Carrying On

Today is my 39th birthday. It is also my 26th day on the Camino. I´m in a small village called Rabanal del Camino, about 22km from the city of Astorga. I am about 12 days´walk from Santiago.

Me, 39 years old, on the Camino, while passing through El Ganso.

So clearly I decided to go on with the Camino. And I certainly don´t regret it. Here´s why.

For one, the blisters healed well after I visited a medical center in Sahagún. The day after Sahagún I took a bus to León (OK, so that means I cheated a little--if you had seen my feet though you´d understand why) and had a day of rest there before walking on the next morning. The bus to León saved me about 2 days of walking, much of it along a highway and past suburbs, factories, warehouses, and car dealerships. I haven´t had any blister or other foot problems since.

So happy to have someone to lean on, in León.

Now here are the other reasons, the true ones. The morning I left León I walked to a tiny village called Villar de Mazarife and stayed in a pilgrim´s hostel named after our Lord (Albergue Jésus) with artsy graffiti all over the walls. I walked there with a woman named Karen, a singer-songwriter from Austin, Texas, with daughters a few years younger than me. She´s doing the Camino on her own too, starting in Pamplona. When Karen and I get to Albergue Jésus, she discovers there´s a guitar there, for anyone who wants to give it a play. Karen hasn´t held a guitar or any musical instrument in over 2 weeks and is really missing playing music. She brings the guitar out into the albergue courtyard, where I´ve been playing with a pretty cat and watching the cat stalk bees and butterflies stalk the yard´s clover and where other pilgrims sit in the sun and write in their journals and do their day´s washing, wringing the Camino dust out of their socks. Karen sings some songs by Dylan, John McCutcheon, Old Crow Medicine Show, Emmylou Harris. After the first song I ask her how it feels to be playing a guitar. "It feels great," she says, with the same relief and gratitude you hear from pilgrims when they´ve finally reached a place to sit down after a long day´s walk.

In the yard of Albergue Jésus. Yeah, I know. Weird.

On the wall in Albergue Jésus.

On the lawn at Albergue Jésus.

Karen plays her first European gig, at Albergue Jésus.

Karen´s sitting right next to me now as I type this. Here in Rabanal del Camino, where I´m staying in what has to be the warmest, most welcoming albergue on earth, one run by the Confraternity of St. James in England. The very cheerful and very British hospitaleros at the albergue help me with my laundry washing and set out tea with biscuits for us pilgrims at 4:00. Before arriving at the albergue I received my first Happy Birthday of the day from a fellow pilgrim who I´ve been keeping pace with for about 2 weeks now, an Italian man with a a thin, curly mustache who works as a clown for disabled children back in Milan. His name is Andreas. When he sees me stopped for a moment´s rest in the old, crumbling streets of Rabanal, he calls out Happy Birthday to me. Later at the albergue, a young guy from Belfast who I met in León a few days earlier gives me the gift of a pear he got from a field near Astorga, where he camped the night before (and was pestered most of the night by a horse). He doesn´t necessarily give it to me as a birthday gift, since he doesn´t know it´s my birthday--but I take it as a gift anyway. I take the whole day today as a gift, including the pretty walk across rolling hills and mountains covered with green and gold trees under a blue sky and a sun softened by a gentle but relieving wind.

Someone here, another pilgrim, is waiting for the Internet. I´ll be the gracious pilgrim and sign off now. Ciao for now...

Seen today, on the Camino.