side of the valley and pondering how clever he is to bray at exactly the same time as the village clock strikes two.
Yes, now I know, the chainsaws. Now everyone is back home on their farms they are doing what Basques do best. They are cutting and chopping the wood, leaving it out to season in the bright, turncoat spring sun. And I remember seeing lots of new wood piles when I ventured out last time to the sullen, lifeless villages on the valley floor.
Now, that did make the news. Our road; the ten hair-pin bends that weave and buckle their way down the four kilometres to Ituren and the river below.
The road. Our umbilical chord with the world. It exists no more. Our only escape now is the rough, pot-holed track I affectionately term ‘Lover´s Lane’, but that story is for another time, it is in ‘The Book’.
But, sorry, back to the road. Apparently, it was the idea of some civil engineer from the other world to take away part of our mountain in order to build a new infant school for the village. It seemed a bit drastic. It was north-facing too and not a good place for baby lungs. But then we realised that the part of the mountain they had chosen to take away contained an import piece of local infrastructure. Our road. Our road is now closed until ‘further notice’ so they can embed it further into the mountain rock less it ends up, all too suddenly, on the valley floor – or, God forbid, on the village school.
Now that makes the news.
And then there is me…
Yes, this is the big change – I am so over-awed by the beauty here that I forget. I miss something. I miss the anticipation of the vicarious joy I always feel when my guests step onto my terrace and behold the full, un-adulterated beauty of this landscape. When I look up into their eyes and I can say, yes, I told you so.
For months, maybe more, I will have no one to share the burden, and I will have to learn to digest all this God-given splendour on my own. I will miss my guests terribly, and yes, business-wise, it will be a disaster too, but my neighbours will smuggle me pots of soup and cuttings of meat as they always do, and I may just have to work harder at keeping the slugs from my lettuces!
-Georgina Howard’s previous two books were ‘Freedom to Choose’ (a manual on how to make dreams come true) and ‘Breaking the Language Barrier’ (a rhapsody on languages and language learning). She is now editing her autobiography ‘Kidnapped in the Basque Country’. The book is not only about her life building her company, Pyrenean Experience Ltd, and bringing up her daughter, single-handedly, but it rigorously documents the lives and cultural idiosyncrasies of life in a tiny shepherding hamlet of the Basque Pyrenees. It also pays tribute to the Basque farmers who have watched over her and her daughter, and without whom she would never be here today.
(Pyrenean Experience Ltd runs Total Basque Mountain Walking ´house party’ holidays – and some Spanish language immersion courses – from Georgina’s home in Ameztia, Ituren, Navarre).
