This is the time of year when the sun belongs to the south of Europe.
Tenerife—where the weather holds no loyalty, shifting between rain, sun, cool winds, hot winds. Sometimes you feel both at once, the warmth of the sun pressing against your skin while the wind wraps around you with a chill. A contradiction that makes complete sense.
Perfect, for me.
So I stayed out all day, whenever the sun decided to show itself. Holding onto it, knowing it wouldn’t last.
Oh, dear Tenerife,
May you always be honored the way every traveler honors you.
You are wild—
Beautifully wild,
Untamed,
Beautifully, wildly resilient.
Because you created yourself from the ashes.
Literally.
Volcanic soil beneath you, fire-born, yet you breathe life into everything.
You do not just withstand destruction; you embrace it, you learn from it, and then—
You begin again.
Walking through the remnants of prehistoric forests in Anaga, I felt the weight of something ancient. Trees that once stretched across all of Southern Europe, now standing here, whispering their stories to the mist.
Moss-covered trunks, ferns that curled like secrets, mist weaving its way through everything, turning the path into something more than just a walk.
Every sense awake, but moving in its own rhythm.
The silence wasn’t just heard; it was felt.
The quiet carried weight. It lived in the branches, in the fallen leaves, in the air itself.
Soft sounds—birds, insects, the wind shifting through the trees, the occasional drop of water sliding off a leaf. The kind of sounds that don’t demand attention, but are felt in the body, recognized by something deeper than hearing.
Light playing through the trees, filtering through branches in ways that made time feel fluid.
This was, this is, this will always be.
The texture of logs, rough yet softened by time.
They have withstood everything—storms, fires, wind, change.
They have adapted, learned to hold both the past and the present, already knowing what the future will ask of them.
The air smelled like untouched earth, damp and fresh. It didn’t just enter the lungs; it opened something. Like a gateway, like a memory, like a feeling that doesn’t need words.
Anaga was not just a place.
It was a presence.
And then, the lava rock formations—raw, porous, broken yet whole.
Shaped by fire, carved by ocean waves, softened by time but never tamed.
Where lava meets the sea, the sun plays with the water, and suddenly, the waves take on a color that exists nowhere else.
Succulents—growing from the cracks of volcanic stone, roots holding onto places that should not sustain them. Yet they grow, they thrive. A reminder that life will always find a way, even in the most impossible places.
The mountains—standing still, holding the island together like an embrace.
Tall, unmoving, steady in their existence.
Dramatic cliffs plunging into the Atlantic.
Deep ravines cutting through the land like stories carved over millions of years.
Rock formations shaped by time, by heat, by destruction, by rebirth.
Tenerife’s native pine, standing as proof of survival.
Its bark thick enough to withstand fire.
Its needles pulling moisture from the clouds, feeding the land, giving back, always giving back.
Resilient. A lesson in stillness and strength.
The waves—wild, restless, alive.
The wind moving through them, the light playing along their crests.
Foam forming, dissolving, forming again, like a rhythm that existed before us and will continue long after.
The waves reached for me before I reached for them.
Salty, cool—alive.
The ocean moving through my fingers, slipping between the spaces, wrapping around my skin, pulling away only to return.
Light scattered across the water, glistening, shifting—like a quiet conversation between the sun and the sea.
The foam, delicate yet relentless, dissolving and forming again, never truly gone.
For a moment, I stood still.
I am here, I am alive, that I am part of all of this.
Bare feet pressing into the black volcanic sand, hand in the water, the weight of the world dissolving in the tide.
an offering.
an acceptance.
an exchange of energies
Am I in Tenerife?
Or is Tenerife in me?
And then, my beautiful partner for life
Hands steady on the wheel.
Music filling the car, not just as sound but as feeling.
And when the song touches something deep within him, he sings—not because he thinks to, but because it moves through him.
A voice flowing freely, carried by the road, by the moment, by something beyond words.
And I sit beside him, watching the light shift on the road ahead, feeling the wind tangle in my hair, knowing that some places don’t just exist in memory.
Some places live inside you.
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