Only in Spain do you get invited to go out to the campo after school and go cherry picking. I accompanied a teacher friend out to her pueblo of Carcabuey, the next town down from Priego. It only has a few thousand people, and as you can imagine, my presence there was stuff for the daily papers. I joined her and her father at their family´s huerta, which is similar to a house but with no rooms. Many families in these pueblos have land in the campo (country) and they grow crops or group there for family gatherings. We picked cherries from one of her father´s fifteen trees. One in the bag, one in my mouth. And so it went. The cherries, large and dark like an old bottle of cabernet, were the best Í´d ever had. She then took me on a small hike that resulted in a six hour excursion. We hiked up to the top of the town where we visited a church that housed their beloved saint, Maria de la Castillo.There were crutches, pictures, and notes tacked to the wall surrounding her: survival stories, because they´d believed. I lit a candle and made a prayer. On the walk down I noticed a small crevice where there were bundles of picked wildflowers. Children bring them every day, she said, because this is the place where one day long ago, Jesus appeared. We continued to the Carbario, which is like a walkway all the way around town. We passed thirteen crosses, where the families go to pray the Stations of the Cross and reflect during Semana Santa. We visited the one farmacia, a cafe where we sipped on cafes and ate little chocolate cakes, the one school, the births that belong to her family where they get fresh mountain water, and stopped for a visit at her family home. It reminded me of all the times I used to go romping around in the backyard of my old house in Meadow Hollow. How I used to pretend the big tree that had fallen during Hurricane Hugo way back in the woods was really the home of the Lost Boys from Peter Pan, and how I used to stuff a bag with a banana and a book and go there. An adventure, just waiting. Carcabuey is this, an adventure, just waiting. Having ridden through it only in the autobus, I thought it was no more than just a little sleepy pueblo, and often wondered why people would want to live there. If you take time to get to know a place, and the people there, you´ll see, every town has a little touch of Peter Pan. You have to give it a chance. And just go pick cherries.
