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SPAIN BY TRAIN, Reflections on life
Rachel Peterson - September 1997

I love to travel by train through Spain, I always have. Ignoring the conditions of the bathrooms, the B-class movies, the food, and the occasional group of boisterous teens returning from a Michael Jackson concert in Barcelona, from the windows of this conveyance, one "lives" the country.

The skies are unpaintable. Maybe it’s the month. September is full of rains, bright skies, and high and low barometers at war, but I think it is, perhaps, the place. Whether over Quixote’s windmills in La Mancha, over the perfectly ordered rows of grape vines in La Rioja, or over the vast plains of sunflowers in my dear Castilla y Leon, the skies are a dream. Strikingly graphic clouds punctuate the turquoise blanket – castles of grays and whites they float at an imperceivably slow pace. They speak volumes to me, the clouds.

From the train you can watch the tractors plowing the winter fields, the great white egrets picking dinner from the furrows behind the machines. From the train you can watch the old men; bent, wrinkled, tanned, with their canes and dark berets, standing silently still watching you whiz by. The flocks of sheep, the small pueblos in the distance, the occasional oasis of cypress or cedars between the great expanses of now-fallow fields, the single burro waiting patiently for his next cargo… these are timeless images.

These are the images of Spain long before trains existed. The way the setting sun falls pink upon the cotton balls of high pressure clouds, so clear, so well-defined that the most complicated camera could not capture their reality. The timelessness of the countryside and the strong presence of history is powerful and so comforting here. It is the knowledge that this has all existed just like it is now for centuries without change, and it will exist for centuries to come (unless man destroys it). This is a comforting thought.

I watch my Spanish peers, I listen to the way they speak to their toddlers, and how they share their experiences, fears and doubts with their mothers and grandmothers. I am certain that 300 years ago the Spaniards ate tortillas, cocido, chorizo, lentejas, and el queso manchego prepared just as it still is today. They pass down the recipes, they pass down the winemaking skills, the ability to cure olives and press the oil, the sense of humor, and the critical and philosophical mind.

Being in Spain always reminds me that the Spaniards are everything we Americans are not. It's not that their lives are so difficult, they aren't. But our lives are so easy, and at the same time so empty. We live in a busy, overscheduled world. We don’t have time, and we have chosen not to have time. We have chosen not to watch our children grow – and relegate them instead to daycare. We have chosen to live in houses in suburbia where we live alone among others living alone. We have chosen to microwave our processed chemical-laden foods, we have chosen cable tv (and the value of spending so much time controlled by it). We have chosen to believe our jobs matter and our neighbors do not. We choose to worry about whether our furniture matches or our ball team wins. We have chosen a fast, blurry life. And when I sit in a Spanish train, I see clearly that we have chosen foolishly.

Copyright © by Rachel Peterson

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