You can determine how your life plays out by deciding where you live.

What a sobering idea. What if really, rather than who we want to be, what we want to be, or how we want to be, all we need to decide is where we want to be?

This question is particularly pertinent to me at the moment because I am currently living in Spain. I am returning to England in August, and I’m looking forward to it, but I have come to consider that Home (with a capital H) for me has become fluid and elusive. Whilst many of the English people I know here still refer to going Home, to how things are at Home, and in many cases to how much they prefer Home, I simply can’t find such a strong link within me. Home has become undefinable, and being away from it, wherever it may be, has become the norm.

So let’s take step one of deciding where you want to be as finding out where Home is. This is not as easy as it might seem. The old adage goes that ‘Home is where the heart is’; but my family is in Birmingham, my best friends are in Leeds, my girlfriend is in Copenhagen, and I am in Oviedo. And I can safely say that I feel ‘at home’ in Oviedo, but I still miss all of these things which aren’t here with me. Much Colonial and Post-colonial literature draws a clear distinction between home and Home, the former being where you live, where you return to every night, and where you have built your life, and the latter being a more spiritual, cultural or social baseline: not the place that you are, but the place that you are from. Unfortunately in real life such a line is not so easy to draw.

For me, and I imagine for many people in a world where travel and mobility is the norm, there are parts of Home scattered all over the world. Journeys we make, people we meet, and things we see all make up who we are as much as where we do these things; and all of these things are now so much more easily accessible due to modern communications and media. In the world we live in, there is no longer such a clear definition of what is ‘Home’.

But people do not always want to be ‘Home’. I can recognise that most of my cultural DNA is 100% British, from how I dress to the music that I like and the food that I enjoy. However, for me, one of life’s greatest pleasures is stepping out of this comfortable ‘Home’ and into the wider world. Seeing, smelling and tasting new things, meeting new people, and the more that they clash with what I have grown to see as the norm the better. There is nothing more exciting than a new and original experience. Some people, like me, take great pleasure in keeping that warm, comfortable and familiar ‘Home’ as a backup, somewhere to fall back on, whilst we forge ahead, in varying degrees, into the unknown. And so we come, perhaps, to step two: Are you a ‘Home’ person, or do you prefer to be somewhere else?

Once all that’s decided, step three is the hardest of all. If you fall into the same category as me, the person who is as comfortable being away from Home as being there, then you have to make the hardest choice of all. If not Home, then where? This is the real choice, and the real problem. The quotation at the top of this page, seems, to me, to be correct: for a person with sufficient cultural awareness and an ability and willingness to learn and embrace new cultures, choosing where you live can have a huge impact on how your life will pan out. I have always loved to travel, and in the last four years I have lived in three countries. I am, currently, most definitely not one for staying ‘Home’; I only have the vaguest notion of where ‘Home’ might be. As such, I’m already starting to think about where I might want to live after I finish university in England the year after next. Will that decision change the rest of my life? Almost certainly, in ways I cannot begin to imagine. But realising this is not the hard part. The hard part is the choosing.

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I arrive at Plaza America 15 minutes early to find some slight confusion. Nobody knows if there’s space or not, and the bus has gone to the wrong place. It arrives and people jump aboard, Rodrigo and I are last — we didn’t sign up after all, and it turns out there’s no seats left. Never mind, that’s why I brought my car. Rodrigo gets in the passenger seat, with the usual comments about how much discount I got for having the steering wheel on the wrong side. Plug in the Ipod and Eric Clapton is singing Layla. We look at the cloudless sky, look at each other, and smile. This is going to be a good day. Down the motorway, into Quirós, and then up the pass towards Puerto Ventana. There’s not much snow, but the temperature is dropping. Soon we catch up to the bus, and start climbing. Patches of snow start to appear. Another fifteen minutes later and I’m driving slowly, a good distance behind the minibus, wondering if I’ll make it to the top of the pass without getting out and putting chains on. We made it. Just.

We get out of the car. “Joder” — Rodrigo breathes in sharply.“Fuck, it’s cold!”. And it is cold. Cold enough — and snowy enough to get the skis out. And so after a little discussion and a few jokes, we’re standing on the snow, skins on, ready to head off up the mountain. The target is El Ranchón, a summit of about 2100m. There’s still some way to go, but as I stride past the others, gliding over the top of the snow they are sinking into, knee-deep, I start to think that I’ve made the right decision.

Heading up past the walkers

Two hours later I’m struggling up an icy slope, watching the walkers in crampons filing past. I really need to buy some ski-crampons. They certainly would make life easier in these conditions, but a month cross country skiing in Norway has taught me a thing or too about skiing uphill, and I manage better than the more experienced skiers think I would. There are even one or two words of praise. “You’re brave, coming up this without them” comments one of my companions. That’s one word for it, I reply, thinking to myself that perhaps stupid or stubborn might be more appropriate. The ice steepens and steepens; It’s alright when it’s textured by the wind or breakable, giving me something to dig the edges of my skis into, but as Ciro and I approach the top, it starts to get really tricky, and the last 15 meters take me about ten minutes, laboriously side-stepping my way up. “It’s all worth it when you’re up here” he shouts down to me.

Heading up behind the walkers!

On the peak, a swig of water and a bite to eat, then I peel the climbing skins off my skis – without taking the skis off, much to the surprise of Ciro. “How do you do that?” he asks. It’s good to know that I learned a few things in Norway that I can teach to people over here. Ciro is still eating, and besides, I suppose I should go first for a change. “Right, I’m off”, I tell him. I slide towards the edge of the summit, and my earlier worries become more concrete. I look down at the 60º sheet of ice below me, with a few rocky islands sticking out here and there, and realise that the days I spend skiing on-piste in Andorra won’t help me at all here. But there’s no way i’m coming all the way up a mountain with skis on my feet and then taking them off to go down. Count to three. One. Two.

Getting ready for the off.

Three. And I push off, sliding sideways down the first few metres through a gap in the rocks only just wide enough for my skis. “Faster is Easier. Faster is Easier”, I repeat to myself, the advice I got from pretty much every experienced skier I asked. I point my skis downhill, and start to pick up the pace. Lean left, lean right, and lean forward. Ski aggressively. Oh my god, it’s working, I’m going, I’m not on my arse! I see someone at the bottom taking photos, and realise I have remained on my feet for the whole steep section. I start to cruise towards Alberto, his camera still trained on me. I look up from the snow in front of me, smile, and my ski tip drops into a hiker’s footprint. Before I know what’s happened I’m in a heap on the floor. I burst out laughing. So do the spectators. “And it was all going so well”, I comment. I get myself back on my feet, and continue on down, sightly flatter now. The next descent seems easier at first, but I hit a patch of ice and cartwheel down the hill, hearing my left shoulder crunch as I go over. A quick yelp, count to three, and back up again. It’ll get better by next weekend, I think to myself. I’m right-handed anyway.

Ovidio at the beginning of the walking part.

As I approach the beginning of the next downhill section, someone calls out. If I want to get back to my car, I need to put my foot down. I cruise down the last downhill section, flying past all the hikers until I take a final comedy bail into a snowbank. This time I stand up unharmed. Ovidio is standing, waiting for me, looking amused by my enthusiastic incompetence. We ski to the bus together, two perfect examples: one of how to ski, and one of how not to ski. I’ll let you guess which was which. The final couple of kilometres we have to walk, carrying our skis. We arrive at the bus, and the weather is closing in. We’re all onboard just in time, and the doors close as the cloud, wind and snow arrive. Back up to the car, a quick repack, and Rodrigo and I are on our way down, wondering where the bus got to. As we arrive at the bar everyone is stopping at on the way home, we still can’t work out how it got down so fast.

In the bar I continually decline the cider I’m offered, choosing cecina and chorizo instead, nursing a lemonade. This is the price you pay for not signing up for the trip in advance. Chatting away, I am always amazed by how keen all these people that I have just met are to help me. “I’ve done the bike-ride you’re doing this easter,” says Alberto,” I’ll see if I can dig out some maps and stuff”. Last week, Miguel, who is sitting opposite us, lent me a pair of bicycles for the trip. I think back to England, and wonder how many people would lend be a bike after I’d known them for a fortnight. Not so many, I think to myself. More jokes about my backwards car, and finally everyone is rounded up and it’s time to go. Rodrigo and his fiancée María José pile into my car for the ride back to Oviedo, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to wipe the smile off my face for the next few days. I drop them near my house, and we say our goodbyes. “So, I’ll call you next weekend then,” says Rodrigo, “and let you know what we’re up to. There will probably still be snow in the Picos.”

Living for the weekend. This is my weekend.

I’ve cleared my diary.

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The book is structured as a series of interlinked ‘real life’ plots, interspersed by this new creation myth. The real and the magical are intrinsically intertwined, and often the surreal and real sections are linked by sharing the same words in the last lines of one section and the first lines of the next (e.g “Well, for one thing, what happened to them?’ / ‘What happened to the trees’” [pp. 21–2], “‘Have we made another mistake?’ / Lionel had made only three mistakes in his entire life” [pp. 29–30]). This magical realism further confuses the already muddled creation myth with the novel’s ‘real’ plot, which forces the reader to accept a view of the world where the divine or magical can, and does, affect every day life.

King imposes Native American mythology upon Christianity as Christian mythology was forced upon the Native Americans during the colonisation. The very beginning of the book serves to demonstrate how ridiculous, not to mention sacrilegious and insulting, this practise must have seemed to Native Americans by reversing the process. King chooses the holiest of holies, the all seeing Christian ‘God’, as his first point of attack, reducing this omniscient, omnipotent being to nothing more than a dream (thus refuting the traditional Christian notion of God as an all powerful being, apart from and above human experience), and further more a dream of a dog, traditionally an animal used in western cultures to represent an inferior being. By casting God as little more than a petulant, confused animal King immediately trivialises and insults the basis of all Christian belief in the same way that early Christian settlers in the Americas brushed aside belief systems as established, if not more so, than their own as primitive or ridiculous: “I am god, says that Dog Dream. ‘Isn’t that cute,’ says Coyote. ‘That Dog Dream is contrary. That Dog Dream has everything backward’”(p. 2). This could also be seen as a direct contradiction of Genesis, in which God gives man dominion over animals; within this revision of the creation myth it seems that an animal — Coyote — has dominion over God. Even an attempt to categorise Coyote as a God figure fails, as the nameless narrator affirms later in the book that “[t]his world is full of Coyotes” (p. 272).

The author similarly dispenses with other quintessential biblical figures. Noah is portrayed as a sex-starved misogynist, who follows a perverted set of Christian rules (amongst which, for example, is “Thou Shalt Have Big Breasts”[p. 147]). The Angel Gabriel (A. A. Gabriel) we see as a stereotypical politician figure, “a little short guy with a big briefcase” (p. 269), trying to coerce Thought Woman into signing a contract for the immaculate conception, but constantly revealing himself to be not who he seems. First he shows a business card which has two sides (on one “A. A. Gabriel, Canadian Security and Intelligence Service.” [p.269] on the other “A. A. Gabriel, Heavenly Host” [p. 270]), then instead of the contract he pulls out some papers containing the phrase “as long as the grass is green and the waters run” (p. 271), a phrase often used in contracts between settlers and natives when Canada was colonised – contracts that were frequently broken. This depiction of the Angel Gabriel as a sort of double-agent also serves as a metaphor for how religion has been used by colonisers for far more self-serving purposes than simply ‘enlightening’ Native Americans, and parodies modern political machinery and the deceptions that are made through manipulation of Native Americans and of the media: “No problem, says A. A. Gabriel. Sign this paper… We’re going to need a picture” (p. 271).

Even Jesus Christ himself is mockingly portrayed, in one of Kings several versions of the creation story, as “Young Man Walking on Water” (p. 350). Far from the kind, gentle, benevolent Christ of the Bible, this Christ is angry and self-important. He portrays his biblical qualities of omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence as more “Christian Rules… And the first rule that is no one can help me. The second rule is that no one can tell me anything. Third, no one is allowed to be in two places at once. Except me.” Coming from the mouth of an angry young man, instead of a mysticised messianic figure, these three cornerstones of Christian belief sound ridiculous, and the tone of their delivery is almost childish. After Old Woman saves the disciples on the boat, and Christ takes the credit, King also mocks another of Christianity’s failings: its inherent misogyny. When one of the men in the boat points out that it was Old Woman that saved them, and not Christ, Christ replies: “Nonsense…That other person is a woman.”

King further dilutes the importance of the Western creation myth by including several incongruous characters, all from books largely regarded as colonialist (the same characters as which First Woman, Thought Woman, Changing Woman and Old Woman disguise themselves, and as which these four women are present in the real world as the four escaped Indians). These characters are archetypal colonialists, and there are many examples of this (in fact, nearly everything these characters say is verging on cliché in its portrayal of colonialist ideals). One such striking example would be the dialogue between Thought Woman and Robinson Crusoe, which epitomises the colonialist destructively patronising ideology of bringing a superior style of life to inferior people: “as a civilised white man, it has been difficult not having someone of color around whom I could educate and protect”.  King expounds this point in each of the sections relating to a character from Western fiction, the final of which is Nasty Bumppo. Here, King makes the point in the most blunt and obvious dialogue in the text, as Bumppo lists what he calls “Indian gifts” and “white gifts” (p. 393), and King continues:

“So, says Old Woman. Whites are superior, and Indians are inferior.Exactly right, says Nasty Bumppo. Any questions?‘Oops,’ says Coyote. ‘We have a problem.’‘Only if you’re an Indian,’ I says.” (p. 393)

Ultimately by juxtaposing Western and Native American mythologies, King deconstructs the Christian creation story, and shows us that through the eyes of a Native American, it is as primitive and ridiculous as Native American traditions seemed to the colonists that settled in Canada and tried to displace and ‘educate’ the American Indians who lived there. Instead, he reconstructs a world where everyone, and everything is fallible, and even the mythical characters who created the world are prone to mistakes – King’s characters even describe the great flood and Christ’s birth as mistakes, appropriating Christian biblical events into King’s invented muddle of Native and Christian mythology:

“‘The last time you fooled around like this,’ said Robinson Crusoe, ‘the world got very wet.’
‘And we had to start all over again,’ said Hawkeye […]
‘But I was helpful, too,’ says Coyote. ‘That woman who wanted a baby. Now, that was helpful.’
‘Helpful!’ said Robinson Crusoe. ‘You remember the last time you did that?’ […]
‘We haven’t straightened out that mess yet,’ said Hawkeye.” (p. 416)

King’s humour, though, throughout the novel, means that this de/reconstruction of mythologies is not as aggressive or destructive as it could be. This is a book of many messages, with an enormous number of possible interpretations, and there are certainly a few direct criticisms of the way that Western settlers treat Native Americans and their traditions. In some respects, though, by mixing and muddling the two mythologies to create a single mythology which is universally absurd, King is demonstrating the similarities, as well as the differences, between the two cultures. Not only does he mock the Christian creation myth, but by using this comic style, also the Native American one. He makes fun of Native American oral traditions with his constantly restarting narrative of the creation as much as the western written literary idiom with his depiction of Moby-Jane, the black lesbian whale, and his stereotyped and exaggerated literary figures. By creating a world in which all traditions and cultures are ridiculous, King demonstrates that it is impossible to impose a predetermined set of cultural signifiers onto another culture and another culture’s mythology, in either direction. Perhaps this is best summed up by Kings narrator, when Coyote interrupts with a series of suggestions for where Old Woman fell when she fell from the sky, trying to impose images from several different cultures into the narrator’s story. The narrator finally tells the Coyote to abandon this tactic of trying to make different cultures to conform to each other’s ideologies, and replies:

“‘Where do you get these things?’ I says.
‘I read a book,’ says Coyote.
‘Forget the book,’ I says. ‘We’ve got a story to tell.’” (p. 349)

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But the next problem is just as bad: nobody understands your addiction. Just come out, don’t bother this weekend, come on, wouldn’t you rather be out with your friends? “Sure”, I think. I’d rather be out with my friends. In the mountains. So you have to make new friends, friends who are addicts like you. And the cycle deepens. Soon there is no escape, it becomes normal, even mundane.

Getting my fix.

And when it becomes mundane, that’s when it really gets bad. When last week’s fix just isn’t enough anymore. You need something harder, stronger, a richer experience. You have to push your limits, exhaust yourself, put yourself in harm’s way. And you try to explain, but there are no words to describe the feeling; there is no logic to your actions.

And so nobody understands.

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A literary tradition in a folkloric idiom, from the Icelandic Saga to the Basque contest-poetry of bertsolaritza has many key differences from a written one. These stories, passed down from generation to generation and often with some degree of improvisation create a literature in constant evolution. It is also a literature which, apart from a very few respected storytellers, does not elevate the author to the revered position that he occupies in modern written literature — in fact, there is no real concept of author in a story told for so many years that it simply becomes ‘a story’ rather than ‘a story by x’. It is a literature which applauds deviating from the original, improvising, improving, forgetting and remembering. It is a literature which thrives on constant innovation. Even in the act of transcribing Sagas and other primarily oral traditions we are irrevocably altering the dynamic of a literature which previously existed in a state of constant evolution and flux. It is also a literature in which any evolution is gradual, there are few paradigm shifts, since the basic stories stay more or less the same for decades if not centuries.

There is no solution to this problem. Oral storytelling and tradition (and by this I more specifically I mean the skill of remembering and telling stories that are never written down) is all but dead in first-world western culture. In written stories, and even in recordings of stories being told we are creating a subtle but crucial change in how these stories are transmitted: we are giving the listener the ability to re-read, re-listen, and therefore learn much more closely the stories being told. That is to say, the re-teller of a story no longer has to gloss over or make up the parts of the story that he doesn’t remember. However, it seems ridiculous not to record a tradition that is so obviously on the decline. These opposing points of view are equally valid, and I find it almost impossible not to agree, however hypocritically, with both statements. I cannot deny that the written word, and in most cases modern media, is supremely beneficial to society: it allows the development and retention of complex ideas and fantastic levels of creativity through development and revision; it allows us to learn and transmit knowledge in a way that is all but impossible within a society with no knowledge of the written word; it allows the dissemination of this knowledge to previously unthinkable numbers of people.

But part of me really misses being told a good story.

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Snow on the mountains behind Tuiza Arriba (1300m), Asturias, Spain

They were covered in snow.

Of course, I knew that the first snows had hit the Picos de Europa last week, but this was some one thousand metres lower in altitude, and still there was a decent covering. My mind was racing with the possibilities for climbing in the big mountains. Now the need to find a partner of equal ability and experience is even more pressing. I pulled myself away from the view and after a quick stretch — I never was a great believer in long warm-ups — I set off running. I wanted to reach the col above the village so that I could see the view on the other side, and with sunset in two hours, I was going to have to get a move on. Oh well, I thought, I’ve packed a head-torch, what’s the worst that can happen.

As it turns out, Bulls. Lots of bulls, all over the path I was running along. I’d driven nearly an hour to get here, there was no way I was turning back. I started trotting towards them, and to my amazement, they all turned and ran away. It must have been a bad hair day. With my bovine obstacles out of the way, all that stood between me and the col was… well, a very steep hill. I arrived at the top, some 400 metres higher and 4 kilometres along the track, panting and spluttering my way to an incredible view. After soaking it up for a few minutes, I noticed that my hands were numb. It was windy and cold up here, and I was dressed for running, not for hanging about. Better get back on the move, before I get so cold that I injure myself. I looked behind me at Tuiza, my starting point. It seemed a long way, although thankfully now it was a long way down, instead of a long way up.

Looking down on Tuiza from the col above. You can just see the village in the valley below.

I tumbled back down, my earlier adversaries nowhere to be seen, and had a quick look around the village before getting into my car and riding the brakes all the way down to the motorway. This is how I want to spend my afternoons. This is why I came here. This is Asturias.

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The exception was last monday, when I went along to take photos of my Mum’s birthday present to my Grandad — a day of falconry with a bloke on the edge of town. It was great fun, and the birds were amazing creatures. I had never realised (or really been able to see in my imagination) just how far these falcons can see. It’s literally miles, of course, but until you actually witness it in the flesh, it’s hard to picture. I got a few good photos too, although my hayfever did eventuall absolutely ruin me. A few more of my mates should be around in the next few days, so hopefully things will liven up a bit!

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