Ben. Sabrina.

I didn’t think I’d be deranged like all other parents. I told myself I would be self-aware and would at least know when I was being foolish. But on the drive to the start of our hike, a perceived slight towards Ellie made me see red. Vistas give perspective, and as we walked up and up towards a stunning mirador, a little bit of objectivity began to filter back through and I apologized. We looked down a new river valley clear out to the sea, counting two, three rows of higher mountains back, steep rock exposed at the top, a wild ruggedness in miniature.

We fed and changed Ellie and started up the next climb. Then she protested. How she howled. We took her out and checked her diaper and made extra sure she was sitting right in the carrier but still she yelled. It was her tired cry. We agreed to try for 10 more minutes.

Ten minutes came and went. We’d hiked up to the Collado de Huerta Grande, with ambitions to make it a Big Day. The loop was our baseline, but we figured we’d be able to add on a significant lollipop tail to the route. Ellie’s crying jag changed that plan. We knew going into this travel month that there would be some plans that Ellie mostly would simply force us to abandon. But so far she’d spoiled us with her easygoing nature and carrier naps. But by the time Ellie started truly melting down on this hike, we were basically at the halfway point of the loop, with many kilometres and elevation between us and the car. So we kept going, knowing that she would likely eventually cry herself to sleep. Ten minutes was usually the max amount of time she’d cried in the carrier when fighting naps in the past. But when that marker passed and she was still screaming, we took her out again and I laid down on the ground in an attempt to side-feed her to sleep. It didn’t work. We were all doing a good job of staying calm — it used to be harder for me to weather Ellie’s crying if there were others around; I felt like maybe they were judging me, or judging Ellie. We put her back in the carrier and in a few more minutes she finally did fall asleep. Sweet relief. Not only for us, each of whom feels this tiny being’s wails in the core of our hearts, but for darling Ellie who was so tired.

We were quiet, fearing to wake the angry monkey, but also, speaking for myself, introverted. Chastened by my bout of mania and emotionally drained from Ellie’s cry. We did part of our lollipop, and we got our most sweeping views yet. This was the first part of the Lonely Planet’s recommended walk to the abandoned but now reborn town of El Acebuchal. Due to uncertainty about our pace and the availability of taxis, we opted to split it up. The next day we took a shortcut that doesn’t go so high, or so far up the valley to reach the town, and its highly recommended restaurant in just a couple hours.

I was personally ready to leave behind the dirt and gravel rural roads that had punctuated half our hikes so far. My feet yearned for soft trail and narrow paths. Alas, that was not to be the day I got it. Luckily the kilometres passed quickly and fairly easily as we scooted our way up and down the valley toward El Acebuchal and the guidebook-recommended refreshments it promised. After the previous day’s failed attempt at carrying her backpack style, a better rested baby today accepted the lumbar-friendly mode of travel. Still coughing, Ben was still reluctant to carry her for fear of making her sick, so I’d been carrying her thus far. Back home, she’d taken to backpack mode in the Lillebaby carrier just fine, but I’d always switched her out when she started to fall asleep since I wouldn’t be able to check on her easily to make sure her nose and/or mouth were clear. But with Ben, mother and Jen around, I felt more comfortable letting her airways out of my sight.

The waiter brought the bread, still hot and soft. Steam billowed out into the chilly air as we cut into it, tearing chunks off our slice to dip into the flavoured oil. It was great bread.

Ahem. I believe Best Bread of Our Lives was the agreed description.

The mains are also excellent. Rich and succulent and perfectly cooked. We were stuffed with beef and lamb and wild boar. On the way back we checked out an abandoned fábrica de luz that was puzzling at first, but I was pleased to piece together the clues: a date on a gate, logos with a palm tree that had disappeared from the courtyard. These buildings had a second life when some romantic dreamers tried to revive the place nearly 20 years ago, and we were seeing its second abandonment. The nearby El Acebuchal’s rebirth seems much more promising, and I hope it lasts because breaking that bread met a deep human need. The rest of the walk back felt long. I was tired from the poor sleep I got on the floor of the living room, and even in the hills in Spain, a road walk is a weary thing. By mutual agreement, tomorrow would be a rest day.

The next day we passed the hours reading, writing, and listening to birds swooping among the neighbourhoods that dipped and rose on our surrounding hillsides. Mom showed me how to make granola with oats, oil and honey (I’d known it was theoretically that easy, but everything looks faster and easier when Hurricane Arlene is in the kitchen). She also whipped up some marmalade from the fallen oranges the abuelas had scavenged from the backroad. Not all of the oranges made the cut though – a few we tried were so face-puckeringly sour that I suspected they might be dangerous in some way, and launched my sample into the brush.

By this point we’d ticked a lot of the most highly recommended walks around Cómpeta, so we opted for a classic closer to the sea, and in a new valley at the town of Frigiliana. I think I’d had 3 hours of sleep that night. I felt fine on the drive down to the coast, but as we drove back up into the town, the sudden onslaught of cars (and a literal train of a dozen golf carts full of impassive elderly tourists), made me realize I was not aware enough to be driving. I decided to just seek refuge in a paid parking garage rather than compete for a tight parking spot.

It was the right call. Frigiliana was much busier than Competa and we all shied from the congestion like feral cats. Car sickness had snuck up on mom and she took a sec to dry heave over the railing before we rallied and set our toes trailward. This hike was pleasantly different from everything we’d done thus far. Keeping initially to a dry riverbed, we wound through canyons (Los Cahorros de Rio Higueron) and over giant boulders and down concrete stairways held up seemingly by magic. We decided to add the Cruz del Pinto to our route; it wasn’t too much extra elevation or distance, it involved an alluring single-track trail, and it was right there. Step by step, we ascended. At one point, Ben and I paused at an opening in the trees, savouring the light breeze while we cheered on our tough-as-nails mothers. My heart swelled as my husband turned to me with a soft smile and said “thank you for making this trip happen.” This dream I’d had was actually realized. Here we were, despite all the late night anxieties, all the logistical minutia, hiking together in the Spanish sunshine with our real life miracle baby and her doting abuelas. The Mediterranean sea glittered in the background as Jen and Arlene reached us, smiling and huffing. Ellie woke up shortly afterward and began fussing for a carrier break so I booked it for the summit before she fully lost her shit (when I made it, a group at the top said they thought they’d heard a baby, and wow what a great job we’d done together).

It was around here that I developed the mantra, “n’importe où,” in response to the increasingly frequent questions about which way to go. We had to go up and it all looks about the same to me. I felt like the micro-nav decision making wastes a lot of time and energy and makes you stare at your feet or worse, your phone. Besides, near summits, there is usually a fun scrambly way that I am drawn towards, and my brain does a version of saccadic masking that prevents me from seeing the boring trail. All this is to justify myself for not being more patient and helpful.

A little Catholic monument graced the summit of Cerro Pinto, in the shade of which we changed a diaper and Ellie aired her bum most irreverently. It was a warm day even by summer standards and we were going to be short on water, which made me eager to move on. A short descent took us along a ridge shaded by pine, each sporting at least one ‘pillar nest. I suppose it is okay to be wary; a ‘pillar down the back of a shirt, or in Ellie’s carrier, would certainly spoil the day. But they are not malicious like a wasp. They just inchy-squinch along and have no interest in dropping on people.

Like the caterpillars, our group inchy-squinched along the ridge before finally dropping into a descent that was, to my great relief, well graded. I switched Ellie into front-facing-out position and she just peaceably chattered all the way to the end. We remarked anew at what an amazing wonder babe she was to be handling these hikes so well. It was another encouraging data point before we attempted our biggest hike yet.

As the highest mountain in the range, La Maroma had piqued my interest early during the research phase. But I assumed that only Ben would see its summit. He was fit and strong, while I was… getting there. My postpartum progress had been going well, but I still had a long way to go. At 2,069 m elevation, the top of the mountain was roughly 22km and 1,500m away from our starting point of Canillas de Albeida. I’d been previously topping out at 10km hikes. So with Ellie on my back I figured we’d go as far as we could before waving bon voyage to Ben (with only 11 hours of daylight at our disposal, and two hours of commute, we’d decided to keep the attempt team lean and go as fast as we could). We left home a half hour later than planned, at 8:30am, after doing final-ok-actually-final-ok-FINALfinal Zoleo checks.

From the kick, I was bursting with drive. The sun washed the land with soft light and I wanted to make as much progress as possible during the gentler morning temperatures and Ellie’s nap. The steady ascent started immediately and I ate it up. Ben, to my surprise, started to fall back a bit.

You were absolutely motoring. Normally you set a steady pace we can maintain all day and stop me from power hiking too hard and burning out my legs (with my knees being the inevitable next casualty). Hiking with you has helped train me to stay in control, so it was a surprise that you were going so hard on the lower slopes. Later in the day, I was glad you did. We were always in a slow-motion race against the sun, and especially when the heat of the afternoon beat down, I was glad to have banked some quick kims in the cool morning. Of course, the only reason we could do this was because of what a little hiking champ Ellie was.

From route descriptions, I was expecting it to be more densely treed, my default imagining being a Rockies hike. But very soon we were walking on open slopes with only the occasional little stand of pine trees for shade. It was also very straightforward to navigate. The trail was excellent, and marked with white and blue, so the only reason for looking at our GPS was to track how far we had left.

And after our first diaper change stop of the day, we realized that we really didn’t have much left until the turnoff point. We looked at the map, looked at the watch, looked up in the direction of the summit, looked back at the map. We had time. We were pretty sure, at least. It was worth a try. So when we got to the fork in the trail, we followed the arrow pointing toward the intimidating switchbacks. Up up up we climbed, past the switchbacks, through the rock-strewn plateau, past cairns and the occasional lingering snow patch. We passed our turnaround time, but the summit was within spitting distance so we kept going.

The Roof of Malaga is a vast flat stone plateau. It is so big and flat that I had to walk a couple hundred meters from the “summit” to be able to see more than just sky over the far end. While Ellie fed, I wandered around the windy rockscape, peering this way and that. Snowcaps to the east, farmland to the north, valleys and lakes to the west, and the sky merging into the sea far to the south. I returned and ate my sandwich with Ellie while Sabrina took a quick look around. It was a struggle to keep her sheltered from the sun while the wind buffeted the umbrella this way and that.

I couldn’t believe we’d actually made it. My legs were toasted but I was so proud of us. “You should take Ellie on the way down” I told Ben, visions of stumbling the baby into a concussion dancing through my head. The switch-up was advantageous and we made quick work of the descent. But as we descended through the afternoon, the temperature kept climbing. Soreness crept into my knees, my hips. I started to fall back and knew I needed a rest and a big drink, but Ellie was still peaceably sleeping and there’s always an urgency to make progress before she demands a break. Very rarely have I ever wished the baby would wake up sooner, but as Ellie continued to sleep I dug further into the suffer-cave. Ben noticed, and made the executive decision to stop. And good thing too, because as soon as we sat down I felt a wave of dizziness come over me. While he changed Ellie’s diaper (and then onesie, after a sniper shot of pee) I sat with my head sagging between my knees, guzzling water and eating one of the fiddly-piddly sugar sticks that seem to pass as granola bars in Europe. It took awhile for me to be able to stand up without shutting my eyes, but soon we were on our way again. Ben later revealed that he’d given me his share of the remaining water, pointing out my increased hydration needs from breastfeeding.

Over the last week, Sabrina had been talking about only doing part of the mountain, so I had downloaded my own navigation for once. With the shadows getting longer and longer, I noticed a trail that seemed to cut off a big unnecessary loop of road. We discussed taking it as we were taking it, and by the time we noticed it was going to be a bit scruffy, neither of us was willing to entertain the idea of retracing our steps for even a couple minutes. It ended up being quite steep and tricky, forcing us to go slow, so in the end it probably didn’t save much time. As we rejoined the road, we saw another shortcut on the map, but by then we’d filled our bellies with adventure and opted to slam out the last couple kims on a mindless double march back to the car.

We pushed to the end, chasing daylight, until finally reached the car and scarfed more food and water. Ellie had basically spent 8.5 hours in the carrier, and by the time we were halfway home on the drive and darkness was descending, her serenity had run out. We stopped multiple times to try feeding her, changing her, soothing her, but the last twenty minutes was a screamfest. We pulled into our rocky driveway to see the abuelas anxiously awaiting our return.

They delivered the news that there was no water for a shower. This put me in a bit of a funk, but their kindness, and a big curry feast pulled me out. Because it was Valentine’s day, they also made up a little charcuterie board decorated with flower petals for us. It was a lovely gesture.

Maroma was the literal highpoint of our Spain trip, and a satisfying close to our time in Cómpeta. The next day was spent relaxing and preparing to relocate to our next home base, in the desert of Cabo de Gata.