Catalunya, SPAIN

A Revelation In Catalunya

It was the late seventies and at eighteen-years old, my cousin and I were riding the later wave of the hippy era. We had graduated from High School and I worked on minimum wage in July to finance the trip. And the more tramps we looked the better it was.

Planning then was minimal. Better yet, no super highways with multiple lanes. 

This meant that Jerome and I could drive for a whole month in a Citroen 2CV, the slowest french car on roads, to the most southern tip of Spain, across the strait of Gibraltar into Morocco… and back. 

Heading southwest we climbed the Pyrenees, hopped over the mountain to Camprodon for a night of rest and the next day rolled into the heart of olive oil country just north of Lleida. 

Unscientifically I might say millions of olive trees. Whatever it was, we were overwhelmed. To say that my cousin, a future MBA student, may  have had any interest in olive trees, I couldn't tell. But for me, it was the largest jardin I had ever seen. It was intoxicating to be immersed into a sea of perfectly aligned trees all ever slightly different yet uniform as a whole. 

Perhaps it was then that my nascent interest crystallized  with all to do with olive oil.

It was bringing to me a feeling of immense tranquility and peace, a cooling of relaxation.