A Circular walk with a dolmen: La Dama Verde (2)
La Dama Verde Balneario, Almeida de Sayago, Zamora, Spain
Over the week in this very special Spa I began to accommodate, but not overcome, my distaste for returning to where I had started. I am unsure why I have so disliked walking in circles. I also do not like returning to recover things I have left behind. As my memory worsens, I leave trails of walking sticks, shirts and maps along my route.
The Dolmen and the Smelly Spring.
The Gallery entrance to the Dolmen, San Vincente de Almeida – 300m from La Dama Verde.
On one walk I began by visiting the original spring for the balneario, which wells up from over 2km beneath the earth’s surface. The water is known as “fossil water” because it has been trapped in the Earth’s crust for millions of years emerging, in this case, through a small fault which has developed between two different types of granite. It clearly became one of those sacred sites which has retained a special significance for humans over many thousands of years.
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What is the “sacred”?
The bit missing of the route on the map was caused by a mysterious gap in my GPS recording, but it is along the same path, so anyone venturing on this walk from La Dama Verde is unlikely to get lost. It was a space in which to consider the place of the sacred in human life, but not as an intellectual exercise, for that would be too taxing in the heat. I simply let the surroundings, the huge rocks, the rivers, ever-changing, filling and drying up, the encinas and the wide horizons wrap me up in the moment, the moment I walk with them, with these witnesses to human activity over the ages.
Huge boulders open up the path near the dolmen.
Death
The mysteries of birth and death have not changed: these life-changing events come into our lives and we don’t ever see again as we had seen before them. From era to era, humans have buried and burned their dead, held rituals for death. New lives and lives finished flatten and empty us, shocking us out of the every-day, awakening and bewildering us. For me they are a great puzzle, no longer to be understood, but to be experienced.
The Altar stone, carved to let the blood flow down a channel to be collected, probably for drinking.
In another post I write, “….all fear of death left me. I don’t think I’ve been really scared of dying but this was an actual looking forward to death, not in a morbid way, nor through an ennui with life, but a simple acceptance that death is a wonderful step which I will welcome when it comes, hopefully. This acceptance of death has stayed with me.”
Life
The dolmen, the great Altar stone and the spring of fossil water are all together, in a line. Water, is, in most traditions symbolic of life. In this case, that really does take a lot of faith, but the evidence is that those who do manage to drink it and bathe in it don’t immediately die. Otherwise the Balneario would have no clients.
The water looks lovely and very fresh but is millions of years old.
Lord, give me to drink.
If I am honest I do believe the waters in this spring, known as La Fuente de San Vincente, or the Hervidero, do have healing properties. Springs, in many traditions, notably for the Celts, are sacred places associated with life and healing. For some reason, though, I didn’t even put my injured ankle into this one. Probably I was sulking subconsciously for not going on a proper walk from one place to another, and missed this opportunity. These past months have been unbalanced for me, but that is life and I am confident that this phase will pass, for Life promises that. Indeed my most constant prayer in these circular walks was, “Lord, give me to drink.” That summed it all up. I needed refreshment. Life is full of little jokes. On my visit to Iona last year, all the guests were asked to pick out of a hat a piece of paper on which was written a gospel verse. Mine was, “Lord, give me to drink.” What could be more fitting for an alcoholic? Perhaps that is why I prefer to walk forwards, I had had enough of going back to the beginning in my drinking days.
La Dama Verde, the alpha and the omega of another circular walk.