Sideways

When Things Go Sideways

I took this photo of this nearly perfect mirror reflection at the end of a day after collapsing in the van from a walk that ended up being extra. In short, things went sideways.

Here's the long of it....

Some might say our idyllic morning plan to take an easy stroll to the other side of the Embassament de Sopeira went badly.

I say we went adventuring.

After passing that beautiful view of the embassament, this stone building piqued my interest, the Monasterio Santa María de Alaón. It was here that we began to stray. Although we reasoned that we were just going to take a quick look and then would get back on track.

The tourist sign in front of monastary said there was a Roman bridge nearby, so we decided to go see it. In excellent condition, we walked onto it, marveling at its condition, but walked back off it to the Pista de la Central we had been traveling on because it seemed like too much to continue along one of the footpaths we saw leading off to the right on the other side.

We could have turned back entirely, but no.

We had seen the bridge. Something caught our eye not too much further upstream and so we decided to go for a closer look.

Past the Roman bridge we could see two rivers intersecting. The tributary feeding into the one we were walking along, was fast-moving and turbulent. Beyond it the main river was calm and tranquil. Signs indicated this was trout habitat. I thought about the fishing poles and gear I no longer own. It was the wrong time of day for fishing anyway.

Not far beyond the intersection, we could see two bridges. A modern version next to the remaining foundations of another. Here the Pista de la Central crossed over to the other side of the river and curved enticingly to the right around a tall canyon wall. We decided to see what was around the bend, because why not, it was not that far away and who knows what's just around the corner.

And around the corner, the road ended at the facade of building in front of teh massive cliff face of the canyon. We walked towards the large brick window on the left-side of the facade and saw a path leading yonder to the Central Hidroeléctrica Escales.

I mean, of course, we took the path to get a closer look at the dam.

The pool of water reflected, not nearly perfectly, but this big bold structure was breathtaking.

And who doesn't like a waterfall?.

We saw that next to the dam on the right was an actual Jacob's Ladder, and of course, we decided to get even closer to have a look at it. And well, we walked up the first two diagonals, stood on the bottom of the curved platform above the waterfall, and then decided to walk all the way up to the top of the ladder up all those steps and cases, because why not.

At the top of the Jacob's Ladder, there was a small tunnel. At the end of the tunnel was a metal door.

To the right of the door was a switch on the tunnel wall.

I promise we didn't pull it.

Although, this is when things began to go awry.

We had two choices before us.

One was to go back down the Jacob's Ladder.

The other was brilliant because we could turn our hike into a loop instead of going back on our route and covering the same ground. So, we crossed this via ferrata to the dam's walkway that ran alongside the entire length of the top of the dam before climbing up the metal ladder, over the padlocked door of the rail and onto the access road.

If it makes you feel better to think we had climbing gear or even one piece of rope to secure our bodies to the affixed metal cable and use the two steel pins driven into the cliff wall to traverse the divide, you can imagine we had them.

Because we were still alive, we decided to cross the access road on top of the dam which intersected into the N-230 and look at the dam and ladder from the other side. We noticed a slightly overgrown path down the canyon wall and saw that it eventually led to one of these lookout towers that we had seen walking along the floor of the canyon.

The view from the one we went to of the razor ridges was incredible. We were so in it!

After walking back up to the road we realized that there were three or four short road tunnels on this high speed N-230 road with vehicles zipping through them at about ninety plus kilometers per hour. There was a very small shoulder on each side of the road and it somehow seemed dangerous to do the walk back to the village on it.

So we decided to walk down this staircase on this side of the dam to begin our loop "walk" along the other side of the river back to the village.

Two-thirds of the way down I said, "I hope we don't get to the bottom and discover that there's no where to go!"

What's not seen here, and I was too tired to take a picture of all of the things, were lots and lots of spider webs all along the way, briar that had overgrown the stairs which made us have to carefully step off the staircase and brace against the angled wall of the dam to get by them, and the three times the steps became steeper and shallower that last third of the way down.

When we finally reached the bottom the bottom was impassable. Our choices were to try and fight our way through briars that were much taller than he or I, to go through the water coming out of the dam, or to jump into that serene pool which had not so nearly perfectly reflected that water pouring out. None of those choices seemed feasible or wise. So we walked all the way back up I don't know how many steps, stopping many many times along the way. To our credit, neither one of us complained.

Taking the road still seemed too dangerous, so I suggested we try to go over the top of the tunnels. There seemed to be an overgrown trail leading up and over. There were structures built in across the road. This seemed very logical at the time.

So I stomped down the few waist high briars on the overgrown path that were in the way and sallied forth, but then the grown surprised me with a depression deep enough to cause me to fall backwards. Not hard or fast. Slowly and gently, I felt myself going down in slow motion. And there were those lovely briars I had just stomped down to pin cushion me on my fall.

Thorns went into my hands, the backs of my legs, and of course a couple stuck me in the posterior.

My partner gently lifted me up. I picked the thorns in my hands out. We soldiered on and climbed up a rocky cliff wall with some metal pins stuck in a very narrow ledge shelf following the path to what we thought would lead us to freedom. What we found was an incredible view as we stood upon one of those razor ridglines and surveyed the entire dam and canyon that had brought us there.

Some sense seemed to kick in. Or maybe it was the pain of those briars pricking me back to reality. I mean, I would have liked to continue further to see if we could actually cross those radges, but a little voice speaking common sense said "You could try, but the road seems safer."

After, climbing back down, we strategically worked our way through the road tunnels. Once past them, the road opened up a bit in that a large shoulder appeared on the left-side for us to safely walk on off the pavement.

Fifteen short minutes later, we were walking down into the village.

The lovely greenish-blue waters of the embassament and olive trees looking so inviting and calling us home to the van.

We arrived back at our starting point, parked next to this lovely mural and the fishing pier next to and on the Emassament de Sopeira. It was now four o'clock-ish.

We had departed at eleven in the morning.

With the van doors wide open, lunch was made and eaten. Lots and lots of water was guzzled down. Afterward, we took a long lazy well-deserved siesta.

As the late afternoon turned into early evening, and I came back to life, the setting sun and clouds near the outlet of the embassament became a rennaissance painting of colors, I took my second nearly perfect mirror relfection photo of this trip.

We had thought the hard hiking of our summer holiday road trip was over. Then today happened. I still don't know what to say. But writing it all out here now and remembering each adventurous step of this "easy morning stroll" has me smiling and laughing out loud. I am reminded of a movie from youth with a young man named Ferris and his day.

We never did do that walk to the other side of the embassament to those benches on the other side that had looked so inviting. Maybe we'll do that next time when we are passing on through and have us another nearly perfect, perfectly wonderful, adventure-filled day.

Open Studio

Autumnal Equinox

21 & 22 September 2024

11:00 - 15:00

The address of this private location in Madrid Spain and will be delivered to you by email. Of course, you will need a reservation to come visit me.

For two days in 2024, I will open my studio to share a new body of work on the weekend of the Autumnal Equinox. I'll be showing a series of sculptures, static and kinetic. There are just a handful or so of open spots still available. Let me know if you want to reserve yours.

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A friend has been telling me for ages to write a book, a memoir, of all my wild past-life experiences. Maybe I'll write a book about my life when I'm older, maybe around 80 (if I am blessed to live that long). I've decided to keep this diary instead.

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