Even the monks of Montserrat are embracing the new energy technology!
Barcelona & Catalunya
Yet another poster is at the printer…
So, what has been hanging out in my iPhone these past few months?
Montserrat is the spiritual heart of the Catalunya region (with the famous Black Madonna), a rock climber’s and hiker’s paradise, and a geologic oddity. It also makes a great subject for landscape photography as the storm clouds clear…
It should be repeated… the best camera in the world is the one that you have with you when an opportunity presents itself. Often, for most of us, it is our mobile phone’s camera.
It had been months since I had set out to photograph the dawn atop some interesting summit, and it was time. Montserrat, my go-to rock climbing destination these days, and not far from Barcelona, was an obvious choice. Would the morning light and the mountain mists cooperate?
If you are exploring the coast of Catalunya, north of Barcelona, this is a worthwhile stop. After all, it isn’t every day you get to wander the ruins of a small city founded almost six centuries before Christ. First, there were Iberian tribes, then the Greeks, then the Romans… come walk among their ghosts… and wonder what life might have been like during those distant times.
This building is not on very many tourist bucket lists, I’m sure, but it is a really peaceful, green oasis in the midst of the pandemonium that is Barcelona if you happen to be strolling the area…
The project for the day… find and record an image which illustrates the idea of aloneness, or solitude, or loneliness…
Its potato salad conglomerate summits bulging toward the sky just 45 minutes outside of Barcelona, Montserrat is a strange geologic oddity. It is also home to the near-mythical Monastery of Montserrat and thus the spiritual aorta of Catalunya. It attracts pilgrims and tourists from all over the world by the thousands… in charter buses, by car, by bike, even walking long distances. Perhaps not as well advertised, though, is that it is also a mecca of sorts for another kind of pilgrim–rock climbers from all over the world. The climbing history is just as grand, colorful, controversial, and bold as could be found in any other major climbing mecca of the world… and some of that history can be seen as you climb–in the belay and rappel anchors, and in the fixed protection you might encounter… thus, this post.
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