A dew-covered street in Cádiz, at dawn, there are hardly any pedestrians. It is a fifteen-minute walk, crossing Sagasta Street to Liberty Square, where I will order the first coffee of the day, in front of a counter with paper napkins. Another moment: dawn also breaks, we find ourselves in Oberlech, it is cold, winter has already set in, I light the fireplace with beech logs, I prepare the coffee, the mist awakens over the hills of Rüfikopf and Omeshorn, I step out onto the terrace, due to the sound (an echo of dry leaves) of footsteps crunching on the snow: it is a dog walking beside its human.
Memory —which also travels— now carries me to Menorca, it is mealtime, we are seated around a table, pressed against the railings that overlook Cala Alcaufar. Hours drift slowly under the shade of one of its umbrellas; on the white tablecloth there are two wine glasses, Laura frames the scene before us: fishing barges, three ladies reclining in their beach chairs, platforms from which to observe without hurry the endless green. A dip shortly after, the nap on the damp rock, we fall —through time— into a pleasant doze, until some gardens that it takes me a moment to recognize, but I do.
The chants of the adhan wake me from a mosque in the medina, we walk through a garden thick with orange trees, lemon trees, jacarandas, palms and olive trees: Arsat al-Mamoun. These aromas (cedar, dates, orange blossom, and orange peel) cling to the skin and to the fabric of the memories themselves. What material are memories made of? Of connections between neurons; there is no drawer where they are stored, they are rather an infinite journey, that very brand even has a name: engram. The physical imprint that a experience leaves. The most fascinating thing about memory is that it demands the present: neuroscientists Karim Nader and Joseph LeDoux demonstrated that every time we retrieve a memory, it becomes fragile again and must reconsolidate, be fabricated anew. That is why remembering is rewriting. I like the message: if you remember it, it will not fade.
Final stop, dusk among the birches of a lush forest in the Irish Midlands, at the foot of the Slieve Bloom, the place is a dream. But before that, a confession: for some time now —a year, at most two— my relationship with travel is complicated. It exhausts me yet it calms me, it traverses me, it completes me but also empties me, leaves me exhausted. I think David (Moralejo) travels to hide, Laura undoubtedly travels in search of wonder. When Lady Kildare discovered this place, she wrote a letter: “Yesterday I saw a most delightful place indeed, much beyond any place I have seen in Ireland”. I am sure that that vision —which we are witnessing at this very moment, nearly three centuries later— accompanied her until the end of her days, as it will with me. Perhaps it is simply that: traveling in search of beauty. Beauty as an intangible that cannot die because it will remain etched in memory; filling my pockets and my heart with awe, saving beautiful things for when the days grow ugly. They always arrive.
