That Stick

At lunch with my colleagues the other day, one of them mentioned a little-known nineteenth-century female novelist. We were talking about titles of novels of that period, and my colleague said that although many of this writer's novels had typical titles, such as the name of a woman followed by a subtitle like "Or, the Story of a Young Woman," she wrote one novel with the very odd title That Stick. I said, "That sounds like it could be a subtitle for the story of my trip to Spain."

Why, you ask?

The very first day of hiking, I realized that my left knee was going to be, well, problematic. (Probably playing volleyball three days before I left to go on a hiking trip was not a great idea. Also not great was rushing down the stairs of my walkup apartment on the way to get the taxi to the airport dragging suitcase, garbage to throw out, knapsack, and purse. I could feel my knee, which was already slightly inflamed, twisting alarmingly at one point.) Anyway, during that first hike, which was a half-day, we were going downhill and I suddenly felt shooting pains in my knee. The leader heard me gasp in pain (and yell out "my knee!") and he became concerned. He found me a stick from along the side of the trail. That helped, until I leaned on it, hard, during one rather steep descent, and it snapped under me.

The leader, unfazed, found me another one. Sturdier, as he said, but a little crooked. That one worked well, but I ended up leaving it against a wall somewhere in the village later that day.

The next day, one of the English gentlemen in the group was kind enough to lend me his fancy, adjustable walking stick that he had brought with him. It was part of a pair, but he had just brought the one. He assured me he was doing fine without it and that I could use it.

So all during the next morning's hike, I happily made use of the borrowed stick. The group had lunch together at a beautiful spot, a restaurant in a village high in the mountains. After lunch, two others in the group and I were going to take the option of a taxi (!) back to our hotel, rather than do the afternoon hike. It was a hot day, and the three of us waited in a little park in the shade for the taxi (which had been prearranged--there aren't exactly a lot of taxis roaming around in the area). The taxi came and we went over and said hello to the driver. As the only one who could speak Spanish, I had been charged by the tour leader with advising the driver that he should take a scenic road running along the cliffs. He very agreeably said he would prefer not to go that way because it was narrow and his car was wide. I translated for my companions--and we all collectively shrugged our shoulders and said, okay, fine.

Despite the fact that the road we did take was nauseatingly curvy, I was enjoying the ride, chatting away with the driver in my limited Spanish, when I suddenly had this sickening feeling that I had left the stick in the little park. I asked the driver if he had seen me carrying the stick (which I had to pantomine because I couldn't think of a Spanish word for "walking stick," or even, actually, for "stick"). He said he hadn't seen it, and, sure enough, when we finally got back to the hotel and looked in the trunk, it wasn't there. I felt awful that I had been so irresponsible and careless with someone else's possession. We went into the reception area of the hotel and I tried to explain to the lovely young woman who ran the hotel what I thought had happened. She had the same idea I had: "okay, we call the restaurant and see if someone can go out and find the stick." This was all in Spanish.

I had no idea what the name of the restaurant where we ate was, but she was able to get in touch with the tour leader, who was out with the rest of the group in the woods somewhere. He told her which restaurant it had been, and she called them. She was assured that someone would go out and look for the stick. Then we had to wait, so I went to take a shower, still feeling miserable and sure they wouldn't find it. But when I came down from my shower, and the hotel owner called the restaurant, it turned out that they had indeed found the stick. Not only that, but someone from the restaurant was coming to our town the next day to buy bread, and he would drop off the stick at the hotel.

I felt redeemed and happy.

But somehow it was hard to keep that stick with me. The next day that we hiked, which was two days later, I forgot to take it with
me--left it behind in the hotel room. This was not a crisis, though, because we stayed at the same hotel all week. I ended up buying an inexpensive souvenir-type walking stick in one of the restaurants we stopped at, which I used all that day.

Later, I think probably when I was already home, I was looking through all the pictures I took on the trip. I laughed when I saw the one below, showing the stick leaning against the bench where we waited for the taxi, just waiting to be left behind.