Sacred Sierra

by Jason Webster

  *

  The loss of the roof had effectively pushed us back into an older part of the house. It was cramped, but we could just manage to live there, if without some of the modern comforts – such as windows – that we had grown accustomed to in the newer section: it had been built more as a shelter from the elements than as a ‘living’ space. When word began to get out about what had happened, though, we quickly received offers to come and help us rebuild what had been lost. The response took me by surprise. Within a matter of days we were astonished to find a small group of friends and family from England had travelled out to Spain and were up on the mountain with us, eagerly helping to put the whole thing back together.

  By tying ropes around the back of a tow bar we were able to salvage almost all the beams that had been sent flying down the mountainside – in the end only two had been smashed beyond repair. The roofing boards all had to be replaced, but apart from that our losses could have been much, much worse. Once we had got it all back up to the house we launched ourselves into it in earnest, wiser, more experienced, and determined we should never have to do this again. This time we double-bolted and keyed everything in as best we could, strapping down the beams and bedding them properly into the walls where before we had assumed their own considerable weight would be enough. And once they were in place, and the boards screwed in, we immediately tiled the roof with traditional, old, trough-shaped ‘Moorish tiles’ that felt like they weighed half a tonne each. There were plenty around on the farm, faded and moss-eaten, for us to salvage and use.

  After only five days, working ten to twelve hours a day in the intense mountain sun, drinking ourselves to sleep at night to help kill the pain of aching muscles, we had finished, our new pale pink and orange terracotta roof like a smile beaming on the mountainside. It looked heavy and solid, I thought. After working on the house for so long, I had begun to develop an intuition about buildings: which walls were in danger of falling down, which ones could be pulled down without endangering the structure, how secure a floor or ceiling might be. This new roof was a vast improvement on the previous one: the errors of before had been corrected, while the tiles – something we should have got round to putting on long before – had an air of semi-permanence, at least. I’d noticed the local farmers in the valley had a habit of placing large stones around the edge of the roof, to hold the tiles on. It didn’t look particularly pretty, but I decided to follow their example none the less: aesthetic considerations became secondary when you simply had to concentrate on making the house weatherproof. After a while they didn’t even bother me: it was, I reflected, a nice way of tapping into the local culture. Besides, the stones and the tiles were almost the same colour, and it seemed to make the house blend in more with the landscape – something I was happy for it to do. Nature, here, was in command. We were visitors, scratching away as best we could at the surface, allowed a small space in which to live our life, battered, sometimes, by the elements, but still hanging on. I didn’t want to leave a mark on the landscape, rather blend with it and understand it. It was as though I had been thrown into a cage with a lion, struggling to survive by observing and slowly learning the ways of a dangerous, majestic beast.

  Arcadio came up when the work was finished to help toast the new roof.

  ‘It looks happier now,’ he said, drinking a cup of wine and fixing me with a look. ‘The house looks happier than before.’

  A few days later, once the toasting was over and our saviours from England had returned home, we came in late one night having been out for the day, stumbling in the dark into our newly recovered kitchen laden with shopping. Something caught my eye as I fumbled for the light switch. Two small golden lights, about the size of bees, appeared to be hovering by the window. I turned my head to get a better look, unsure what I was seeing. They sped away in unison, crossing the kitchen away from us, darting around one another playfully for a split second before seeming to go through the window and disappear outside.

  My fingers found the light switch and the kitchen was illuminated. Salud was already putting the shopping bags on the table. I picked up my own and did likewise. Had something odd just happened, or was I imagining things?

  ‘Did you see that?’ I asked after a pause, unsure whether to say anything at all.

  ‘What?’ Salud said.

  ‘Those golden lights by the window just now as we came in.’

  ‘I saw something,’ she said. We looked at each other for a moment, both wondering, it seemed, if it were best to leave it unsaid.

  ‘You don’t think –’

  ‘Probably just a reflection from something,’ I said, interrupting.

  Salud started opening the shopping bags and putting things away in the cupboard.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘probably.’ Then she turned and grinned, a playful flash in her eyes.

  ‘Or perhaps they were … fairies,’ she said.

  She held my gaze for a moment, then with a skip went back to sorting out the shopping. I felt a curious flutter in my stomach and walked over to the chimney to start preparing a fire.

  ‘I’m glad you said it,’ I mumbled to myself as I lit a match and stared hard at the flame, trying to make sure it was really there, ‘and not me.’

  *

  Lunch with the Truffle King in Xodos. He’s got some horse manure for me, for which I’m going to end up driving a hundred-kilometre round trip. What a man won’t do for good quality shite … It is mid-March and now that the almond blossom has gone the landscape is changing – the pink and whites fading as the strong yellow of the gorse streaks over the abandoned terraces. I drive up on a road I’ve never used before linking Atzeneta with Xodos – winding and curling its way up the side of the valley through olive and carob-tree groves. New vistas burst into view ahead, great green pastures. The stones here are as white as clouds, as though burnt by the sun, a sharp, bright Mediterranean light glaring back into your eyes as they rush past. Xodos is perched on its outcrop of rock, peacefully hidden and largely undamaged by the ravages occurring nearby. A few pig barns are all that blot the landscape up here, the whitewashed walls of the hermitage on the rock above the village gleaming like a lighthouse.

  The Truffle King is there when I arrive, small and compact, soaking up the sunlight in the little square outside the restaurant. The sun is intense and hot up here, despite the time of year, and the altitude: Xodos must be up at something like 900 metres. I tell the Truffle King about my problems with the boar. He suggests I hang up some strips of plastic around the area to frighten them off. They are sensitive to sound, it seems, and the plastic will rustle in the breeze.

  ‘If that doesn’t work you can always try pissing round there,’ he says. ‘Smell of humans frightens them.’

  I’ll give it a try and see what happens. At least if I can prevent them digging up any more trees …

  After lunch, with the manure in the back of the car, and some onions the Truffle King has given me to plant, I drive back along the track leading to Penyagolosa: the Camino Real de Aragon, the ancient thoroughfare that runs north–south through this region. More abandoned masos dot the hillsides. Despite the general sense that things are getting warmer, it is still too harsh a life to be living all the way up here. Our farm, set further down, hidden from view in the valley below, is just at the edge of possibility for this region. Things may change, more people may come in, set up hotels and countryside bed and breakfasts. But the recent winds are a reminder that things up here are still tough, despite the beauty. A family living up here years ago would have been self-sufficient in virtually everything – not just food and water, but clothes, entertainment, healthcare, everything. They would only have gone into the village to sell their produce or for emergencies. The skills they learned over centuries that enabled them to survive in such conditions have been lost in all but a generation. How long, I wonder, would it take to recover them if the need ever arose?

  *

  Far more time than I had expected was ta
ken up with the truffle plantation and the best season for planting trees, winter, was already coming to an end. The cold and the wet allowed them time to get bedded in and their roots established before the long months of summer arrived. Ibn al-Awam insisted that autumn was the best time of all: The wise prefer to plant trees in autumn over spring, as trees planted in the autumn will grow stronger roots, while those planted in the spring will only grow more above ground. He did say, however, that there was still time before spring arrived: Planting is often carried out once the harshest of the cold has passed, and the branches are about to start budding new leaves. We were still all right – just – but planting now meant I’d have to take more care of the trees over July and August to ensure they didn’t dry out. I’d finished with oaks for now – I could get some more the following winter perhaps – so I turned my attention to other species in the time available.

  At first I worked on an oval shaped group of three terraces above the house. The land was relatively clear here, and within a day I had cut down a couple of forlorn almond trees and a dying fig tree and eradicated the weeds using the brush-cutter in preparation for planting. My red-headed nephew had got hold of some strawberry-tree saplings for us – arbutus unedo – and this seemed to be a good place for them, with a certain amount of shade from some mature pines standing close by. From my reading it appeared that the strawberry tree would be able to cope with our long, dry summers. I hadn’t seen any in the rest of the valley – and Arcadio later confirmed this for me – but I’d come across them in some of the other valleys heading further inland towards the Millars River. Ibn al-Awam said they were ideal for mountain conditions, and recommended planting them at least six cubits away from each other. I had half a dozen, and spaced them out following the same routine from my oak-planting, placing heavy stones around the base of each sapling to help retain the moisture in the soil. I liked the idea of having a small grove of them up there. The fruit was alcoholic, hence the Portuguese liqueur Medrohno, while you could also make jam out of them. Birds were said to love them. Salud quickly christened the area ‘Strawberry Field’.

  I then turned to a small patch of land sitting at the top of the path that led down to our olive grove. Here I planted a couple of yew trees and a cypress. As with the strawberry trees, I had seen neither species in the valley itself, but had spotted them in the surrounding area on occasion. I associated cypresses more with tame, well-kept palatial gardens in Tuscany and elsewhere rather than our more rough-edged, peasant environment, but still, with time, its needle-point stretching into the sky would add a new, welcome aesthetic to our mountainside. And the conditions were right for it, once it had established itself well enough. Ibn al-Awam suggested fertilising them with shredded human excrement during the first year.

  Yews, I had heard, were locally considered an endangered species, although I had seen a handful at higher altitudes. I had a lasting childhood memory of running around yew-filled churchyards; there was a strength about them I had always loved, while in vain I tried to fashion longbows out of their branches in imitation of the weapons of Robin Hood, and the archers of Agincourt. In Spain the symbol of everlasting life – and hence the common churchyard tree – was the cypress, so it seemed fitting to put the two species together: a marriage of Celtic, Northern European and Mediterranean cultures.

  In addition to these trees of eternity, I decided to plant a cedar of Lebanon. I began to realise that my choice of trees – while being governed largely by the conditions and climate – also owed something to fond childhood memories of certain species. Cedars had always fascinated me, with their gigantic, horizontal branches, hands stretching out as though deliberately trying to cast shade for the people below sheltering from the sun. In my imagination they were like gods, or giants, friendly creatures protecting and defending the little folk below. It would take some time for my own sapling to reach such proportions – it was barely three feet high. But even Capability Brown, I assured myself, must have been through moments like this at some point.

  Magnolia was another tree that had its inspiration in some childhood corner of my mind: great goblet-like flowers brightening a spring morning; thick, leathery leaves. I wanted something that might add some colour when all the rest of the blossom had gone. An apricot tree planted years before stood nearby, and was flashing bright pink against the whitewashed walls of the house. Yet soon the stiff breezes would erase this. The magnolia went close to the front door of the house, on the western side: I wanted to be able to see it from my bedroom window when I got up in the morning.

  Over the course of the following days, my planting spree continued – mostly around the farmhouses themselves as by now I’d run out of time to clear any more terraces on the mountainside. An araucaria, a ‘monkey puzzle’, went in further down the slope from the cedar; no self-respecting arboretum, I reasoned, would be complete without one. Nearby I also planted a thuya – the tree of life – which would be well suited to the dry conditions. Although I dearly wanted to plant them as well, I had to rule out mimosas and jacarandas, as they would almost certainly perish with the winter frosts. They grew in abundance further down the valley, but we were just a little too exposed for them. Perhaps at a future date, with a little more tree-nurturing experience under my belt, I might try nursing a couple of specimens through the colder months.

  To the east and south of the house, I also planted two nettle trees – llidoners in Valencian. Similar in appearance to elms, they were a common local tree. The idea was that they would eventually offer some welcome summer shade for the kitchen terrace. Ibn al-Awam warned about planting them in dry areas, but said they could do well in most places: with regular watering during the first couple of years I reckoned they would flourish.

  In all of this it was always something of a struggle to imagine these tiny creatures one day soaring high above. The temptation was to plant them too close together – a little sapling standing in a large space of its own could be a melancholy sight. It took a certain leap of faith to realise it would often need more than we could give it on our rocky, sloping ground.

  I did my best to follow Ibn al-Awam’s advice about tree-planting, digging a big hole, placing manure at the bottom, and then more around the top to protect the roots afterwards. All simple stuff to an experienced gardener, but it was invaluable advice to a novice like me. He also warned against planting trees on rainy days – except olive trees – although cloudy days were preferable to sunny ones. Fridays and Sundays were also advised against, being the holy days of Muslims and Christians respectively; interestingly, no mention was made of the Jewish holy day, Saturday, despite the sizeable Iberian Jewish population in his day.

  Slowly, I began to get the hang of planting in general, and started to develop a sense for what kind of trees might survive. I still had doubts, and only with time would I see if I was getting it right, but our land was clearly suited to hardy species and varieties. I could have said that at the start, having read it somewhere, but now these words actually began to mean something. Experience was beginning to fill in where books and comments from other people only gave a sketch.

  Apart from the trees, I also planted a few herbs and climbers at this time. One of the last things Agustí, the previous owner, had done before leaving the farm, was to put in a septic tank. He’d managed to half-bury it in one of the stone animal shelters that stood near the house, but frankly it was an eyesore, with its square cement roof plonked right in the middle of the garden. Perhaps at a later date, I thought, we might build a new one in a less conspicuous spot, but for the time being I decided to disguise it as best I could by cultivating a herb garden around it. Laurel, sage, lemon thyme and rosemary were tucked around the edge, while I planted some thornless blackberries on the south side in the hope that they might grow over the structure and mask some of its ugliness. A box plant and some holly joined them.

  Meanwhile, I turned my attention to some of the ruins standing near our own houses. These were crumbling down in
most cases, the roof having caved in years before and the walls slowly dissolving as the rain seeped in and washed away the simple mud mixture that held the stones together. The owners never came up here, but, even so, I couldn’t really pull them down, despite the temptation: word would get out and I would almost certainly end up with a feud on my hands. The best bet, as with the septic tank, was to try to beautify them in some way. And so I planted some ivy and jasmine against the walls, with Virginia creeper for autumn colour. Agustí had already planted a couple of roses beside them. Now, after heavy pruning, it seemed they might come back to life: new buds were quickly appearing. Near the ruins stood a pomegranate tree that had sprouted over two dozen shoots and was looking more like a bush than a tree. I pruned it back as harshly as I dared, hoping that a proper tree – and with it some fruit – might appear in time.

  Finally, I planted the onions the Truffle King had given me, placing them on a little terrace below the kitchen where some of the water from the sink ran out. That way, I reasoned, watering them would take care of itself, even if the soap suds and other elements washed down on to them might give them an interesting flavour when it came round to harvesting. Half a dozen lettuces went in next to them, to give us something cool and watery to eat in the heat of the summer.

  *

  A westerly Ponent had been blowing since the night before: that ill-wind that brought dry, dusty air in from the central plains, charged with a curiously negative energy almost guaranteed to put everyone in an odd mood. We are usually blessed with fresher winds coming in off the Mediterranean, but the Ponent seemed to bring with it dirt and anger picked up during its overland flight and dumped it down on the coastal mountains.