A moment that lasts

Before our departure from Linares de Mora, I took a walk up to the cemetery this morning, at the foot of which we had spent two extremely quiet nights. The many veil-like clouds in the sky muted the already strong sun rays and bathed the white stone walls and the lush green of the surrounding mountains and meadows in a soft, almost gentle light.

The cemetery surprised me. Here, most graves were set into a concrete structure, into which caskets and urns could be easily slid. Each niche was covered with a usually black stone slab, engraved with the name and date of death of the deceased. Colorful flowers adorned the individual graves, not natural ones, but artificial, yet all radiated in vibrant colors, untouched by the relentless heat of the summer sun.

I sat down on a bench. The sun had already chased away the morning chill. A light breeze was blowing. Behind me, a little owl hooted softly. It was a special moment. A place, a minute like a painting. A moment, a feeling that made transience ... yes, made transience transient. Here, in this small cemetery in the Sierra de Gúdar, in southern Aragon, time seemed to transform into eternity for a few seconds.

Back at the camper, reality quickly had me in its grips again. We were out of water in the tank, the bread was gone, and we had no parking spot for our next destination, Rubielos de Mora. That was found quickly, but it was just a remote, dirty sand spot where our scruffy bunch would have enjoyed – and we would have faced a lot of trouble...

We checked out the nice little town, had an excellent snack afterward, and decided to continue on to Mora de Rubielos, where we wanted to replenish our supplies. That went perfectly, but we couldn’t find the marked camper parking spot. I’ll spare you a detailed description of our half-hour's winding journey up and down. It was only 1:30 PM, so we decided to drive the nearly 90 kilometers further to Albarracín. And here we are now, safely parked in a beautiful spot and looking forward to tomorrow’s visit to this magnificent city.