I want you to walk with me from Rabanal del Camino to El Acebo

There is something about blizzards that makes you feel alive. With the snow and rain drenching your clothes all the way in to your skin, and the wind in your face sending small pieces of frozen rain, like needles of ice, desperatly trying to puncture the surface of your facial skin. And then you stop for a moment, in the grey cloud on the top of the mountain you are climbing, and right behind you, in all the greyness, there is a small patch of sunlight that seemingly should be an impossible occurance. And somehow you feel like life is an adventure beyond your wildest dreams.

And then you hit the last Templario's home in Manjarin and your wildest dream has gone even wilder. And you enter a wooden cabin out of the rain, up on a mountain, and it has a fire stove and cats and a donkey that walks around eating scrap pieces of bread. And as you leave the horses come galloping down the road, galloping free, out of the grey cloud as if coming from nowhere. And you keep climbing up, up, through the cloud, until you come to the pass where you have the sense, even though every view is blocked by cloud and mist, of passing from one world to another. And this new world takes you down, steeply down. And then you enter El Acebo. And the old stone houses bring you back a hundred, two hundred, three hundred years back. And you put down your bag and you know that when morning comes you will see the view. And when morning comes you meet the frostbitten, chilly air of the snow clad mountains, and your heart fills up with awe as you move slowly, trying to block out the cold wind, slowly down towards Ponferrada, and you stop, time after time, as the snow falls and covers your wool sweater, and you breathe, and you feel like crying, and all your heart can say is: I am alive. I am alive. I am alive.