“The birds have vanished from the sky and now the last cloud disappears. We sit together, the mountain and I, until only the mountain remains.” Li Po
When we bought our land at the end of 2006, there was a small building on it, which served as a day shelter for the farmers, a tool shed and a fig drying shed, and this small building would eventually become our home. There was also a half-finished building 50 metres further south, with a metal gate and a sink as the only furnishing.
For the first few years we were very busy converting the main building into a home, and the other house languished with the tranquillity that only inert materials show in the face of time. At most it served as a provisional storage area for everything that needed a roof and had not yet been assigned a place in our daily life.
Once we were settled, we began to look at that building with different eyes and Harmony began to visualize a space for meditation and yoga, as well as the possibility of having a guest house that offered both proximity, independence, and intimacy.
The building ended up being called La Morada (The Abode) and has served and continues to serve everything we imagined it would, and much more.
Today it is, above all, the accommodation space for those who choose to live a Parenthesis [ · ] Vital stay.
The casita is delighted with the role life has designated it and in return it offers those who stay there gentle views of olive groves and sky during the day and beautiful dreams at night.
Our land is located in the municipality of Arenas de San Pedro, a small Castilian mountain town that is fortunate enough to be nestled in the eastern foothills of the Sierra de Gredos. Within a few kilometres you can travel down and feel the gentle southern pastures of the dehesa, holm oaks, meadows and Iberian cattle, then you can pass through our Mediterranean area of olive groves, fig trees and vines, then moving up to landscapes more rooted in the mountains, with its chestnut trees, oaks, meltwater rivers – natural pools in summer and then even higher, where vultures and eagles fly, and ice, granite and yellow broom flowers make their home and then there’s the land of clouds.
It is a good place to come and rest.
