PAINTED STEPS: Walking the Camino #14

"How ‘long ago and far away’…is enough?"  or  "A walk in the park meets the backstory".

The barn: el granero - granary, grain barn. el establo - like a stable. las pocilga, la porqueriza - pigsty, sty, pigpen, piggery, stye, swinery

My next little picture is The Barn. I had seen a few buildings of this type in Tierra de Campos. They were off in the distance, far from the walking path, seemingly isolated in the middle of fields, and not easy not to notice. It took me a while to figure them out. All that pork and no pigs…?
Distance functions here like the thick fringe of trees along BC highways that mask the blight of clear-cut. This is not the chickens-scratching-in-the-dirt kind of farming.
Distance means too far to hear, too far to smell. 
Distance allows us to ‘distance’ ourselves….
 
However, the tele-photo lens offers a kind of transport, can ‘virtually’ carry you closer. So can a magnifying glass, a finger spread or command +. So I chose to paint the barn quite tiny. An individual background brush stroke becomes a little hill.

The barn door lurks behind.

How far is the barn from the edge of the painting?

How far from the end of the journey?

How far is far?
 
To get to the Camino, to get to the start of our pilgrimage, we flew 8,000k from the Pacific coast, across Canada, Greenland, the Atlantic Ocean, to Roissy CDG. We crossed Paris on the RER and Metro, 24 k to the Gare St Lazare, then travelled 770k southwest by train to Bayonne on the coast.
An hour’s bus ride, 53k, down a winding country road, took me, my partner and 50 other back-packing, pole-carrying, broad brimmed prospective ‘pilgrims’’ into the spring green heart of Basque country.
We finally arrived at the terminus in Donibane Garazi, St.Jean Pied-de-Port, the starting point of the Camino Francés. My destination that night was the Hotel Camou which according to Google maps was in the neighbouring town Uharte Cize about 700m away.
Maybe take a taxi?

“Is it far?” I asked our taxi driver.
He smiled, laughed, and said <ça dépend.>
 
(To paraphrase Obélix “Ils sont fous, ces touristes”).
 
Perhaps it was the preponderance of x’s in written Basque, “Euskari”, that made me connect Basque with the story of Astérix and Obélix.
Perhaps Welsh being also a ‘unique’ language, and the Welsh being Celts, with a reputation of people resistant to Romanization, Latinization,   There emerges a kind of  Xena -fication of history, a mythological, anecdotal, orally transmitted soup. A connection of time, not place. Like some vague family history.
 
But in reality it’s possible that the Basque are ancestors of the Welsh.During the last Ice Age this region, Navarre, was habitable, free of glaciers.
At the retreat of the ice the population of this area spread north and so ‘the Basque Refuge”, may be understood to be the cradle of European peoples, making the Basque ancestors to the British!
And in fact it may be that the famous Celt village of Asterix, so French a cultural artefact, may well be proven to have been in Spain, or more precisely, in Basque country.
 
All may not be as it appears.
 
Happy Trails,
Buen Camino!

Alvaro Bermeio
https://www.courrierinternational.com/article/1999/12/23/et-si-asterix-etait-basque
Forty years after its creation, the work of Goscinny and Uderzo seems to reach the pantheon of the great myths of our time with the film “Asterix and Obelix against Caesar”, currently on Spanish screens. Everything seems French to the extreme in this blockbuster.
 
With one exception: if, taking into account History, we move from fiction to reality, instead of being in Gaul, the legendary village resistant to the invader should rather be in Spain. And, more precisely, in our ineffable Basque Country. History says that after the defeat of Vercingetorix all Gaul submitted to Julius Caesar. However, in Hispania……….. Alvaro Bermeio
 
Courrier International 15/12 2004
Quarante ans après sa création, l’oeuvre de Goscinny et Uderzo semble accéder au panthéon des grands mythes de notre époque avec le film Astérix et Obélix contre César, actuellement sur les écrans espagnols. Tout semble français à l’extrême dans cette superproduction.
 
A une exception près: si, en tenant compte de l’Histoire, on passe de la fiction à la réalité, au lieu d’être en Gaule, le village légendaire résistant à l’envahisseur devrait plutôt se trouver en Espagne. Et, plus précisément, dans notre ineffable Pays basque. L’Histoire dit qu’après la défaite de Vercingétorix toute la Gaule s’est soumise à Jules César. Or, en Hispanie…..

Basque Refuge:
https://indo-european.eu/2017/07/neolithic-and-bronze-age-basque-speaking-iberians-resisted-invaders-from-the-steppe/
,
Xena Warrior Princess – TV, New Zealand
          (facts = data = writing)