Many people hike the Camino de Santiago, the Way of St. James, and many know why they do it, or at least think they do, at the start.  What comes out of it is much more than a pilgrimage to what is taken to be the reliquary, an ossuary, of the remains of one of Jesus’ disciples, James the Elder, the son of Zebedee.   It is told that the burial place of St. James was discovered by the light of stars shining on a spot of ground, and that, upon investigation, a tomb was uncovered.  It is also said that the body of St. James was in a marble sarcophagus, but I have not read if the tomb uncovered in Spain was marble.  I personally find it suspicious that just at the time the armies of Christendom were trying, in vain, to expel the Moors from the Iberian peninsula, the tomb of one the original apostles was “discovered” there.

Whether the legends and stories and fables are true becomes, in the larger view, irrelevant, because this month-long trek becomes a journey into the “soul”, if you will, for each person on the trail.  Like all pilgrimages to holy places, it becomes a pilgrimage of discovery, not of what is “out there” but what is “in here.” 

It is a discovery of what a person brings with them.  If faith, then faith will be strengthened.  If a divisive mouth and mind, then that will be enhanced by the experience.  Whatever a person holds in their heart, whatever is at the core of their being, that thing which is the whole of their personality, their core persona -- that is what will be amplified and will radiate about them.  And everyone will see it and know that person for what they are.  If you should go on such a pilgrimage, then the animals and the people, the air and the trees, the water and the fish in it, the birds of the air -- all will know you for what you really are.  If a person is aware, is awake, is mindful, they will also see it and come to know themselves better, more fully, with all their flaws.  {{All the cuts and bruises, the healed or the open festering wounds, will boil to the surface aching for relief from the prison of our hidden self.  Our joys and our pain will manifest themselves as the trial tests the will and contends with the body until the very force of the struggle forces the mind to relinquish its control over them, to be forced to accept that life is sorrow, is pain and that the only way out of the pain and sorrow is to know that everyone else, too, has pain and sorrow that cripples them and binds them to the same faith.}}  The discovery of the faith of love.  The discovery that this faith of love transcends all “religion”; it cares not what book you read.

This is the story of my journey--my discovery, my healing and my suffering--which will continue, unabated, until my death.

The First Day

 I arrived at St. Jean Pied du Port, St. John at the foot of the pass, on the day of the first full moon in March, 2009. The 7th I think it was. I came in to Biarritz, in the south of France, on the TGV from Paris earlier in the day and caught the little, two car, train that made the hour or so shuttle into the Pyrenees town. The little train, more of a tram, wound its way alongside a clean little river that, too, wound its way down from the high mountain snowfields and meadows. The hills and mountains were rock and, for the most part, bare and stood out in stark contrast to the cultivated fields and partitioned farms in the narrow river valley. I wondered if, in times long ago, if Charlemagne had seen a forested slope. If war and plague and famine had driven the people to harvest the trees to survive, had denuded the slopes to the point where the soil-less rock couldn’t support higher plant life. Whether, like in Scotland, the trees had been burned down to make pasture for livestock and, in retribution, the Earth gave up the struggle and bade man, make houses with wood as Pharaoh had bade Moses to have his people make brick without straw or if these hills had always been naked and threadbare. 



The tram stopped at the base of a gentle slope that lead up to the old city, a Roman frontier city. The climb up to it would have been easy save for the 45 pound backpack and the fifty eight years of trial and pain that weighed me down.  I soon fell behind the 10 or so other people, who carrying packs of varying sizes, meandered up the road looking into shops and bars and chatted animatedly. The smiles on their faces made me feel more alone than I already knew I was.  “I’m here now, nothing to do but carry on,” I thought.  That refrain would run through my mind a thousand times before the end of the next day, but at that moment, I was enthralled by the bliss of ignorance and looking forward to what I thought could be the end of me or could be my awakening to my real life.  The nervous quivering in my stomach told me I was at the edge of my “comfort zone.”

This was not my first trip to Europe.  On my very first trip I had rented a horse on a three-day holiday package and rode around Dartmoor.  I nearly killed myself-- running freely on the rocky tors, slopes, and bogs--but I didn’t, and even though my soft, desk-ridden buttocks ached from the use of flabby muscles, I came away with another “success” in my life; the knowledge and realization that I survived, thrived, in the adversity of the moment, however contrived it may seem to others.  It was high adventure, and I have sought it out, in measured doses, ever since. 

But this was different.  It was not a quick trip, and I was not as young as I had been, and I was on my own.  The online guide suggested not going in early Spring when there can be inclimate weather. Having checked weather satellite images, I had seen where swirling clouds of low pressure could blow in at any time, bringing rain and snow.  I had last checked the weather map in Paris the day before I boarded the train south.  If I didn’t delay, the weather would be clear over the pass.

I did not have to ask the clerk at the tourist information booth on how to get to the chapel to register; all perigrinos have to register, or should, and my backpack had given me away. The middle-aged lady handed me a map and quickly inked in the route through the old citadel.  Across the wide paved street a gothic arched passage through the wall of the citadel led up a cobbled street, past a small, walled lawn, to “T” at the main village street.  



Turning left I easily found the chapel office where you can register for a Euro. I donated five, registered and got my pilgrims passport, a folded piece of heavy, cream colored paper, stamped and initialed, and received my scallop shell, the outward symbol of the Camino Pilgrim, the Perigrino.  The Father told each group of Pilgrims the expected weather over the pass to Roncevoux, Roncevalles in Spain, and the safer route of the two to walk.  There is the Napoleon Route traversing the pass on the left, or East, side of the stream that runs down from the pass, and a more modern auto route that runs on the right, or West.  Either route is hard, but he advised, because of the heavy rains and slippery muddy slopes, taking the paved road.  The Father told us that ten days ago a young man was caught in a snowstorm and died of exposure.  I took his advice even though I had prepared for a Pacific Northwest trek with a “zero” rated sleeping bag, a bivy sack to put it in, and a tent, plus long underwear and wool socks.

A local woman, for a small fee, housed six pilgrims in a small, clean, and tidy room. I dropped my pack and, after settling in, went to explore the old town and citadel, looking for a good meal.  The Father had said to notice the lintels of the doorways as I toured the streets.  I walked up to the old Roman fort, and looking through one of the parapets, I could see why this was a such a strategic location: it marked the approach to the pass from the East.





As I walked down the gentle gradient of the cobbled streets, the soft “bruppt” of my hiking boots--as I trod the cobbles--echoed on the stone walls of the homes and shops in the old walled city. Soft light from the windows washed the streets in the quickly darkening early evening. As I glanced in, families were sitting down to eat.  Many homes had candles on the table, a long baguette in a basket, and a bottle of wine beside it.  Young children sat at their places, parents at theirs--many a home had a grandparent or two also--all bowed in prayer.  I longed for that sense of home, belonging, family. I turned my gaze to the cobbles or up to the orange-colored snow-capped peaks to the south, leaving the families their privacy.  I remembered to look for the lintels and saw many dated 1804, 1812, and a few with the bust of the Caesar over the doorway.  “Is this city that old? To have been built two thousand years ago and yet remain in habitable condition!”  I don’t know why I was so surprised; I had been to Rome and people live in apartments there that I was told are quite old.  I had stayed in a seminary in Voltera that had been dedicated in 532 AD.  Still, it was hard to believe that families lived there and shops were still in use and in such good condition.  History crawled into my body and crept under my skin, taking me to a place very near yet very long ago.  

I found a lively little restaurant where they were celebrating a soccer victory by the local hero, and it beckoned me in. I had a lamb stew with fresh bread and local, hearty, red wine, lifting my spirits.  Later I wandered about, feeling the air, and listening to the sound of the foaming river rushing down the slope to the south, to cascade over a small fall at the bridge, over which the auto route passed.  The moon was near full, and the bright glow cast a blue light on the trees on the slopes, on the surface of the water, and on the fields of snow high up on the mountain sides.  A cold wind descended, and I knew it was time to take my besotted self to bed.  Tomorrow the test would begin.







The Beginning

Every day, from this day on, until the end of the Way, starts at seven in the morning.  That doesn’t mean you get up at seven, it means you’re out the door by seven.  That does mean getting up at six,  packing up, eating what you’ve got or what’s offered, and getting out and on the trail. This morning started with stale bread, which I piled with butter and jam, and a cup of instant coffee.  These people, who run the albergues, the Pilgrim hostels, need to get ready for the next group that’s coming up behind you, and they--most all of them--have jobs they need to get ready to go to, and that doesn’t mean they are rude, but the look on their faces is the same the world over.  “I’m busy with family, worried about making ends meet, and need to get it done”, just like we do in The States, or in England, or France, or Italy.  Well, maybe not Italy.

The air was cold and I was glad for my wool socks... and long underwear... and jacket. I descended the quiet cobbles, my backpack engaging the muscles in my legs and on my hips with every measured step on the slick cobbles.

. 

The southern portico of the citadel opened onto a medieval stone foot bridge, crossing upstream from the auto route, passing more homes and shops and onto the auto route on the west side of the stream.   Up the route climbed,  past the last outskirts of St. Jean and into the farmlands, obscured by early morning mist, and on to upland fields of the countryside where young lovers from St. Louis passed by, intent on their goal, and life together, yet still knowing what they were there for.



On I walked, trying to come to terms with the realization that I was retired and what that meant; no structured life to return to.  I had sold my home and was now single, again, so that structure too was gone.  I had no place to return to, no life to continue.  I had watched a travelogue about the Camino and thought that this would be a good transition, something to get myself out of myself, something to make me forget the death of my young daughter, the suicide of my brother, the felonious transgressions of my father, the insanity of “Western life” in general.  Little did I know what The Camino would do all that for me, or to me.  Maybe I did wish to die and what better way than to do it here, on this trek.  I shoved this train of thought back into the depths where I kept--where we all keep--these blackened thoughts, and kept walking--trudging to what goal I did not know, nor cared.

Little rivulets and brooks trickled and burbled their way from springs and snows on the mountain sides as I climbed on and on in a curving, hair-pinned ascent... to the end of the first day of walking.  The shoe salesman had advised me to get boots that were one size too big, but I, in my arrogance, chose those that fit comfortably.  Now, as my swelling feet jammed my toes against my boots, I began to regret my foolishness.  I walked on, the upland valley falling below me as I mounted curve after curve, and St. Jean, hidden by the folds of the mountains, disappeared.  On I trod, back bent, legs and feet aching, as the sun dissolved the mists that had chilled me in the early morning, now heating me until sweat wet my back and arms and face.

My empty, wagging stomach and parched mouth made me stop--at Valcarlos, the last village in France--to eat.  The idea of stopping there for the day didn’t occur to me.  It’s only 24 kilometers, 15 miles, from St. Jean to Roncevoux and I was accustomed to riding my bike five miles each way to work and I walked 10 miles, on average, every day and so I told myself "I can do this; I'm tough."  It’s just mind over matter: if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.  I didn’t mind.  Yet.


After Valcarlos the roadway pitched up quickly, leaving the valley that the stream had made during the unnumbered millennia of its flowing, flying into the beech forests crowning the Pyrenees.  My lungs burned in the thinning air.  My swollen toes slammed into the ends of my boots with every step my feet took, weighed down by my pack.  My back dripped with sweat, my face dripped with sweat.  My mind barked, “Why are you doing this? Just quit, you don’t need this.  You're retired.  You’re too old for this,” in a never ending deluge of why I could stop, trying to justify quitting.  “No”, I told myself, “I will not quit!”  I had to do something to take my mind off the loneliness, the isolation, the rigorous indoctrination I had given myself in my “real life” to get to the goal, to achieve, to work.  Only later, much later, would I realize that we, in America, live to work.  I remembered mediation.  I needed something for my mind to work on besides my pain.  I would count my steps.  I counted twenty steps, and counted twenty steps twenty times, and I counted twenty times twenty times twenty steps, 8000 steps; where was the top!  My heart pounded in my ears, and everywhere there was movement in my body, there was aching.  I could not go on.  I resolved that I had bitten off more than I could chew and that the first car down the hill I would hitch a ride out, down, and amuse myself with an easier trek.  No car came by.  I could not wait.  “No way out but on,” I told myself.  “Okay brain, shut up,” I scolded.  And it did.

In the quiet of the mountainside, a little Jack Russell Terrier joined me, bouncing around, running up the road and back down to me, licking my hand, bouncing up on his hind legs and yipping a little voice of encouragement.  Engrossed in the antics of the little pup, I didn’t notice a Frenchman catching up to me until he was walking beside me.  I couldn’t talk much between the huffs and puffs of my exertion but I was glad to have company.  He wore a very light pack and could have easily passed me but we walked together up the steep grade soon to be joined by another Frenchman on a bicycle pulling a child carrier with a big dog in it.  Together the three of us, with the two dogs, were pulling each other up with encouragement and stories, as the day wore on and the roadway bent in one hair-pin curve after another, climbing towards the pass.

After some hours the little terrier, as by some internal signal, suddenly left us, and trotting down the road and over the edge of the steep hillside, set off to his next destination. Home, I hoped.  He looked clean and healthy and wore a little leather belt for a collar.  He acted like he knew his way around.  “Thank You, my little friend”, I whispered.  Friends unlooked for.  My human friends walked with me for another hour or so, but as the afternoon sun sank lower I could sense their anxiety, and when they asked me if I was okay, I waved and nodded and their pace picked up, soon leaving me to continue along, alone.  The head of the valley swooped up on my left just as the road curved to the right and ascended in a long, even grade, and I could tell that I was closing in on the pass.  Far ahead the two Frenchmen strode on in a quick pace that I could not have matched, even with no pack. As I watched them--envying their youth--moving further and further away, they suddenly stopped.  Appearing as dark shapes in the shadow of the trees stretching across the road, they turned, arms reaching up, and waved, and I could hear them faintly call out, “You’re almost there, my friend.  We’re at the top!”  All I could do was wave and yell “thank you”; I wanted to run up and hug them.  I never saw them again.

At the pass at Roncevoux stands a chapel, enshrouding the first chapel to Roland, Charlemagne’s paladin. The terrain rises steeply from the north, cresting at this flat open field, or gentle swale of grass, of maybe a hundred yards, then descends, nearly as steeply, to where legend has it Roland fell defending his kings retreating army. And there is built a Benedictine Monastery which bears its name. 


Just as the descent starts into Spain a spring bubbles its way to a small brook that, through a course of rock and small falls, leads a straight line to the monastery through a grove of beech trees.  The trees, in the failing light, cast stolid shadows on slick, wet, mossy pavement as it descends quickly to Roncevoux.  My knees, unused to holding a descent, ached and my legs shook violently as I steadied myself on my trekking poles.  It took a painfully long time to get down; it was 7:30 in the evening, dark, and spitting snow when I knocked on the half door leading to the dormitory.
















Roncevoux


I registered while the lady checked my name on the list that is sent from St. Jean to the Monastery of perigrinos that had started on the Camino.  “One day!  Good walk .”  I could only nod a sweaty head, my parched mouth wouldn’t speak.  On the way up I had drunk the two liters of water I started with.  I paid my lodging and, following her into the dormitory where I, along with 120 other pilgrims, would sleep, she told me dinner would be at 8:30 and that mass would be at eight.  Again, just nods and grunts from me.  I was beat.
The room was rock walled and rock floored.  Rough wooden beams, tree branches and trunks, shimmed to make a straight gable, covered us.  A vent fan in the far end hummed.  I was given the last bunk, a top bunk, next to the door.  I quickly dropped my pack in the nearest space not blocking the door, peeled my sodden, water proof jacked off, bent down and got my boots off hoping the cool floor would give my aching, sweaty, swollen feet a bit of relief.  What happened was just the opposite.  As soon as my feet hit the cold stone floor their muscles cramped turning them into clubs in a pain that was near debilitating.  The sweat on my shirt evaporated and my stomach and chest started to cramp.  Stars shown out in the corner of my vision.  My breath became erratic and strained.  I was on the verge of thermal shock.  As quick as my twisted fingers could I pulled out my sleeping bag, tossed it up on the bed and climbed in warming myself in a moaning, swirling delirium.  Later one of the fellow walkers couldn’t make out what I was getting on about until I told her that I had done the St. Jean/Roncevoux leg in one day.  Her and her companion had taken two.  A younger man, from Germany had, upon reaching the chapel at the pass decided to take the trail alongside the creek down to the Abby.  He had slipped and broken his leg.  He lay in his bunk, waiting for ambulance to take him to a hospital.  I was reminded, once again, that people get seriously injured and some, still, die on this trail.
A shower, even in cold water, was a joy to experience after that mind bending, mind numbing, body wrenching experience.  I wondered, later, if that is a little bit of what childbirth must be like.  I couldn’t believe I made it, climbing 1100 meters, 3500 feet, most of it in the last half of the route, even though it did take 13 hours.  I missed evening mass and the dinner was frugal, at best, but I went to bed smiling, having conquered pain and subdued a recalcitrant mind, and slept the contented sleep of angels, awaking to a bright morning, invigorated, ready to continue on.

To Zubiri

There was no breakfast offered at the monastery.  I could have waited for the hostel next door to open I chose to move on thinking in the next village some place would open where I could get a descent breakfast, praying that it would be more than stale bread with butter, and jam;  I was accustomed to a big morning meal.   The path was a wide dirt track separated by the paved road by a line of trees as wound its way down from the Vale of Roland to the next village, Burguete, Auritz for Basques, that was mostly closed up.  It was a summer retreat from the heat of southern Spain or a ski resort for the downhill set but this was late spring and sleeping late.  From there the well marked trail cut across country, through manicured beech forest, and away from the highway, and across quiet streams crossed with stone flags.  

Quiet and peaceful, I gained a separation from my “before” life and was beginning to feel that this is what I liked to do, that this has been my true calling all my life, seeking the holy, the reverent; that a faith, long dormant and repressed, was welling up inside.  A participant in nature as well as an observer.  My grumbling stomach reminded me of my needed participation of a particular type of nature, consumption of mass quantities of food.  Village after village was quiet, sleepy, and nearly deserted so on I went reasoning that three was enough fat on me to get me through a few more hours.  I laughed, “days, more like it.”
My first encounter with the warmth of the Spanish people came when I saw the first person I had seen all morning, an older man walking into the small town of Espinal as I was walking out.  I stopped him and started to gesture something about food and he spoke, in perfect English, “Si, yes, a little place I am going to now will fix you something.  It’s just around the corner, here.”  As we walked he told me he was a retired GE employee that had returned to his extended family here.  He walked to town every morning to have coffee with his friends.  When we arrived the door of the unadvertised cantina was locked but he bade me wait, “The owner is surely on her way”, but he would go and find her in any case.  I watched him disappear past the corner of a building only to see him, in the next second, reappear.  She was that close.   “Just tell her what you want and she’ll fix it’, he promised.  Oooo, hog heaven!  “Quatro huevos, jamon, potatas, café!”  I held up my hand with my fingers indicating the thickness of the ham I wanted, half inch slice.  “Quatro huevos?”, she questioned.  “Si”, I responded, “quatro huevos.”  I rubbed my stomach and licked my lips.  Coffee, instant but thick and black, filled the small cup she placed on the bar as I dropped my pack and leaned it against the wall.  My new friend and I chatted and he translated to the others that had gathered.  My plate arrived with four eggs, many, paper thin, slices of cured ham, and a pile of French fries,  The eggs were under cooked, the ham was tasty but practically melted in my mouth before I could taste it and French fries for breakfast?  It was all good.   I must have eaten like a starved dog because in a half hour I was back out the door, waving back at my benefactor.  My aching toes made walking difficult but my much improved mood kept me unflagging through fields, over hills, and past ruins on rutted, muddy trails where I met two fellow perigrino women from England, Jackie and Caroline.  Caroline, I later learned had recently had knee and hip replacement surgery, was sitting on a rock, resting, while Jackie stood over her, assessing her ability to go on.
“Do you need help?  Are you alright?“, I asked.
A slight frown greeted me and Jackie told me “we’re OK” but I could tell that the strain of the previous day caught up to us had pushed her hard.  Thinking that they knew their own business best I moved on.  I was in no hurry, the days walk would be easy, so I walked easily, enjoying the shade of the beech forest, the crispness of the cool morning air, and the birdsong filtering through the trees.
Just before the village of Linzoain the road made a sharp right turn out from the edge of a small wood, and looking north, I could see where clouds had formed at the pass where I had been that morning.  My timing had been good; sunshine had blessed my passage.


In my easy stroll through the wooded hills the two ladies caught up to me soon joined by an Irish couple and a young Frenchman.  As we walked through the languid countryside other perigrinos joined our little group until a train of ten or so marched on, sometimes in silence and sometimes in amiable chatter all in the best measure and content.  The Paso de Roldan was unremarkable as there wasn’t any marking or sign and we all moved on, chivalrous to the ladies at deep ruts and slippery, muddy passages until we reached the Rio Arga and crossed into Zubiri over a medieval bridge and the nights rest, one hard day out of Pamplona; or two if, like I did, you stop at the convent of Trinidad de Arre and let the river Ulzama hush you to sleep with its water falls.


The medieval bridge at Zubiri

On to Pamplona

The next day started with crossing the bridge and walking down the rio Arga.  The sometimes narrow dirt path winds its way through pastures and thickets of thorn, sometimes hemmed in between the river, ten feet below, on the right and the eroded cliff face on the left.  It was on this path that that the young Frenchman, speaking broken English, told me of his reason for this trek.  We all had our reasons, kept mostly to ourselves at this early stage, for walking The Camino and his, like so many men of his age, dealt with love unreturned by his paramour.  His hair was long, but thinning rapidly for his young age, mid twenties, but he was lean and fit.  Unemployed, working in the construction trade, he felt he had nothing to offer his lady love and she, wanting more than a life as the wife of a tradesman, had spurned his advances.
“I love her so much”, he pleaded.
“Do you really! Do you love her for her or for  yourself?”, I asked
Cocking his head, his eyes asked, “what do you mean?”
“For love to be true it must be willing to do what is right for the one you love, even if it means letting that one go; to want what is best for that person.  Besides, love is every where if you carry it in your heart.  It is, at once, the most ephemeral and ubiquitous occurrences of nature.  You cannot find it if you look but if it’s in your heart everywhere you look you’ll find it.”  I spoke as the wizened grandfather to his young heir.
The young mans face brightened and he smiled as we sat down to rest from our struggle through a particularly close stretch of brambles.  “Never give up; never surrender”, I continued.  We both smiled and laughed.
Just at that time a darkly pale young woman appeared on the trail walking towards us wearing a full, crocheted black dress.  She was plainly pretty and moved quietly, quickly through the thorny bushes, not catching her garment on the prickly spines that had plagued us all morning.  As she passed she nodded her head with a sweet smile, catching us with her dark eyes.  The young man and I looked at each other and I said, “for that I would surrender!”  We chuckled and turned to see watch her go but she was already gone.  We drank some water a sat in silence, waiting for Jackie and Caroline to catch up to us; we had gone ahead so the young man and I could talk.
As the women approached I asked if they had seen the Spanish woman in the colloquial, black dress.  “No, we saw no one”, they replied quizzically.
“You’re jerking my chain”, I thought they surely couldn’t have missed her, there was no place to go except into the river or up the side of a loose dirt cliff.
“No”, they both replied, “there wasn’t anyone on the path until we caught up to you.”
The young man and I stared at each other, eyes wide, and said nothing.  I recalled reading a story, a tale, a legend perhaps, of a young Basque sheppardess that had become enamored of Roland and his Moorish foe and had walked between the two camps trying to decide which she love the more.  On one of these passages she was followed to Roland’s camp by fellow Basques who then told the Moorish captain where to find his enemy.  Roland was beset by the combined armies of Basques and Moors and blew his great war horn, Oliphant, to call for aide from his king, Charlemagne,  but to no avail, he was killed but not before taking the life of the Moorish captain.  Upon hearing the sound of Oliphant echoing in the vales, the young girl ran to battleground only to see her loves dead on the field.  There, setting a sword in the earth, she took her own life and now wanders from Pamplona to the Pass at Roncevalles, seeking her lost loves.  Was it her?  How could I prove it? But, I think it was.
We moved on, in single file, through the brush and fields, on the path that climbed higher on the hillside above the river and down into the little hamlets of Osteritz, Illarratz, and Ezkirotz to the little town of Larrasoana where I proceeded on alone on The Way to Pamplona.  The trail, now busy with walkers, weaved its way down the river, crossing at every little hamlet and village, to climb a dirt wall at the junction of the N135 and the N121, diving beneath the N121, mounting the Monte Miravalles, and crossing the Rio Ulzama on another ancient span to the Convent of Trinidad de Arre.



There, I collapsed on a stone bench outside the convent listening to the white noise of the water falls.  Pamplona was only six kilometers away and the sun was still in early afternoon. “I could afford the rest”, I told myself.  An old man opened a half door into the convent and asked if I wanted a room.  “No”, I replied, “just a short rest.”  The scowl on the mans face made me think I had made the correct choice and I laid down again and closed my eyes only to open them again as a chill breeze woke me to the orange sky of a setting sun.  I gathered myself up and knocked on the upper half of the door and rang the bell.  After a few minutes the old man opened up, “You stay?”  “Yes, I stay.”  The old mans face brightened with a wide grin and he opened the door for me to enter.  I crossed that threshold into a different time, a time of a long faded past, a time of  tables and furniture, carved by hand with simple adzes and chisels of high, log beamed ceilings and wide doors of a structure that must have been a barn but was now the offices and, judging by the small bed, the abode of the old man. Corroded iron rings, spaced at even intervals, anchored into thick stone walls, and uneven stone flags to tread on.  "Yes", I told myself, "barn."
He stamped and initialed my Pilgrims Passport and led me to the rear of the barn where we exited onto a lawn in an inner courtyard where a smooth, stone path took us to a cold but clean dormitory constructed as the barn had been.


“Take any bed you like”, he said, waving his arm at the empty dormitory. “The door to the outside is locked at 8, please clean up the kitchen before you leave at seven.”  This last request was made over the top of his spectacles to add emphasis to his desire not to  have to clean up after me.  I bowed and said, “Si, of course.”
I dropped my pack, and not being in any hurry I went outside to sit on the bench where I had lain before and listened to the sighing, rushing hush of the falls and inhale the feeling of the ancient through as many of my senses as I could.  Evening grew upon the wooded hills across the river before me.
Before long Jackie, who would later become my constant companion on The Way, and Caroline found me, eyes closed listening to the water and the birds and asked if I was staying here.  I said I was and “besides, Pamplona is a short hike away and that will leave me more time to explore the city.”  It must have sounded like a good idea because they registered and the three of us combined our food and fixed a modest meal.
Some time later in the evening two quite elderly women from Portugal came in and quietly took beds at the 
far end of the dormitory. They never made a sound.
The next day we rose at the time that would announce the start of every day on The Camino, 6 am.  
Giddily chattering about the places to see in Pamplona and pinchos and bull fights, and how much we didn't want to see one we glanced at the two ladies at the far end of the dormitory. THEY STILL HADN'T MOVED! I hoped they were just very tired and left quietly.


Pamplona
Pamplona is a modern city and we trod through the streets of light industry before crossing the medieval bridge that lay before the ramparts of the old city where we stayed in Albergue Paderborn.




From there we toured the city, stopping for tortilla, a wonderful dish of potato and egg, and coffee, still instant, in one of the many bars in the city.  The streets of the old town are narrow and under the terra cotta eves hung dried, woven strands of garlic and corn and peppers.  High above, aged enclosed walkways of daubed wattle, held aloft by the bent and twisted tree-trunk beams, roofed with the same terra cotta of the homes,  led from one building to another, keeping the gentry out of the teeming masses that had populated the streets in the past.


The main square, broad and lined with bars and restaurants, filled in the cool of the evening with the laughter of children and the chatter of friends communing, gave me, in spite of the enormity of the gathering, a feeling of comfort, of homeyness, of being at ease with the world, contentedness.  The ever present, and all but invisible, police kept close watch on the rambunctious twenty something’s that populated the later nightlife and, with only subtle hand gestures, let things become enjoyable but not get out of hand.  Pamplona, for my short stay, is a perfect mix of modern convenience, industry, and family; a wonderful place.


Puente La Reina

Jackie, Caroline and I had conferred to leave together the next day and make for as far as we could but my body, still on the schedule that had driven it for many working years,  could not, would not, wait to start so I struck out at my usual 7 AM starting time.  Leaving Pamplona I noticed the streets are lined with the same species of tree whose branches had all been grafted together to give one continuous line whose big, grape leaf sized leaves, shaded the broad sidewalk in summer and naked limbs allowed sunlight to warm the benches beneath them in winter.  I trod along the busy streets looking for the, now familiar, yellow arrows or French tricolor markings that marked the path of The Camino.  A broad paved pathway took me past the last industrial outpost and through the University of Navarra to a modern footbridge over the Rio Sadar and on to the gently sloping fields leading to Cizur Menor where, in ancient times, knight champions of armored armies fought to the death, winner take all.  Legend says that two armies fought here, each starting with one knight battling to the death only to have each die and then increasing the number of combatants until the Earth bled with ten thousand dead on the field.
My heart pounded and my lungs grated against the steadily increasing slope of the dirt track as I strained against gravity to the little hamlet of Zariquiegui and the ridge of the Alto de Perdon, a French expatriate whose benevolence is noted in the many edifices bearing his name throughout northern Spain.


The Alto, today, is the home to arm waving giants of the modern age, wind powered generators, whose rotating propeller look like angels signaling the pilgrim, beckoning him forward.  The wind blows steadily down from the Pyrenees driving the steady drone of the generators to power the homes of the city of Pamplona.
At the summit of The Alto iron silhouettes commemorate the pilgrims throughout the ages that have trodden these heights.



I felt a part of it now and there was no turning back.  And if I died on the trail?  I would be even more of its history, its character, its qualities, its persona.


Beyond the heights the trail drops quickly down a pebble strewn slope where the hurried, unwary traveler has suffered many slip and fall on their way to the small villages that line the trail.
On I walked, stopping only to drink some water in the cool shade near a statue of the Christ in the every increasing heat of the growing day.  The ache in my feet and legs, back, and neck was wearing me down and I stopped often to rest and I thought of staying in an albergue that I passed but the noise and raucous laughter reminded me what I wanted was respite, not from the trail, from the life I had left behind.  I still had the hurt and murderous anger locked up inside me.  That was the real weight I carried not the pack on my back, that is what really ached, not my body but my mind.  I moved on.
After many a twist and turn across roads and fields I came to the wonderful town of Puente La Reina where, crossing over an arched, stone, medieval bridge whose roadway peaked at its center, I was transported back to a time of simpler lives and pastoral peacefulness; in the quiet of the town isdat was easy to forget the violence that had rolled through these areas in those days, long ago.  Later that evening my new friends, Jackie and Caroline, caught up with me.
As we left Puente La Reina over a fine example of another medieval bridge Caroline said that the trail, which crossed a secondary road and wound along the Rio Ara for a ways, had been washed out but that if we went along the highway, the A12, for a short distance it would cut off a hard climb up an alternative route to the village of Maneru.  I was a little suspicious about walking on a divided highway because, if they are like divided highways in America, pedestrians are allowed and, sure enough, a Guardia National stopped on the other side of the highway to wave us back.  I acknowledged my error and started back down the onramp but Caroline, in best British form, called out, “Youhoo, Youhoo!,  can we go on?”, pointing up the highway.  No, he shook his head and waved his palm for us to go down the ramp.  She still pointed on.  The officer then crossed the highway on foot, hopping over the dividing guard rail.  Judging by the look on his face I was sure we were going for a ride and not a pleasant ride, either.  Fortunately for us, Caroline in particular, he was a very patient and understanding man.  I waved back to them as I preceded Jackie and Caroline down the road the way we came.
Cirauqui, an old Roman hilltop fortification, sits on a hill overlooking the vineyards and cultivated fields at the base of the Pyrenees foothills.  As I approached the little village the modern highway, and its sounds, were hidden from me and, viewing it from a distance, I expected mounted riders to issue from its walled gates on errand from some vassal of The King; to hear the church bell ring the morning prayers and horse drawn plows and carts on the dirt tracks leading to fields and town.






I was a Pilgrim, a Perigrino, now.  My new friends and I stopped at a little bar there and, over tapas and coffee we began to ask why we had started the Camino.  Jackie and Caroline were walking to raise money for a child abuse prevention organization.  I said I hadn’t really know why I was walking it other than I had retired, newly divorced, and thought this might be the change I needed, a good way to transition.  As we talked more and more about each others motivations, the strain, weariness, and aloneness  of the past few days, and few years, really, eroded the dam that held back the emotions of the past couple of years and silent tears flowed down my cheeks.  I couldn’t hold it back; maybe I didn’t want to.  The death of my daughter, albeit 24 years earlier, the suicide of my brother, the revelations about my father, the realization that my mother knew and allowed it to go unsaid, the conditioning of my life that had led me to do so many things that “felt” right but were so wrong, and the sudden realization that, in spite of all the work I had done, books I had read, classes that I had taken, and counselors I had talked to, I was still far from righting ’the ship of my soul’, boiled over in a deluge of bubbling anger and sorrow made me know, perhaps for the first time, I had just begun to scratch beneath the surface of my pain.  I finished my coffee and went out to wait and let the sun and wind dry my face.

Estella

The trail led me through isolated farmlands, past woodlots, and over small streams on, another, medieval bridge, and wound its way to the Rio Ega along a lovely, quiet, street between well kept homes that climbed up a river carved slope on our left and the deep, languid river on our right.  We were all tired after our days walk and arrived late, near dark, due to the bit of wrong advise at Puente Le Reina, and, needing to replenish ourselves, stayed an extra day.  The park by the river is quiet and serine in the bustling river valley town and I sat or laid on a park bench letting the emotions and trials of the day before run themselves out.  It was good to rest up a day.
By this time I had learned that almost everything closes at noon and, if I was lucky, something would open up about three in the afternoon, I was seldom lucky, so any market or store where I could buy fruit I would stop and get oranges, which were big, juicy, and sweet, or apples, but these were harder to find.  In Estella, while Jackie and Caroline toured the town with a local, I found a heath food shop and bought granola and HTP (high temperature pasteurized) milk in a resealable carton.  The milk will keep, unrefridgerated, for quite a while and even though it tasted a little “cooked”, it was, with the granola, just what I needed for the start of a long days walk.

Los Arcos

There are no, or very few, uncultivated woodlands but to walk in the shade of trees is a blessing on the Camino, even in early spring, and as the trail dropped down from the foothills around Estella to the rolling, intermountain plains the shade was welcomed.  Patches of cereal crops and potato fields slowly replaced the rocky vineyards behind me but, being spring, the green of new growth hadn’t replaced the dark brown of the plowed Earth and the vineyards were yet orderly collections of twisted, gnarled sticks jammed into the red clay soil that are more rock than dirt.


I walked past an enclosed well, the Fuente de los Moros, where, in times past, and perhaps even now, horses and pilgrims were watered and rested and I wondered,  "how many pilgrims died drinking bad water."
The walk to Los Arcos is away from the paved roadway and I could feel the pressure in my ears and in my head as my brain and psyche flow out of me as I emerged from my ocean depths of work, and striving, anger and pain; I was emerging from my conditioned self, my mind poking its first feelers into the “real” as I cracked the chrysalis shell. I just walked on, silently, one small car in a train of three, shoes crunching on the gravel, thankful for the cap I purchased in Pamplona.
Los Arcos is barely a town.  On arrival in the late afternoon, the streets were deserted.  After booking in the albergue, a rustic building whose owner gave majestic massages, getting my passport stamped, as I had in every place I slept, and dropping my pack I looked for a cantina, bar, or open shop where I could get a glass of wine, or bottle of wine to relax with and share with my companions.  Nothing was open, not even the church with its wide portico, its wrought iron fence locked with a modern padlock. I returned and washed my clothes in an old wringer/washer like we had on the farm when I was a kid, the first washing machine I had seen in this first week of walking.

Parting Company

The three of us strolled out of Los Arcos after stopping at the church and a small food shop where I bought some fruit and a granola bar, just enough for lunch.  Full water bottles added four and a half pounds and the fruit added another pound or two; I was becoming very conscious of every ounce of extra weight.  The trail was dusty and dry and the vineyards became more spaced with cereal crops, potato fields, and olive orchards, where we stopped to eat a light lunch.
Caroline, feeling the strain of her recent surgeries, was wobbling from one hip to the other in a stiff legged gate and her many rest stops made the going slow.  I felt empathy for her but, reverting back to my conditioned goal setting mindset, I was getting more and more impatient.  I wanted to be sure I got to Santiago for Easter.  We had stopped to eat in the shade of a small olive tree and while we ate I reminded them of what I had said the day before, that I felt the need to move on and that I couldn’t, or didn’t want to miss Easter Mass.  They both had understood, then, but when I mentioned it under the shade of the olive tree they both fell kind of silent.  I finished my orange and, standing up, I quickly slung my pack onto my back with my customary swinging lift, clipped and adjusted the chest and waist straps, bid them adieu and moved off at a quick pace to put some space between us.  I had just divorced, it wouldn’t be final until midsummer, and I  didn’t want to start something, as kind and sweet and attractive as Jackie was,  I was vulnerable and wary of people and relationships and everything that goes with them.  The episode with the police out of Puente La Reina made me question the company she kept; ‘birds of a feather’, and all that.  My mind ached and I craved solitude, so off I marched to Logrono.

Logrono

The countryside was pretty much non-descript.  The same fields, more and more potatoes, sometimes huge mounds of them in the furrowed fields, more as I neared the city of 145,000.  I passed a beehive shaped monument to the legendary slaying of a Moorish giant who, after days of non-stop battle, was killed when he fell on his Christian opponent, and would have crushed him had the Christian not stabbed him with his dagger.  As I neared the Rio Ebro old women, dressed in black with scarves over their heads, offered stamps for my passport for a Euro.  I declined.  The albergue only asks for donation but I paid what I had for the others, 10 Euro.  I washed my clothes again, they still felt dirty after Los Arcos, hung them out to dry and walked to the main square where I bought vegetables and salt, in a little shaker, broth cubes, some more fruit, and a postcard to mail to my kids.
Jackie and Caroline hadn’t been the only two that I met or walked with on the trail.  The Irish couple had walked ahead only to be caught up to when they stopped to browse the shops in the little villages.  I had said hello to a German couple, a twenty-something woman and a 50-something man.  Father and daughter, they said.  “Yeah, right”, my mind had said.  They both looked a little too happy to be related.  A group of international students also took part in the moving feast of personalities, a very eclectic mix.  Two Spaniards, a South Korean, who spoke some Spanish and Japanese, a Japanese girl, who only spoke Japanese, a Frenchman, I think, and one other all conversing and interpreting and getting along marvelously.  It must have been an impromptu meeting; I couldn’t have imagined that anyone would organize such a milieu of different people but there it was and it worked, happily.
I also met a young lady from Bristol, the pistol from Bristol I called her, a vegan on her year abroad, as they do in the Commonwealth, just finishing up her year and on her way home via Australia.  Her cute face, pale complexion, and blond hair ensured that she would get hit on by every Spaniard along the way.  She was having a very tough time getting enough protein and when I sat down to eat she was at the table, head down, tired, dirty and exhausted.  I had plenty so I told her to get a bowl and help herself.  I had bread, too, and a bottle of wine.  She buried herself in her meal and was off to the showers and bed.  I had already showered and set my bag on my bunk, my pack on top of it, before I started to fix my meal.  It felt good to be of help to someone else, especially when it seemed they appreciated it.
After I finished I washed the dishes and was hoping someone would finish the pot of vegetable stew when, looking down stairs at the new arrivals, I saw Jackie and Caroline come in.  I was elated to see them!  My walk, alone, into Logrono had buoyed my spirits to foolishness and later that night I kissed Jackie; immediately I felt that I had crossed a boundary, not one she put up, or one that I had put up, but one that was there; a part of my old conditioning had wiped away, one that I needed to put back up.
I woke at 5 the next day and was out, in the dark, by 5:30 headed for as far as I could get down the trail.

Najera

I fumbled and stumbled my way out of Logrono through the dark, narrow streets of the old inner city and through industrial outskirts, the only time I really had any trepidation, to cross a small stream by a modern footbridge and out, into the “wild” of mown lawns bordering a quiet, well lit, boulevard leading to a well kept park, lake, and, after a steep ascent, camping ground.
Navarette, another hilltop town, came up quickly in the day and, as it was yet still morning, slipped quickly by.  I still, if I was to stay on schedule and get to Santiago on Easter, wanted to make up time.  I had lost a day in Pamplona and another in Estella; I only had two more days to spare and it was still very early in my pilgrimage; Najera was still ten miles away and, at two miles an hour that meant late afternoon getting in.
I was a tiring, one of the most tiring days of the trip.  It turned out to be one, hot, dusty slog.  Another “turn-my-mind-off-and-move” kind of day.  My pack became heavy, my feet became heavy, my shirt, pants, socks, everything wet with sweat and streaked with dust.  By the time I crossed the shallow, swift flowing Rio Najerilla, where the moisture from the river cooled the air and moistened my dry, dusty nostrils,  all I could do was find a bench to sit on and rest.  It was all I could do to find the albergue, a square, stuccoed, post war, cement affair whose only saving grace was that it was cool and had a bed in it.  It was crowded.
I searched around and found a little cantina with very cold beer that served a descent meal and proceeded to eat and drink.  After four beers I went to bed.
The next day the trail took a grueling ascent out of town that had many a young and fit walker trudging weary foot after foot up to a “zona natural” that only looked fit for growing twisted, unusable short trees and scrub.  I passed through it as quickly as my twitching legs could go.
The countryside, open and rolling, passed slowly as I worked my way forward on rutted trails and ankle-breaking falls of rounded boulders.  “Forward”, I told myself, “forward”, as the farmstead homes became further and further apart and fellow perigrinos separated by more and more distance until I was walking alone.
The 21 kilometers rolled slowly on and when I arrived at Santo Domingo de Calzada it was late afternoon and the shops were opening up for the evenings meals and, later the paseo, when families pass the cool of the evening watching their children play and chat about the day.  There were festivities at the albergue that evening, a new wing was being open and the old one rededicated to the pilgrims it had served for a thousand years; I got registered, stamped, showered, reprovisioned, and sat in the square, enjoying the cool sunset.
I had purchased eggs and potatoes, raw potatoes, and sausage for my breakfast, I needed a change from granola.  I knew I would leave most of the eggs and potatoes for the next group that came in but it didn’t matter.  What would come to matter is that before the next day was out I would find that I had, either left my washed socks and underwear in a plastic bag in the fridge or dumped them, along with my orange peels and apple core, in a trash can where I stopped to eat lunch.  I laughed at my mindlessness.

Making up Time

I still wanted to make up some time and, checking my map, the terrain for this day was a lot flatter that the previous days so I set out at a quick pace moving through the hamlets and villages taking little notice of the architecture, now a familiar terra cotta, the people, or the geography around me.  Only moving into and out of Belorado, the end of this days segment, as indicated on my map and onto the next days segment where I found myself exhausted  near sunset in the village of Villambista where I stayed at a private albergue/bar my only company a tall, buxom Canadian woman, who I had met in Pamplona, and her newly acquired boyfriend.  I had my included meal and sat on the terrace of this new and clean albergue, drank my beer and watched the sun sink red over the high hills that would be my next days challenge. I had done thirty kilometers today, a good days walk and I was feeling fit.  I did not know that the next day would challenge that fitness to its very edge, and past.

The Longest Day

Up and out, gone before dawn.  I had gained a half a day, now I would gain the other half.  I set out with determination to get to the end of this day on my map, Villafranca Montes de Oca, well before noon and rued every twist and turn in the trail that varied from a strait line.  I did pause to reflect on the ruins of San Felices, now reduced to a single, square, open column of two, high stores in the middle of a field.  I moved on.
Villafranca, this Villafranca, there are more to come, was approached quickly well before noon where I took a short rest and a quick cup of coffee and started up the long, grueling, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other ascent that burned my lungs and stretched every ounce of will and stamina to the very, bitter end.  “On”, I told myself, “never give up, never surrender.”  I moved on and up, conserving my water and my food and again willing my mind, more obedient after the test of the first day on the trail, to be silent.
The trail went straight on, through plantation forest, down to a little stream and up to another peak.  There were many short rests in this long, lonely, and forlorn place where only the occasional Guardia National policeman patrolling on bicycles passed by.  I later learned that these woods are a favorite haunt of North Africans who sneak into Spain, illegal emigrants, and waylay and rob perigrinos and other foot travelers; it is best not to traverse this section alone.
St. Juan de Ortega is named after the man, Juan Valazquez  who developed the road through the woods I had just walked from Villafranca to Burgos, the next city on the route.  It looked as though most of the hamlet was in ruins but the chapel and the albergue are in good condition and the tomb of the saint is easily visited.  I was temped to ask the bus driver, who was guiding a tour there, if I could ride with him but the temptation passed and so did I, down the trail to the end of the day, at Burgos.
At Ages, where I stopped for a rest and a drink, the German couple, young woman, older man, passed me by again and, out of curiosity, asked me how I got there so quickly.  “I just pick a good pace and stick with it,” I told them.  They smiled, waved, and moved on at a brisk pace.  After a bit, so did I but much slower.  The day was just pass the noon and, by my reckoning, I still had a good four hours of light.
I moved through the small settlement of Atapuerca without stopping and up to the alto where an old iron cross, surrounded by a pebbly ground, marked the gentle peak, and down the other slope without pause where, at the base of the hill, a well graded dirt road pointed at Burgos.  Without sign to guide me I kicked up the dust as I marched on to a fork in the road where a yellow arrow on a short concrete pillar pointed left, down a steep incline to a deep dell where the roof tops and the cross on a square, terra cotta, church steeple, still far below me, gave the only sign of a village.  The dirt road went straight ahead towards a freeway but I could just make out a livestock bridge over it and the road continuing on straight towards town.   The marked path would take me down into the deep dell and then, it had to, back out again.  No, straight ahead I paced, past a mine or quarry of some kind, over the freeway, and on, walking on farm roads, field roads, dikes, and ditch banks to the edge of the airport and the paved road that ran beside the rail road tracks until, crossing the tracks, I was on the wide boulevard leading into Burgos.  “Not far now,” I told myself.  Yeah, right again (not!).  The heart of Burgos, the old city where the albergue stood was still 10 kilometers away and only three hours of daylight left for my aching, tired, and hungry body to trod them in.
By the time I had come into Burgos I was in a delirium.  I would, literally, stop a person on the street, point to myself and moan a dry, guttural , “perigrino, albergue”, my eyes lolling around in their sockets, and they would grab me by the shoulders and point to a yellow arrow on a wall or signpost, then I would stumble forward until I lost the sign and, again, stop someone and say, “perigrino, albergue”, and the process would  continue until, finding what should have been an open albergue to be closed, stumbling, dirty hungry, sticking with sweaty dust, I got a hotel room, The Hotel Londres, in the heart of the old city.   A BATH!  IN A BATHTUB!  I will never, ever, never-ever again, make fun of anyone who takes a bath.  I was in fear of falling asleep and drowning in the tub and I think I would have if the exhilaration of soaking in a hot, bubbly bath hadn’t revived me.
I had walked 48 kilometers that day, 30 miles, with a 45 pound back pack.  I couldn’t have done it again the next day but I had made up one day of the two that I was behind.  Success!  I awoke the next day thinking I had not even closed my eyes but my body was ready to go and, after getting my stamp at the Cathedral, I did start the long drawn out exit from Burgos.

The Long and the Lonely

Burgos is just as extended on one end as it is on the other and the long trek leaving wound past many places, abandoned, working, and in-between.  The long, paved walkway went past a fenced compound that looked like a prison, past hospitals and parks, through a river valley with cliffs on one side and a plain on the other.

The Meseta

The Meseta has a reputation, deserved or not, of a hostile, forlorn, and forbidding land with few redeeming qualities.  I found a stark beauty.  Lonely? Yes, but with a spirituality all its own.  As I looked at the miles and miles of grains that had been harvested here, the rolls of straw stacked in the fields giving testimony to the recent harvest, I marveled at the stamina, the perseverance, of those who worked the serene plain to provide the sustenance of others.  To live a life of coaxing blades of grass from a hostile environment, dependent on seasonal rain and calm days before the harvest so the stalks and seeds would dry and not be blown down.  This is love, not the desperate, flailing of animal passion, or the possessive ownership that jealousy makes of fool of us with but the love that comes with knowing and respecting the ways of Nature, to know just a little, an infinitesimal bit, of the Mind of God, to be at its whim and beck and call, to see the riches and ease of life gained by others through less strenuous endeavors pass you by, and still persevere, that is love.  It is the kind of love that the doer may not see or feel but it is the kind of love that God sees, and understands, and rewards.
I had lived with the quiet desperation of farmers trying to make a living from the land and the history and lineage and pride that comes with seeing things grow and become and bear the fruit of labor; the love that comes from the birthing of an animal but knowing, also, that its death will give life and that, one day, we all share that fate.  What life will my death support?  What life has my life supported?  Am I, are we, just ‘a top predator’, is that our purpose, our destiny, just a means for an end?  Isn’t that what this trail, this pilgrimage is all about?  Isn’t this our statement? No, we are more than that.  More than the loneliness and strife.  We ARE the struggle, the journey, and not its ending.
At Tarjados I stopped to rest and have a drink by another old church and who did I see?  The German couple coming up the road behind me.  I tipped my hat and greeted them and they sheepishly waved and mumbled hello but kept on walking, whispering between themselves.  I picked up and moved at the same pace that I had set coming out of Pamplona, two miles and hour.
Coming into Hornillos a large sign indicated “Santiago, 490 kilometers.”   “Wow,” I think, “I’ve come a long way!”, feeling proud.  “Not halfway, though”, I remind myself.  I keep moving, climbing to the next plateau and descending, passing the next, small albergue of San Bol, climbing up to the next plateau to descend quickly to Hontanas where I will spend the night, thankful for my bivy sack around my sleeping bag, in a cold albergue, in a cold crevasse of a village, chilled by a cold winter wind, at the head of a winding stream that feeds the fields of a steep sided, narrow, river valley.
The next day is cold and windy and grey with high, dry clouds scooting above me that will evaporate in the late morning sun to bring me, sweating into the little hamlet of San Anton where, again, the German couple caught up to me.  This time there is no greeting, no wave, only wide eyed wonder at how I got ahead of them, again.  Their quickened pace hoping to take them where this grey clad specter would not pass them again.  I chuckled, mumbling quietly “I just pick a pace and stick with it”, as they receded into the distance.  I never saw them again.
If Castrojerez were not so clean I would have sworn it was abandoned.  I did see three people there, an woman walking into town, a shopkeeper, who runs a trekking supply store, very handy in my case, and a farmer with his dog as I left town.  We, the farmer and I, sat under the shade of a tree and conversed in his broken English.  I think he stopped so I would talk to him.  His dog, very friendly and attentive, begged bits of bread from me until the farmer asked me to stop.  I finished my little snack and bade him good day.  I would stop to take more at the top of the next climb, at a little wayside with a table, where the wind blew so hard I abandoned the table to crouch behind a low rock wall.  There is were I felt the true starkness, grandeur, and lonesomeness of the Meseta; until the international group of twenty-something’s caught up to me.
A steep descent, so steep I wondered if I would walk down or slide or fall, and a brief walk brought me to the shallow valley of the Rio Pisuerga where mechanized loggers harvested the eucalyptus groves that grew there.  I passed up the pleasant looking, rancho style albergue thinking that if I would press on I could make up the second day I lost by the end of tomorrow.  The road was quiet and I was the only perigrino I could see.
I wandered into Boadilla del Camino and found the first albergue closed, not enough walkers to justify it being open, I was told, but the second one, run by a young man and his mother, willing to open up the detached dormitory.  The neat, clean, but cold, hacienda style bunkhouse was soon warming to a fire in the little wood stove and after a shower I sat on the comfortable couch, separated from the bunk room to peruse the selection of books and magazines.

Carry on to Carrion

The next day tested two things, my sense of direction and my senses.  When I left Boadilla I missed a yellow arrow, down low on a wooden post and walked for half a mile or so on the Canal de Castilla.

 Luckily I kept my wits about me and knowing I should be heading, more or less, West with the morning sun at my back; I found it warming the right side of my face; I was headed North  I turned around and started over, this time catching the way mark.   The second test was after I left Fromista, a very pleasant little town that begins immediately after crossing the railroad tracks.  I found yellow way marks painfully scarce leading into town but I trusted to providence and my sense of direction, it had already saved me once that day, and kept straight ahead.  When I left town yellow arrows were prevalent and easy to find but it was the long, interminable, flat, featureless trail beside a well used motorway that was nothing but torture.  The walk was easy enough but whenever a car went by I began to think, and that, I am told, is a thing a man should never do, that these cars are going to go further in one hour than I will go in 3 or 4 DAYS of walking.  I recalled the trips I had made in a car where 6 or 7 HUNDRED miles had been driven in a single day.  They could drive THE ENTIRE CAMINO in a single day.  The oppressive weight of that thought was, singly, the most depressing of the whole route.  I had to stop it.  Counting steps?  Been there, done that.  Something new was called for but nothing came to mind and then I saw a line of telephone poles horizontal on the ground.  They had been cut down by ETA, the Basque separatist movement.  No power or telephone lines were damaged, they were just being annoying to the Federales. I noted how they did it and it was quite ingenious, though, probably, hardly original.  The first poles, twenty or so, had been cut half way through, perhaps over several days to not arouse suspicion, then the last pole was cut all the way through.  When it fell it took all the others with it.  As I contemplated this strategy a car of the Guardia National with two officers pulled up to a stop sign and eyed me suspiciously.  I smiled and, as usual, kept moving.
My feet ached as the day marched on around me but that was nothing new.  There was nothing of note on the featureless plain between the Meseta behind me and the plain before me so I turned my mind off, again, and marched on into Carrion de Los Condes where the most beautiful young woman, in the guise of a nun, greeted me with iced tea and pulled me into the albergue.  She was obviously new to the whole idea but her enthusiasm and joy made me smile until my mouth ached.  “You are the first one!”. she exclaimed in a lilting English.  I was placed in a chair in front of a desk in the office where I registered, got stamped, my glass of ice tea refilling as I waited, and then led up to the dormitory.  The Reverend Mother, still young, younger than me anyway, but looking stern showed me around to the small kitchen, the showers and the dormitory.   I tried to explain to the Reverend Mother how lovely and sweet the young novice had been but I wondered if I had relayed my message properly because, when I left the young girl was leaning, dejectedly, against on a wall opposite the entrance.   I went over to her and, bowing , thanked her for her warm welcome.  I left town feeling that I had been treated with the welcome of a long lost friend; I will always remember that sweet, pretty  young woman and her glass of iced tea.

Terradillos de Templarios

The morning out of Carrion was cold and overcast but the brisk pace I set warmed me and soon I was out of town, crossing the bridge over the Rio Carrion.  I had made up my two days and I felt that I could, being back on track with the guide book, slow down.  It was only a good 8 hour walk, 16 miles, and, starting out at 7 AM, that meant I would be at my days goal at about 3 in the afternoon.  “Just right”, I told myself, “for a shower, a glass of wine or a beer, and rest before the evening meal.”  Walking on I listened to the birds singing to the sun, and swooping and diving for their breakfast.
The trail was always full in the mornings after pooling up in the evening like salmon waiting for the next freshet to continue upstream but quickly spread out, each at their own pace or the pace of the group they were in.  I was the first one to come in to the albergue at the convent the previous evening but by the time I had returned from my evening meal the dorm was full with a couple of groups of young people, including the international group that had been passing me and catching up to me for the past few days.  The poor Japanese girl was completely out of her element.  I don’t think she had been away from home, at least not this far, before and didn’t know quite what to think of a mixed dorm.  I had seen her, with her traveling companions, at the albergue in Carrion. Her head was nearly always bowed and she quickly got into bed and turned to face the wall.  Everyone was so tired, though, as soon as heads hit pillows it was lights out.
I liked walking alone.  I had become used to being alone when I was a kid on the farm.  It started, I think, when, as a child of 7 or so, I had stepped in front of my father as he raised his hand to hit my mother.  From that time on I would eat quickly, do my chores, and disappear, riding my bike or walking the fields of wild oats and grasses, climbing on top of the barns to look at the snow capped mountains in the hazy distance, traveling in my mind.  I didn't know where I wanted to travel to; anywhere but here I suppose, but I was always interested in other cultures and how they lived.  I had a very old world atlas that had pictures of people who lived in long houses in Borneo, people who lived in stick huts in Africa, and people who lived in boats.  I was fascinated by how they got by with so little.
As my mind mused these things I got to feeling a little lonely as I walked through this stretch of  the trail.  I don’t think it would have been so bad if the other Peregrinos had been more spaced out so I could't hear them talking.  It’s one thing to be alone and have nobody around, a person doesn't mind being quiet if there’s no one there, but to be on a trail with lots of animated, convivial chatter and laughter with no one to talk to is depressing, even torturous.  There was nothing to do, I didn't want to interject myself into someone else’s conversation, so I kept moving.  I began to think of how much I missed my brother and how much I thought I had let him down, how I wished I had known more about my family, and all the mistakes I had made.  I missed my daughter.  The water flowed from my eyes in a silent cry.
A little market was open at Calzadilla and so I stopped, along with most everyone else, and bought a couple of oranges for a noon time snack.  I had taken to not eating much of a lunch.  I opted, instead, for a good breakfast.  It’s surprising how far a person can go on not very much food.  We Americans really do eat too much.  The international group was there.  There was one young Spanish man who seemed to be shepherding the little group.  I watched as he made sure the Japanese girl, diminutive, pretty, and painfully shy, had her water bottles filled, got a snack at the market and then went to the Korean man the see if he was fixed up and as he did so the Japanese girl raised her bowed head and eyed the handsome, dark-skinned, young Spaniard.  I grinned at young love.  When they were all set he would help them on with their packs, make sure nothing was left behind, and then lead them on, checking for signs of injury, limping, and stragglers.  “The kind of guy I’d want my daughter to marry,”  I thought.
Just out side of the little village the trail crossed the N-120 and proceeded along next to a little park where, wanting to be truly alone, I took an alternative route and cut across the park to traverse the far side  near some cultivated fields.  There I kicked along in the dust letting my mind relax, keeping it from thinking what I would do when I got back home or where would I live or the sadness and anger that so easily broiled to the surface.  I wondered what would happen if I was injured back here, away from everybody; what if wild dogs attacked me or a snake bit me; I mentally slapped myself back to reality.
I exited my exclusive little path back onto the main track not far behind where I would have been, noticing the line of walkers had thinned.  I wondered if the small albergue, it only held 56, would be full and picked up my pace, my face bowed to the setting sun.  I heard “hello, Larry”, and turning my head, still bowed, it was the Irish couple at a covered bench eating so I wandered over.  The woman greeted me with, “Why, Larry, I’ve never seen ya outa bed!”  It was what she had greeted me with when we were first introduced in Zubiri and had become her greeting to me whenever we met on the trail due, in no small part I’m sure, to the shocked looked I had when she first said it.  I was not accustomed to such familiarity at first meeting.  When she said it this time I smiled politely and, after some pleasantries, move on.
As I strode into the afternoon sun glaring in my face I saw the outline of a familiar hat, on a head, attached to a body, sitting on a bench beside the road.  I stopped and considered turning around.  I needed time to sort my feelings before I approached Jackie and dealt with the relationship that I had, so foolishly, started.  Before I could turn round the arm of the tall Canadian woman I met earlier was waving high in the air and she was calling my name.  I smiled and moved closer.  It was good to see people that I could talk to and the joy of our meeting again propelled me into a hug.  “You cheated!”, I exclaimed and her blushing explanation followed.  We all walked on to the Los Templarios albergue.

Sahagun

The trail into Sahagun is long, boring, being alongside a road the entire way, and hot.  I can’t imagine what it must be like in summer.  Along the way I began to have pains in my left knee.  My right knee had been completely blown out in high school and I expected problems with it but overcompensation was beginning to get the better of my good knee.  I could only complete half a days walk and, opting to stick with Jackie and the others that had formed this little band, I took the train to Leon the next day.

Leon

Leon is a large, well ordered, clean and modern city and I took advantage of it and splurged for a hotel room.  If you really want to splurge The Parador is a converted pilgrim hospital that is THE luxury splurge, for the common folk, or THE place to stay if you’re ‘in the bucks’.  The Cathedral there is large, very old, and magnificent; be sure to get a stamp there and take time for to tour it.  The vegetable market in the Plaza Major is a wonderful place to buy fresh local produce.
Leon, I have read, is where Nicolas Flamel found an old Jewish scribe that could, or would, interpret the manuscript he purchased that had been made by Abraham the Jew and led him to make ‘The Philosophers Stone‘.
The city has been fought over, destroyed, and rebuilt many times in its long and tumultuous history as evident by sections of old walls standing here and there throughout the ‘old city’

Cruz de Ferro

I don’t recall the trail to San Martin del Camino or much of the trail to Astorga and only by referring to my Pilgrims Passport can I confirm that I stayed there but the trail, rising modestly, posed no difficulty and I was blissfully aware of the joy provided by congenial company and how easy is was to fall into old habits of the mind.
Out of Astorga the trail climbs modestly until the climb up to Santa Catalina de Somoza and continues along a high plain until, mounting in steps, rises to Rabanal del Camino.  For a population of about 50, the streets and houses are surprisingly well kept and clean looking, from the outside at any rate.  Other than the people running the albergue and the people on the trail, I saw no others.



Through the deserted streets of Rabanal the trail slipped through Foncebadon to the breathtaking views south



and past a wonderful little park by a church.



The private albergue there was new looking and had a wide porch and lawn and even a vending machine where I bought a soda.  This village, too, seemed deserted but a wonderfully quiet and pleasant place to live.
The trail now runs along, and sometimes on, the paved road but the only wheels I saw were those on bicycles, whose riders puffed and pressed on their pedals barely exceeding the pace of the walkers.
The last stretch to the cross ascends a fair grade in a straight line and on this occasion led to a big bull standing near the road.



It was April 1st and I was itching to play a trick on Jackie and as we walked quietly past the large, but quite docile animal, a plot hatched in my mind.  When she went up to place her pebble on the pile I yelled, “lookout, Jackie, here he comes!”  She turned with a start and then, seeing it was an attempt at an April Fool, she made her way down carefully to give me a swift, but gentle, kick in the behind.


The cross is on a wooden pole that sticks up through a mound of boulders and stones placed there over the ages.  The idea being that the stone may help to balance out the sins committed in this world when that judgment day arrives for each of us.  The pile is about ten feet high and thirty feet in diameter.
The decent is steep, boulder strewn, and, in many places, deeply rutted.  It was on this descent that my trekking poles saved me from a very nasty, if not life threatening, fall.  I had to put all my weight on them when my tired and shaking legs tripped and I fell forward.  This section leading into Acebo is very trying, especially on the knees and my left knee took a real beating.  This section, from the Cruz de Ferro to Molinaseca is all winding and steep and, when I go again, it will be a two day section just so I’ll be in good stead for the remainder of the walk that, in a couple of days, gets to be very trying, indeed.

Molinaseca to Villafranca de Bierzo

Molinaseca is a small town but it is clean and bright and is a bedroom community for the city of Ponferrada, a large and busy urban center for the area.  A quiet stream runs on the outskirts of the village and many fine restaurants are there replenish the body and spirit of the Camino trekker.  The entrance to the city, across a beautiful bridge of modern construction of medieval style.  The wine, usually free, water was extra in most places, was a deep red and of a local vintage, usually that of the owner of the establishment, and had no label but went down excellently with the ample steaks that are served in Spain.  A word of information about steaks.  A small steak is called a solo mio, a steak for one, a large steak is called a cheuleton (chew la ton) and it is, generally, a big honkin’ piece of meat that can be up to 2 kilos in weight.  They are usually meant for a family to share; be forewarned, they are not the thing to indulge in and then try to walk the next day, I know.
Ponferrada is, I said before, a large, busy, urban/industrial area and the way marks into town can get lost in the flurry of new construction amid the winding maze of  ancient streets.  If there is time, the well preserved templar castle is well worth the visit.



The trail is easy to loose going through town and Jackie and I didn’t see any way marks in the city and, in the end, just picked a street that went west out of town toward the village of Camponaraya where the way marks and fellow peregrinos give a sigh of relief to the wanderer.
Just outside of Camponaraya there is a wonderful park to rest and eat in and from there the path took us over a busy divided highway and along serene trail among country homes.  It was here that we noted another distance marker where I had my photo taken.


It had been a long trail so far, 24 days of walking, and still there was almost a hundred and twenty-two miles to go.  And the worst was yet to come.
The final eight or so kilometers into Villafranca is not steep but a constant undulation that, at the end of the day, is very tough on the knees and coming at this last quarter of the trail can be debilitating.   It is in this next stretch that the bodies of many pilgrims give out.  By the time I reached Villafranca my knees were sore and aching and I knew tomorrow was going to be a difficult day.  Here I stopped under the shade of three giant wisteria trees, not bushes.  Only one can be seen in the photo but the low drone of the buzzing bees was only exceeded by the honey sweet smell of the ample blossoms.  I thought I was in an empty honey jar.


We stayed in a Parador, a pilgrim hospital converted into a hotel, hoping that a good nights rest in a comfortable bed would help my knee.  It didn’t and the trek out of Villafranca and on to, while only 32 kilometers, took two days with the final 10 kilometers by taxi.  The last leg into Villafranca had inflamed the tendon in my knee until walking was impossibly painful.   Fortunately the chilly temperatures in O’Cebreiro and the cold showers there brought the swelling down and, along with the level to down hill slope I was able to recover enough to continue.

O’Cebreiro

This village deserves its own entry.   O’cebreiro is a Celtic village, that is it was founded by Celts. Anthropologists and historians agree that sometime in the early Roman era mercenary Celts settled here.  Their art, adorned with Celtic knots, and architecture, round, stone homes and huts roofed with thatch give it away.  Even the stature, bone structure, and skin and hair color evoke the British Isles.


The hamlet, barely a village, is small and in the fog that is common in the mountains as the trail nears the Atlantic, it feels smaller yet but there are the inevitable souvenir shops that sell some food stores and a couple of nice pubs where a decent meal can be had.
O’Cebreiro real claim to fame, other than its quaint charm on a mountain peak, is its chapel.  A small Benedictine outpost that was, or perhaps still is, the home of the Holy Grail.  A celebration on September 8 and 9 commemorate the miracle of the Grail turning bread and wine into flesh and blood.  The remains of the miracle are in a silver reliquary, still in the church, along with a chalice that was recovered in an excavation of the site.  The church itself, small, humble, and filled with the sensation of the Holy Spirit, is a reconstruction, as faithfully done as can be, on the original site.

My stay here was entirely too short.
Leaving the next day I could see why this area is called ‘islands in the clouds’ for, in the dim light of the pre-dawn night,  the surrounding mountain tops poke their peaks up into the clear night sky from the ocean of fog that hides the land.



Not far down slope a large, modern, metal sculpture is dedicated to the Pilgrims who have walked the Camino.  I didn’t see a single person walk past without stopping to have their picture taken and, like all other, I succumbed to the opportunity, the early morning sun in the cobalt sky, blinding me.



Triacastela

The trail descends easily to the valleys and streams below through lush high meadows, fern, and bracken past cows grazing lazily in the warm, early morning sun.  It was here that I began to realize that this wonderful experience was coming to an end and I began to get melancholy, even depressed.



This had been, and still was to some extent, the most revealing experience of my life and yet there was something missing, something that still lay hidden inside me, that fought with me to be revealed.  I didn’t know what it was but it was there, churning in my heart.  I walked on
I walked on, my friend Jackie beside me.  Down, down, down the ever descending, winding, ever more crowded trail until it and every little village and hamlet, that came more frequently as we moved West, was crowded with short time trekkers, groups on school children on Easter break, vacationers on a quick holiday, and the increasing number of "taxi peregrinos".  The trail had lost its intimacy in the chattering throngs of ’part time’ peregrinos.  There was a disdain growing somewhere in my mind; this was my trail, my search, mine!  “Wait”, a tiny echo reverberated in my head, “it is not yours.  Judge not lest ye be judged.”  That eminent truth slapped me down and I began nodding and smiled at each person I passed, “Buen Camino”, spilled from my throat and my heart soon echoed its praise.  This journey and transformation is individual, and together.

To Samos




The tree lined trail moved through meadows and fields, across streams and rivers as we followed it, sometimes feeling lost, along streams flush with spring rain.



Past an abandoned water powered grist mill,



and into Samos with its ancient Benedictine monastery.

A fine mist was falling, as it did most days in the walk through Galicia and, taking shelter in the gazebo of a small park, we ate a frugal lunch.
The exit from the city was on a wide concrete sidewalk sandwiched between the road and the gathering river, that jumped down its narrow course through cataracts and over falls, to a bridge that led us away from the road, sometimes glimpsed through the trees above us, leaving us to wander the narrow river valley greeted by the many “Buen Camino“ of its inhabitants.

The maps show many small hamlets on the trail but are, for the most part, single houses by the trail, muddy and misty, cool and green as it meandered West.  In a larger hamlet a small cantina served the ‘taxi peregrinos’, those that take a van or cab to the edge of a village so they can walk in, get stamped, and then walk out again to picked up and driven to the next village.  Ah, the conveniences of modern life!



I sat at this little cantina sorrowfully contemplating the end of an experience that I didn’t want to end.

Portomarin

The approach to Portomarin, a lusty town in its past, is through verdant fields bordered with rock walls, “a lot like Cornwall”, as my English friend kept reminding me.  I would answer that it looked a lot like California.  It became our running chide.



The roadway enters the town across a steel bridge, suspended twenty or thirty feet from the water, where the pedestrian walkways are expanded steel grates that rattle and clank with each passing car or footfall.  For those afraid of heights, like Jackie, it can be a nerve wracking experience, especially when a car passes and the structure flexes and shakes.  The path leads us to a long, steep ancient staircase that the original entrance to the city but was moved to its present location when the dam was built