Climb Every Mountain

(I know I've used this blog post title before, but if you can't use Sound of Music song titles as part of your life, is life really worth living?  Next thing you'll say is that I can't use Princess Bride lines in every day life.  Sigh.)

This was to be the most difficult hike day of the trip. The second of our two days on the Primitivo, it was not to be long, but it was essentially all uphill.  First, we had a one thousand foot elevation gain in three miles, and then a seven hundred foot elevation gain in one mile.

Seven hundred feet in one mile!  For comparison, Angels Landing in Utah was 1400 feet in 2.5 miles, while Spy Rock in the Blue Ridge is 1100 feet in 2.4 miles.

(By the way – no pun intended – the Primitivo is a great name for both a hiking trail and a rock band!)

The first three miles were relatively uneventful.  We departed, as we have so far every morning, in fog, but it too would burn off, leaving a bright, sun-shiney day.  After hitting the local small bar for coffee and a bathroom stop, we left the tiny village of Penaseita and headed down, but the walk down did not last long.

On the other hand, once we started going up, it was not that difficult.  It was harder than the three mile uphill ending hike the day before, but one thousand feet over three miles is not that strenuous.  Of course, you are not always going up.  Sometimes you are on flats, and other times a little downhill even.  

To pass the time, I told some of my favorite hiking stories and jokes, such as the one about the lost Fugowweh Tribe (thanks to John Pazz), the Blind Deer, Notre Dame bellringer, and the Buffalo/college one.  Aner enjoyed them and said he would try using them.  My fellow Americans on the hike would chuckle and groan at the jokes.

At a bridge named after a local hidden mill, Aner told the story behind why mills were hidden in the country.  When you had your grain milled, the miller reported the amount and you had to pay a steep tax on that.  So the villagers would set up their own mill deep in the woods, grind about half of their grain there, and, of course to avoid suspicion, still have royal miller grind the other half – thus avoiding about half of the taxes.  If only I could get those ancient villagers to do MY taxes!

(Actual Editor’s Note: the country manor house we are in also has slow internet, but I am able to download some photos.  Hurray!)

After a bit further on, we stopped by a house pretty much in the middle of nowhere, and Aner broke out some hazelnut pastries that he had picked up at a bakery in Oviedo for a snack.  It was fabulous. . .very tasty stuff.  I taught him that the rock fields that we had passed are called “scree fields” in English.  He shared with me the Spanish word for them, but I’ve already forgotten!

An oddity is that we saw many random black slugs on the hiking path, usually pretty far apart (there was one point where there were two very close together).  The picture I took of one did not turn out so well, but I may post it anyhow.

(Editor’s Note: Do you realize that one paragraph about slugs is one too many?)

(Blogger: No, this is interesting stuff!)

(Editor: The sound you hear is the heads of your readers thudding against the table as you have put them to sleep.)

(Blogger: !.  Moving on.)

We came to a very pretty setting with a stream, a bridge, and a lot of moss and beautiful oak trees.  Aner and Bea asked us to do something the pilgrims of yore would do. . .stand around the oak tree in a circle, hold hands, close our eyes, and spend a minute listening to nature.

It sounded goofy, but it was all right.  (Don’t worry mom, it was NOT some Transcendental Meditation weird stuff!).  As for me, my minute went like this – 5 seconds of listening to the water and the rest of nature, 10 seconds of thinking about the blog, 5 seconds of telling myself to listen to nature, 15 seconds of thinking about work, 5 seconds of wondering what’s for dinner, five seconds telling myself to listen to nature, and the final 15 seconds of listening to nature, although also wondering how a minute could last so long.

Odds are everyone else spent 60 seconds listening to nature, like they were supposed to.

Eventually we could see guardrails of the road.  When the first car zoomed past above us, the sound was quite jarring.  As we came out onto the road, the bus was parked in a clearing above us.

We had a short break, where I scarfed down a banana, and then it was time to gird ourselves for steep hike.  (Editor’s Note: Good use of “gird” – it really is underused in these modern times.  Blogger: Thanks!  Editor: I was being sarcastic.  Did you not appreciate my cutting humor?  Blogger: Aimed at me? No.)

Carol and three others decided they could skip the honor of doing 700 foot gain in elevation over the next mile, so they wisely hopped on the bus, Gus.  They made a new plan, Stan.  There was one way to leave the hike.