End of Winter
In March 2006 life continues in the mountains of lower Aragon. We are emerging from the cold and snowy winter, where we learned amongst other things how difficult it was to put snow chains on our 4 x 4’s, Rosinante and El Gordo, without
getting completely covered in mud from crawling under the vehicles. A foot of snow fell over 2 days and due to the low temperatures it stayed around for more than 3 weeks. It was beautiful to look at and be in but scary to drive on, even with the chains. Several times we walked the 7km to the village to load up with food or to collect or see off volunteers working with us. During the winter we got to working inside quite a bit but with the coming of spring and warmer temperatures and longer days all that is changing. We also lived mainly inside with long dark evenings in front of the wood burning stove.
Spring is here
As the days lengthen we ourselves feel as if we’re coming out of a certain sort of hibernation and venturing into the world again. The landscape in places is dotted with thick, sweet-smelling almond blossom. The sun tan cream has been fished out of the cupboard and the thermals abandoned (for the time being anyway). The birds are more vocal and frogs can be heard at dusk near the river. The goats seem to understand that hunting season is over and they’ve been around the house a lot. On one stunning occasion driving near to the village we saw several large long-horned males standing on a huge boulder silhouetted against the blue sky.
Maitreyi, our president and kalyana mitra to the project has been staying with us for a few days. This has brought a different element to our working lives. She brought with her a rupa of the Tibetan enlightened hermit Milarepa which has been donated to Aranya. It is now residing on a large rock in a grove of carrasco trees near our house and will be a lovely spot to meditate in. One morning Maitreyi led us in study from ‘The Yogi’s Joy’,
a commentary by Sangharakshita on the ‘The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa’. As we sat in the sun talking of the dharma and Milarepas haunts – Grey Rock Vajra Cave and Red Rock Jewel Valley – we were already there. Living, not exactly the hermits life in Tibet but in our own Red Rock Jewel Valley surrounded by mountains and pine trees and a vast blue sky. The study helped to contact a strong sense of the mythic and Milarepa seems a perfect symbol and inspiration for us.
New Name
We were able to talk more with Maitreyi about a new name for Aranya. Aranya was always intended as a name for the fundraising project but not necessarily what the retreat centre would be called. As we looked more in Spain it became clearer that Aranya (which means spider in Spanish) while it has a really lovely meaning in Sanskrit wasn’t going to work well in our host country. Over several months we’ve been canvassing opinions and ideas and musing over it ourselves. We hope to be able to let you know the name of the retreat centre within the next couple of months.
The Yurt
One of the main projects for Bianca during the coming month is to construct a base for the yurt to rest on. This means transporting all the wood to the terrace above the community house, along with the generator and other tools. Once the wood has been cut to size and covered with wood preserver the base can be nailed into place and we’ll have another go at putting up the yurt.
The first attempt was last summer but it turned out to be a larger and more complex structure than we had bargained for. Helped by Tejapushpa and Satyavadita with their nine year-old Jaya looking on, we eventually got it up but in a rather lop-sided sort of way. Over the weeks the canvas roof started collecting rain-water and in early autumn valiantly Vijayasri took it down and back into storage.
We’re keen to get it up and then have it functioning as our first solitary retreat venue. We are in the process of making some decisions about what sort of facilities we can offer and when we think they might be ready. We’ll keep you posted…
Lastly …
Our other main news is that in late February we signed a contract with local builders to start building on the retreat centre in March. Today – March 16th 2006 – they started work. More news in Builders Update.