Niadela, by Beatriz Montañez

Beatriz Montañez listened to that inner voice that sometimes goes from whispering to shouting amid the noise that comes from outside. And notice that here one prejudged that presenter of «The intermediate»Considering that his new professional bet would not have turned out very well when he had disappeared from TV.

It turned out that it was all due to a very different decision, an idea between the romantic and the spiritual that made her an ascetic, an exotic hermit of our days. And of course, the matter becomes older when it is discovered that it was not a defloration or a temporary step backwards. Years away from everything, without a message in this book from which any proselytism is given off because of or through religion.

It was about these, to move away to meet again and write to relate it. We did not discover new philosophy or depth existentialism in Beatriz's retreat to her secluded new home. We only enjoy life, impressions, sensations and emotions integrated in that nature to which no one returns at all, sine die ...

Nor is it about convincing anyone of any ideology because the decision taken and the time spent in the retreat already indicate that it was not about attracting attention. An overwhelming sincerity flows from this book and it is "only" about transmitting a search for harmonies like the animal that blends in with the environment as a defense of course, but also to become part of that whole with its same colors.

Synopsis

Suppose you have been working on television for years, presenting a program in 'prime time'. You have it all: fame, money, professional recognition, a rich social life ... But you feel like something is 'crack'. And you drop everything. But you really stop. Because you know that you drag a deep and very old wound that neither fame nor money nor recognition have been able to heal. And it's time to take care of that wound.

This is the story of Beatriz Montañez. She decided to go live in a stone cabin, an old peasant shack, which had been abandoned for several decades. There was no electricity, no hot water, and no human being within fifteen miles. It was perfect, because it was time to bet hard, to see them alone with that hollow or empty woman. Extreme confinement? An experiment? An outburst? Not much less. Beatriz Montañez has been living in her modest refuge for more than five years ...

Simply dedicated to writing. Ultimately, the story she tells us in 'Niadela' is that of dispossession: the abandonment of oneself in order to find who one really is. But how to make this motionless journey? As has been done for millennia: stopping your movement, separating yourself from the group or the tribe, sharpening your eyes and ears to understand what nature wants to tell you. Thus, 'Niadela' becomes an exceptional exercise of attention, observation, listening; in other words, of pure 'nature writing', in which with patience, precision and with an extraordinary poetic breath, the author tells us of the constant evolution, as ephemeral as it is marvelous, of the life that springs up around her.

Beatriz Montañez's writing seems to be guided both by her scientific curiosity (which the reader draws from) and by a higher intuition, according to which nature is made and unmade between words, and at times the animal merges with the vegetal, or the mineral with the atmospheric, or the narrator with what she perceives, and in a disconcertingly natural way the text thus speaks to us of a whole, that which only poetic language reveals, that whose settlement in our consciousness allows progressive healing of the wounds that memory drags.

In this way, the story of his friendship with a fox is intertwined with the memory of the father, his absence, his death and something even worse and more painful; the story of that day when he slices his finger with the chainsaw (and picks up the detached fragment, saves it, and drives thirty kilometers to be reattached in an outpatient clinic) is enmeshed with the profound joy of verifying that the wild boar orphan has survived, or with sadness when confirming the logical estrangement and final separation from his partner, or with the fear of being threatened by a hunter, or with the insecurity of feeling forgotten by all those who were previously part of his life more everyday, or with the happiness of feeling part of a new wild family whose destiny, now, he shares.

The possibility then arises of re-formulating a we (which goes beyond the human) that suddenly takes on a much greater importance than that of that self that arrived battered and that is cured, precisely, by accepting its own insignificance and the fascination for the wild beauty that surrounds you.

You can now buy the book «Niadela», by Beatriz Montañez, here: