Hike

I hiked this morning up into the rocky ravine that looms above our heads this side of Alcoy. A steep range is almost always in view at any site of Alcoy's perimeter, but this particular formation is especially spectacular because of the deep but narrow slash through it. A small rock path wound its way past an abandoned factory on the outskirts of town and then up into the evergreen forests and dry chalky soil that lay hidden behind the cliff faces.

On the path I passed a number of small houses inaccessible by car. I also passed a donkey who was tied up eating grass. I untangled his tether and gave him two dried apricots. His thick wooly coat was white and tendrils of dread-locked hair covered his eyes. His ears were at leat a foot long, very long ears. I stopped and read Salvador Plascencia's "People of Paper" for awhile.

When I passed through the ravine I was looking up. My eye caught onto the movement of a hawk riding hot air pockets at the very top of the cliff face. It was high enough up that I watched the bird in the same way you look at a faint star, by looking away from it or looking past it; or when you have to focus on one blade of grass to see the army of ants marching below it. Looking up into the clouds, more and more birds of prey entered the realm of my strange kind of hyper-stare, and I thought of Hitchcock. They had been spurred to drop from their eyries merely by my entrance. I was walking onto a rocky stage where the daily ritual of the rodent dance was enacted, the perfomer being swept up in a flurry of holy sacrifice by the viewer with the truest opera glasses. My performance was less captivating than the tit mice hidden behind the rocks- the hawks soon returned with gracefull dives and stalls to their caved nests and my staring revealed nothing to me but sunspots.