Note: this post is the third part of a trilogy. Click here to read the first part. Click here to go to the second part.
It was a day like any other, but with a large number of boxes, backpacks and various things in front of the elevator. Something in the air made me think that coming into the car would mean a slightly longer trip than the typical early-morning one to the mountains. I felt nervous and happy, excited and anxious… and then it was when the car began to move.
I felt the wind caressing my face and the smell of the changing landscape on the other side of the window. I remember that first day because we were many hours in the car, but when we stopped, everything smelled different, and there was no other noise than the flow of the river and birdsong.
Then everything became an adventure. Each day we saw new landscapes and I never knew what I was expecting. Sometimes we walked among thick forests, sometimes I enjoyed crossing rivers or even plastering my face with sand on the beach. I changed the freshness of a terrace for the shades of a beech, my plastic drinking can for fresh river water and the whole world became my new home.
There were moments when happiness and madness took control of me. In these cases I simply barked at full power in order to make it known to the world as well. Although there were moments when I got exhausted and I used to defend the backseat of the car as my throne, my little fort and the only known place in a strange world.
I also ate delicious things. Strangers approached me offering me bits of food with different flavors. I especially remember a waiter who cut a piece of something that my people called Cachopo, from a dish of a customer that had already left … I had never tasted anything alike.
I remember the waves of that afternoon, hitting my chest while advancing to reach the rest of my herd, who went into that great mass of salt water. The lines of pointed rocks offshore and I traced jumping between them without really understand why. We swam and ran between water and sand until sunset. In these moments when I’m already tired are the times when she becomes quiet and unhurried, she removes various objects from her backpack and stares into the landscape in silence. I sit down and look her. It’s a good life.
