Mountain Air

A new week begins, and I am refreshed by my first true trek outside the city limits last Thursday and Friday. I experienced first-hand the amazingly simple means of exploring this vast country. From my apartment to the main bus terminal in twenty minutes and an overnight bus ride on a comfortable double-decker up into the northern mountain ranges of the province of Cordoba, by before noon I found myself checked into a small room in the back of an old museum house and sitting beneath a tree staring at the gorgeous ominous mountains before me. Phew. And wow, what a release to be among nature again, breathing the fresh mountain air, greeting the small creatures (including the monkey owned by the museum/hostile that I stayed at!), receiving smiles and hellos by the local small town population.

At my first stop in town at a corner café, I asked for a local Rotary Club, and was graciously told by my waitress that the president of the local club owned the lingerie store next door. That evening we were chatting like old friends in her small downtown shop, and the next day I accompanied her on a trip down to a nearby town, gaining insight by her commentaries as we passed through the different mountain communities. I soaked up the inspiration from several of these simple yet reaffirming encounters with various people along my two day adventure. I remember particularly my conversation with a woman at a vegetarian restaurant I stopped out before leaving town—as I poured out my woes and creeping pessimism, she talked of the people she meets from all over the world, and how so many shared in common what I was expressing: a constant quest for understanding and a sense of place in the world. Ah, the common ground of the human experience and the solidarity with unmet travelers/seekers expressed through the weathered lens of a mountain-town eatery…