Mountain Gold - Life in a remote off-grid mountain village
Hello, my name is Kate and I'd like to share what Being Land is for me. Right now, as I record this, I've been living in this remote off-grid mountain village for about 20 months now. It's located in the Spanish Pyrenees.
And I sit here right on the other side of the valley to the village. It looks very small and the valley is really deep between us. It's a big vacuum of space between me and the village. It's like a different vantage point being sat here because you can feel like you've been swallowed up into a bubble of the land the village is on.
As we hardly ever get to leave this place, I mean it's at least a 4 hour walk to the nearest town with shops and we don't have transport. So we're pretty dependent on our neighbours to sort out our food and also our drinking water as our spring kind of dried up for more than half a year due to sporadic rain.
When I sit here I have a really good view of a mountain called Oroel. Oro means gold in Spanish and el is him. So apparently that translates to The Golden One. And there's a river that flows through this village called Moro so it has "Oro" again which means gold.
It's a pretty potent place to be here, I mean basically as soon as we first stepped foot in this village there has just been never ending process and it does have a reputation for that.
I mean we kind of came here thinking we're gonna build a community or build up the village because it's an abandoned village with ruined buildings.
And yeah life had other plans. It was not the place to build up, we eventually realised that. I mean many other people came here and they try to build up the place. Much more physical and practical people than me and my partner.
And yeah they had to give up too, you know... a process happens or things just don't work out and it's like the village has its timing. It brings you in and then it kind of pushes you back out again.
And yes... it's like me and my partner are struggling to even escape this place. We are trying to leave but... because we need to move on with our life and come back into society a bit and just have some comforts back.
I mean, it's just has been so hard to get anything done here. Life is very slow here where there's this kind of... I don't know... energetic push back? When you really try to push or force things to work in this village but it just doesn't seem to want to happen so we just kind of put our hands up and we just have to surrender to the flow... being here.
I mean this village has had a very tumultuous history. It's had many people pass through here and it used to be a very kind of open land where anyone can just turn up. And lot of people turned up and caused lot of trouble or did certain things that really kind of opened up the energetics of this place in many different ways, which I won't go into.
But yes... the village was in quite a bit of trouble when we got here. And... yeah because we didn't feel safe for a long time being here but we kind of couldn't leave and we just had to keep our presence, our anchor here. We didn't even really had to do much but yeah... it's been very quiet and peaceful for more than a year now.
Our neighbours, who are a couple, who have lived here as semi-residents for around ten years, they said that it's never been so quiet and it used to be so full of people with lots of drama going on. It's been known to just be a constant kind of soap opera here.
But now it's just really quiet. And yeah we're kind of enjoying it like this. We get to be left in peace and just get on with our own lives.
It's not a comfortable life here at all because the infrastructure is quite weak and the buildings are kind of falling apart because despite peoples' best efforts to make it work it's just really not holding together very well.
I mean for starters we don't even have baths or showers... or hot water. And yeah you have to heat up the water yourself and we have this little small plastic tub we can take a bath in. Just submerges part of your body.
And electricity is failing. So, especially for the winter we were going through so many blackouts, spending many nights in the dark. And we had to be careful with our device usage... making sure our torches are charged up so we're not walking around in the dark.
We have an outdoor kitchen. We do the laundry outside. You have to hand wash all the laundry. Not enough electricity to have a washing machine so yeah everything's just really outside, out in the elements. Cooking or washing and cleaning, even doing my hair outside. It can be very cold in the colder months. Or windy, or rainy...
A lot more easier in the hotter months but then we're kind of... too hot. I mean last year it was like reaching 40 degrees regularly and that was a bit intense, not to mention all the mosquitos that came out. Lots of scars to remind me of my time here, mosquitos bite scars. Thank you for that.
There's more I could say about the infrastructure of this village. I could go on and on and bore you guys out. But to be so stripped away of all that. And also not to really, you know it's very rare we leave this place. It's just leaves you kind of with yourself, and your process and what's going on internally.
And it has been very tough. I mean the lack of comforts, sometimes your body is just crying out for some soothing and comfort, some warm water to just touch the body and you know just relax you.
Often the body is just very tense and achey, and it's very hard work to do basic things you know... even just to wash a dish, because we don't have a tap or a sink, for example. It can be very tough when you're just very tired and exhausted already. But you just have to push through and do it, you know.
It's been a very enlivening experience living like this. I mean before I came to this village I feel like a totally different person, I barely recognise that person before coming here. Being here has been one of the fastest growth processes I've had to go through.
So although it's been very tough and wishing to leave at some point... I don't regret being here. I just feel kind of more connected to the land, to myself, just kind of more alive. I just don't feel it's any coincidence arriving here. It was kind of by chance we ended up in this village because no other doors were open for us.
Yeah I feel so much more stronger internally and these mountains god... they're just amazing to me to live so deep in the middle of the mountains. So kind of rugged and raw and primal feeling, simultaneously really kind of harsh. In a way life has been quite ruthless to me and my partner being here. The mountains have been very kind of... unforgiving with us.
You've got to face this. You've got to feel this. You've got to feel this deep frustration, you've got to feel what's most important to you. What do you want? Do you want comforts? Yes please.
I mean when me and my partner do eventually leave this place, whenever that may happen. It's a bit complicated in our situation, for different reasons, I won't go into. But we're just gonna appreciate comfort so much more. To have warm water, to be able to wash a dish easily, to just throw clothes into a washing machine and to even have a sofa, that would be nice.
There's no shame in that. It's not that I don't recommend living this lifestyle, I mean it can be a real growth process and it can switch something on inside of you. I'm not saying you have to come here and do it. Yeah hopefully you can get the idea just by me talking about it.
So yeah I just wanna give my deep thanks to this land. It's been a honour to be here. To have been welcomed into its deep valleys. To be held so tightly... that we couldn't get out. But it has really shaken things up for us and I will always cherish my time here. It's just really kind of cleaned me out, being amongst those mountains... in this village. To be surrounded with so much wild beauty, to be swallowed up by the bugs in the summer. So many bugs, god.
Yeah what an incredible time it has been here. I feel really part of this land. Even as I speak, I hold a rock to my belly and I just merge with this land even more holding this rock. Something about holding the rock just anchors me more deeply into my being.
So, I will leave it on this note. Thank you.
My blog feed with posts sharing more about life in this village
My art website
This transcript was made by Roee and isabelle, not by AI. When you detect any flaws or errors, just let us know via email and we fix it asap. Thank you.
