Bodega Land: Bilbo Doesn't Live Here Anymore

There's little to notice about Moratinos, but one thing that makes all the pilgrims stop and stare and snap photos is the bodegas. They're hard to miss, as the landscape is rather severe otherwise.

Right on the edge of town where the Camino comes in is a funny sort of hill. Dug into its face are 16 little doors. A path leads all the way 'round the base of the hill, and all along it are porches, entryways, lintels, and doors, each one numbered. Each is different from the next. They are cozy and old-fashioned and rural and cute.

Some pilgrims know Moratinos simply as "Hobbiton." We are constantly asked to be introduced to Bilbo Baggins. When Patrick designed our "sello," the stamp we use to mark pilgrims' passports to prove they moved through town, he used the image of the bodega hill.

Bodegas are underground storage lockers, rooms dug deep into hillsides. The constant temperature underground is great for curing hams and sausages and cheeses and making and storing wine. It's also a little way from the houses in town, so traditionally it was where the guys got together to taste last year's vintage, cut down a sausage, and chew the fat for a while.

Our bodegas were dug, according to the dates carved in the walls, in the 1920s and '30s. Each family that owned land in town also owned a bodega. Almost everyone left since then, so most of the caves are abandoned -- some have collapsed. Others are sagging badly, their doorways sealed all summer by thistles and undergrowth. One section resembles an Old West ghost town, with rusting sheet-iron and busted barrels visible deep inside its yawning black mouth.

But others are very fine bodegas indeed, still very much in use right up to this day. Modesto's is one of them, the first one seen by the passing pilgrim. Two years ago he did up the doorway with scallop shells; his family monogram picked out in little stones. Inside is neat and clean and cool, with barrels and bottles brimming with his own tempranillo. Pilgrims sometimes ask Modesto (who may possess a passing resemblance to some Hobbits) why he doesn't live in there. "Why don't you live in a hole in the ground?" he asks them back.

Celestino and Esteban, brothers-in-law, have linked their two bodegas deep under the hill. Lucky pilgrims get a tour of their operation, the biggest in town. Their bodega has a fireplace, a collection of antique and derelict farm equipment, and barrels and barrels of something liquid. Celestino says it was probably his dad or grandad who put wine in those barrels, but he's not gonna be the one to pull the bung. More often than not, it's long ago gone to vinegar. The smell will knock you down, he says.

Their bodega even has electric light... a string of hanging lightbulbs runs on a pair of jumper cables hooked by hand into the wiring for the neighbors' outdoor lights.

The most wonderful bodega by far, however, is one up from Modesto's. That one has it all: a woodstove and chimney, a television aerial and wide-screen setup, tile floors, running water, a bar and seating for 16. That was bought four years ago by "the cave men," a gang of good-time handymen from Sahagun who made it their weekend project for a year or so. Now and then, when there's a big football game on and everyone's schedule meshes, the guys come into town and roast a lamb in there and party all night. It happens less and less these days, though, as the guys get married or leave town for better jobs. I have lived here for almost a year, and have only seen it open once. A good time was had by all!

So when we bought our finca last year, we got a bodega in the deal. It's a fine one; the roof is intact, it has an elegant Gothic pointed-arch vault inside with several alcoves. The winepress is useable, probably. Like our house, it is best described as "full of charm and potential."

There's no light in there. It is always cool and inky dark. It seems like it ought to be damp, but it's not.
The former owners left lots of things behind: a plank table and benches, cups and corkscrews, sheep-shearing scissors, a form for making adobe bricks, three magnificent "trillo" threshing sledges, and several dozen bottles of wine. A few of them are actually drinkable. We found one bottle in there from 1986, and it was truly tasty. Others could clean the crud off a carburetor.

I am reminded of what a "bodega" is in urban parts of the USA: a corner store that specializes in cheap liquor and cold beer, and is subject to frequent hold-ups. The owner usually keeps a ball-bat handy. Cameras watch your every move from front door to cooler to counter.

Faraway and nowadays in Castilla-Leon, a bodega (the classic cave kind) is a curiosity, even for Spaniards. I would like to make some use of ours, someday -- it's very near the camino path, it's always cool in there, it's cozy and dark and very Spanish. A few little stools and a light source of some kind...A chapel for the pilgrims perhaps, with a nice statue set up on the winepress? A cool resting place on hot days? The downsides are apparent already, the majority related to sanitation. Once they've explored, pilgrims routinely use the bodega doorways as latrines. We could make it something free and nice for the pilgrims. But anything nice left unattended is often wrecked, looted, stolen, or otherwise spoiled -- even in the sweetness-and-light atmosphere of the Camino de Santiago.

So I await inspiration. Meantime, the bodega gives me something to do while the house is worked-on. We've lately begun re-facing the outside, where the weather and cheap building materials have conspired to give Bodega 10 a rather bombed-out look. I've painted the door "Luminous Blue," and we're experimenting with concrete and lime plaster to fill in the missing brickwork. It looks like a pizza just now, but things are improving! Film at 11.

If you have ideas, please post them here: If you don't comment, the terrorists win!

A Long Summer Saturday

I am very tired. It's only 10 p.m. on Saturday, time for all good Spaniards to sit down to dinner, with a card game and drinks after. Not me. Soon as I get done with this, (and writing in the daily hard-copy diary, and putting away the green beans) I am hitting the sack.

It's a righteous kind of tired. I put in a very full day. It makes me feel proud of myself, as I've been putting in some less-than rigorous time lately. I don't want to get fat.

So here is Saturday on my own in Moratinos. (Paddy is down in Malaga, splashing in the Med and sharing stomach viruses with the grandchildren.) I woke myself up early because I was expecting Roger and his wife to arrive sometime in the morning, and I wanted the place to look at least sanitary. I had the whole morning to hike the dog around (Milagros gave us a couple of handfuls of new green beans), start laundry, put away junk, take out trash, etc. And to hunt down all the info. I have collected on woodburners, pellet stoves, boilers, and other heating systems. The visitors rolled up about noon.

Roger and his wife (I can't remember her name!) are from the Netherlands. He lives now down on the Costa del Sol, where all the Europeans are; he's started a business there selling radiant heating systems mostly to fellow expats. She is an architect, still living in Holland and supporting them both while his business gets going. They were on their way south from Holland, and stopped here on the way, because I kept asking him so many questions on the online "fincas in spain" forum. They have nothing to gain from us, as Castilla-Leon is a LONG way from Arcos de Frontera, where he lives and works... too far to sell or service anything. I think they're just really nice.

And so I showed them through The Project, and then learned more about renewable energy heat sources than I ever wanted to know. I still am not sure what all I've come away with, but looking over our place he recommends a "bomba de calor," aka "heat pump," to run the under-floor system and a few connected upstairs radiators. (I think "bomba de calor" sounds a whole lot more toothsome than "heat pump.") And I found a dealer/installer right here in Palencia!

I also learned our gut-and-rebuild project is remarkably huge even for those used to seeing expat reform-a-ruin projects in Spain. And that our many months of waiting and arguing and anguishing over builders could've been a whole lot worse. And the corrugated steel doors on our front gate and bathroom are quite chic in architectural circles!

Their three dogs waited out in the camper van, parked in the shade. The dogs are real crocodiles: an Irish terrier and two rather feral-looking little black mutts whom Roger said, with a touch of strange pride, have already killed five sheep between them. The terrier attacked Una, who attacked right back. And on that note the Dutchmen and their dogs drove away toward the Via de la Plata. (Una seems none the worse for it. She loves a good rumble.)

They went at about 2, which is lunchtime hereabouts. I had leftover veg, all mixed up together, and fell asleep for a while. This is Spain. That's what you do, especially when the heat comes down like a curtain at about 1 p.m.

I woke up just in time to bike over to St. Nicolas, where I was to chat with young Esperanza in English for a while. I ended up chatting with her mom, Raquel, in Spanish instead. They live in a classic Moorish-style finca, very plain on the outside and a lush garden with fruit trees, roses and jasmine, vegetable patches, a well, caged canaries, covered porches hung with hams, and stable blocks all strung together over decades' worth of do-it-yourself building projects. The house is two stories with amazing views out over the threshing floor and up the tree-lined Rio Seco. I got the full tour. I got another big bag of green beans. I think they like me.

Their front gate opens right onto the Camino de Santiago, and they put up scallop shells outside... apparently an invitation to some people. Just as I was leaving a very nasty-looking man turned up with a scruffy dog on a string. He asked for help, so Raquel gave him a Euro. He looked at it in his hand like it was a beetle.

"I don't need money. I need something to eat. I want a sandwich," he said. (He put the money in his pocket anyway.) Raquel went into the house, so I stood at the gate and was friendly at him. He spoke English. A Swede who'd for some reason visited Mississippi, he decided he doesn't like America so he came back to Europe, where the evils of America just seemed to follow him everywhere. The Camino was, he said, a nice break from all that, a few weeks of peace.

Raquel came back with a foil-wrapped sandwich and an apple. "I don't want your fruit. I just asked for the sandwich," he told her, handing back the apple. "Thank you."

He went to leave. "Say a prayer for her, on your way," I said, by way of goodbye. "I already said thank-you!" he said, striding back to the door. "What more do you want from me? I'm not going to do it. I'm not saying a prayer."

Me and Raquel and Esperanza looked at one another. The canaries stopped singing. "OK then," I told him. "Have a good trip. Good luck with your dog."

"Christ! You're still such an American, telling me what to do!" he yelled, waving his sandwich. "My dog does not need good luck, OK?" Raquel shut the gate before he could get any closer.

"Maleducado," Esperanza said. "Sin verguenza," her mom added. "Bloody lunatic," I finished. Raquel nodded. "The moon is full. It makes them aggressive."


He made me feel low for a little while, but when I got back to Moratinos the pueblo was in full Summer Evening mode, which is enough to put anyone right. The plaza is all tidied up, the flower garden is in full bloom, the duenas in their widow's weeds sat in their wheelchairs while their progeny played cards or chatted or hauled buckets of concrete to the roofing job across the way, or oiled their tractors. Modesto's house was blasting the "Sound of Music" soundtrack. We all tapped our toes while Julie Andrews' "Favorite Things" echoed off the adobes. It sounded remarkably like the tinny electioneering cars that jabber through the streets during campaign season, but with a string section.



In summertime there are children in Moratinos: the grandkids come to visit, and their cousins ride their bikes over from Terradillos or St. Nicolas. They shout and run. Above it all the swallows swoop and circle endlessly. At some signal Julia got up and headed over to the church, her hands full of two huge silver keys. It's Saturday evening -- cleanup time. The able-bodied ladies followed her up the stairs and into the tall cool sanctuary. (this picture is from St. Isidore Day. That's Julia with the church keys -- her pride and joy. And the man is Modesto, resident poet, historian and Julie Andrews fan.)

In a half-hour's time the floors were swept and mopped, from the apse right out over the front steps. The old flowers were taken out and dumped and new gladiolas and roses and greenery were cut and arranged and set up in front of the altar, Nuestra Senora del Rosario, and San Rocco. Candlewicks were trimmed. I put the last of the little votive candles in their cups. After this, no more until September. The bishop is cutting back, Julia said. (I wonder where I can find some around here?)

We stopped back in the plaza, where Leandra showed me the latest crop of kittens and told me to take a couple home. "No!" Pin yelled from over at the card table. "If she's taking anyone's kittens she's taking mine. I asked first, a couple weeks ago!"

I'm allergic to cats, so this will be a Paddy decision, I said. He'd be the one taking care of them. (Hiding behind your husband is acceptable here.)

So I came home, ate some more veg., washed and snapped and blanched and bagged all those green beans, which will go into the freezer soon as I'm done here. Which is right now.

(I'd tell you to "sleep tight," but I don't want to be a bossy American.)

I see yer Remolque and raise you a Least Weasel

It's harvest time 'round here, the fields are full of machinery and the farmers are up and about half the night. The big rush is almost over, I am told, and the "eras," or threshing floors, are piled high with heaps of different kinds of grain. This picture shows the one in Moratinos. A huge truck from Galicia came this morning and hauled away a couple more heaps; the grain-buyers were all over yesterday, sticking their hands into the cool, slippery corns. The farmers stood by quietly. That's a year's work stacked up there for judging.

The harvest has brought about a few unintended circumstances. On the right side of the picture is a big wagon, what around here is called a "remolque." A week ago, that very remolque was parked outside the gate at the Peaceable Kingdom, and a smiling young Rumanian lad was filling it up, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow, with dirt excavated from the space that will someday be our kitchen. But this week the remolque was needed elsewhere. The dirt downstairs is left in a gigantic pile, waiting for the remolque to roll back this way. I wish I had a remolque of my own! (but then I'd need a tractor to pull it.)

(Still, the work continues upstairs -- they're putting in frames for the walls, doors, and windows. They just told me they need more money to buy the things they will need for next week. I told them they already have way too much of our money, and I won't give them any more. I think the boss is pretending he does not understand my Spanish.)

Having all this grain around is giving rise to lots of other things. The most noticeable is a sharp upward spike in the field mouse population. These guys are glossy and fat and full of attitude, and they were making nightly appearances in my room. For this reason only I am now permitting Una Dog to sleep in the cave with me. She is delighted, and spends the night on the floor, growling at things I cannot see, which isn't exactly reassuring or restful.



(I put down a mousetrap yesterday behind the dresser and got two mice, straightaway. They are cute. Their tails are luxuriantly long, their eyes bright black beads, their ears have little folds at the ends, like bows. And they made an almighty racket trying to chew their way into a bag of dog food, stored only about 3 feet from my bed. It is not very Buddhist of me to end their existence, but they were ruining my equinamity, dammit!)

The mouse boom has emboldened all the critters who enjoy a mouse luncheon. I heard the owl last night, after the mice packed it in. There are more raptors wheeling around overhead. And yesterday evening, best of all, I saw something rarely seen, out on the path beyond the dovecotes: a mostelo! In English it's a Least Weasel, the world's smallest carnivore, and supposedly one of the meanest little critters out there.


The one I saw, on the path just behind us, looked just like a half-size, chocolate-brown ferret. (I know my ferrets.) He was hot on the tail of a mouse, but he stopped dead right on the path, just so I could get a good look at him. He moved in that same smooth humpety-humpety slink, then leaped into the weedy ditch after his dinner. It made my day!

Una, meantime, killed four mice of her own.

So... soon the grain will be sold off or gathered in for next year's seed, and the tractors will be oiled up and put away, and all the farmers can go to the beach and relax for a couple of weeks.

And the remolque will come back, and the dirt will go into it, and the kitchen can be built. If I can convince the builders they can keep working without weekly infusions of cash.

Wherein I meet The Geomancer

You never know who you're going to meet when you go for a morning walk around here.

This morning the dog and I followed the St. Martin Triangle (nothing to do with Bermuda, btw) a little network of roads about 2 miles on each side. It's rolling country, all fields and trees and storks and hawks. Anything new and different stands out. The drilling rig and box truck caught my eye right away. Una and I made our slow way toward it, with our shadows striding long on the blacktop alongside and a field of sunflowers watching with wicked black faces. The truck was parked in a little strip of hayfield, alongside the Rio Templarios bridge. There were four men, working at something.

Men working is remarkable too, especially on St. James Day, a Spanish national holiday. I drew closer, said my "buenas dias" and watched while three of them manhandled what looked like a telephone pole into the upright chamber of the drilling rig. Strange. I asked the odd man what was up, after carefully framing my question in Spanish.

"Why are you drilling a well next to a river?" I said.

"Sorry. Don't speak a word of Spanish," the man answered, in accented English. He sounded Dutch.

"Netherlands?" I asked (in English.)

"South Africa," he said. "Name's Jim." He shook my hand. I told him I'm an American living nearby, and asked him again, in English, why they were drilling when there's already abundant water in the little river.

"Not drilling, miss. That's no water drill. We're geomancing. Me, I'm the geomancer, and these are my crew."

"Umm. Yeah," I said, thinking fast. "Geomancers. Ley lines. The mystic energy of the earth and all that, right?" Jim nodded, folded his arms across his chest, and squinted out over the tiny river to the new autopista in the distance. The Look of Eagles, it was.

The Way of St. James attracts its share of metaphysicians and strange sciences, not to mention alternative religions and conspiracy theorists. Shirley Maclaine Herself acknowledges the Camino follows one of Earth's great invisible power meridians. Still, most Arcane Adepts keep to the Camino proper. It was odd to find such a specimen a good mile south of the Way. And with some major machinery in tow.

"You're a little far from the Camino," I observed. He just smiled and appeared to listen closely. "What do you do with all this rig?"

"Oh, that. We're taking soundings. Measuring. This stream here, it's the Rio Templarios, you know. Templars. The Templar Knights. The next town is Terradillos of the Templars. And right there, in between, making a triangle? Is the Camino de Santiago."

"Well, yeah." I said. "Um... What are you finding, then? Your measurements, are they telling you anything?"

"Of course," he said, clasping his hands together. "You live around here, right? You're in for a show, then. There's a great deal of energy built up right here, where these hills and rises come together...just follow that line of electric poles there with your eyes. Right....there. Where the birds are all sitting. It attracts the birds." He grinned. "If you stand and watch it, maybe you'll see the radiant energy rising. This place is just waiting to explode in glory!"

I haven't head of anything "exploding in glory" since I last attended a Holy Ghost Revival service, which is a rather long time. I didn't quite know how to ask Jim to explain himself without being caught up in a sermon. And just then one of the other men started over to us, clipboard in hand. He was wearing a helmet. His name was Henk, he said.

"Check these," he told Jim. "They're ready for you over there." Jim nodded at me and stepped over to the machine.

Henk spoke to me, matter-of-factly. "Don't listen to a thing he tells you. Just watch, you'll see what we're doing."

Jim hit a button, and the drill rig slowly sank the utility pole into the soil. The men put a sort of cap on top, to mark the spot. The men were simply reinforcing the river bank, driving a line of pilings into the ground several yards back from the banks. It's a state project, Henk said, European Union funding, a South African crew working under contract with an Austrian engineering firm, unaffected by Spanish holidays. No ley lines or geomancy or mystic power. Just poles and geology and hydraulics.

"Cool," I said, watching the machine work. "But where'd the geomancer thing come from?"

"Jim's a fucking sociopath," Henk said fondly. "I think he's getting too much sun. It makes him tell horrid lies."

Jim overheard. He looked up from the clipboard and corrected his friend. "Not the sun, stupid," he sang out. "It's the Earth, man. The power of the Earth!"

Why I Love America

OK, this has nothing at all to do with Moratinos or Spain or the Camino. But it makes me laugh out loud and I want to learn how to post videos on here. So... enjoy this celebration of American Popular Culture and the True Creative Spirit of My Countrymen.



... And for the really fun part...

Sunflowers, Dust, and 'Sketty

I am thinking of things besides writing projects, at least this Sabbath Day. A summer breeze is blowing hard across the Meseta, filling the sky with fake-looking clouds. We took our big long Sunday hike this afternoon, over a web of farm tracks that criss-crosses miles and miles of this area. There's been no rain for weeks, and the tractors have pounded the surface underfoot into golden-brown, powder-fine dust a quarter-inch deep. The trails appear and disappear between tiny towns with names like Villelga, Villalon, Villada, Escobar de Campos, San Martin de los Fuentes, and Grajal de Campos ("grail of the fields.") These "pueblins," or hamlets, crop up every three or four miles, with nothing in between but fields laid over a rolling landscape. You can see for miles... or kilometers.

Because monster industrial farms haven't taken over here, the landscape isn't boring like Kansas or Iowa. The plots are only two or three acres big and there's a wide variety of things growing in them, giving that patchwork look that's so pleasing. The cut hay lies in yellow stripes, the alfalfa is still deep green, oats wallow and wave under the wind, and newly turned fields are dark brown corrugations. In June there were fields painted solid red with poppies, and now in July there are acres of violent yellow sunflowers, all facing the same direction. (when you walk past it always seems like someone is watching you. Really.)

Here and there we saw a combine harvester or a pickup truck. But for most of the hike we were the only figures visible. Still, the guys in the tractors see all. I expect to be quizzed within the next couple of days by the neighbors about why we chose to walk out among those fields out toward Escobar, so far from town for a Sunday afternoon.



It would be easy to get lost if you didn't have some kind of bearing. The fields and hills look alike, and even the distant towns all have similar church towers, grain elevators, poplar trees and an orchard or two strung out along the rio. Smart people would take a compass. We take Una Dog, who so far has always found her way home. And I have a sharp eye for details and a good sense of direction, at least out on the campo. (Cities and highways are another story.)

We ended up in St. Nicolas de Real Camino, and went backward along the Camino de Santiago to get home to Moratinos. On the way we stopped and spoke to two pilgrims, a woman on foot and a man on a bike, both of them keen to find the next place with an available bed and a filling meal. We marveled at how international the camino is, the four of us chatting there in some kind of Spanish: an Italian, an Englishman, an Argentine and an Americana.

Pilgrims are very focused people. They remind me of how absorbed I become when I have a goal in sight, how I miss out on so much that's standing just over that hill to the left or that mountain to the north. Focus is good, unless it isn't. We are fortunate, living here. We can enjoy the pilgrims and the Camino, and also take time to ramble in the fields and pathways that parallel and cross and the Way. The Camino is such a rich experience. But Spain is out there, too, outside the lines.

I hope it rains tonight. I want to see how well our new roof works, before they start putting in drywall and other non-waterproof things. Oh, and my first mosaic, a little hand-sized plaque with a nice stylized cross, has turned out just dandy!

As for the writing project: Yes, I am writing something crazy. Unfortunately it requires me to immerse myself in memories, diary entries, blogs, and just plain academic-type research; some of it fun, some of it not nice at all. I've had a couple of "smack upside the head" moments of realization, the "wow, why didn't I recognize that?" stuff I am sure happens to people who think they know what they're looking at when it's staring them in the face... when they don't! Things are coming together now, but slowly. And all the re-thinking of things I'd put aside is actually working its way into my dreams at night!

It's fascinating to note that our town has only about 25 people living in it, and good 10 percent are truly "not all there." Should we be drinking the tap water, I wonder?

I thought about just shelving the story idea, but no. This is just too damn compelling to let go, even if it does get me down. There's been some really good writing done around here in the past year, and more is happening all the time. (My audience has shrunk somewhat, but I thank you, dear blog readers, for checking me in!)

Ryan's made 'sketty with mushrooms (from our mushroom field) and toasted pine nuts and walnuts! No time to blog! (It's going to be hard to let this boy go back to Cleveland!)

The Muse Hovers Near

Maybe it's because July is my favorite month of the year. Maybe because progress is finally happening on the house, so my mind is eased a little (even thought the pellet furnace and under-floor heating system is going to cost almost 5,000 euro! Yikes!) Or perhaps it's the simultaneous arrival at our place of three editions of the New York Times AND a New Yorker issue of rare excellence. Or maybe it was the afternoon I spent last week chasing down a news story for the Post-Gazette. (it didn't go anywhere, but I had a lot of fun!)

For whatever reason, a really delicious and long-absent sensation is moving over me: I think I am going to Write Something.

The Writing sensation has never been terribly omnipresent, even in the years when I wrote news for a living. But when it does move in, it's like an intoxication. I become useless at other pursuits save the contemplative. I walk or sit, and think and consider. I take notes and make outlines and stop in the middle of conversations because some little detail or word or memory or color suddenly completely sucks up all my attention. I prepare myself. I read and re-read things: old notebooks or diaries, a collection of essays and poems and post cards accumulated over the years. Some are serious: Joseph Mitchell's "Up in the Old Hotel" always does it for me, as well as poems by Rilke and Roethke, and a few old emails from friends in faraway places. And the Modern Jazz Quartet.

All this is usually my way of circling around some particular subject or event or story line that's slowly taken shape in the last week or month, something or someone particularly piquant or fascinating. It used to be news stories that did that, or a snippet of conversation overheard. One time it was a song on the radio combined with the sound of wind in the trees, as heard from behind the wheel of a top-down convertible going 50 mph. (someday I'm getting me another rag-top roadster. I promised myself that.)

I realize that right here among us we have a character of remarkable depth and richness and texture, someone whose reality truly is stranger than any fiction I could conjure up. It's almost ready-made, really... all I have to do is re-read everything me and Paddy have written in the past year or so, and mix in some hindsight, and have a glass of wine maybe, and set this thing to spinning... I've got no idea what will become of it, but at least I'll be off the streets for a day or two.

So, if I neglect my blogging you'll know that is a good thing, really. Because when I'm really Writing it's like I've fallen in love, or I have a new baby, or I'm on a big winning streak at the horse races. I'm probably working my tail off, but I'm having the time of my life. There's nothing in the world like it!