I have never lived in a place as arid or barren as the province of Valladolid. It has been a shock moving from Eugene, Oregon, which is one of the most verdant and lush places in the United States, to the empty plains of central Castilla. I never knew before that a change in landscape could be so unsettling.
There is not much in the way of forests - just a few scattered "pinares", or pine groves. Some of the landscape looks exactly like northern Utah or southern Idaho, places which I came to know due to my epic journey across the United States almost a year ago. Actually, east of the Cascade mountains in Oregon looks very similar to Valladolid, but without nearly as much change in terrain. Here, for example, is a landscape shot near Burns, OR:
I don't know if I could live for an extended period of time in a place like that. Something about the Wild West just has a mystique, though. That unspoken edge to it, carved in from centuries of cowboys, desperadoes and history.
But, of course, all of that existed in Castilla as well. There were knights and duels and jousts and desperadoes and vaqueros, long before there were any on our continent of North America.
Maybe, just maybe, it's my rut-stuck way of thinking about a place that's unfamiliar to me. Because this plain, this páramo, sometimes doesn't match up to the one I am used to. But sometimes when I scale one of the flat-topped, monolithic mesas that encircle the city, the astounding view I get is something that conjures up the epic wildness of the American Old West. Maybe, just maybe, the Spanish conquistadores saw something that reminded them of home - many, many years ago.
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