Some time between storms, I'd been enjoying a warmer spell, people watching and absorbing the sounds of Stan Getz, when a woman had come to sit on the grass next to my rig. She'd been followed by a pair of tiny pups, who were playing, pouncing on each other and rolling around in a brown-and-white ball of fluff. I watched them for a while, as I sipped my tea, and Brubeck joined the jam.

The pups drew a small crowd and it wasn't the first time; I'd seen this family before, but this time, the woman saw me watching the games and threw me a smile. I took it as an invitation, and since I'd spent the last two day alone, while the rain pounded the gates of my kingdom, I accepted gladly.

With tea in hand, I slid out of my seat, leaving the boys to jam it out, and walked over to say hi. It was a few minutes before the pups noticed me, and they stopped rolling around to come and check me out. Nothing interesting, apparently, and the games resumed without another thought, only now, I was a part of it, and now and then, they would end up on my lap, flop over my shoes and bump into me like I was just a part of the furniture.

It was nice to talk to a stranger. We shared stories of travel and photography, dogs, and other important things, and she was the one who told me about the mountain forest village I would later visit. I was probably there for half an hour when the woman, whose name I can no longer recall, got up to take the pups to town. I spent the next hour on the beach, in my capacity as volunteer beach volleyball judge, silently awarding points for various reasons, some of them having to do with the game.

As hunger set in, I returned to my kitchen to cook up some lunch and organize my calendar for the busy day ahead. By the time it got dark, I'd written a couple of post cards and looked through my box of memories. After seconds and thirds, I sat at my typewriter to commit some ideas to paper for later discovery.

Life was full of space back then. Bit space isn't a lack of things; space is a thing in its own right. It gives you abilities nothing else can, like the ability to think and feel, the ability to appreciate, to accept. It's a wonderful thing. And I had it in abundance.

A few days later, while returning from a long ride through Barri Gòtic and Sants, and the long way round through Universitat and back to El Poble Nou, I saw those pups and their woman again, playing as energetically as before. We exchanged familiar smiles, and sat together again for a short while, this time engaging in Spanish, and it felt like we'd been friends for years. But that was the last time I saw the three of them, and the next day, I headed over to that village in the forest on the mountain, and that was where I met Rocío (and the mountain village forest dog).