humans made this art

22,000 years back

(art is survival)

You will never know Spain if you stick to cities like San Sebastián, Madrid, Barcelona, or Toledo.

You will think you know it. This is the center of Christian-Jewish-Muslim heritage! This is where Gaudí became a masterpiece! This is the place of the Prado, the Gran Vía, el capital! This has the beach, the pintxos, the perfect views!

But it is on the trail, in the small town, along the back alleyway that goes to nowhere, where you will find Spain. In the forced Castellano (because why would an American woman randomly be walking on this trail in the middle-of-nowhere Castilla y León?) of passing hikers on the trail who warn you of thorns (maybe rocks) that will partially (but not wholly) block your walk (but you can make it?)–“Lo conoces?”

Do you know it? Do you know it like a lover who chose a town in the middle of everywhere mountains because it looked like home?

Do you know it like a person–a person who half-heartedly greets you with a “Buenos días” even though, given your appearance of gang-bearing bandana and sun hat, you must not be from around here?

Do you know the trail like a lover, enough to understand that down a little ways there are thorns and rocks and briars that have no translation for the cuts on your ankle, the tearing of your shorts, the understanding that they won’t keep you from walking up and down a mountain, in and out of a country, that you don’t have the vocabulary to say it in Spanish, but goddamn it you understand?

You will never know Spain, when, walking into a shop with three English-speaking daughters in a tourist town, the merchants explain everything in their perfectly-mastered, perfectly-memorized English.

You will never know what it feels like to ride a horse in La Sierra de Gredos with the guía que habla solamente Español y la cantina de vino a media mañana.

You will never feel the freezing cold waters of Las Piscinas Naturales de Arenas de San Pedro, because your wimpy Google English translation of swimming hole wouldn’t lead you to a crystal clear conscience since you’re too focused on trying to be a tourist.

You will never know Spain if you stick to cities. You will find her in fern gullies, picas con nieve, senderismo. In the lilted accents of locals and the undiscovered beauty of mountains no one knew existed. You will know her--la conoces–in the cherry blossoms, the dotted pines, the trails that lead you from forest to orchard to forest.

Do you know what you are searching for in Spain? Do you know that you will get strange looks (thorns) and be accused of being too young to have such old daughters (rocks), and that the view is always best from the top of fern gully (peaks)?

Si, la conoces España. Es tu corazón, tu pica, tu lugar en el mundo. Y encontraste por accidente, en una senda.

But at least you found her. And you knew who she really was.

with legs killing me

i’m enjoying siesta

after this long ride

no words to describe

the exhausted Spain beauty

that tourists miss

if you took the time

and practiced Español hoy

you could share these views

a world apart

from what you think Spain could be

(life is not a beach)

clear water swim day

a break from weighted world

better than the beach

One thing I have learned from traveling with my family is that I am really the only one in my family who wants to travel. How it took me twenty years of marriage to finally accept this is beyond me. It’s mainly because I am stubborn as hell. I know what I love, and I relentlessly hope that my loved ones will learn to love the same things.

I am also too afraid, or have been up to this point, to travel alone. Part of it is my general fear in life of being alone. Getting married at such a young age was not just for love—for me, it was the security I needed to face the difficulties of adulthood. I also imagined, naively at the time, that my newlywed husband and I would spend our twenties building our marriage while taking worldwide adventures, but after a few years of me begging him to go places with me and he adamantly refusing, I thought, well, we might as well have children now then.

Somehow (and I’m sure he hoped for this as well) I hoped that having children would make me more of a homebody. But the truth is, I was never much of a homebody. I can’t even wrap my head around people who go to the same lake or beach or mountain house every year as their solitary family vacation; the world is so big and beautiful—how could one stand to revisit the same old place?

Having children made me want to travel more. Wouldn’t they want to learn Spanish and live in Spain for a year? Wouldn’t they want to see where their Italian ancestors came from? Wouldn’t they like to visit all fifty states before adulthood? Wouldn’t they learn to love hiking through the redwoods, the Keys, the Smokies? Wouldn’t they follow in my footsteps and gasp at architectural phenomena so far from our backyard bricks that they would never want to come home?

We spent their early childhood on long road trips sleeping on couches in relatives’ homes. It was all we could afford on a teacher’s salary, and fortunately, I have relatives who live in some pretty exquisite places near mountains, beaches, rivers, and lakes. Midwestern America became our path to a summer’s dream, where we’d beat back Kansas winds and drive through the night to wake the next day under the shadow of the Smokies, the flow of the Hudson, the beating of Newport waves.

My children learned to sleep anywhere: in the backseats of cars, in playpens propped up in strange living rooms, on the floors of cheap motels, in one relative’s house after another, in each other’s arms, beds, couches. They learned how to pack their own bags by the time they were six, and carry them before they were eight, and set up a tent by nine.

But did they learn to love it? Did my husband, who thinks money should be scrimped and saved and put away for emergencies, wish he had spent his twenties traveling the world with me?

Here I am, halfway through my trek through Spain, and I know that all my children want to do, all they have really wanted to do since just a few days in, is get on a plane and head back to cuddle with their kitties, play Minecraft with their friends, and live a lazy, European-free summer at home.

In my attempt to brighten their journey, I planned only one small activity for each day and let them sleep in on almost every occasion. Lots of beach time. Swimming pools. Palaces. Castles. Farms. Funiculars. Museums and towers. Dreamlike archways and fairied forests. Blue-sky, hilly drives. The sun setting on the Atlantic.

I even invited one of their friends who, never a traveler herself, hated the journey more than anyone and made sure everyone knew it.

I am forty years old. I tried to plan the family vacation of my dreams only to realize my dreams are not the same as my family’s.

I took my top off on the beach for the first time the other day, partially because I spent most of my life trying to cover up this awful burn scar and I was tired of doing so, partially becase when I joked with my fifteen-year-old about doing it she said her boyfriend would never allow it just like my husband wouldn’t allow it when we were on our honeymoon in Cancun when I was twenty, and partially because I wanted to be free.

I wanted, for a moment, an hour, to try not to be the someone that my mother told me to be (“Don’t ever wear tank tops; don’t ever expose your scar.”), that my husband told me to be (“I just don’t want you doing that. It makes me uncomfortable.”), that my children told me to be (“You’re just crazy, Mama, everyone here knows you’re an American.”).

I wanted to be alone. I took my top off, I bathed in the sun. All week, I took long hikes through Pais Vasco where no one whined, no one told me it was too hot or too humid or too damn boring. I walked through the city this morning and had conversations in Spanish with passers by, with the cashier at the grocery store, with anyone I fucking wanted to talk to. I drove across Spain while my children occupied themselves on devices rather than drinking in the gorgeous views, and I thought…

This is it. It took me forty years and a whole hell of a lot of stubbornness, but I have finally learned to love what I love—the beach, the architecture, the hike, the view, the tapas, the language, the barra de pan, the motherfuckingly amazing olives—the journey—alone.

I may have been afraid before, but now that I’ve gone topless and everyone in San Sebastián has seen the scars of my youth, I can enter the next stage one bikini top, one hike, one drive, one trip at a time.

And I can do all of the research, read all of the books, type up all the itineraries, and plan every last penny for a solo, free, drink-it-all-up traveler.

I think this realization might be my best birthday present, even better than this trip across Spain.

Almost better than this trip across Spain.

We took two planes and spent most of one groggy day in a freezing-cold Icelandic airport before renting what will forever be known as “the bus” to drive from Madrid to Córdoba to Ronda… to see a bridge.

Yes, we traveled halfway across the world to see in real life what a photograph couldn’t quite capture. It was one of many sights on my bucket list, my twenty-year-marriage list, my researched-for-distance road trip list. Built in 1836, El Puente Nuevo defies a canyon, engineering, and a waterfall to connect two parts of one ancient city that is buried in the hills and backroads of a country we’ve each, for a time, called home.

The best view of the bridge is a quarter mile down a steep and treacherous stone pathway from the old part of the city, the view where I took this shot, alone, because no one in my family could, or would, take the walk with me.

Earlier that day, I went in search of cereal and yogurt and chocolate croissants to fill the bellies of growing girls. I walked the steep hills of Ronda from our second-rate Airbnb and came upon one out-of-business shop before finding another, not much bigger than a 7-Eleven, trying to pawn themselves as a full-service grocery, ripe with fresh cherries from “la Serranía de Ronda” and a stockpile of freshly baked bread behind the counter. As the owner/cashier was ringing up my sugar, my choco-krispies, my chocolate-infused croissants that the girls would later gobble, my last-minute cerezas and apricots, she said to me, “Cuál barra quieres?”

This was not a request; rather, a demand, an expectation. Which loaf would I like? And she separated some that were fat and round, some narrow and angular, some as dark as the chocolate in the croissants, so that I could have the best view. “Este,” I pointed, unable to formulate the exact sentence she needed to hear. She smiled and popped it into the bag with the other items, just as she popped loaves of bread into the bags of the Spaniards before and after me in line. With her simple question, she sold her product, her country’s lifeline, her daily bread.

This moment, among others—the crowds of people on un paseo through the car-less streets at dusk, the towel that fell from the third floor balcony that a neighbor in the Madrid apartment hung on our door handle before we returned home, the waiter in the cervecería who begged me to take the last free olive because el último es el mejor—these are as beautiful as the bridge between two cities.

Just like the perfect picture that can’t quite make a postcard as magical as the moment in real life, this view of Spain—from the eyes and mouths of locals—is as heavenly as the bridge we traveled the world to see.

There is nothing perfect about apartments where the hot water runs out, last-minute cancelled reservations, trying to please the needs of six people in a foreign country, trying to figure out how to drive a diesel nine-passenger van through a hundred roundabouts, trying to determine how to turn on the gas and keep the endangered peregrine falconettes happy while washing laundry in a machine whose cycle takes three and a half hours, trying to appease the tech-savvy, lovesick teens and the money-worried spouse…

But there is perfection in solitary walks filled with poppies and lavender and stone bridges and solid forty-year-old legs. There is perfection in the cadence of Castellano that lilts through sea-blue air and floods my ears in every conversation. There is perfection in the perfect view of my loaf of bread, my bridge, my dream come true.

I only need to ask, “Which one would you like?” And I know I will find the perfect view of this day… or any other.

for most of my life

i’ve been too scared to show scars

today i bare all

life is too damn short

to worry what others think

when Spain’s sun smiles

Pais Vasco hikes

consumed four of my mornings

(fern gully beauty)

all U.S. parks should:

serve bonbon coffees, have nets

make life fun for all

funicular fun

to the top of Bilbao

labeled red for us