Some runs stay in your head because of the view. Others because of the climb. This one stuck with me because of the stones.
I was halfway up a trail somewhere in eastern Spain, one of those dusty zig-zag paths that climb slowly out of a valley. The kind where you stop pretending you’re running after a while and just settle into a steady hike. The mountain looked empty at first. Dry grass, rosemary, scattered pines. Nothing unusual.
Then I noticed a line of stones running across the slope.
It wasn’t a natural line. The rocks were too evenly stacked. A low wall about waist height, running for maybe thirty metres before disappearing into bushes. I carried on up the path and ten metres above it there was another one. Same shape. Same line.
Then another.
That was when the hillside suddenly made sense. The whole mountain face had been cut into terraces.
Once you notice them you see them everywhere. Long shallow platforms held in place by dry stone walls, stepping their way up the mountain like a staircase built for giants. Some are still intact. Others are sagging slightly where time and gravity have started to win.
It’s strange to think about the amount of work behind them. Every one of those stones was carried there by someone. Picked up, placed, adjusted, balanced. Hundreds of metres of walls holding back soil that would otherwise just slide down the slope.
These mountains were farms once.
Not big farms. Small terraces carved into hillsides where olives, almonds or vines could grow in thin strips of soil. Families working the same slopes we now pass through with trail shoes and backpacks.
The trail itself usually follows the old access routes. You can tell when you start looking for it. The path cuts across the mountain at a steady angle because that’s the easiest line for a donkey to climb. The turns are wide where a cart might have needed space to pivot.
And then there are the almond trees.
You see them standing alone on some terraces, old and twisted but still alive. In spring they explode into blossom, pale pink against the dusty mountain slopes. For a few weeks the place almost looks like a working farm again.
The rest of the year it feels quiet. Not the peaceful quiet of untouched nature. A different kind of quiet.
The kind you notice after something has slowly faded away.
I realised properly what I was looking at during a run where I had actually stopped for a completely unromantic reason. My shoelace had come undone. I crouched down in the middle of the trail to fix it and while I was there I started looking at the hillside properly.
It suddenly struck me that none of the terraces were random. They were too consistent, too carefully built. The mountain wasn’t just a mountain. It was a piece of old infrastructure.
Which is a slightly ridiculous thought to have while tying your shoelace halfway up a trail, but once it clicked I couldn’t stop noticing them.
Every run after that started revealing the same thing.
Terraces above reservoirs. Terraces tucked into small valleys. Terraces clinging to slopes that look impossible to farm. Sometimes you spot the remains of a small stone hut beside them, half hidden by bushes, the doorway still facing the valley.
They were shelters once. Somewhere to escape the midday heat. Somewhere to keep tools. Now they slowly fill with soil and plants.
Nature is taking the land back, but it’s doing it gradually. Pines grow between the walls. Shrubs spread across the old platforms. The terraces soften, collapse in places, blur into the hillside.
But they never quite disappear.
Even high in the mountains you occasionally see them again. A lone wall halfway up a ridge. A terrace that seems absurdly high above the valley floor. Evidence that someone once thought it was worth farming there.
Running through these areas always makes the landscape feel different.
The mountains look wild, but they are not untouched. They carry the marks of centuries of work. People shaping slopes, moving stone, coaxing crops out of thin soil.
Now the trails run through what used to be farms.
Sometimes I try to imagine the noise these hillsides once had. Donkeys on the paths. People repairing walls after winter storms. The sound of tools against rock. Voices carrying across the terraces.
Today it’s mostly just wind and the sound of your own footsteps.
You climb higher and eventually the terraces stop. The mountain becomes steeper, rockier, harder to shape. The walls disappear and the slopes return to something that looks more natural.
But when the trail drops back down toward the valleys you start seeing them again.
Lines of stone half hidden in the scrub.
Ghost farms scattered across the mountains.