5:00 pm: Setting out in a hurry for the mountain, spend some time walking in the shadows of the old stone buildings, on rough cobblestones, under a Roman arch. Walking down by the synagogue, I smell woodsmoke, and it reminds me of Andalucia five years ago, Mathis and Miriam and I, coming back from collecting a powdery white clay for the roof of a stone house, passing olive and orange and almond trees in the dry afternoon sunlight

5:15 pm: fields of yellow wildflowers, now with a few purple ones here and there, the snows of the Sierra de Gredos hovering just above the horizon, only two visible, nearly mistaken for clouds, neglected; I stop to watch a horse, and he begins to trot towards where I'm standing, the wildflowers padding his hooves, hiding the movement of his legs so it looks like he's floating towards me in slow motion.

5:45 pm: I stop to Look out over Caceres again. The city, dense and compact, stretched out in a ribbon along the hills. Nothing has happened. I arrived here two months ago, and before the week is up I'll be gone, and nothing will have happened. Some guitarists came here a couple of times, and I was with them. What is there to say: the city is there, I am here?

6:00 pm: The road must continue past the overlook, too crowded on a Saturday with cars and Spaniards. For awhile, it becomes a trail, the wildflowers growing in close, defining the edge of the road.

6:15 pm: Greeted close to the end of the road by a couple and their dogs. "Do they bite?", I call. "No, they just eat.", the woman calls back. Then onwards to a TV tower, where the path joins up with a motor road that heads down, and surely doubles back someplace. I'm too thirsty to push on. A gate to a property: olives and scrub oaks, some children playing in the yard. I turn back towards the overlook and the church.

6:30 pm: The first time I saw the mountain, I made some assumptions. There was a cluster of whitewashed buildings on top: one of these must be a chapel, I thought. Even from that distance, it was possible to discern a statue of Jesus ("I shall reign in Spain," proclaimed a plaque on the door to the chapel of the old manor house in Asturias that I won't be visiting now.). Since this was Spain, there also had to be a bar of some sort. at six thirty I entered the bar, and ordered a long shot of espresso with some milk, and a glass of water. I sat in a corner where I could look out onto a domed alter, and beyond, to the city, where, in the narrow streets filled with noisy vehicles and their exhaust, evening had already set in. I took out my notepad and started to write this.

7:45 pm: I walk under some arches, and out into the plaza mayor. Somebody revs a scooter. People are beginning to come out into the street. The last light of dusk turns the sky into a dome. Through a third-story window, I'm surprised to see a girl playing a violin. A string quartet is rehearsing. I stand under the window, but all I catch is a single note.