Hearing a formerly Canadian couple of Azerbaijani and Russian origin sing a German electropop song originally sold me on Majorca (see a YouTube clip here). A stretch—I know—but something about the youthful excitement beaming in their eyes at the prospect of a weekend away drew me.
Stairway, Cala Barques
Hope seems baked into the ochre landscape of an island defined by the cliché 'jewel of the Mediterranean'. It is not its wild-eyed club-hopping sister, Ibiza; it is the yearning of The Night Manager's lead character Jonathan Pine for the off-limits ethereal wife of a billionaire arms-dealer on a T.V. series set on the island itself—wistful, breathless, and a tad debonairly reckless. It is camel-coloured sandals skimming over cobblestone to a glimmering party under twinkling harbour lights. The surge in the pit of your stomach before you dive into the Mediterranean's soulful blue waters.
Somewhere on the southern tip of the island near the tan-and-forest-green-trimmed town Ses Salines lies a bleached salt pan where locals have harvested salt for generations. High up in a mound of salt waiting to be processed nestled a young family's hope: a nest of that same-green twine and pale-brown grass sheltered baby birds in the inhospitable white glare reflected off a chemical compound used for preserving food, stemming life (bacteria, mold). I snapped a picture of this age-old attempt to avoid the inevitable.
The next year when I returned the nest was gone, no doubt removed as a consequence of processing the salt. I couldn't help but wonder what became of that plucky couple who tried to secure themselves, and their fledglings, a future.