The two issues that capture my attention this summer in Viladrau, a mountain town where I spent my vacation after the sunny days in Formentera and leading a life style Tom Sawyer (growning), are, apart from the usual arrival of the oropendolas and the successful afternoon in more the Martí, the mystery of the trout trout of the nursery of the restaurant El Molí de la Molí of the barite Black—, and the fall of a tremendous ray over the people that everyone listened to shudder but nobody knew how to hit where he hit exactly. As for the first, it is not yet known what the fish died and the case has taken detective dimensions when the species of which the bodies of the crime have disappeared, so to speak: the dead trout carried for the autopsy would have been lost. In reference to the second topic, the ray, I have first -hand information about where the spooky Centella fell: in my house.
The trout of the barita, a specialty whose tradition does not go back to the bandit Joan de Serrallonga (1594-1634) but almost, suffered a mysterious mortality at the beginning of the year that some, such as the TER defense group, have blamed, as a foam, to a polluting spill in the Major Riege that would also have affected other species such as the common toad. The new management of the restaurant, which changed hands two years ago, had to face the sudden death of the trout, which are raised in an annexed nursery with water from the river and decided, in an initiative that honors them, to take them out of the menu until they clarify what happened. The deceased fish were carefully collected (one imagines the fish with the Silhouette of chalk to the FBI drawn around it) and made available to the relevant authorities to proceed to their forensic analysis. But, according to restaurant sources, the fish have disappeared (of the morgue of the trout?), And, on the other hand, the explanation of the cause of death has not yet been made public. Meanwhile, the barite serves a trout of other origin, but it is not the same.
The trout, of which I especially value the modality with almonds and ham that was historically offered in the barita, are delicate animals. I have read it in Fishing the troutby Francisco Suay (European Hispanic Editorial, 1986), a title that I have found precisely these days in the Casetita de Bookcrossing from Viladrau with the Church, which will already tell me if it is not a coincidence. In the book, Suay states that “trout is exposed to endless hazards,” says diseases such as enteritis, forunculosis and the intestinal cataract of the fry, and remember that all the beings that inhabit and walked through their waters are their enemies, which makes me think of the long Major by hand and at night, end of the one I attest because I accompanied him in one of his extravagant exits that included people like May Clapers, Pep Bofill, Luis Fita and Arturo Garrid, and even tried to imitate it until when I put my hand under a submerged rock what I trapped was a water snake (Natrix maura), with the natural scare for both, snake and me. Suay explains that “the ducks, the otes, the eels, the Martín Pescador, the snakes, the herons, the water rats, etc.” They pretend to the trout, but emphasize that the worst are “the toxic waste of the industries”, which suffocate large and small specimens and cause “true catastings.”
To speak with the mayor of Viladrau, Margarida Feliu, quite satisfied because summer is being quiet (it is also true that she has not fallen a ray at home), she tells me that she has also heard the disappearance of dead trout but blames it to the rumorology that is unleashing the one who takes so long to clarify the case. Understand that these things are complex to elucidate and refer to a meeting that there will be in September, warning that the investigation may not bear fruit, given the variability of the analysis parameters – the river flow for example – and the fact that apparently the trout must be analyzed before they are quite dead, and those that occupied us were already liabes, and it is worth the phrase.
The case of the trout of the barita, true Chiit still does not resolve – we will continue informing – but at least I can explain in detail that the terrifying ray that made all Viladrau tremble on July 24 was the one who came to petar (for using the explosive expression of the film Syrup) On the main tree of my house garden. When the accident happened I was not, thank God: the fireplace fire for lack of maintenance and a ray at home would have been more than my nerves could have supported in a year. But the effects are very visible. The entire electrical installation jumped and the painting was melted, in addition to expiring television, which was new. But the strongest is what he has done in my tree, a magnificent specimen of douglas fir more than 35 meters high and wide and dense foliage that I thought was a colossus of nature capable of arrupting any danger that earth and skies could send us. The trail that has left the ray in the tree is of unheard of unprecedented, overwhelming violence. He went to hit in the great V at more than twenty meters where the Douglas bifurca (Douglasia Verde, false green tsuga of the rocky or douglas of Oregon, as I have identified in me Tree field guide in Europeby Alan Mitchell, Omega, 1979), causing a spectacular hole and chipping, a brutal wound that seems to have been caused by an ax of the legendary giant Paul Bunyan, that of the blue ox, and from which two large and amazing zigzaging scars fall in the trunk of the trunk that would be said to pieces of a giant sword.
Branches and bark remains jumped everywhere between the dazzling flash and you find them up to one hundred meters from the garden. One of the winding fissures crosses the great three -story nest box for birds stuck in the trunk. I have not dared to open it because I fear that it is not that the plumbs have jumped to the feathered residents but must be inside fried, poor.
As you can imagine, I have not lost time in looking for plenty of documentation about what happens when lightning falls into a tree and especially when the tree is next to your house. I have found a wide range of information, from the very alarming – the tree, to which the water and sap would have boiled, is already dead, Zanjan, “cut it as soon as possible” – to others more optimistic who even suggest that an electric shock like the lightning can be revitalizing, come on, I imagine that as a defibrillator (it would be the case, without leaving viladrau Boya pubescent oak near the room). Other sources point out that the tree thus beaten is usually weakened and prone to diseases and falls. I, natural supporter of let let pass And I think that cutting down a tree to the size of my douglas must be a move, apart from costing a paste, I want to believe that it will survive the lightning. In any case, the most recommended in general is to wait and see how the injured colossus evolves. But the proximity of the Douglas to my house, about 15 meters, the triple to the house of my neighbors, who are Ukrainians and only lack that a tree will fall on them, adds suspense and forces to study the situation with special care. So I called a specialist, Manolo Díaz, from Jardins MDP, a first gardener, to tell me how to act.
He raised his eyebrows, and see that he has seen things that you would not believe, then frowned and a worrying “my mother” escaped. However, he was in favor of waiting – “we are always in time to cut it” – in the consideration that the tree will not be that of the Sycamore Gap, But it is wonderful and I don’t even tell you the shadow that it provides, not to mention the disgust that the squirrels were going to carry. The specialist, who proposed to place some flanges in the bifurcation above the cracking, to prevent the bamboleo with the wind will aggravate the wound, explained to me numerous stories of trees beaten by rays, such as that of one in L’Erbollari, some spooky. “They burst like bombs and splinters fly everywhere and if you reach you, you can kill you,” he explained by combining images that reminded me of the battle of Trafalgar when exploding the Santabárbara del Achille. That night, wind blow precisely and we had both sleeping badly because when I woke up the next morning, Manolo was with a gang at home and equipped like a firefighter, for cat alarm. “I thought it was better to place the flanges as soon as possible, and it is already done.” I regretted having lost seeing how Manolo, 55, up there (“the douglas They are not good to climb them, the branches break without war HMS Indomitable. You don’t have vertigo, Manolo? I asked him with admiration, “if I had it, he had not climbed,” he replied, and added so that I thought something had affected the climbing: “The world looks very different from up there.” The following will be to cut something from the Douglas for the Cup to make it safer. It will not probably be so pretty but we will all live calmer, and if the tree survives it will always be uphill.
As I usually do when I face the numinous and extraordinary (and they will tell me if it is not that you fall lightning, as unlikely as the lottery touches you), I have looked for answers in the books, exploring the symbolism of the event. I have made a mess of entry with the tree of life, the cosmic and the sefirotic of the cabal studied by Scholem, the Fresno Yggdrasil of the Scandinavians and that of Jung, which states that the tree has a certain symbolic bisexual character, that I, really, do not see him. Juan Eduardo Cirot, that authority, remembers Osiris’s connection with Cedro, from Jupiter with Apolo, from Apollo with the Laurel and, for what occupies us from Atis (who castrated himself) with the fir; He points out that the tree is a symbol of regeneration and rebirth, which encourages me. But it is in The golden branch De Frazer (Economic Culture Fund, 1979), always in my nightstand, where, as so many times, I have found the most interesting. There are many superstitious beliefs about the fulminated trees: the Indians of the British columbia threw arrows made with wood of trees reached by the lightning to set fire to the houses of their enemies, the Winamwanga of the old rodesia revered the fire that set the sparkle in the tree and gave it to their chief, and the maidu or the maidu. Lightning as a great man who came down from the sky with flames, which is already a powerful image.
I have seemed precious, especially the idea of the ancient European peoples that the great god of heaven descended from the clouds on the trees he loved leaving as a vestige of his passage or presence the heavy trunk and blackened and the withered foliage. “Such trees remained from then on surrounded by a glowing nimbo, as visible thrones of the tonant god of heaven,” writes Frazer. “And this fulgured site were fenced and considered it consecrated since then.” I thought a whore had happened to me, I already have an epiphany in the garden, and a valuable tourist attraction.