And from Spain

Spain.  Hiking around in the heat.

Zubiri, Navarra. August 27/L Herlevi 2019

Navarra Morning. August 28/L Herlevi 2019

Sunflower Army, Navarra. August 29/L Herlevi 2019

Puenta la Reina, Navarra. August 30/L Herlevi, 2019

A couple pictures from late summer

France.  Hiking across the Pyrenees.

Orisson, August 26/L Herlevi 2019

Dawn in Orisson.  I spent the night in a room underneath the deck.  We each got a coin that ensured 5-minutes of shower time; there's limited water availability.  I hadn't been sure I would be coming this way when I left home, but I put in a reservation request just the same.  When I was able to access email, 2 days before my request date, I found I had an invoice to pay and a reservation.  Between that and the G-7 closing the French border up near Irun (my original destination), that sealed the Pyrenees hike.  And it's a tough crossing, but I probably could've done it in one day.  As it was, I split it into two, Orisson, 8 kms up from St Jean Pied de Port.  Hot, and 100% humidity; with air so thick that morning, you could barely see 20 feet in front of you.  The Refuge at Orisson suddenly appearing out of the mists.  The picture below is how it appeared later in the afternoon, once the mists had burned off.  There was a family dinner at 7 pm, where everyone introduced themselves and what brought them here.  At night, we'd left a window open, and moths and other insects attracted to the bathroom lights, collected inside.  Ones you'd probably never see otherwise.

Orisson, August 25/L Herlevi 2019

French Pyrenees, August 26/L Herlevi 2019

The second day was more dry, with a lot of wind.  Full of herds of horses (which I'd hoped to see, and made the walk worth it), crowds of people walking, jeeps of armed security driving down the road, and a very steep descent into Roncesvalles, the first village in Spain.  I was tired and happy to get a bed when I arrived.  I got a top bunk, but a woman I'd met in Orisson, remembered that top bunks were hard for me, and traded with me, without my asking.

French Pyrenees, August 26/L Herlevi 2019

New Season

Day 16

Day One

About 16-days old, each day new insults, but it hasn't collapsed

Some pictures of our Jack-o-Lanterns, which really need to be composted, but have battery-powered candles in them that need to be removed first...and who really wants to do that tasks with the aggressive mold taking over?  I suppose we could pick them up and turn them upside down...another day.

A few days old, drying out from heat in house

The house did a pumpkin-patch outing, on a late Sunday afternoon, before the flooding, but muddy just the same.  We arrived late, shortly before the patch closed for the day.  Somehow arriving in a window without rain, the fields full of mud and standing water, the mists wending through the nearby stands of trees, the trees bright orange and yellow, bright spots on a gloomy afternoon.

We ate pumpkin and apple-cider donuts, then traipsed down to the muddiest bottom of the fields, to look at the biggest pumpkins.  All of us sinking into the mud, pumpkins rotting in the field, as we tried to wrest other pumpkins from the vines.  And then one of the housemates met us with a wheelbarrow to lug the chosen squash out of the mud patch and up the hill to the pay window.  Moving through as if in quicksand, sinking down with every step.  Scrubbed the mud off, then packed our mud-covered selves into the car again to go home.  As soon as we started driving, the rain came down in sheets again.

Our shoes remain in the mud room, caked in mud.

We carved them the following night, one of the other housemates documenting the process for his anthropology class, as some local seasonal rite he'd never experienced before.

On Halloween we sat in the living room hoping for trick-or-treaters, but only got a handful brave enough to come to our house.  Still, it's been nice to have a social household again.