Parque del Peñalara

In early December, a friend and I took a long, early-morning bus ride to the Parque del Peñalara, a state park-type area high in the mountains near the ski station of Madrid. We were going to see the snow. I was unfamiliar with this concept; where I'm from, if there's any snow to see, there's the same amount outside your door as anywhere else within an hour's drive. There was no snow in downtown Madrid, and though I could see the snow on the mountains in the distance, I wasn't sure it would amount to much. The park ranger quickly set me straight when I called to inquire, however. "Oh yes, there's snow, " she told me. "One of the other rangers went out yesterday and sank in up to his waist... and he was wearing snowshoes." This didn't seem promising, but I improvised a multi-layered outfit that included waterproof rain pants, and off we went.

It was absolutely beautiful. There were at least eight to ten inches of snow on the sides of the trail (the path itself was packed down from other hikers) and on the exposed curves of the mountain there were sparkling, wind-sculpted whorls and dunes. When we reached a sheltered meadow from which several other trails take off, there were more surprises in store. As a flatlander, I was amazed to see people with cross-country skis clamoring gamely up the trail of what I remember from a previous visit to be a rocky and very steep 6-mile loop. High on the ridges that cup the meadow on one side, I could make out the tiny figures of people inching up to the summit before skiing partway down in a graceful swoop of poles. The strangest sight, though, was closer to the path. Across the meadow, we could see people rock climbing... only it wasn't a rock wall they were navigating, but a frozen waterfall. There were two frozen cascades, the lower perhaps 25 feet high and another above it that must have been 40 feet altogether. As we watched, someone inched out of an ice cavern at the top of the higher waterfall and slowly rappelled down.

Intrigued, we decided to leave the path and found ourselves right in the middle of the waist-high snow the ranger had warned me about. After hauling ourselves uphill for fifteen or twenty minutes, we arrived at the lower waterfall. One or two people were ascending the frozen wall while the others clustered at the base, drinking Gatorade, checking their equipment and swapping stories. The climbers were using two ice picks, one in each hand, and sturdy boots with needle-like cleats protruding from the soles to ascend the ice very slowly. A group of young guys saw my friend reach out reverently to touch the frozen waterfall and started laughing. "Try the real thing!" they urged, and handed us their ice picks. After several ineffectual swings, I got the hang of it; you have to swing hard so the pick goes deep into the ice, then wiggle it carefully out while keeping your torso still so as not to lose your balance. One climber explained that his least favorite part was striking a sac of liquid water while climbing; the water splashes straight into your face at temperatures presumably just above freezing. "Aren't you worried you might fall, or the ice might not hold you?" I asked them. It was warm in the sun that day, and the creaking of the ice was audible as we chatted. "Shoot, man, it's not the safest thing in the world," one of the guys answered. "But it's really, really cool."

Music, part two

In other musical news, I joined a community choir this fall! In addition to the normal church-songs-in-Latin repertoire, they also sing quite a lot of zarzuelas, a traditional Spanish musical theatre-esque genre. It's similar to what we would call operetta, complete with swirly, colorful dresses and cheesy lyrics. The choir is directed by an energetic Catalan guy who spends about 15% of rehearsal time trying to keep everyone’s desire to socialize in check. “Now we’re going to stand up and sing this again,” he’ll say, “but please, remain in silence. Silence. I SAID, SILENCE, PLEASE!” But he is an excellent and demanding musician, and the music is a lot of fun to sing. At our first concert, we were instructed to recreate the theatrical feel of an actual zarzuela performance. This entailed laughing artificially, pretending to gossip, giving what the director dubbed a “special sigh”, and, of course, shouting things like “Olé!” and “Viva Madrid!” I felt pretty ridiculous doing this, but the other choir members, all apparently zarzuela veterans, managed it with aplomb and no apparent loss of dignity.

Now we are preparing for a Christmas concert, which will be a mix of really old church music in Latin, traditional Spanish carols, and other songs from around Spain and the world—there’s a song in Catalan, one in Basque, one in Japanese, one from Peru, etc. For me the most interesting has been learning the Spanish carols, especially the ones from Andalusia—they frequently have snatches where the music echoes the rhythm of castanets or the aching melodies of flamenco. I’ve also been amused to see that (at least in several of the songs we’re singing) the Christ child is portrayed not as a tiny, saintly being, but as an actual baby. Sample lyric: “They made soups for the Christ Child/He didn’t want to eat them/So, since they were so sweet,/Saint Joseph ate them himself.” No “no crying he makes” here!

Beyond the realistic portrayals of Jesus, I must admit that the lyrics to some Spanish Christmas carols are just bizarre. The ultimate example of this is the song “Los pesces en el rio”, the chorus of which goes as follows:

“But look how the fish in the river are drinking!/To see the newborn God!/They drink, and they drink, and then they drink again/The fish in the river, to see the newborn God.”

Does this sound more like a Christmas song, or a recycled drinking song? Probably in your native language, songs like this don’t register—you’ve been singing them for so many years you cease to think about what they’re actually saying. Not so when sing carols in Spanish, during which my thought process is something like: “I think the melody is more or less like this… oops, that was supposed to be a sixteenth note. . . what the heck is that WORD?! Oh, well, I'll ask later! The fish drink and they drink and—what is this song ABOUT?” But it’s good company and a great mental workout--just what’s needed to ward off the sluggishness of winter.