Synaptic

Sam’s essay is a snapshot of an ordinary Sunday ritual–a walk with his host parents to their vegetable garden outside Granada. But however ordinary that walk sounds, it’s really an exotic essay full of wonderful characters, sharp description, and connections to his Iowa home and childhood. These experiences are why we travel.

-Keith Ratzlaff

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We found ourselves walking again, this time away from the city center, and towards the countryside. Laura, a friend of my host parents, was visiting for the weekend, and we’d decided to cap off a lazy Sunday with a visit to the garden, as Antonio, my host father, was eager to check in on his crop. Despite our leisurely pace, we were intent on escaping the buzz of the city for the calming allure of La Vega – the vast, flat area of countryside neighboring Granada proper.

The valley in which Granada lies is somewhat bowl-shaped, flanked by foothills and mountains on nearly all sides. To the east is the city, rising and falling with the contours of the land, with the cathedral as the jewel in the center of its crown, the tanned stone standing in contrast against the various grays and whites of office buildings and apartments. Further east, the Alhambra rests on its prominent perch, overlooking the valley, which is speckled with pueblos of many sizes, all connected to the main city through branching roads. From the south, the mazy foothills of the Sierra Nevada grope towards the city fringe like withered fingers outstretched. The western border of Granada is formed by a major highway, and just to the west of that highway lies our destination, an open, fertile valley – La Vega – a pastoral gem not yet spoiled by urbanization.

We sauntered on, crossing the river, pausing only for a moment when Antonio spotted a familiar face among the throngs of granadinos headed home for the night. “Como andas?” she inquired (literally “How are you walking?”, but meaning “How have you been?”). I thought it ironic, given our circumstances, and asked myself the same question. At this point in my stay in Granada, I’d long since reconciled myself with the natural rhythm of my footsteps – I’d found my pace, as it were. I suppose I finally slowed my mind enough for my body to catch up, and the ensuing reunion had me feeling gathered for once. I’m convinced that this tranquility that’d somehow taken hold of me over the course of the last couple months had something to do with spending a lot of time walking. On a typical weekday, I calculated that I walked about seven miles, and up to ten or eleven if I ventured out at night. There’s something so balancing—so human—about putting one foot in front of the other, and letting the mind go where it may.

With the sun still well above the horizon, I imagined it was around seven o’clock, but I supposed it didn’t matter – I hadn’t bothered to check the time all day, as was the usual on Sundays in Andalucía. Often the majority of the day was spent preparing for and thoroughly enjoying the day’s most anticipated occasion – lunch. There was nothing more on the agenda.

Study abroad students like myself are trained to make the most of their time, to go and go, to see and do, to make a hasty trip to yet another alleged paradise during every spare moment – after all, it may be the chance of a lifetime. However, those curious Sundays in Andalucía began to catch ahold of me, slowing me down and keeping me near, my plans to travel Europe gradually evaporating. On Mondays, many of my friends in class used to complain about the previous night’s frenzied return to Granada, ranting on and on about deceiving budget flights and logistical hiccups. To be honest, I was envious, but still I preferred to stay home. Almost every Sunday night, I’d leave my snoring host parents to the news, lug my mattress out onto the terrace and lie down to watch the first stars squeeze through the twilight sky, Manolete the tiger cat purring in my lap.

Before us, deep golden beams streaked the asphalt, light pouring in through the narrow streets running east to west and spilling onto the sidewalk. I thought of my home back in Iowa, of that soft pink light that floods in through the west windows in the living room after supper. As the sun continued to sink, the west-facing sides of the buildings took on a salmon-tinted hue, much like the peaks of the Sierra Nevada in the distance, also ablaze, basking in the lingering rays of Lorenzo (the sun as personified by the locals).

We were nearing that line which, on the western fringe of Granada, marks the clash of the rural and the urban – Autovía A-44. From where we were, I could already make out the fields, and the old plantation houses once abandoned but taken up 53again because of urban sprawl and the ever-increasing lack of fertile farmland. Terracotta tiles ran the roofs, delicate cascades of earthen orange. There were wooden shacks nestled between bushes and long grass, their frames warped from the searing Andalusian summers. The paths ahead widened and turned from concrete to gravel. I felt a rush.

As a native Iowan, I’ll admit I’m actually quite fond of long gravel roads, and fields of corn and beans, of river bottoms strewn with cottonwoods, the occasional thriving prairie (most of which are long gone), and sumac-laden county highways. I found a weird sort of humble pleasure in attempting to explain the Iowan landscape to my host parents during my first few days with them. It’s always bothered me when people (especially natives) label Iowa as plain and boring. There’s actually much to see, but it must be sought after, and with patience. It was this that I wanted to communicate, but my rusty Spanish didn’t allow for it. Antonio and Jesusa offered polite smiles in consolation and made me promise to send pictures when I returned home, although I was afraid they wouldn’t see things the way I do. I feel a bit stir crazy when I can’t see all of the sky, and I’m calmed by a view that extends out to the horizon, not obstructed by office buildings and cathedrals (as grand as they may be). When I picture home, I see those long gravel roads tapering off into the distance, and electrical wires draped in an endless procession over the hills, everything converging and growing closer together towards a center point, until suddenly, the line ends, and earth touches sky. However, rather than what meets the eye, it’s the simplicity that dazes me – and the solitude! As a boy, I liked to imagine that the gravel roads were unpaved only because the tires that had ventured out to pound the rocks into asphalt were still too few.

Were it not for the hum of rubber on pavement, I would have thought myself long removed from Granada. A mere five-minute walk back towards the city could’ve land us in a shopping mall, which sits adjacent to the highway. We followed a winding dirt road, passing beneath a canopy of roses in full bloom, which clung to a trestle that arched over the meandering path. Beaming, Jesusa plucked one and placed it in her hair, something I’d already seen her do many times by that point. The fragrance came in waves.

Rounding a corner, we arrived at the gardens. The field before me was subdivided into about 20 rectangular plots of comparable size, marked by shallow ditches dug into the soil. Antonio offered an explanation – a city organization owns the land and rents out plots, providing tools and seed in exchange for a monthly payment. It seemed that many people took advantage, for the place was still teeming with life even with the fast receding light. Some had slings and baskets already full of early spring harvests – beans, spinach, swiss chard, lettuce greens. We followed a footpath towards the heart of the field, passing a frail, hunched señora who had dedicated her entire plot to flowers, which were in full bloom. We stopped for a moment to shower her with compliments, and then resumed our meandering down the path, which was thinning now. An older man stepped out of our way, treading lightly between rows of potatoes, leaning on his rake and brushing away the perspiration beading up at his temples with a dirty glove. After a short time we reached Antonio’s plot. He stood still for a moment, legs apart, hands on his hips, and then went right to work. Laura and I collapsed on a nearby bench to rest our weary legs for a spell, and she began to roll a cigarette.

Laura, a native of France, had been living in Spain for more than 30 years, and most recently had moved to a humble abode in the barren mountains of Southern Spain, where she lived alone – save for her many feline friends. Even though she spoke Spanish with near-native fluency, she still answered questions with “Oui, oui.” A gentle woman of small stature, her lack of makeup and plain garb reflected her contempt for material things. Laura has a rather gravelly voice, but her talk of universal energy and harmony and love seems to purify it, in a way. The last time I saw her before leaving Spain, I told Laura I didn’t know if I’d ever see her again, and that I’d miss her terribly. She laughed and kissed me on the cheek, and told me our spirits have a connection – we’d find each other someday. I can still picture her movements – running a thin hand through her hair, a cigarette dangling precariously between her fingers. She’d take a slow and methodical drag, then tilt her head back slightly like she always did, gently exhaling the smoke through pursed lips, with a faint whisper.

Before she could enjoy a single puff of the cigarette she’d rolled, Antonio called us over to behold the breathtaking cauliflower he’d been coddling for the last few weeks. “Oui, oui,” whispered Laura in affirmation. We all chuckled, and Antonio went back to his harvesting, beaming with pride. Laura lit her cigarette.

After a short while, when we’d finished the bulk of the picking, Jesusa urged me to walk back down the gravel road to catch a glimpse of the new litter of kittens by the toolsheds – the owner of the plots had cats brought in a while ago in an attempt to do away with the rodents that plagued the old buildings. I nodded, and started walking once again, back down the gravel road, but not for the kittens.

On both sides of the road, there were numerous plots of different shapes and sizes, but all seemed to be plowed in the same manner – rows and rows of perfect lines of elevated dirt, the seedlings just beginning to poke through the crest and unfolding, revealing the first small leaves, mere wisps of light green at that point. I kept walking, passing by row after row, lines bending and shifting in my peripherals, one after the other in succession.

When I was a child, I used to blink my eyes with regular intervals marking each time the car passed an electrical tower. My vision would follow the rise and the fall of that single wire, tethered precariously to its wooden post. Then I’d imagine a man running on the shoulder at 55 miles an hour next to the car, like a road-runner, his legs a flesh-colored blur. I would make him plunge down into the ditches and then, with a burst of speed, ramp off of the upcoming slope, up into the sky with a magnificent leap, limbs flailing in the air, finally slamming down again on the next downslope. But most often, especially when I was dozing off, I would stare directly out the window to my left —I always sat on the left—and try not to move my eyes while watch the stripes of corn and beans pass by me, something akin to a film reel. On other occasions I’d pick out a row up ahead, and wait for us to approach it, following it with my gaze as it neared. Then, in that one moment when the car reached the row – a flash – the row would form a straight line leading from my perspective to the horizon, but only for a passing instant, and then it’d be behind us, quickly receding, bending and elongating once again. Ask any small-town Midwestern child and they will know what I mean.

Back at our plot, after some time (having been through considerable talk regarding bean trestles and pepper strains), Antonio got my attention, “Mira pa’lla.” He gestured to a man in a straw hat a couple plots down. “Yimi.” I vaguely remembered hearing this name come up over dinner a couple times – the name of a “funny” man Antonio had wanted me to meet. We all wandered over towards Yimi’s plot. He was in the middle of a conversation with another gardener, also an acquaintance of Antonio, and we joined in. “Yimi” sported a Green Bay Packers t-shirt, athletic shorts, and thong sandals – undoubtedly American. After a few minutes of conversation, Antonio introduced me to Jimmy, whom I’d pegged as Asian all along because of my host father’s struggle to pronounce the English sounds. Knowing little about me, Jimmy continued to speak to me in Spanish. I was a bit confused, but kept on with Spanish as well in an effort to keep my host parents included in the conversation. I asked Jimmy where he was from, and told him I was from Iowa. “Wait, what the hell?” he exclaimed, suddenly, in English. “You’re not Spanish?” I tried to stifle my laughter – here were two Americans, oblivious to each other, both hiding behind guises – one Asian and the other, Spanish. Jimmy looked to the sky and groaned, pestering me for letting him struggle through a Spanish conversation all that time.

There was no holding back; we eagerly burst forth into rapid English. The Spaniards’ eyebrows raised, and they glanced at each other, completely lost now, but we didn’t care much anymore. It felt incredible to speak my native language in front of my host parents, for the burden of confusion that I was used to carrying was theirs to bear for a short time. There’s a certain dark satisfaction we get in turning the tables on someone, in forcing them see things from our own point of view. Perhaps we all just want to be understood – I think we all have something worth sharing, after all. Regardless, I took my chance to boast, and cracked more jokes than my usual self, making sure to laugh with extra delight as to communicate to my host parents that I did in fact have a sense of humor. My glee was short-lived, as the Spaniards became bored (Jesusa always told me she hated the sound of English) and wandered back towards Antonio’s plot, daylight quickly receding.

Jimmy’s voice was laid-back, and he shaped and drew out all the vowels in his words – speech reminiscent of a surf bum, or someone of the like. I couldn’t help but grin. He’d moved to Granada three years ago, originally from Wisconsin, and had been living with his family in Seattle, when out of pure boredom they decided to uproot and go somewhere new. We talked of his family, of Spain, of what we missed back home, and how the granadinos teased him for his “nontraditional” gardening methods. I asked him if he ever regretted the move. “Never”, he asserted – “Look around, this place is beautiful!” He was right. Golden hour had set in, and the valley was bathed in an ethereal glow, the sun clinging to the horizon. If I blurred my vision, the landscape became something reminiscent of a work of Monet, dashingstreaks of color squiggling and squirming in a constant and dazzling display. Leaves and flowers danced and swayed in the breeze, each miniscule movement catching some of that heavenly golden light and reflecting it with a quick flash. There was a clarity that caused things to seem dreamlike – colors so pure, a breeze so gentle. I remember turning to the south and seeing the Sierra Nevada, which had been to my back most of the evening, and in the vibrant, lucid light, those mountains put me in my place – I was an insignificant speck, but I did have a story. For a moment, I was fully conscious of myself where I was – my place in the garden, in the valley, and in the world, as if things had been put rightly back into scale and perspective. As soon as it came, it was gone. I looked to my surroundings once more, everything bathed in the glow of Lorenzo and radiating beauty. I saw the gravel road, a gentle curve, and the electrical wires, draped like tapestry, following road’s arc, on and on.

***

The sun had set and the cool of the night was already upon us. We gathered the night’s crop – cardoon stalks, leeks, beans, and the small red peppers that Jesusa hangs on a cord in the kitchen to dry. We then stopped briefly at the toolshed and dropped off what we had borrowed. Those first stars I’d grown so fond of were beginning to appear overhead, speckling the sky. We gave our farewells to the big sky, and we set off, refreshed, back down the gravel road, toward the city lights.