mountains – The Wildart Wanderer

I’m in the middle of nowhere, seriously.

I just checked the population statistics for January 2018 and there were 52 people in this village. Evidently that was on a good day… so far I’ve seen five in the street, but not all at once.

I’m here to keep the plants alive and walk the dogs while the owners are away. I’ve learned to walk. Big time. It’s twenty minutes up a mountain to the next village (where I hear there are 25 inhabitants) and the capital of the region is an hour away on foot across a ravine.

Day 1: up the mountain to water someone else’s garden.

Day 2: up the mountain and across the ravine to meet a friend.

Day 3: up the mountain, across the ravine, stick out thumb, hitchhike to town, return by late afternoon with full backpack… collapse on couch.

You get the picture?

I’m loving it!

We’re all hung over and the journey is for dreams. I’m just totally sleep deprived after a night in a cheap and clean but extremely restless hostel. If I had two hours I’d be surprised. The other passengers smell of sweat and pull out their best comfort for the kilometres that hum by. Madrid is in the rear-view mirror and Toulouse ahead. I curl onto the seat and lie on my bag.

At some point I break my zeds and discover that the bones of the mountains are lying naked under an azure sky. The Spanish side is bare and beautiful. Then a long tunnel divides the dry southern landscape from the green-cloaked body of France.

It’s a ten hour trip by bus and thankfully there was a decent sandwich shop on the French side because I left while the shops were still shuttered in Madrid. The driver navigated the tortuous curves with prowess and we arrived at the gare routière in Boulevard Pierre Semard ten minutes ahead of schedule. Sigh of relief because I still had a train to catch.