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Empower Yourself...
Spanish Mountain Life
by Juliette de Bairacli-Levy
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So vast a mountain is the Sierra Nevada
range that it is a country in itself, with its towns and
many villages, its rivers and streams, and the strange ways
of the people who farm or trade or merely live there, and
who preserve very truly much of the ancient life of Spain.
This book tells only about the mountain life in the area
of the water-mill where I lived from early spring to late
autumn, and where my second child was born and where I and
my first child nearly knew entombment in the cemetery of
Lanjaron as victims of the typhus fever which plagues that
part of the Sierra Nevada.
I arrived in the small sierra town of Lanjaron in March.
The town is a two-hours' bus ride from Granada; it has deserved
fame for its medicinal springs in the far part of the town
away from the Sierra Nevada towards the sierra of Montril.
It has fame also for its orchards, cheese and the basket-weaving
of the many gypsies who live in their own ancient quarters-barrios-of
Lanjaron.
I stayed at first in an inn in the town
centre, overlooking the part of the Nevada range where it
meets that of Montril. It was several weeks before I found
my room and terrace garden in the old water-mill of Gongoras
at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, some miles from the town.
That March the weather was bitter: the worst early spring
that had come to Andalusia in fifty years. Much snow had
fallen in Lanjaron, a rare thing in that town, the orange
and lemon crops were largely spoilt, and all the upper ranges
of the mountains wore cold white shrouds of deep frozen
snow. Ravens screamed in the blue-white air, hungry for
the blood of the newborn young of the sheep and goats which
teemed on the mountain. The men wore thick woollen cloaks
and broad-brimmed felt hats or tight berets, and the children's
legs pricked uncomfortably in the unaccustomed wear of coarse,
woollen stockings. The cold kept the people indoors, and
over the entire town hung a gauzy perfumed veil of rosemary
smoke, that shrub being the chief fuel of Lanjaron and the
surrounding sierra farms. Daily the men and boys- and sometimes
the young women- collected great bundles of rosemary from
the mountain-sides, and brought this fragrant fuel back
to the town on their horses, mules and donkeys, leaving
a further scented trail as the rosemary brushed against
the walls of the houses in the narrow way close by the water-mill.
Nearly every family in the town owned a transport animal,
and many owned also goats, chickens, pigeons and a pig or
two. These animals were stabled strangely in the ground-floor
rooms or basements of the houses. When I lived in the inn
I was amused by a herd of goats which was stabled in a house
facing my window. Every morning around seven o'clock the
door was opened wide, and out into the street hurried forth
an immense family of goats, fifty strong or more, of all
sizes and colours, including many of the lovely blue-grey
shade of wild lavender, a type of fine-horned goat much
seen on the Sierra Nevada where, also, many wild goats live.
For a reason beyond explaining, I was always reminded of
the Pied Piper of Hamelin: and yet this was a going forth
into the light, not an entry into the darkness of a mountain.
Perhaps that thought came to me because of the music of
the goat bells, which altogether seemed to produce a wild
piping: and perhaps also I was influenced by the tall hat
and the cloak of the youth who shepherded the flock.
"The goats! The goats!" always shouted my two-year-old
son Rafik, in his shrill Spanish. He was daily at the window
to watch them and the many other animals which made up the
long morning procession to the mountain, where the snows
melting beneath a cold wintry sun had given place in many
parts to stretches of sweet new grass, and there was leafage
again on the bushes and wild flowers amongst the rocks,
hyacinths and cyclamens.
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