Recently, the “Comfort in Travel” (Consolatio in Peregrinatione) luggage tag was observed in Gaudix, España where I joined other troglodytes in slack-jawed, slope-skulled hunting-gathering.
When driving through the Spanish province of Granada, the passerby can’t help but notice the caves dotting the Sierra Nevadas. Bronze Age settlers in the area may have been the predecessors of Spanish tribes, or they may have been Phoenicians like traveling yet home-loving Leopold Bloom’s ancestors. Those Phoenicians would have been cave-dwellers. It’s lovely to think that have been awaiting the ancestors of Sephardic Molly Bloom’s maternal ancestors in Iberia almost a millennium later.
Speculation rashly suggests that these caves on the less severe slopes of the mountain range were permanent dwellings more than a few thousand years ago. Bronze Age occupation, in the best traditions of the Cyclops Episode in Ulysses, is supported by archeology. Today many of the residents of Gaudix continue the tradition by chipping geothermal homes into opening in the rockface of the mountain. Some homes turn open faces to the sun, meanwhile enjoying the cool but stable temperate embrace of Mother Earth. Others, cool and completely subterranean, are revealed only by vents and chimneys. Both styles have interiors especially envied by neighbors who suffer the stifling Spanish summers. New geothermal dwellings join ancient ones regularly.
But do I really believe that “All Roads Lead to Bloom?” I hope they do. ~Don