Habits
My life has the habit of putting me in situations and places where extraordinary and improbable things happen for no particular reason. It especially intensified when I started hiking, back in 2008. The size of the mountains was a good lesson on the size of humans compared to them, and how their egos by far surpass those altitudes of the highest peaks. In a way, it brought me back home, the inner sanctum I had no idea was there in the first place. When my eyes opened to it, suddenly everything else changed too. The awareness that my body is actually a tool, and my exhaustion treshold was higher than I thought. Having been perceived as weak and incapable, it was an awakening of unspeakable proportions. And sitting on a bench with the view of a monumental mountain range, between tall tree trunks, it felt like everything was within reach. How intoxicating.
My grandfather wasn’t the hiking kind. He kept to the ground level and was perfectly comfortable there too. He had that Hitler mustache, but that wasn’t really a metaphor for his political views, though their family tomb of obnoxious proportions sports a large black iron cross on top. He was well educated for his time, and worked as the secretary of the local elementary school. Never one to play by the book, he regarded the laws of society like a giant piece of cheese full of holes through which you could escape the rules and still get your way. Or at least that’s what I was told, and I didn’t really put it past him. He even managed to get himself thrown out of the Party for some meddling with money during the his work as the local wedding official. After the war, things like these became a regular occurence since the system that controlled them had broken down, but my grandpa was already too old to play the game. Fuck, he loathed rules with more charisma than political players nowadays. There’s a stone underneath a mulberry tree behind his house, where I used to sit in the shade during the long afternoon hours in July or August, it was one of those places where you could hide from the heat, underneath its translucent crown.
Though mulberries weren’t my fruit of choice, there was plenty to chose from in the grounds: cherries, lemons, apples. Strawberries were planted in and old tin barrel pierced with holes through which twigs heavy with fruits sprouted, their smell colliding with the fragrant lemon tree right next to it. Grandpa used to tell me, during our walks around the grounds, stick to seasonal fruit and you’ll be fine. Not that it was something I hadn’t figured out myself, but it showed he cared for my well-being. One time we stopped by the neighbors’ house and no one was there. He sneaked me into the apple orchard behind the house. Then we sat on a bench overlooking the lake underneath and ate them. I think I was happy, though we didn’t really bond too much over the years. I grew out of that picture, my life took a different direction and I didn’t really mind. There were new people, new things, exciting prospects, and somehow, grandpa stayed tucked away in the back of my mind, until one fateful day a couple of years afterwards.
I was on a trip in Spain with a friend of mine, and we went for a hike in the breathtaking landscapes of the Aiguestortes National park, with 200 lakes, streams and waterfalls. Four days of intoxicating beauty, sweet frosty dew on your lips every morning and a canopy of countless stars above your head in the night. Some of the trails were steep and slippery; one wrong step could have had cost you an injury that would be hard to fix right there. But somehow, we reached the peak and it was definitely worth all the effort to get there. The wind was blowing my hair out of my face. There was a marker with the altitude right there in the middle: 3017m, with France underneath my feet, deep down. It was almost an out of body experience.
It took me every ounce of strength to get there, but seeing all that beauty made me forget just how tired I was. Then I remembered I should probably call home to let them know I was alive, since there had been no coverage downstairs. The phone rang and dad was on the other side of the line. Phones make geography look ridiculous. But what he said to me was anything but. Grandpa had died, and they were on their way to the funeral as we spoke. The moment of my biggest triumph over myself turned into regrets about being so far away from all that drama, as if the experience of that altitude wasn’t dramatic enough already. So I sat down and shed a few tears, my taste buds overflowing, once again, with the taste of apples.
But there was no time for grief: we would save it for later, when we found out that our host, an artist called Jordi, died the very same day as well. Death is not a good travel mate. It can even follow you all the way up to the mountain peaks of Spanish Pyrenees and down into the apartment of an old painter in Barcelona. Grief is a heavy bag that never fits into the overhead compartment. So it’s the best to put it on a luggage belt cruising inside your mind like lost suitcases through the bowels of an airport. And make sure you leave the premises before it comes back to haunt you.
