ARRIDURAK

Published by DEIA, July 21,2011



Taking a walk by the Biscayan coast and chatting with several friends about how easy or how difficult that it is the co-penetration of two txalapartaris (the persons w ho play the txalaparta) have to work out in order so their combination keeps on rising the magical rhythms of the txalaparta (an ancestral xylophone played by horizontal planks hit with vertical sticks) one of them sees another but not less fascinating combination. Above us 6 seagulls flying in circles, as in taking height, and over them a bird shaped like anchor that was carrying shorter and energetic circles.

"He’s a peregrine falcon", they tell me, and I, a bit incredulous, keep on thinking what it could be similar to, but a falcon? All of a sudden he closes his wings, turns around and, in a beating of wings, he’s already grating on the back of one seagull that, as he can, turns around and shows his threatening peak, in front of the falcon which changes his direction and disappears.

Everything was in moments of energy and an unusual emotion. I could not get out of my amazement. But what most called my attention is that, while we shouted and we were indicating the event, the people that were walking around were not showing neither the least’s interest. And I remembered the words of an Austrian friend that I met at a concert in Glasgow, Peter, that he said to me that we were a fortunate country for the whole wealth of the fauna and scenic that we have in the peninsula and, in that occasion, he explained to me about the cologne of vultures at the mountain Candina, in the easternmost extreme of Cantabria. In this 476-meter peak settles down one atypical vulture hunter with views toward the sea: the northernmost of Spain, and the only in Europe with these characteristics. Some call these vultures, "marine vultures" for the queerness that it seems to observe these birds in the coast.

So many times unique elements lose their attraction and mystery for the human being to become part of what's everyday activity. How it's possible what is to be "normal" loses interest in exceptional things? I do believe that we should put more emphasis in bestowing their true value upon each thing.

We have so many fascinating things that are around us, learning how to enjoy them, even though they are a part of what's habitual, is an obligation. Or, are other people always going to have to teach us?


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