The builders have been working on the retreat centre for 5 weeks now and the speed with which the building is changing is astounding. Vijayasri and I have moved on from our reaction on viewing our future retreat centre of “oh no what have we done!”. If anything the building site effect is more pronounced with piles of rubble forming dusty mountains on the terraces below the house, stacks of old tiles waiting to be re-used on the roof andThe builders have been working on the retreat centre for 5 weeks now and the speed with masses of old wooden beams and planks, door and window frames and old cupboards lying around. And the building from above as you approach is still a cavernous hole looking into the sky blue walls of the barn and dining room.

Our response at the moment is more one of excitement. Pallets covered with bags of cement, new roof tiles and red bricks are stored alongside the track opposite the house. A lorry load of new wooden beams lies covered with tarpaulin waiting for work to start on putting the new roof on. As well as the destruction what is now clearly evident is the new building beginning to emerge. Old walls of mud and stone are still being pulled down but now new walls of brick faced with stone are forming new rooms.

I’m finding that as the building changes from the old collection of small, low roofed rooms, as the walls grow higher and dividing walls are knocked out, the plans make more sense to me. I’m full of admiration for what Luis, our architect, has envisioned. It’s really lovely to walk into a roofless barn with holes for windows and be able to imagine it as a spacious library cum sitting room.

Yesterday Vijayasri and I had our weekly meeting at the retreat centre with Luis, Jose (one of our builders) and Jesus, the local town surveyer. Yesterday we were also joined by the foreman on site. We walk around the building at a leisurely pace. The mood is relaxed and friendly as Luis inspects the work and invites us to express our concerns or questions. With requests for repetition and clarification we manage to keep up with the conversation which of course is all happening in Spanish. Cigarettes are smoked and there is time for exchanges of local news. At the weekend there was a village day walk from Penarroya to the ridge standing at 1200 metres, 250 metres above the retreat centre. A different walk is chosen every year and a substantial part of the village population of 650 participate.

In one room a small dividing wall has fallen over. It was a feature Vijayasri and I had wanted left out anyway so Jose teases us by asking if we pushed it over ourselves. No, no, we protest laughing, it was the recent storm!

I find the new section of building particularly exciting. On the ground floor it houses a 3 person bedroom and the ‘installations’ room for the boiler and solar panel batteries. Above is a spacious kitchen and store room with fantastic views through the open holes of the windows. The stone walls are being built up over the kitchen door as we watch. The local stone is incredibly expensive to buy but really beautiful, and definitely preferred as a visible building material by the local authorities. I really like that all our new build can be constructed from our existing stone which is first cleaned off and chipped into the right shape. The result is a little more uniform than the old parts of the building but looks great.

The work is progressing satisfactorily. Luis and Jesus are both impressed with the Brazilian team of workers and the speed and standard of their work. We are gradually getting to know their names though they are still quite shy with us.

After looking over the building we go down to the spring to talk about different options for a water deposit. We check out a site above the house where the water could be pumped up to and then gravity fed down to the retreat centre. This would cut out the need for a second power hungry pump on our lean solar budget. The site is next to a pool of muddy water visited regularly by wild goats and wild boar. Their footprints are sunk into the mud. My dictionary comes in handy when Jose shows us a mud stained pine tree with the bark rubbed off by the boar having a good scratch. Is it fleas? No. Ticks? We have some experience of finding these in our clothing! No. Finally we establish the wild boar are covered in lice!

Finally we all stand a little way above the retreat centre watching and admiring. The work is progressing very well. I comment with a word I’ve learnt while watching football on television with Vajrananda during our days living in the flat in Penarroya. ‘Son un bueno equipo’. ‘They are a good team’. The others agree. Then we say our goodbyes and agree to meet same time, same place, next week.

I write this on my return to England, following an amazingly fantastic, extremely memorable and special two weeks spent at Aranya; it was filled with physical work, fun, laughter and learning experiences, on many levels. I had three main reasons for wanting to go to Aranya as a volunteer. Two of these reasons were what I thought would be personal challenges; to live within a women’s community and to work as part of a team. These, I soon realised, were not to be challenges at all, I felt immediately welcome and it felt easy to fit into the work and day to day life. The challenges were yet to come… My other reason was to experience living completely out in the sticks. I had a small concern about what these women’s idea of remoteness would be; I’ve experienced the ‘travel ads’ claims of places being remote… I was not disappointed, believe me, Aranya is remote!

The nearest town is three quarters of an hour away; to leave the mountains you need a vehicle with four wheel drive. There are no domestic services, I now realise how much I take these things for granted. There is no rubbish collection. The electricity supply is solar powered, someone has to remember to turn the panels towards the sun throughout the day. There is a back up petrol generator for when there hasn’t been enough sun. There are no water mains so they have put in a septic tank and dug their own well for general water, and then drive to the nearest town to collect drinking water. The main heating is from a wood burning stove, for which wood needs to be chopped and dried. The hot water is run off five gas bottles, so you don’t want to be in the shower when the gas runs out and the bottles need changing over! There is no landline and only a tiny area where I could get a signal on my mobile, so phone calls and internet meant a trip to town.

I was living at the community house, which is gorgeous, simple and quaint. I didn’t see the retreat centre for the first couple of days, but I heard some of the stories of winter and the massive challenges they had faced and were due to face, I started to realise the scale of what these women have actually taken on… it’s phenomenal! There’s not only the actual building work but also the language barrier. I, briefly, questioned their sanity, was it all really worth it? As soon as I visited the ruin that is to become the retreat centre, I knew exactly why they had chosen the place and that all their hard work was definitely worth it. Words cannot explain how incredibly beautiful the setting is, I felt so excited thinking of friends and people I know visiting and experiencing the same wow! High up, looking out across the tops of a range of mountains, seeing the infinite amount of space and sky, massive outcrops of rock; it was breathtakingly stunning! One of the things that really struck me was the silence; it was so quiet, I could hear the silence. It was impossible not to get caught up in nature; I saw so much whilst I was there. I saw spring flowers bursting with new life, fields filled with almond trees in blossom, so graceful and beautiful; I saw wild goats, hares, bats, huge ants and beetles, ticks, stick insects and long lines of prossessing caterpillars; I experienced outstanding sunsets, cloud formations, caves, and came across so many different colours of stones and rock, ranging from browns and greys to oranges and reds, even lilac; it was wonderful! I sat and watched about sixty vultures come together, circling in the sky, so graceful and effortless. I went to their feeding ground, bits of animal carcasses, skulls, rib cages and fluffy white paws lay scattered around, a stirring and thought provoking place. I felt very much in the realm of Padmasambhava and could sense his presence.

As a volunteer, my main job was to assist Bianca with building a huge wooden structure, with concrete footings, which was to become a platform upon which a yurt would be fixed; to provide a solitary retreat facility. My initial reaction was… no problem, that can easily be done in a fortnight! I then saw the hill we had to carry every thing up! Not only was it physically tiring carrying chunky wooden planks, about five metres in length, up the hill but, the weather also added complications. The wood needed to be preserved, we laid it all out on supports so that we could paint on the preservative and leave it to dry; we needed to use an electric saw on site so we carried the generator and extension leads up the hill… and then it would start raining! We would then dash up and down the hill restacking the wood and covering it all up again, reeling the extension leads in and covering up the generator. Then, it would stop raining so, we would start it all again, for it then to rain again… a definite practice in there! Another challenge was the fact that the structure was octagonal, this meant that when cutting the wood we were dealing with extremely complicated angles, which was mind boggling and took time to work it all out. Time seems to be very different at Aranya, everything takes so much longer. For example, we ran out of wood treatment which we hadn’t anticipated, so that meant ‘nipping’ to the shop, at least a two hour round trip. Because it’s such a trek, we would find other jobs that could be done on the outing to save time at other times, such as post, collect water, internet and phone calls, food shopping etc, so before I knew it half the day was taken up. We did make good headway though and got a good part of it done in the time that I was there.

I feel very honoured and privileged to have had the opportunity to work at Aranya and to have been part of the team. It was great to have witnessed, and been part of, their enthusiasm, passion and commitment to such an amazing vision. I am in awe of these fantastic women and feel incredibly inspired by them. I feel I experienced a true sense of, Women Going Forth! Thanks ‘ladies’!

End of Winter
In March 2006 life continues in the mountains of lower Aragon. We are emerging from the cold and snowy winter, where we learned amongst other things how difficult it was to put snow chains on our 4 x 4’s, Rosinante and El Gordo, without getting completely covered in mud from crawling under the vehicles. A foot of snow fell over 2 days and due to the low temperatures it stayed around for more than 3 weeks. It was beautiful to look at and be in but scary to drive on, even with the chains. Several times we walked the 7km to the village to load up with food or to collect or see off volunteers working with us. During the winter we got to working inside quite a bit but with the coming of spring and warmer temperatures and longer days all that is changing. We also lived mainly inside with long dark evenings in front of the wood burning stove.

Spring is here
As the days lengthen we ourselves feel as if we’re coming out of a certain sort of hibernation and venturing into the world again. The landscape in places is dotted with thick, sweet-smelling almond blossom. The sun tan cream has been fished out of the cupboard and the thermals abandoned (for the time being anyway). The birds are more vocal and frogs can be heard at dusk near the river. The goats seem to understand that hunting season is over and they’ve been around the house a lot. On one stunning occasion driving near to the village we saw several large long-horned males standing on a huge boulder silhouetted against the blue sky.

Maitreyi, our president and kalyana mitra to the project has been staying with us for a few days. This has brought a different element to our working lives. She brought with her a rupa of the Tibetan enlightened hermit Milarepa which has been donated to Aranya. It is now residing on a large rock in a grove of carrasco trees near our house and will be a lovely spot to meditate in. One morning Maitreyi led us in study from ‘The Yogi’s Joy’, a commentary by Sangharakshita on the ‘The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa’. As we sat in the sun talking of the dharma and Milarepas haunts - Grey Rock Vajra Cave and Red Rock Jewel Valley – we were already there. Living, not exactly the hermits life in Tibet but in our own Red Rock Jewel Valley surrounded by mountains and pine trees and a vast blue sky. The study helped to contact a strong sense of the mythic and Milarepa seems a perfect symbol and inspiration for us.

New Name
We were able to talk more with Maitreyi about a new name for Aranya. Aranya was always intended as a name for the fundraising project but not necessarily what the retreat centre would be called. As we looked more in Spain it became clearer that Aranya (which means spider in Spanish) while it has a really lovely meaning in Sanskrit wasn’t going to work well in our host country. Over several months we’ve been canvassing opinions and ideas and musing over it ourselves. We hope to be able to let you know the name of the retreat centre within the next couple of months.

The Yurt
One of the main projects for Bianca during the coming month is to construct a base for the yurt to rest on. This means transporting all the wood to the terrace above the community house, along with the generator and other tools. Once the wood has been cut to size and covered with wood preserver the base can be nailed into place and we’ll have another go at putting up the yurt.

The first attempt was last summer but it turned out to be a larger and more complex structure than we had bargained for. Helped by Tejapushpa and Satyavadita with their nine year-old Jaya looking on, we eventually got it up but in a rather lop-sided sort of way. Over the weeks the canvas roof started collecting rain-water and in early autumn valiantly Vijayasri took it down and back into storage.

We’re keen to get it up and then have it functioning as our first solitary retreat venue. We are in the process of making some decisions about what sort of facilities we can offer and when we think they might be ready. We’ll keep you posted…

Lastly …
Our other main news is that in late February we signed a contract with local builders to start building on the retreat centre in March. Today – March 16th 2006 – they started work. More news in Builders Update.

This month the project moves into a whole new phase, as the builders have started work on the Retreat Centre! The old house, which has been standing empty since the 1960’s, full of old tools and clothes, pans and bottles, is now turning into a building site, its ceilings open to the sky. The workmen are saving the old tiles and wooden doors, and as many of the big beams made of tree trunks as possible, to be reused. And the rotten wormy wood will keep us in firewood for a while.

Today I went up to have a look at the site and to save a giant pot that was lying around outside the house. The guys helped me put the pot in the back of the 4×4. I think they found me a bit odd, to be honest, I felt like visiting royalty trying to make conversation. They are a team of immigrant workers from Brazil - maybe I should have tried talking about football. But then Jose, the local builder who is overseeing the works arrived, which was a relief. He’s a bit more accustomed to the strange Buddhist women who have landed from some other planet.

Renovating the house is one part of the project at the Retreat Centre, but we also plan a large purpose built shrineroom on a nearby terrace. It is a beautiful spot, sheltered by great cliffs above, with a view straight to the sunset. We still need to raise funds for this, to ensure that we can have a fitting, beautiful shrineroom for the Retreat Centre.

So now the three of us, Vajradevi, Bianca and I are living here in Mas de Lluc, the community house. We arrived here the on same day and were plunged straight into the usual catalogue of complications. El Gordo, our second 4×4 chose that time to have an intermittent electrical fault and completely died on us two days running when we were just about to set off up the long rough track to the house. Two days running we had to unload all our luggage and a vast amount of food shopping into Dapple (our little white van)and phone the Grua (breakdown lorry). We’re making friends with the man who drives it, he thinks it’s very diverting and always chivalrously offers me his shoulder to lean on when I climb up onto the side of the lorry to drive the car off. ‘Guapas y fuertes’ he described us - ‘beautiful and strong’. Quite.

The first breakdown we stayed the night in a Hostal in Valderrobres, but the second time I decided to walk the 7km up to the house to pick up our other 4×4, Rozinante. I was keen to see if any mishaps had happened in my absence, since the house had been standing empty for a month. As I walked up the stony track I counted all the things that could have gone wrong. Firstly would the river on the way be too deep to cross? (it had been raining heavily) Would the big bank of solar panels be a) stolen b) damaged by a hailstorm c) blown away? Had the house been broken into? Would Rozinante start? Would the well be flooded? I was less worried about things being robbed, as I have a lot of trust in people in the nearby village. The same cannot be said about the weather!

The river was OK, I could wade across. And when I turned the corner near the house the first thing I saw was our solar panels undamaged. The house was fine - no break in. I got into Rozinante and she started first time. It was all going to be alright… Then I walked down to the well, newly excavated just before I left the previous month. I lifted the heavy manhole cover - and gasped. There was certainly plenty of water - the level was way up above the electric pump. Ah well, 6 out of 7 mishaps avoided not bad.

I phoned Gerardo, our plumber/electrician. ‘The water in the well’s very high’ I said. ‘That’s not bad’ he said. ‘But it’s flooded the pump’ I said. ‘That is bad’ he said. ‘I’ll come on Saturday. Don’t switch it on.’

Finally El Gordo was fixed and we all arrived in the house. There was much to learn. Our solar energy system, for a start. What did the mystifying array of lights, warnings and figures on the control panel mean? And when it went ‘peep peep’ with the red light flashing how worried should we be? When Gerardo arrived on Saturday to fix the pump we had a long list of questions. His explanations were mostly even more mystifying to the linguistically and technically challenged. However we’re gradually making sense of it, having come to realise the basic fact that in midwinter there isn’t enough sunlight and we do need to use the generator regularly to keep our batteries happy.

That was one saga, there are plenty others, every little thing takes time, effort and knowledge. I find it interesting that it is the more technical, modern, convenient side of things that I find more troublesome. Woodstoves and candles are so simple (we haven’t actually been reduced to candles very often, but I prefer them in my room) We’re about to get a washing machine, which we’ll be able to run while the sun is shining. But I feel a sort of regret, yes it’ll be easier, but it’s another thing to break down - and do washing machine repair men come out this far? In helicoptors?

And then there’s the cold, so far down to minus 5 some mornings. We have a good wood burning stove, and central heating as a back up, run from gas bottles. The house holds the warmth, unheated it stays around 12 degrees inside. I am acclimatizing to a cooler way of life, although I don’t wash as often.

There are two sides to the work now, the legal/planning side for the retreat centre and the building/ maintenance side on the community house, . We are well into both - plans have been presented to the ayuntamiento (local council) and this week we meet with Luis, our architect, and Jose and Manolo, our builders, to try to firm up the details for a contract, with a view to the work on the retreat centre beginning in Spring. Vajradevi and I are involved in these discussions, and Bianca mostly stays working in the house. Whenever we can all three work together on the building.

So for me there are two main types of working day. There is the type when we drive into Alcañiz for shopping, going to offices, logging on in the internet cafe, picking up fuel for the generator, propane bottles for the heating and recently taking vehicles for their MOT’s, and follow ups etc etc. I find that kind of day needs a lot of concentration. But is satisfying to learn more and find our way around how things work out here.

Then there is the type of day when we work together on the house - mixing mortar, building up stonework, sawing wood, chopping kindling. For me time expands on those days, the quietness of the hills sinks into me. It’s hard work but I feel happy.

The evenings are long at this time of year. After supper we sit around the estufa (stove) reading, writing. Some nights we watch a DVD of The West Wing on my computer. Bianca often meditates. We go to bed early - it’s very dark and very quiet and I usually sleep well. In the morning Vajradevi and I have begun to meditate together in a room we’ve set up with another estufa for warmth.

The sun rises late here, it’ s not usually getting light till past 8am, and the sunlight doesn’t hit the solar panels till nearly 10am. If the sun shines, we can turn the fridge on, and run the pump from the well, filling our water tank. If the sun doesn’t shine, we run the generator to keep our batteries happy and well. And another day begins, fire burning pinewood in the estufa, water from the ground, rocks to build the walls, clothes drying in the wind, and often the blue blue sky above.