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"Almost Home"
Art Lester
Lost and Found in a Spanish
Mountain Village
| A chapter from this book
has recently been included in The Best Travel
Writing 2006 (Travelers' Tales, San Francisco). |
“There are no more undiscovered paradises,”
went the advice of the old hands at world travel.
“All the undiscovered villages now have McDonald’s
and strip malls.”
Art Lester, former journalist, wasn’t convinced.
So when he and his wife stumbled into Cantilla, a
white village perched high in the Sierra Nevada mountains
of Spain, he knew at once that he was going to try
to live there.
There were problems to overcome. Speaking the language
for one thing, as he learned when he told a roomful
of peasant farmers that he was pregnant, or when he
convinced the neighborhood that he was in search of
a brothel. The house they bought on the first day
nearly revealed itself as a ruin too far. It didn’t
help, either, when exhausted by dangerous and difficult
traveling, the newly-arrived pilgrim accidentally
peed on a neighbor’s sheep. But these problems
could be overcome by patience, hard work and a stubborn
refusal to face the hardest questions of all. Such
as, “Now that you’ve found paradise, what
do you do?”
The story of a year’s living under the highest
snow-capped peaks in southern Europe is one of discovery.
Discovery of the thin line between reality and fantasy,
for one, as the Demon Cat of Calle del Rio would soon
show. The realization that you don’t buy real
estate in a place like Cantilla without signing on
to something ancient and mysterious for another. But
Cantilla had even more surprises in store, as the
two pilgrims would gradually discover. Surprises about
the nature of their relationship, about the ancient
dream of Shangri-La and, most of all, about themselves.
In the cauldron of a truly foreign culture, things
taken for granted gradually slip away, leaving behind
more questions than answers. But in the same process
of unraveling, what remains is what is real. Sometimes,
as Art Lester discovers, it is necessary to get really
lost in order to be found.
Almost Home: Lost and Found in a Spanish Mountain
Village is a narrative of an extraordinary year
in an extraordinary place. Its 73,000 words in 23
chapters reveal the delights of armchair travel writing.
Its humor and occasional hilarity nestle comfortably
alongside the depth reporting of an ancient and alien
way of life. The descriptions of the breath-taking
scenery, the food and folklore are rich and satisfying
in themselves.
But this is no dilettante's account of a glimpse of
amusing peasants who are funny merely because they
can’t speak English. There are no tales of the
“funny day the neighbor’s pig ate our
rosebushes.” The wonder and pathos of a people
who were until recently the most isolated community
in Europe is reported with accuracy and sympathy.
The engaging struggle of making a home in such circumstances
is familiar to readers of such classics as the books
of Gerald Durrell and Frances Mayes. But, unlike these
fine books, Almost Home is also a story of
struggle and growth, which leads on to insights for
author and readers alike of what makes meaning, and
where it might be found.
The book is currently under representation by a literary
agent, awaiting publication.
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