Without wishing to disturb Cervantes where his Don Quixote mistook Windmills for menacing long-armed giants, I have always considered these modern mills – the wind turbines – silent giants.
Certainly less menacing and poetic than those born in the madness of the knight errant under the condescending but resigned gaze of the trusty squire Sancho Panza, but no less deserving of respect for their majestic and silent presence in the infinity of many of the vistas I have trodden over time.
Almost 30 years ago, their long arms and slender bodies knew how to enrapture my gaze in the curved contours of the Bavarian heights.
And there I found them again, also elegant and silent – though never threatening – in the French and Dutch countryside. They were the Southern Star on Earth in the deserts of Chile and they cadenced my weary, labored step on the Mirador Alto del Perdón in Spanish Navarre during my Camino to Santiago.
Modern mills that treasure the wind … that from the wind, cleaving it with a silent as well as harmonious hiss, draw breath. And poetry- though less noble than Cervantes’s – creates in their slow movement the rhythm of time that makes them guardians.
Here in Bac Lieu, on the Mekong Delta, where the Mother of Waters finds her rest after nearly 5 thousand kilometres of travel through 5 countries in Southeast Asia, in front of the immense-as silent-expanse of slowly moving paddles, I can recall all the moments when these Long-Armed Giants accompanied some of the steps I feel I want to remember.
They have been the Guardians of a Time (mine) and of those who chose to want to be Wandering and wandering.
Like a mad Don Quixote, but who made poetry his voice.
