Postcards from Mallorca
An island of miraculous loveliness: old stones, lemon trees, and calla lilies
Dear Wanderlifers,
How do you feel after you return from time away from your normal routine? How do you reflect and integrate after traveling?
Today I’m sharing a little of what’s on my mind after a week on the island of Mallorca. East of Spain and north of North Africa in the Mediterranean Sea, it is the largest of the Balearic Islands. Inhabited for a very long time, it is a land of layered histories.
A week away from the United States provided a fresh vantage point. The German writer Elke Heidenreich wrote, and I paraphrase in translation, I travel to be somewhere else. My sentiment exactly. It’s about setting my eyes on different versions of home, about tasting different versions of breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It’s about clearing my mind of an obligation to get anything done and instead to be…immersed in experience, relaxed enough to notice details, open to the nuanced vagaries of how people live daily life on this planet. I tend to find it all very beautiful.
My pliable nature means that I’m highly influenced by whatever I’m reading. The novel Orbital by Samantha Harvey was reverberating in my mind while wandering the tidy village of Muro where my friends live. From space, the six astronauts in Orbital gaze down at planet earth and marvel at “such bizarre and miraculous loveliness.” I felt their wonder as I explored a new-to-me old place, as I acclimated to a different time zone and pace.
“If only politics really were a pantomine. If politics were just a farcical, inane, at times insane entertainment provided by characters who for the most part have got where they are […] by being louder, bigger, more ostentatious, more unscrupulously wanting of the play of power than those around them, if that were the beginning and end of the story it would not be so bad.
“The hand of politics is so visible from [the astronauts’] vantage point that they don’t know how they missed it at first. It’s utterly manifest in every detail of the view, just as the sculpting force of gravity has made a sphere of the planet and pushed and pulled the tides which shape the coasts, so has politics sculpted and shaped and left evidence of itself everywhere.”
- Samantha Harvey, Orbital
Muro gets its name from the Arabic word “muru’a” meaning “wall” or “boundary.” The village sits on a hill, a walled city surrounded by farms and fields less than five miles from the sea. During Roman times, it was an important enclave for trade and agriculture. Under Muslim rule, it was also an important center of agriculture, as well as livestock. When the island was conquered by King Jaime I of Aragon in the 13th century, the Muslim population was gradually replaced by Christian settlers. Muro experienced a period of growth and prosperity during the 15th and 16th centuries. It was during this period that the churches and manor houses, like the one where we spent a week, were built. If you want to see pictures, you can check out Muro Manor on Instagram.
Stone walls are broken by deep-set windows with painted green shutters. Heavy wooden doors open with ironwork forged centuries ago. It’s a built environment from another time. Current residents add signs of modern life with blooms of fuchsia and white cyclamen in clay pots outside their doors and windows. When it’s possible to peek into the garden hidden within the fortress of a home in Muro, there are happy little trees polka-dotted with orbs of orange and yellow citrus.
Postcards from Mallorca
A week is not a long-term relationship. A week is just a love affair. And it’s easy to love the island of Mallorca, but I am no expert on its long history and deep culture.
If I have the delightful luxury of an invitation from a local, I tend not to do a lot of research or planning. I prefer not to have too many pre-existing ideas of what I’ll find and then do the Googling afterward to answer whatever questions arise. In this case, we had amazing hosts who showed us some of their favorite spots. The following postcards are my post-travel reflections after doing a little digging and a little reflecting after a week somewhere else.
Calla Lilies
There was a vase of calla lilies sitting on the heavy wooden dresser in the guest room of our friends’ new old home when we arrived. “They grow everywhere here, like orange day lilies grow everywhere in Wisconsin,” my friend told me. She has spent months working to get to know her new landscape, tending and taming the garden behind the house that had gone a bit too wild. The house came filled, tile floor to exposed-beam ceiling, with the stuff and stories of many generations of a family. A photo of a bride posed with her arms full of calla lilies hung near the bed where I slept with my husband for the week we stayed in the village of Muro. I love flowers (who doesn’t?) and was reminded of my own armful of wedding flowers, tulips cut fresh and carried loose and wild as I walked down a grassy aisle. Simple beauty. The doorbell rang on the day we arrived. A small, elderly woman was there with her arms filled with stiff stalks of Bird-of-paradise flowers to welcome us. She lives across the street and has embraced her new neighbors as surely as she would have embraced any birth in the family, any kin, any new life in the old village.
Oranges and Lemons
Fruit trees just make me happy. Like love from on high, like free candy, like a reminder that everything we need is right here bursting with flavor and juice. From the lemon tree in her new old garden, my friend made lemon bars and limoncello for our visit. To make limoncello, you need high-proof grain alcohol. She learned that it is not easy to come by alcohol on Majorca, but a bottle was eventually procured from an unnamed farm via an Instagram foodie connection. Wine is much easier. A wine-maker lives around the corner from her house and one evening we were invited to a wine tasting. He makes the ‘house wine’ for their property every year. Juan the winemaker poured the first glass and then demonstrated how to swirl the wine around, saying some things in Spanish. Minutes later I was given a friendly scolding for letting the heat of my fingers warm the wine. I tried to hold the glass by the stem after that but old habits are hard to break, especially when you’re drinking.
Old Stones
On our final day, we walked along the beach to find the Necropolis of Son Real, a very old cemetery. There is a quarry, as well as more than 130 tombs built from rocks. Human and animal remains have been excavated, along with musical instruments, armaments, and jewelry. There is evidence of trade from other islands.
Inland the island is scattered with the stone remains of windmills. They are evidence of an engineering technique brought from the Netherlands in the mid-1800s to pump water and grind grain. Before electricity, the windmills took advantage of the ‘cold and turbulent wind’ known as the Tramontana, a name that references the mountain range on Mallorca. I didn’t visit the few restored mills, but have learned that there is a ‘friends of the windmills’ group and some are recognized by the World Monuments Fund. Next time. There is always more. I have a feeling I’ll be back.
Next time I want to learn more about the fabric called Ikat, a style that came to the island from trade with Asia but is now part of its ongoing story. That is how it goes, right? Humans sculpt and shape every place, leaving evidence of style and taste, offering both lessons and inspiration.
Travel is my favorite medicine.
Thank you for taking a few minutes to read Wanderlife! If you are reading in email and have a moment to move into the Substack platform to click the ❤️, I’d be very grateful for the extra bit of love.
I always feel better after a trip. A few additional take-aways: Wearing compression socks for long flights has its pros and cons; there are artists you have not yet heard of doing amazing things everywhere; friendships that span decades and continents make life better no matter what.
I’d love to know, How do you feel after you return from time away from your normal routine? How do you reflect and integrate after traveling?
Beautiful Jessica. I felt your calm as you led me into an island world filled with a variety of so many beautiful things.
Thanks for sharing the pictures and story. All very lovely. Glad you had such a nice trip.