Accessing Happy Memories

I caught a snippet of an episode of All in the Mind (BBC R4) recently, where the conversation was all about the benefits of retrieving happy memories.  I had a moment of thinking ‘no sh*t Sherlock, there are benefits from retrieving happy memories.  Sure that was …………..?’  I stopped myself before actually framing the word ‘obvious’ even in my mind as for me it is a word that either forms or indicates a fixed mindset in relation to the topic in question (and only recently I was advocating for its removal from the English language!)

Instead, I listened more carefully and heard about work done at UCL and Cambridge with teenagers who were particularly exposed to one of more of the risk factors linked to depression.  Under controlled conditions, the participants were invited to notice happy memories and then to self-report on the experience of their own negative self-thoughts.  Morning levels of cortisol, the much talked about ‘stress hormone’ and blood levels were measured, as a means of complimenting the self-reporting with a physiological measure.  As well as having a short term benefit on mood it was found that participants who were able to recall happy memories at the outset of the programme reported less negative self-talk 12 months later, and had lower levels of morning cortisol.

On the programme there was a discussion about the wider applicability of recalling happy memories, and the use of technology, apps and AI to trigger their recollection.  It got me thinking about my own happy memories.  What are they and how good am I at retrieving them when I might need a boost to fend off a darkening of mood or a slowing of momentum?  I have always been interested in the knowledge that I don’t have very many memories of early childhood.  I don’t feel any deficit because of this yet I am interested in the observation ‘people who are depressed find it difficult to recall specific memories, relying instead on more general recollections’.  Instead of pushing me towards wondering if I was more inclined to depression than others, I instead got to wondering about how I might improve my ability to retrieve memories, particularly happy ones.  Perhaps I have an additional sensitivity in this space right now, having passed the 60th milestone this year and finding, very occasionally, a complete void where a piece of knowledge used to be!  I was also really interested in how all this connected to a comment made to me by one of my coachees which really got my brain fizzing!  G said ‘Just because I don’t remember it, doesn’t mean it does not exist within me, or that I have not been thoughtful about it’.  This gave me a sense of ease about my memory, both the parts I could retrieve, and those that I could not anymore.  They exist nonetheless, influencing my way of being.

Even so, I remain interested in my happy memories and retrieval of them.  Part of this has been by talking with other people about their memories and offering them mine as they come to the surface.  In particular, talking about them with Derryn, a part of so many of my happy memories, has been fascinating.  It’s a really interesting conversation to engage people in regardless how well you know them too, obviously provided they show themselves open to doing so.  It’s something that I intend to keep up and in those social situations where the conversation can start to flag, to invite people to tell of their happy memories.  The linking of ‘happy’ with ‘memory’ prompted me to recall (yeh, I managed it!) a sentence from Yann Martel’s book ‘Self’ which I read recently.  His central character was recalling very early boyhood.  The adult version of this boy in narrating this said, ‘memory is sometimes a distant spectator which can name emotions but not convey them’.  It caused me to reflect on how happy and memory come together, with the implication of YM’s statement being the memory is recalled with the label happy, to which we then apply the emotion.  The interesting question is how we do it, which got me thinking about the sensory aspects of the distant memory and how emotion might be triggered by it (them).  Was it a sight, a sound, a smell, a touch, a combination of any or all? 

How does all this sit with you?  What are the memories you want to recall?  How good are you at doing it?  What sensory experience comes to you with the memory and is this the agent generating the present-day emotion?

I wondered how I might develop my own practical way of unearthing a happy memory.  As I have already referred to, I use and invite story telling with others and notice the senses that connect for me and for them, the emotions that come up as storyteller and listener.  I am spending a little time looking at pictures too and will collect a small gallery of them to have available to me one way of the other.  In fact, there is one instance where I have combined capturing a view and telling its story.  The view is one which Derryn and I have always noticed as being a balm to our troubled minds when we see it in the flesh from the terrace of a little house in Spain which we love.  There is no substitute for sucking up the view for real, yet we have taken so many pictures of it too.  These pictures do stir the happy memory of being there and without question the memory serves a positive purpose in the present, wherever I am, whatever I am doing. 

Recently we chose to add a different dimension to recall the view by commissioning Karen Welsh, friend and fabulous artist, to paint a realistic portrayal of the view laid over with her unique interpretation of colour and texture.  The experience of looking at her painting is one that is different again from the real deal and the photos of it.  Definitely a happy one!

Commissioning Karen, and the happiness arising from experiencing her picture, jogged my memory too.  I recalled I had written a story of this landscape about 10 years ago.  I tracked it down and found myself smiling as I read it again, listening to a story that my 10 year younger self had written for the present day me.  Having found it I am going to share it here as an encouragement to you to unearth memories that bring you happiness, and to perhaps keep them closer by for the times when they might provide you with the support you need.  Read on for the story and for pictures of the view that so enthrals us, and the painting Karen created from it.

********************************************************************************************************

Our view – from left to right (April 2014) Nuestra vista – de izquierda a derecha

The view from our terrace is something that we both value very highly given its capacity to help us put our world to rights.  When we were looking for a place to own in La Alpujarra we both recognised that we could not take on any land if we were to be occasional visitors.  Even so, you would not believe how many times we tried to persuade ourselves that we could own a smallholding.  It was a rare demonstration of collective willpower that prevented us from doing so.   The decision, once made, did present something of a quandary.

We are both outdoor people and like a sense of space around us.   This is very difficult, on a limited budget, to achieve inside a house in this part of Spain.  Every design feature is associated with managing the heat so most houses have a warren of small rooms, more often than not with very small windows made up of a bewildering array of insect screens, wooden shutters, rolling blinds and glass.  In fact the management of windows is an applied science in the village.  Only mad people (yep, that would be us) have their south facing shutters and windows open during the day.  If you look above our house at our neighbours’ houses, any time from around 1000 until 1700, you will see that the eyelids of all their houses are firmly closed on the southern side.  This might mean a limited airflow but when the airflow is at 40 degrees centigrade its capacity to strip moisture from everything in its path, particularly pale skinned northern European folk, is astounding.  Limiting airflow in these conditions, as well as shutting out the radiating sun, is to be recommended.  Not allowing direct sun into the house is exceptionally practical in terms of heat management but it can mean that indoor life in the summer (and much of life has to be indoors) can be spent in shadows and the slithers of sunlight that escape the heat warped wood of the shutters.  However, no matter what logic is applied there is something fundamentally wrong to folks from cooler climates to do so much to evade the sun.  And so it is that we have our windows open, have a flow of hot air and try to avoid a daily desiccation for the sake of an awesome view and a sense of space.

Our quandary of not having time for land but wanting a sense of space was resolved when we came across a house with a roof terrace equipped for human recreation.  Such a thing would be judged as being spectacularly stupid by our neighbours who would only consider a roof as being useful for drying consumables, figs and peppers for example.  Why on earth would you want to sit on a south facing, totally exposed combo of slate and concrete that reaches oven like temperatures? Whatever the views of others to us it was an excellent substitute for land ownership. It fulfils our needs perfectly by providing additional living space whilst providing a real sense of space that we both value so much.   To sit and look at the view is truly a therapeutic experience that no amount of pharmaceutical, counselling or self-help can provide.  So, what is this view and why is it so special? 

Close your eyes and imagine yourselves at our house, on our roof terrace and that you have walked as far forward as you can to the dwarf wall.  Careful!  Don’t lean forward over the wall too much or you will pitch over the edge of the roof either, if lucky, into the Nispero tree or, if unlucky, straight onto the raised pathway outside our front door made up of a mosaic of different stones set in concrete.  If you do land in the tree you might consider, if uninjured, picking some of the fruit, also called loquat, always assuming that the quarrel of sparrows that are resident there have not eaten them first.

My motives in attempting to capture the view in words is not entirely altruistic.  If I could bottle that view I would do so to ensure that it could be carried at all times and released into my line if sight when needed.   Failure in the magical bottling department means that it is necessary to try and capture it in words and I will be very happy to achieve that for both you and the two of us.

So, shut your eyes and imagine you are standing at the front of the terrace and facing directly ahead – you are looking south at the Contraviesa, the mountains that separate the Sierra Nevada from two seas: first the sea of polythene sheeting that ensures supermarkets over Europe are stocked with tomatoes and peppers, and then the Mediterranean Sea itself.  More on this later but for now turn 90 degrees to your left to look east.

You will see a higgledy-piggledy arrangement of houses climbing up the mountain, all flat roofed and most with a startling whitewash that in some light seems to glow.    You are looking at about two thirds of the village that is arranged into barrios that used to be known as La Iglesia (church), Las Penas (stones), La Cuevas (caves), El Calvario (effectively Calvary); El Castillo (castle).  Nowadays the barrios are now more prosaically known as bajo, medio and alto.  Our front door is at the top of the lowest (bajo) barrio and our back door, roughly level with where you are standing, is at the bottom of the middle (media) barrio, something like 30 feet higher.  I will be candid and say that if you look a little closer at the buildings you will see that some are definitely in a state of faded grandeur while others have made a utilitarian effort to provide shade by using whatever was available at the time.   It’s not all beauty – there is the distinct sense of the practicality of the Alpujarreno which repurposed all domestic goods once they have fulfilled their original role.  The aesthetic impact of this can be rather obvious and there is a secondary influence too – there is no second-hand market here.  Items are either in the first flush of use, re-imagined into alternative applications, either whole or having been broken down into component parts.  More serious is the underlying sense of such a wonderful and rich community being on the decline as work on the land no longer provides the return that the current new generation want.

Still turned to your left and looking straight ahead you will see the church, a simple square tower with an open bell loft at the northern end and a single aisle building stretching to the south.  The church is the only building that has a pitched and tiled roof.  I guess that Catholic church was happy to exploit many of the Muslim traditions in areas where their faithful lived but drew the line at a flat roofed church.  It is also unique in having a coloured wash on the walls – a pale terracotta.

Run your eye along the roof line of the church towards the south and you will see a near and a far horizon of land meeting sky.  The two horizons have a symmetry about them as the distance skyline matches the ridge of the landmass in the foreground until it is obscured.  The far distant hills are the Sierra de Gator, about 35km as the crow flies from where you are standing.  In some regards a near neighbour, in others a different world.  We have only visited there once in all the time we have been coming here.

The closer of the two landmasses, much closer, is part of Lobrasan.  This looks like a fairly small hill but the top, which you can see, is 1050 metres, about 70 metres higher than where you are standing.  What you can see of Lobrasan could fancifully be considered as sleeping giant, resting on its right side.  The ridge line traces from shoulder to haunch with both left arm and left leg falling into the valley of the Rambla Nieles, something like 200 metres below.  The head is out of sight to the north, slightly to the north, in the form of Penon Hundido.   We have walked pretty much all over this benign giant from all directions and views from the top are fantastic in all directions.  The haunch of the giant is barer than the rest and we often see one of the two goat/ sheep herds from Nieles grazing on afternoons early in the year when the direct sun is not too fierce.

Penon Hundido is a classic spot for the male ibex to strut their stuff and from time to time we have seen them there, on the craggiest outcrop, with their impressive backward curving antlers displayed in all their glory.  A fine way of attracting the females and of reminding juveniles that they have a bit of growing to do before they can expect to take the lead.  However, as a strategy for prolongation of the species it is not flawless if one takes into account that the primary predator, the male Spaniard, tends to have a predisposition for shooting anything with a pulse and an ibex on the skyline in full profile does make a damn fine target.  To be fair, while hunting is a regular pastime here the primary target are the wild pigs who do not choose to present themselves as targets quite as readily as the ibex.

As a spot of light relief from all the words here is a photo of the centrepiece of the view I am describing here.  Photo by Jeremy Hinks

Looking behind Lobras you will see, in a line pretty much extending east to west, the ridge of the Contraviesa.   Just over the giant’s shoulder you can see the peak that is the Cerrajon de Murtas to the east and if you turn to take in the view along the ridge line as far as you can to the west you can just see two peaks, just before the distant ridge is obscured by the colina in the foreground.  One of these peaks is called Salchicha, above a hamlet called Haza de Lino.  I cannot explain how a mountain comes to be named sausage but there is something very suitably Spanish in doing so.  We can report, from experience of walking in the area, that there is no sensory experience on the mountain that implies sausage and there is no evidence of the sausage industry on its flanks.  I am sure that there is some poetic justification although invoking the word sausage in the language of love does seem to have a rather direct euphemistic aspect.

The Contraviesa is on such a large scale.  The part that you can see, from Cerrajon de Murtas to Salchicha, is a distance of around 15km and, at its nearest, the ridge is about 8km away from where you are standing.  At its highest it is about 1500 metres and the northernmost slopes that you are looking at descend to the valley of the Rio Guadalfeo which is out of your sight.  Its current character is defined by the complete absence of accessible water on the landmass but there is evidence of many past waterways cut into the hillside that collect rainfall into their normally dry riverbeds.  This carving of the landscape into barrancos and ramblas (effectively the secondary watercourses that herringbone into the main river valley) is what helps give the area its character and creates innumerable challenges for walkers.  How many times have we rounded the corner of a barranco to see the next corner within a matter of meters only to find the actual walk there involves a 2km walk around the barranco or climb down and back up again that normally requires both equipment and skill.

Dwarfed by both the Contraviesa and Lobrasan are several small tongues of land that you can see as you look down into the valley.  Each of these look like easy fodder for the experienced walker and would be chewed up in a matter of hours under their robust strides.  Maybe so for some people but we have found ourselves lost down in that landscape and when looking up from the riverbed those gentle hills take on a different perspective.  Mountaineering it is not but a landscape that is to be treated with respect.  One of the ridges, which it took three attempts for us to find, leads up from the riverbed through olive and almonds.

Another fanciful impression is that when looking due south, you can see two paws of a huge beast with the two of them separated by the particularly deep valley carved by the Rambla Valdebique.   Where the remainder of the beast is in the distant south, I will leave to those with a more fanciful imagination than I although part of me hopes it is doing some damage to the spreading fields of polythene.   Do you hear the whiff of second-home-owner not-in-my-back-yard’ ism which should be punishable by public flogging?  I hope not but there are future consequences to the Sierra Nevada if this highly lucrative farming method starts drawing on the water from the mountains which has been mooted as a possibility.

Anyway, the slopes that you are looking at are unpopulated because of the lack of water with the only buildings you can see being cortijos that are used in season to service the needs of the so called dry crops of the area: almonds, figs and olives with some areas that have branched out into viniculture.   Apart from the small number of farmhouses the only other obvious evidence of man is a bridge that is right in front of you as you look south.  There is a road tickling the toes of the right-hand paw.  This road snakes in and out of the barrancos between Orgiva and Cadiar and is the route that we now tend to take before climbing to our eyrie.

The backdrop of the Contraviesa cannot be claimed to be dramatic in any particular feature but its impact is one of scale, subtle features and the influence of light.  The colour palette is limited to shades of khaki, ochre and terracotta with varying shades of green reflecting the difference between young olive, mature olive and the only non-productive tree in view, the holm oak.   On these uncompromising slopes most of the land is cultivated and the scarcity of water is one of the drivers for ensuring that the land around the trees is bare.  You simply cannot afford to allow for weeds to compete for the water.  The vertiginous slopes that they put their tractors through to plough can be alarming as is the fact that many fields are still tilled entirely by hand.  Local farmers dig, plough, sow, crop, weed and harvest with a single implement – the humble mattock.  The nett effect of keeping the ground clear is that trees, however small, tend to stand out against the background land giving that impression that the land is being partially and poorly shaved.

During the heat of the day with the sun overhead this landscape seems to lose any definition and effectively appears two dimensional, as if a backdrop in a theatre production.  The analogy is a good one in that, at times, it seems like you could reach out and touch the painted landscape on the backdrop as it appears so close and yet you can then blink and the distance between it and you is re-established as you are recast into being a very small part of a much bigger picture.  As the sun sets shadows are cast within the Contraviesa that return its definition and establishes its true three dimensionality.  A truly dramatic moment is if you are fortunate enough to be looking south at the right time when the shadows start to be cast, and you can literally see the landscape change from two to three dimensions in only a matter of seconds.  Later on the evening light paints the landscape it reaches a gentle pink at a level that gradually rises in response to the descent of the sun on your right.   In a short space of time the backdrop returns to two dimensions but this time with shades influenced by increasing darkness.

Turning slightly to the west and looking at the foreground you will see, immediately across a small valley, a hilltop that we call the walnut whip.  From where you are you can see the striations that contour around the hill at several levels and then on the top there is a partially completed cortijo – the walnut of our grand scale confection.  Some of the steep slopes of the walnut whip defy even the bravest of farmers and they are left uncultivated and to the devices of the holm oak and any other scrub that can hold onto the steep slopes.  Where possible, and with the aid of terracing, almonds are planted on the middle slopes while on the upper there are mainly olives.  One or two fig trees are dotted around the fields but here they are not cultivated on any scale.  As your eye descends to the right from the walnut of the whip you will come to a broad col through which passes the road to Castaras.  Cars coming along this road are a rare event, except during Fiestas, and you will find it almost impossible not to be a little surprised to see one appear in your view and to wonder who it as and what is their purpose.  Local tracks descend into the valley where several cortijos have been built for those who like a challenging lifestyle without water or electricity.  Another mountain rises up and shields the bulk of the Sierra Nevada massif from view and at the base of this mountain there is a network of tracks which lead to individual campos (allotments) that will belong to one villager or another and which they cultivate with dry crops and vegetables common to the area.  After all they have one benefit in particular in relation to the Contraviesa farmers on the opposite side of the valley – access to water from the high mountains using the modern-day equivalent of the acequias that the Moors built to take water from the high mountains of the Sierra Nevada to Las Alpujarra as a whole.

This vista is one that stands alone in terms of grandeur, scale and rugged beauty.  However, it is enhanced even more by the foreground immediately beneath where you are standing. This foreground is at once practical as well as being a function of the landscape that you have been surveying in the distance.  Immediately below are terraces below the lowest houses of the village.  These are owned by one household or another, wherein proximity between house and land is not necessarily related to ownership.  A single pueblista might well own several terraces across the valleys, each one with one particular benefit or other.  Water is the priority as always but soil quality, sun and shade, slope and other factors come a close, and equal second.  The campo immediately under us was once a cooperatively farmed area which is now mainly worked by Alberto on behalf of his mother, Encarna. 

What is one minute a wasteland covered in weeds becomes a heavily ridged allotment with potatoes, onions, tomatoes and peppers being the staple vegetables.  The transmogrification is facilitated by an ancient but very effective rotavator that seems to do the rounds of many plots of land.  A serious evening of rotavating prepares the ground with nutrients provided by the goat manure fro up the road.  Planting follows and the application of the heat available in abundance and the careful management of the much scarcer water leads to cropping in a timeframe that is short enough to make any English allotment holder weep.  If you are lucky, you might see Alberto apply his masterful mattock technique to the job of directing a flow of water along each of the deep trenches that accommodate the crops.  This lasts for as long as he has access to the acequia water before it is channelled to another plot of land where the process will be repeated by another farmer.

Alberto’s terraces fall away down to a small plateau which has an acequia running across it away from you.  Much of this plateau seems to be for pasture for the sheep and goats. Paths on either side of the plateau fall away into the valley: to the left a footpath called the Ruta Medieval for human foot traffic and to the right a goat path for the more intrepid species less phased by a precipitate drop.  Both paths drop down to the Rambla Nieles before rising onto the haunch of the sleeping giant that is Lobrasan.

A brilliant painting of the view in the photo earlier by Karen Welsh .  She captures the reality of the landscape and reimagines it with her creative use of colour.

On the edge of the plateau, nestling like a jewel in the palm of the landscapes hand is one of our favourite sites.  It is the village era, their threshing circle.  Las Alpujarra are riddled with eras.  All are positioned so as to make the most of the prevailing wind in the process of separating the wheat from the chaff and, as a consequence, the have some common characteristics.  Most particularly they are in high, exposed positions and almost by definition they offer extraordinary views.  Other common features are related to their structure.  They are round with a flat surface and have a cobbled stone surface most often in a symmetrical pattern forming a rustic mosaic. The exposed edge is normally supported on a slate wall to raise the floor above the immediate surroundings, this edge typically clinging to the edge of a cliff.  Our own era is unique in having three levels: a circular top level on an elliptical second level which appears to have been sat on a third level at some point in the past.  We have not seen triple layer anywhere else in the area and the scale is consistent with the much higher population of the area in its agricultural heyday.  

So that is what we look out on.  A foreground of some man-made beauty wherein our forebears have understood how to harness the power of nature and a background whose scale, and almost complete absence of human intervention, somehow places the foreground in a visual context.

So having imagined yourself looking at the view you should now go get yourself a drink and then return to capture its essence again.  It never fails to impress and its capacity to draw out the stresses and strains of everyday life is boundless.  

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

For more about Karen Welsh and her paintings, check out her website.

For more about me, Jeremy Hinks, and my coaching, what I think of as thought provocation and curiosity wrangling, go to http://www.alpamayocoaching.com.