North We Go

It is so hot here that the air is totally, perfectly, still. Time feels empty. Hours stretch out with meaningless ease and I feel unable to meld into this giving up – this giving over – of energies to the heat.

Instead I simply lie here wishing I could be doing something.

Anything.
​
For me this is a place for winter. Winter is when the land is lush, the trees green and weighted with plump leaves drunk on water. The white-washed hill towns are fresh and invigorating whilst still under the umbrella of bright blue. People are alive, not muted.

Right now the landscape here is like stepping into a painting, a photograph: the bright orange trunks of recently stripped cork trees stand still against dried golden grass and matte blue sky. Green leaves are motionless, rattling in their dryness only when a light breeze attempts to push through the wall of heat.

Everything is still. So still that sometimes even breathing feels unwelcome.

To be here in the summer, far into the interior of Portugal, where dusty tracks once led smugglers over the border into Spain, is to give yourself over to something almost unearthly. It is to close up, centre your thoughts and prepare to feel nothing.
Until, that is, the night comes.
​
And then suddenly you feel alive again, sitting under the olive tree, a dark shadow against a sky lit with so many stars it is impossible not to feel insignificant. The only sounds are crickets, the odd dog barking and owls, so many owls. When I adjust my eyes to the light I feel their shadows everywhere and I long to swoop through the branches and rest where they rest.

But can a person live for night alone?

In the morning I awaken dreamily and stare as the shadow of our bed frame begins to appear against the freshly white-washed wall. As my eyes adjust the room gradually fills with light, the shadow soon the only part left in darkness. I know it is just about 7am as this is the time I have noted the sun appearing above the tops of the trees that are visible from my bedroom window.

Mornings I watch the sun light up the white walls as I awaken. Evenings I bask in its orange glow from the front terrace as it sets behind the mountains.

Life here in the summer is about measuring the distance between the two, surviving the in-between locked in oppressiveness. It is a kind of meditation, an enforced slowing of the body; a rarity in this sped up world.

The sound of a greenfinch permeates my thoughts until every inch of my mind is centred on that yearning repetitive lone call. Playful long-tailed tits chatter and flutter. I wonder how long before they give up, the heat is already heavy and I have not even the energy to rise from my bed yet.

I imagine breezy walks, my dogs playful instead of stunned into submission. I long to be in a mountain river. I wonder if I will ever spend the summer here again? My heart is telling me to move North. I once described myself through words as a House Martin and now I feel it even more. My dream self feels at ease in this comparison, my physical sense happy with the spread of cold and heat.
​
And so, North I go.