What is around that bend in the road, the one than climbs out of sight through the gap made by two obscuring hills? It is narrower than the main highway; it is little used; it may lead nowhere… but obviously, it leads somewhere.

What’s out there, beyond that horizon? It’s a line drawn in the water that is erased as you approach, only to be redrawn a mile further out to sea. Some people left, never to return. It may be a water grave… but obviously (to me, obvious) there is land somewhere.

What’s up that trail? What does that word mean? How did they write that song? How far can you see? The taste that can’t be described, the heart in the paint in the brushstroke on the canvas, the edge of the reef below which there is blackness, the texture in the plaster applied by a dead mason’s hand, the Roman road uncovered by the pitch of a spade, the shining miracle of human invention, the black miracle of human corruption, the daylight-rimmed movement through space, the shadow-edged movement of time.

All water from the same spring, and though my thirst for it smacks of being driven by desires, I admit to taking a deep drought every day. What was today’s unique height?

Having traveled so much in my life, I have acquired (or I should say created?) some sort of neurosis around tourism and being a tourist. I so dislike crowds and doing what everyone is doing, that I probably have traded much of what is magical in the world for what is simple and mundane and, frankly, dull. At the same time, I have learned to fine diamond dust in the dust, and gold dust in the gold of a setting sun, and haven’t had to fend off nearly as many crap-hawkers in my journeys from there to here, as I would have with more postcards under my belt.

So when I left this morning to check out apartments and living in neighborhood surrounding Gaudi’s famous work “La Sagrada Familia”, I had to take a few calming breaths. Mega-tourist-Mecca, in a pseudo-Christian flavor. According to what I have read and viewed, the place must to be seen to be believed. I use a cliché to pick at the scab of my discomfort: was I seriously considering biking all around La Familia and not even look? Neurosis bordering on psychosis, friends. Since we are enjoying the off season, I managed to get over myself just this once and ride up — what tourist rides up on a bike? — camera in hand, to sight-see this monument to human imagination.

I avoided the off-season lines of visitors by taking my pictures from a children’s playground. Ahhh. La Sagrada Familia really is quite remarkable, and is worth seeing. Those spires rise right out of your dreams and the magic of Barcelona’s history. Next time I’ll take an even deeper breath, and actually go inside.

∞

From there, the “water from the same spring” kicked in. I took a left turn, which means up and that’s where I headed, on my one-speed Schwinn, standing on the pedals all the way. The hills around Barcelona tried to contain it, and by the look of the green heights that ring the city, you would think that they had won: the buildings get shorter as they clamber up the slopes, and here and there a little more rustic; stone and rubble of short cliff faces take the place of houses; and grasses and trees and cellphone towers are cast against a very large amount of blue.

I didn’t have much of a goal in mind – not of the particular, out-there variety at any rate. I saw another slope higher, like the next branch of a tree you are climbing, and grabbed hold, and pulled, and hup! there I was fifty meters further from sea level.

The roads that tumble, sometimes cross-purposes, sometimes arrow-straight, from the hillsides to the sea; the influence of the hilltops on patches or sizable areas of garden; the entryways carefully set onto angled streets and sidewalks, their homes and greenery a story or two above…

Finally the hill presented me with my greatest irresistible challenge. I was nearing the ridge, it was clear; I could follow a road winding around and a little down to the left, or a another that led around and down to he right. Down? Down? And there, like a faerie path leading upward, a broken cement stair rose at angles to the road. I saw it go up into the trees.

What could I do? Apparently, nothing other than lift my bicycle on my shoulder and start climbing, which is what I did. Above the rooftops and past the set of mansions set into the hillside, around a few corners, onto switchbacks.

I was at this point up into the Parc del Guinardó, a sentinel on that ridge up above the sea. I wonder how this must have looked even 50 years ago, or a hundred, or five hundred, or a thousand. There have been people here for, quite literally, ages. I wonder how long this particular expansion will continue. Harnessing oil has certainly taken us further. higher, hotter and colder than humans have ever been before.

I had come out along this wonderful promenade that meanders at contour all along the crown of the hill. Not the pointy part of the crown, mind you, but the brow. At this point, it wasn’t the promise of a view that drew me forward, but that old whisper: what’s over this ridge? I was right there, almost nothing above me but sky… and no more road.

Fortunately, not being the first person to wonder what was on the other side of anything, I found another stairway with a sign pointing up toward “Miradoro” numbers one through five: vistas from the height of land. This time, the bicycle was locked up (specifically: one lock for the seat, another for the front wheel and a post, and a third for the back wheel… high bike crime rate in the city), and I walked with a little more ease up and over the hill…

… to be greeted by the Val d’Hebron (Hebron Valley) stretched out beneath and around me, to the right the Mediterranean where it come round from the city, and up and over the hills to the Pyrenees behind.

∞

So that was that. My workday was approaching, and in this time zone, lunch, so I returned to my bicycle and began the almost-equally-challenging descent, with brakes constantly on, down down down down down. Through the old village of Gracie, surrounded and digested by the city years ago, that I had explored a few days back, and corners and avenues of the city that I am, by stages, making mine. Down the long walking and biking areas of the Passeig Sant Joan; across the Avengut Diagonal, which crosses the city as its name implies; under the Arc de Triomf and down its broad paved expanse, which I walked in September when Catalina was interviewing, and which has now become my neighborhood; with a little skip through the Parc de la Ciutadelle for my daily dose of grass and trees; to home.

Welcome, welcome home.

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