The perfect cup
Is there anything sweeter than the perfect cup of coffee?
If you’re anything like me, you are always chasing that perfect cup of coffee. Drip isn’t on the radar. The perfect cup exists in the sweetness of crema, the scent of freshly ground beans, the knowing that the beans you’re using are recently roasted, not too oily, and not too dry, and that moment of silence right before you take your first sip — this is the stuff of a great cup of coffee.
A few years ago, I walked across Spain on the Camino de Santiago. I started in St. Jean Pied de Port in France, and made my way up the mountain, crossing into Spain and spending the first-night post-walk at Roncesvalles. The remainder of the journey was peppered with lively characters, long days and short, cool breezy walks, and difficult desert scaped hot walks. Each day presented a different challenge and an altered state of mind. Walking the Camino is like living through the waves of an entire life, in 30 days. There are only four constants a walker can predict. One. You will have bad days, wonder why you came, and want to leave. Two. There is always someone’s smiling face or gentle presence willing to help you along the way. Three. You are never truly alone. Four. There is always coffee at lunch, and wine at dinner.
By the time Spain came along, I’d been drinking coffee for the majority of my adult life. I was never an extra-large double-double fanatic, always erring on the conservative side with a smaller cup and no added sweetener, milk, or any other dilution of the great coffee substance. When I traveled to France, I learned about the art of drinking coffee where one sits in a wicker chair on cobble-stone streets, watching passers-by going about their days. I had some great cups in France, other parts of the world, and closer to home, but it really wasn’t until Spain where a full understanding of the power of the perfect cup surfaced.
Day after day, walking from town to town, through forested trails, fields of wine grapes or sunflowers or wheat, along mountain passes and on cobblestoned streets, the simple pleasure of a cup of coffee while taking a rest at a wooden table, your pack nestled at your feet starts to elicit such joy it’s difficult to compare it to much else. When your feet are tired, your mind is weary, and the monotony of putting one foot in front of the other for hours at a time, spanning 30 days – sometimes more, depending on where you started– an open chair, a croissant, and a cafe con leche is enough to put you right again, sending you on your way for the next few hours until the end of your day where you can rest your head once more, only to begin again with the next sunrise. The smell of the cafe, the touch of the chair and table, the chatter of those around you, the sound of each footstep and walking stick tapping on the ground, as the sun shines from above, warming your heart, you realize that perhaps it isn’t the coffee at all that has touched your soul so completely, but something else entirely.
Those moments of pure joy, in whatever form they may take for you, are perhaps less about any one thing or person, but center their power around the experience; the way we internalize a moment. It’s about perspective. In the right frame of mind, emptied from worry or chaos or distraction, people have the potential to experience joy in whatever is laid in front of them, barring a moment of trauma or tragedy, there is always a joy to be found in the simplest pleasures if only we’d learn to stop – to sit – to observe– to let the moment wash over you as if you’ve reached Nirvana. If I let it, that moment comes every day with the perfect cup of coffee.