A FATHER/SON JOURNEY
A FATHER-SON TRIP INTO THE MOUNTAINS AND VALLEYS OF THE SPANISH PYRÉNÉES EXPOSES THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN TWO GENERATIONS AND CATAPULTS A TECHNOPHOBE INTO MODERN TIMES
TOULOUSE AIRPORT, IN OUR rental car. My son Daniel and I are having a discussion, a map vs GPS, high-tech vs old-school kind of discussion. We’re about to head towards the French border and into the Spanish Pyrénées aiming for the tiny mountain village of Casau in the Val d’Aran region of Spain. Google Maps says it’s 165 kilometres away, two hours and 11 minutes. “Let’s buy a map,” I suggest. “Paps, we have GPS, we don’t need a map,” replies Junior.
“I wouldn’t mind seeing the bigger picture,” I counter. Daniel zooms out on the smartphone map and holds it up. I think: “Are you kidding?” But it seems so uncool not to trust technology so, eventually, I relent and we drive off unencumbered by a physical map.
Daniel navigates while Paps drives. First, there’s an unannounced road closure and the GPS’s alternative route takes us deep into the mountains on a road that deteriorates into gravel ruts. Then we are lost. We must turn back and follow yet another alternate route chosen by the GPS. I feel as if we’re flying blind — if only I had a map. At last, after almost eight hours and close to 500 kilometres, we reach our little mountain hotel.
My misgivings were confirmed, but confoundingly, so is Daniel’s trust in the GPS: “Didn’t it get us to where we wanted to go? What do you say to that?” So I said nothing and, instead, thought about our surroundings.
The Val d’Aran is an oddity, at least from a Spanish perspective. Part of the independentminded province of Catalonia, the valley sits on the northern side of the Pyrénées. To get into Spain proper, however, you must either negotiate the Port de la Bonaigua, a dramatic mountain pass twisting like a snarled fishing line, or drive through the claustrophobic fivekilometre-long Túnel de Vielha.
The valley’s isolation from Spain isn’t just physical: in this place, Catalan is the first language. The Val d’Aran, as any patriotic Catalan will agree, is not Spain at all.
We plan to explore the area’s dramatic side valleys and rugged mountains and take in its culture. Walking means early starts, which is fine by me: decades of mountaineering and trekking have made me an early riser. Daniel, however, is not a morning person. “Give me an extra half hour in the morning,” he requests. First thing in the morning, I discover, he scrolls through Facebook and Instagram, watching videos, laughing at comments. Some of our excursions, therefore — like the one to the Val de Toran — start later than I’d prefer. While we walk through the valley, which is clad in age-old beech trees, I broach the subject of earlier starts, but my request is met with incomprehension.
Navigating is now a father/son double act. I equip myself with topographical maps and a guidebook, taking on responsibility for the walks.
Daniel, who still has unreserved faith in satellite navigation, oversees getting us to the various starting points. The GPS only fails again — just once — leading our little car on a “road” more suitable for mountain bikers. It is forgiven as even my map classifies that track as a normal road.
Daniel’s device now rules the car. The soundtrack comes from his Spotify playlist: Postmodern Jukebox, David Guetta, Kygo... Good Lord.
On our walk to the waterfalls of Uelhs deth Joèu and the Plan dera Arriaga, a high valley surrounded by rugged peaks, Daniel asks why I carry all my heavy camera gear. “Your phone has the best camera on the market,” he says.
I only use my phone for talking and texting. “Give it a go, Paps,” he pleads. At the waterfalls, I indulge him. Roaring white cascades gush through dark mountain forests. The contrast is immense, the white balance tricky, but my phone creates perfect shots with a tap of the screen, where my professional camera struggles.
Above the falls, the forest opens into alpine meadows. Cattle roam the summer pastures, which are dotted with tall stalks of white asphodels and purple orchids. Daniel’s phone is getting a workout: video, images. His photos look beautiful on the backlit screen. I get caught up in the easiness of it all and almost forget to take “real” shots with my Nikon.
I learn another lesson that day. Back in Casau, Daniel is deep into WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook. He’s set up a Fuchs family group on WhatsApp, so I overcome my resistance and send my wife images and videos from our outings. Her enthusiastic response overnight is incredibly pleasing, and the WhatsApp sessions become a daily ritual.
Is it about getting as many likes as you can? Not for Daniel — he wants his girlfriend back home to see what we’re doing but isn’t interested in the number of likes he gets.
“I couldn’t care less what other people think,” he says. “My generation came halfway into the new technology — it’s the younger ones that are caught up in the hunt for likes.”
One of the Val d’Aran’s main attractions is a national park with a name that’s utterly unpronounceable and impossible to remember: Parc Nacional d’Aigüestortes i Estany de Sant Maurici. Protected within its borders is a landscape Chinese painters and Japanese poets would love: lakes like mirrors and too numerous to count beneath bare
sawtooth granite peaks. All this accentuated by dark arolla pines clinging to deep cracks in glacier-polished rock. It’s a combination of carefully planned Zen garden and utter randomness but with the serious respect one must always afford remote mountains.
We attempt to walk the famous Circ dels Estanys de Colomèrs on the northern side of the national park, a trek that combines several high mountain lakes. Snow and ice, leftovers from a particularly fierce winter, torpedo our plans and we are forced to follow a lower route.
The topographical maps come in handy now that we are forced to improvise. Through carpets of dogtooth violets and daffodils, we walk to the banks of the partly frozen lake, Garguilhs de Jos.
Here my tech-savvy mentor introduces Paps to the panorama function on a phone camera. Back in our cosy chamber at the guesthouse that evening I check out the quality of the images on Photoshop, and it is an eye-opener. Daniel suggests I download Photoshop Express to my phone, and my app selection begins to grow.
Daniel’s mission seems to be to drag daggy Paps into the modern world. Mine, as my parents mission was for me, is to pass on my love for mountains and mountaineering to my son. It is a passion that has enriched my life. We tramp into the wildly romantic Val de Gerber and walk to the Estany de Sant Maurici, a large lake on the western side of the reserve.
Daniel enjoys our walks immensely. Out here in the mountains, we are mates.
The Val d’Aran is also famous for its 1000year old churches, linked by the Ruta Para Descubrir el Románico de la Val d’Aran. We start in Salardú. The beautiful church of Sant Andrèu de Salardú has the biggest and bestpreserved wall paintings in the Val d’Aran. While Daniel snaps away with his phone, I unfold my tripod, set the camera on a timer and take some long exposures in the dark, austere nave. Phone photography is certainly easier.
The villages blend old and new. Many of the old stone houses have been restored and new houses are built in local stone with traditional slate roofs. Daniel’s more interested, however, in the physical challenge of the mountains. They appeal to his sense of adventure. An interest in history and culture is, I feel, reserved for later years.
I was the same at his age and I realize how alike we are: slightly alpha, with a tendency to lead. Opinionated. Stubborn. No wonder we lock horns so often.
The day we walk to the abandoned village of Montgarri is the kind of day that makes me doubt the reality of death: warm sun, balmy breeze, lush meadows carpeted with wild flowers, pine perfume wafting through the air. It’s an easy walk from the high plains of the Plan de Beret, where herds of horses roam, into a valley hidden by pine forests. We take selfies on the way — snapshots of shared happiness. I had always considered taking selfies somewhat narcissistic, but here it feels right.
The village of Montgarri lies in ruins, the only remains being the church and a farmhouse with metre-thick stone walls and low ceilings that’s now a country inn. We have lunch there: carnes a la brasa, meats grilled on glowing beech embers, and discover an aspect of culture we can both embrace: food.
Our next mission is to sample the fabled traditional Aranese dish Òlha Aranesa, a hearty soup containing lamb, chicken, pig’s ear and snout and blood sausages, along with potatoes, cabbage, leek, celery, chickpeas and white beans. Daniel Googles “restaurants near me”. Unsettlingly, the device knows exactly where we are, and suggests Era Lucana, a restaurant in Vielha — an excellent choice. While ladling stew into his bowl, I ask him what the phone means to him. “It’s my computer,” he says. “I use it for emails, calendar, banking — everything.” And fake news, trolls, data mining? He’s aware of these things, but they don’t bother him nearly as much as they do me.
Musically, we begin to find common ground. As we drive into the impossibly steep Valle de Varradós, it’s my turn to choose a Spotify playlist. Pink Floyd and Dire Straits pump out of the loudspeakers while Daniel negotiates bovine and granite roadblocks. From the car park, the roar of the Saut deth Pish waterfall is already audible. Winter has just departed here and the young foliage of birch and beech trees is almost luminescent. In the valley, dirty snow piles, leftovers from avalanches, exhale cold air as if we’ve opened a fridge door.
By now, my device is also in constant use, filming Daniel in front of the thundering waters, getting shots for the upcoming WhatsApp session with my wife. My resistance to the ever-present phone is slowly eroding as I begin to see its possibilities. As for Daniel, he now accepts the value of topographical maps but tells me there’s an app to download those, too. I still have a fair bit to learn.