The cortijo itself has been assembled from rocks picked out of the mountain and held together with mud clay. It has a jagged neatness solid enough to defy any elements and is a work of extraordinary skill and art. The back wall disappears into the slope behind as if the land has rolled down and is trying to smother it (it has already claimed the old hen house at the back) and the flat roof is covered with launa (a sort of clay weathered from the indigenous slate rock) with a small square chimney in the far corner. It has the simplicity of a child's drawing and is perfect.

From up at the top it now looks more like a ruin than it ever did before with the roof stripped off . . . In this state it is clear to see the rudimentary construction of the walls - simply rocks piled up on rocks - and it all looks a little primitive, but at least it is one stage closer to being transformed.

Up close, there is something forlorn about the house; stripped of all signs of occupation it looks abandoned to its fate of crumbling back to the earth but, conversely, it also looks full of hope and promise.

Our first day up at the house and there they are; two mules on the forest road standing by piles of cement and terracotta roof slabs. One has his head in the gorse and grasses on the bank as he lazily nibbles at the green bramble shoots. I can see a sturdy brown rump circled by a double band of canvas webbing that joins together in a fat strap. Above this harness, on either side, are wooden panniers - like boxes with the top and front missing - and in them are lashed 5 or 6 of the long terracotta roofing slabs.

Beneath the bulge of the animal's stomach I can see the legs of a man and I can hear the rasps of a wooden shovel on the ground. Beside me, Steve's camera shutter is clicking. A puff of cement dust rises. We walk forward and I now catch sight of the second mule, a white one with a paint-dipped grey tail and wide pepper-red fringe of tassels hanging from under its saddle. The air turns cloudy as the wide-mouthed rubber panniers slung across its back are slowly filled with cement. Both mules suddenly jerk their heads up and I can see their elegant long ears and tightly cropped manes. The man puts down his shovel and moves around to tighten the girth on the, now fully loaded, cement carrier. Both animals now shuffle their back hooves in the dust, impatient to be off.

It is a magic moment as we watch the animals' backs swaying down our mule path.This is just how it should be with the ancient ways being restored once more and I feel as though I am honouring the ancestors of the land; and they know it.

I stand and watch the man moving slowly in the heat as he unwraps the rope from around the terracotta slabs and unloads them one by one. A muscle in the mule's hindquarters twitches; it shifts its weight and rests while the load is lightened. It is used to this routine. Once freed of its burden it starts to graze on the oats that have sprung up from the residue of the Small Man's last crop. The white mule's turn now. It is led over to the beginnings of a mound of cement and stares into the distance like a bored teenager while it waits for the man to walk around to the far side. In one smooth movement the rubber panniers are pushed up and over and they slide to the ground releasing a haze of cement dust. The edges of animal and mineral blur. A quick check to make sure all the load is out and then they are slung back over the animal's saddle and the three of them are off again with their measured pace back up the mountain to the road.

They must have been working for hours before we got there because the kitchen is now another line of bricks higher (but this time with the sides more or less parallel to each other) and a number of the terracotta roof slabs on the donkey room have been removed and the stonework under them, reinforced.

I glance into the donkey room as we pass and it looks unfamiliar with its ceiling of new beams and terracotta and its floor partially dug away. The kitchen hasn't changed much with the exception of the rows of fat bricks perched on top of the thick, lime-washed walls but, conversely, it looks even less like a room than it did before; there are gaps the shape and size of windows but it is difficult to imagine them ever framing a view, their three sides only a jagged jumble of stones. The cortijo is becoming something else.

The digger has lowered its wide shovel and is grazing out a level platform of ground for itself to stand on. It is not a new or sophisticated machine but it means business with its voracious toothed shovel at the front and claw of a scoop on the hydraulic arm at the back. If there was ever any shine on the ochre paintwork it has long since been scoured off by the wind and rain or baked into dullness by the summer sun. It has 'Construction King' emblazoned on its side and that makes us laugh immoderately - the relief is immense. We watch as it gouges away a foot or so of soil from our land and the start of the mule track is widened into the age of horsepower. We retreat back up into the shade of the large chestnut tree by the Lower House and listen to the soothing sound of our earth being ripped apart.

We scrabble down to meet them and see that the digger has sunk down to almost below the level of the road as it continues to eat its way through the mountain.

I was still shocked by just how much the Way had altered the land around me. Huge banks of soil tumbled down like colliery slag-heaps and filled the space where the shallow reservoir had been; young trees now had one-third of their trunks buried and looked like they were growing at an impossible angle . . .

All extracts from White Mules and Mountains: Snapshots of Alpujarran Life. © Ruth Wade 2004