On the 3rd<\/sup> of August, 2019, eight of us tried to rewalk one of those routes that we would name \u201coctavianes\u201d, not because it was eight of us that attended that first hike, but because we wanted to give our guide some recognition. We chose the closest route to home, as the author states \u201cfrom Baleny\u00e0 to Taradell, Puiglagulla sanctuary, Vilalleons Castell de Saladeures and Vic\u201d. We followed Octavi\u2019s 400 aligned words, which, between the pages 57 and 59, describe the nearly 25 km this path takes up. Take notice that 400 words is approximately what the two first paragraphs of this text occupy. During that first octavian route it was clear to us that, with his few words, Octavi was sometimes guiding us, and sometimes misguiding us, which made us trust not only him on the routes we made afterwards. The guiding techniques we\u2019ve developed don\u2019t just consist in carrying a GPS and an approximate track of the route he must have followed, sometimes we also trust Sebasti\u00e0 Masramon\u2019s pendulum, and sometimes it is a strange intuition expressed through imagination that we trusted. Where must have Octavi passed through? We look at the landscape and something tells us where to go. I can\u2019t assure it always works for us\u00a0 -we\u2019ve had to go back many times in each octavian route, it\u2019s already part of our hiking- but something comforts me: the feeling that, this strange intuition isn\u2019t too far from that primitive sensibility of feeling the underground flows Pep told us about. A young lad a hundred years ago like Octavi was even closer to that feeling that we are today, right?<\/p>\n It seems quite logical to me to think those paths us humans have opened up, pass through, mostly, positive energy zones; in places the sun kisses, away from snakes and any kind of lush vegetation that would constantly eat the routes away. Away, also, from excessive dampness that would make the paths too muddy. During one of Octavi\u2019s routes I learnt that a rhabdomancer is the person who knows how to read these underground flows. Someone who feels them and identifies them. And I recently met one, Joan Burgaya from Torrell\u00f3. He can detect the flows of underground waters, and also those of other materials, such as minerals using a pendulum sometimes or a brass crossbow in some other cases. Seeing him in action, reading a piece of land while walking on it, letting the pendulum wind at full speed, or receiving the intense blows of the crossbow, that raises up to his chest, the relationship between his body and that which flows below his feet and ours is obvious. The difference between him and the majority of us is the ability of perceiving it. Where have we left it? When did we first consider we didn\u2019t need it?<\/p>\n I\u2019m writing this text in the midst of the lockdown and the resignation to the fact that the octavian route we had planned for this March, and probably April\u2019s too, will have to be cancelled. I think of all of those things and I think about the paths that we went through up until now, more or less frequently. Possibly for a few weeks, no human being will walk on those paths, and I imagine the vegetation, at its full spring flowering, happily spreading through the trails that we had engraved by stepping on them. Our steps were presses; our walk was the screw press. How will the paths be after all of this? Maybe it will actually be a good excuse to go deep into in them again with a fresh look, putting the memory of that primitive sensibility into practice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Some night at the beginning of the lockdown, I dreamt that superwoman came to visit me and told me the energies of the Earth gave her superpowers to her. When…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1259,"featured_media":28260,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6039],"tags":[],"coauthors":[6467],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/a-desk.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/anna-dot-3.jpg\")
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