more lost than the goats

One thing I am unable to enjoy this year in Spain is senderismo, hill walking among the sierras. Walking short distances on flat ground is achey enough and wears me out quickly, so the mountain trails are out for this year.

I look at Sierra Callosa and can put myself up there among the dusty trails. I can smell the pine trees, the thyme underfoot; the heart flutter of wild boar at any movement in the shrubbery.
My friend was always the one to show me the secret access points and crazy goat pathways, the scree scrabbles, rock hopping and I can picture our ascent along one of the sharp ridges.

When we climb in summertime it is too hot, so we start just as the sun is dipping towards the horizon. We climb for an hour and a half or so and get to the summit just as the sun is setting. Then we descend in darkness. If the moon is out and bright it gives us light enough to find our way down. If not then we wear torches on our heads, like miner's lamps in the coal dark.

One time we were ascending, scrabbling hands and legs up a rocky slope, when we heard a bleating sound. A goat, a kid. As we - or should I say I - struggled up to the top of the ridge the bleating went on and on. We couldn't locate it.
After tramping through the tough roots and rocks of the ridge my friend turned to me and said that he thought the trail should be straight ahead. It wasn't. So we descended a little and clambered onto a little ridge where the trail still wasn't. He looked perplexed. The bleating filled the dimming light. He looked around and thought a minute then said, "We are more lost than the goats !!" He was chuckling.
We sat down and drank some water as he tried to figure out how we had lost the trail. The goat was bleating. High above us an eagle was circling. We could see far across the ridge to the many small towns across the flatlands. The sun was low, coating the buidings in amber honey.
Suddenly we located the bleating goat. It was at the top of a sheer cliff face that curved away to the left of where we sat. It looked trapped and stumbled ever closer to a plummet to its death. It was bleating in alarm, to its mother. The eagle was circling with interest. We sat captivated by the immanence of its fall. I gulped at the water and held fast to the rock where I was sitting.
After a while of head spinning possibilities we realised that the goat was perfectly at home in the slight footholds of the cliff face. Even the eagle gave up and drifted away. We left the bleating and climbed back to where we had originally been. We walked over the ridge and down until we finally found the trail and kicked up dust all the way to the top, to the night descending.

So this holiday I won't be more lost than the goats. I am on safe flat ground trying to just get there and back without too much leg ache. I can only look and long for times to come sitting high above the flat land with my friend as the air cools and darkens and a hundred tiny lights go on in the towns scattered below. Taking it in. Taking a breath and turning away, picking up my backpack and heading back down the way we came, lit by moon.