A Walk on a Hillside Vineyard

There are many Joaquim´s and Jordi´s among the planets of my Catalan olar system right now.: Joaquim, my son-in-law;Joaquim, Roza´s father; Joaquim, Roza´s brother; Jordi, Joaquim´s brother; Jordi, Joaquim´s brother in law. It was to Grandpa Joaquim´s vineyard that I travelled today for an exquisite visit on the hills that have grown strawberries, onions, peas, beans, and escarole – all headed to be marketed in the local village. Grandpa Joachim gives me one of the pea pods and I taste the sweetness of the pea.


We walk up the very small area of steps on a whole hill of strawberries, hand made steps going up to the next row, and then the next. No wonder Bonnie is trying to get me to turn every hill that holds Larch trees into rows of strawberries.

I climbed to the top of the vineyard. Grandpa Joaquim was willing to go onto to the top of the top, but is willing to stop when the climb is too much for me. I wanted to keep up. If a man who has five years on me can climb that hill 20 times I day and not be breathing deeply when he gets to the top, I am going to climb it at least twice.

I want to know how the peas are grow so straight on the vines, how water gets to the strawberry plants when they are covered with black plastic, who is growing the onions on his property, and why there are white tops on the escarole. I loose all of my questions when I look back at the sea as I climb. First I can see Callela, then the Pineda del Mar, the Malgrat de Mar as I look eastward and up the Catalan coast.

Below me is the water of the Mediterranean and I can see the different depths of the sea. There is a clear blue river, is seems, channeling itself through the sea and it appears in the shape of oxbow river to me. Wisps of my hair are blowing backward in the wind and I can feel the coolness of the wind on my face, since I have warmed myself up with the climb. I think back of home and remember going through the forest and Doral telling me that the elevation is rising one foot every three feet. I think this climb must be even steeper. I am beating myself up for not bringing my camera with me, but then I remember that it is a gray day and the pictures could never do justice to what I am seeing around me or even to the sound I am hearing as my foot slips on the small pebbles that roll under it when I climb.

On the first climb of the hill I ask about erosion, both of the earth and the roads that are on the hill. Joachim passes his hand over the rock and I see it crumble away, as it would if I were to do the same thing on the stucco of my house. On the second climb I look closer and on the sheer face of the small cliffs, you can see the roots of the trees above, six feet down, reaching right out of rock.

A cistern holds water at the top of the hill, built in the early sixties, taking the building material up there with horses and a cart. Grandpa Joachim says he sat on the structure one day when he was a young man, looking down at Calella, and saw a hotel that was being built by the sea, sink down into the earth and then crumble, killing 20 workers.

Behind us, I can see that this is not the last mountain along the sea, for other hills rise behind us. Mediterranean pines cover half of the hills and the other half of the same hills look grassy. ¨Those areas used to be covered with strawberry plants, but the south of Spain has mechanized the strawberry growing process, and hand picking them on a farm like his is not profitable if I have to pay people to come in and do the harvesting.¨

While they are waiting for us, the children are playing below in the yard, picking some of the ever berring strawberries, putting them in a wicker basket to bring home.

How can I be so lucky as to be seeing this beautiful part of the world in this way-