Unlike other countries I'd walked through, I was not to find the interior of Spain to be a gentle region. Rather, it was one of increasing challenges--both physical and spiritual. So challenging was it in fact that in the end I had to retreat to the southeast, toward the Mediterranean Sea, or endanger my very sanity.

First, there was the land: it rose ever higher and its winds became more and more chilly. Each day was a succession of incessant hills, each one adding at least a dozen more curves to the rough and steep roads I was following.

Although there were many terraced hillsides of olive and almond trees, and more than a few dry river river bottoms sprouting small vegetable gardens, there were also vast expanses of sagebrush, rocks, and...nothingness. So much space--and so immense!--that at times I felt as if I'd been set adrift on another planet--a planet where nature controlled destiny, where I was little more than an insignificant insect.

Then there were the inhabitants: poor, suspicious, as much a part of the dusty terrain as the boulders and srub pine. In the shops and offices of their dilapidated casas de las villas their olive-skinned faces could be so smiling, so gentle and ready for a laugh. But out on the streets and narrow caminos of the countryside, it was another world--a world of fearful and cold stares, of black-garbed figures slinking back into musty doorways when I approached. I was reminded of snakes shrinking into stone walls. And, too, there were the dirt-encrusted dwellings that clustered about the tops of ugly hills, like giant crumbling anthills.

Finally there was the loneliness and pervasive sense of isolation that came from being an obvious stranger in a strange land. Not only were the villages too few and so far apart, but so too were any conversations.

On two different occasions passing German cyclists stopped to chat with me, and I'd felt as if I'd been visited by some sort of heavenly angel. Miracle of miracles, they talked!

After the visits by my two pedaling "angels," I knew it was time for me to seek someplace where there would be more of my kind, where the valleys were filled with more light and more familiar sounds--like autos and radios, rather than the screams of pigs being slaughtered. Quite simply,the interior of Spain at this time of the year was too cold in more ways than one.

But my retreat to the sea was not to be an easy trek. This land that had spawned the restless side of my soul and emotions, that had brought me to the brink of striking out at all those glaring eyes, had to have the last laugh.

The incident of which I speak occurred on the last night before I reached the sea. It was after two days and nights of rain and bitterly cold winds from the west. On that night I was still dozens of kilometers from the fig trees, and palm trees, and flowers of the coast. I was so weary from all the walking and shivering. I needed shelter and warmth badly, but there was none. Only more rock, more blackness, and more rain.

On the crest of a mountain, in the middle of that night, I paused long enough to gaze out into the sea of darkness in which I seemed to be drowning. Far, far away were the only signs of life: the tiny glows of villages scattered across the plains below. So small did the lighted clumps seem--like phosphorescent bacteria colonies clinging precariously to some huge boulder.

So much emptiness between the lights, and between them and me, I thought. We humans really are so much more fragile and smaller than we'll ever admit.

I was to push onward with the sense of isolation growing stronger. The wind blew more coldly. With everyone else light years away, and with my tent and my blanket as soaked as the clothes on my shaking bones, the night held little promise of any comforts. At one point I looked upward into the rain and lamented that I didn't think I could make it through the night. I asked that if there was anyone in Heaven looking after me, to please send me some help, for I feared I was in the early stages of hypothermia.

Not long after my silent pleas to a higher power, there appeared a strange and wobbly globe of light coming up the mountainside from far below. In time, it was accompanied by the all-too-familiar whining noises of a moped cycle engine. Oddly, the light stopped just short of me. It shone directly into my eyes.

I stopped walking. My heart pounded. Could this be a robber? Why else would anyone be in such an isolated place, so late in the night, in such miserable conditions. Surely none of the local people would have had the nerve to approach a total stranger on such an empty stretch of road.

Cautiously I watched a shadowy rider dismount and step toward me. To my shock, the rider was so small and thin. When it removed its helmet I was further surprised to see the rider was an old woman. So fragile and bent-over was she that I wondered if I wasn't seeing things.

Her black clothes clung to her like weary flesh. Her gray hair was clumped around eyes that glistened eerily in the glowing mist. When she spoke, it was in a hoarse whisper. Deep inside me something jumped, for the sound of another voice at such a late hour and in such an out-of-the-way place was too unusual to easily accept.

"Do you need a place to rest?" she asked in peasant Spanish.

"Si. Estoy m-muy frio," I stammered.

She turned away and hobbled into a grove of bare, spindly-limbed trees. Wordlessly I sloshed behind her. Surely she was no higher than my belly.

After about 50 meters, she stopped and pointed to the side of a cliff. In the rock cliff was a cave opening that was blacker than the night. Once inside the cliff, I saw that the cave was man-made. It was for storing tools used in the harvesting of almonds.

I thanked the woman and asked if I could pay her for her help. She only stared, as though she'd not understood my Spanish. She melted back into the night without saying a word.

After she was gone, I felt around in the darkness and found some matches and kindling. I built a little fire and huddled next to it for most of the night. I wrapped my blanket about me like some mangy animal skin. I fully expected the woman to return, but she didn't.

The next morning I left the cave and headed toward a dazzling sun. I felt dirty and raw and tougher. I felt a lot like Spain, I decided.

Steven