Ciao For Now Camino

Me and my friend Aileen on the way to Eunate

This is to be my last post on the Camino de Santiago for now. While there is so much more I can say about my Camino, and though really not much time has passed since I finished it (so I don't think I can be accused just yet of dragging out the indulgence in memory too long), it's getting on to the end of the year now, and to the beginning of a new one, and there are other places to write about and explore, other adventures worth a post or two.

Harvested grapes and vineyard, on Camino after Ponferrada

Corn on the way to Cacabelos

For my last Camino post I'm sharing pictures of all sorts of favorite random moments, places, and people on my Camino. And I'm writing about my first day on the Camino, for no other reason than I recently found a note I made near the end of that day and re-read it, and discovered a kind of theme that I unwittingly kept for my entire Camino. The note was essentially about grace. Not grace in the religious sense, but in the sense of maintaining one's own personal equilibrium--physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, what-have-you. Keeping your cool, keeping a sense of humor, keeping your chin up, or (in the example that best fits the Camino) keeping your own pace--whether fast, slow, moderate, direct, zigzagging, halting, skipping, sprinting, shuffling--and not worrying about whether it falls in line with anyone else's.

Pilgrim shoes in Orisson albergue. Pilgrims are required to remove their walking shoes at the entrance of a refugio/albergue.

My first day on the Camino was meant to be the standard walk from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in France, over the Pyrenees, and across the Spanish border into Roncesvalles. The walk from St. Jean to Roncesvalles is mostly uphill and involves an ascent of nearly 1,300 meters (over 4,000 feet). I didn't make it. The uphill parts were simply too strenuous for me right off the bat, and I only got as far as Orisson, an albergue still in France and just 8 km (5 miles) from St. Jean.

Virgin of Biakorri statue in Pyrenees on way to Roncesvalles

View looking out from Virgin statue

I was OK with this. I actually made the decision to stop at Orisson, as long as there was a free bed there, a couple kilometers before getting there. Up until decision time, I was sweating, straining, panting, doubting I'd be able to do this Camino thing and thinking I'd seriously overestimated my fitness and strength. Back in St. Jean, I'd left the albergue there (or rather, had been kind of kicked out of it--the old henna-haired Frenchwoman who ran it actually hunted me down in the bathroom, clucking and hollering that it was nearly 8AM and I needed to get going) with an English guy named Paul. Paul was in the British military and stationed in Northern Ireland in County Down, not far from where I used to live. He was using most of his holidays to walk the first quarter of the Camino, having seen the movie "The Way" and wanting to replicate for himself the moving experience depicted in the film and get in better shape to boot. He was going by a popular guidebook, by John Brierley, the same one I had, to plan out his distance each day.

Makeshift memorial on the Camino

Still Missing You But It's Easier Now

Paul had asked me the night before to walk with him the first day. I didn't really want to walk with anyone to start out with, just because I was nervous about my abilities and had some very personal reasons for wanting to walk the Camino, and I knew my head would be filled with thoughts. But I didn't yet know how to express my desires to be alone on the Camino. So I started with Paul on the first day.

He ended up falling behind me anyway. As I started struggling with the steep sections, I'd take breaks on the side of the road, and Paul would usually catch up with me. He wasn't looking too good. Not just red and sweaty like me, but kind of miserable and worried. He looked like he was having the same doubts as me. At one point, near Hunto, I began considering stopping at Orisson for the night and mentioned this to Paul when he caught up with me. A little farther on, while keeping pace with a few French couples walking together, I overheard one of the French husbands chiding his wife for continually stopping to inspect and take pictures of colorful roadside flowers and vines and other pretty things. "Let's go! It's the kilometers that count," he snapped at her. What's the French word for divorce again, I thought to myself, as I stopped to look at the same flowers that had enchanted the French wife. At an overlook with a table that mapped the view, where some old people overtook me, I decided for sure. I wouldn't go on to Roncesvalles today. I wanted to hang back with the time-takers and snails and slackers--not the kilometer-counters. Slowpokes are my kind of people, and that's my style. 

Agatha from Poland. She was one of the strongest people I met on the Camino. "The Catholic Church is not about guilt," she said, "it's about forgiveness."

Tanya from Austria and Alexandra from Switzerland, on the bridge leading into Pamplona

I told Paul and he agreed that I was probably making the wiser decision, but he was going to push on. I never saw Paul again after that, and I always wondered how he made it to Roncesvalles, what shape he was in, how his feet were, how far he ended up getting day by day and on the Camino overall. I wondered how enjoyable the experience ended up being for him.

I didn't see "The Way" until I finished the Camino and returned to the U.S. I loved it, but having seen it after walking the Camino, I understand where Paul might have been a little misled. "The Way" notably doesn't depict the physical hardship of the Camino. The most uncomfortable physical experience it shows is when one of the characters discovers the toilet at one albergue is basically the backyard. The characters never break a sweat, never complain about blisters or backaches or shin splints, never run out of fresh water or clean underwear, never suffer sunburn, never slip on mud or dung or loose stones on the road, never get soaked from walking in non-stop rain in Galicia, never wake up covered in bedbug bites... The movie makes it look a little too easy I think.

Me knocking down walnuts, near Alto del Perdon, the Hill of Forgiveness

Aileen picking some kind of fruit we couldn't identify, on way to Finisterre

Moreover, the distances mapped each day in John Brierley's guide are just suggestions, not commands. While Brierley's book breaks down each day into pretty realistic distances, plenty of pilgrims will find from the get-go that they can cover more kilometers on some days, less on others. And it's OK. It's up to you. It's supposed to be.

Of course, unlike me, Paul had only about 2 weeks on the Camino. He had a set date to return home and return to his job. I didn't even have a ticket out of Spain or Europe when I started the Camino. I could take my time, and did. He couldn't. Not the way he'd initially approached it.

Peregrino deer, 3km ahead, on the way to Burgos

Special room for snorers, in the Santo Domingo albergue

All the same, I had to convince myself that not walking all the way to Roncesvalles was acceptable, that it didn't mean I wasn't fit for this Camino thing and wouldn't last the whole way. Even though I felt a big weight lift off my shoulders once I made the decision to only go as far as Orisson and just enjoy the scenery. Even though that new enjoyment included watching the mists of the Pyrenees drift in and out of the pockets of mountain valleys, listening to the clucking of cowbells break the silence, and resting on a large rock while dozens of griffon vultures--great condor-like birds that thrive in the French Pyrenees--soared and circled above, their vast wingspans casting shadows on the Camino below. Even though I ended up meeting my favorite walking partner on the Camino, Aileen from Ireland, once I decided to slow down and stay at Orisson, where Aileen was staying too (we met just before arriving at the albergue, when we were both standing close by and watching the same cow). Even though the whole gang of pilgrims I met at Orisson were wonderful. I still needed to reassure myself that I made the right decision to slow down.

On the mountainside on the way to Roncesvalles

Approaching Zubiri

Twice the fortune

Shepherd with sheep and goats, near Estella

In Lorca

In the notes I made before dinner at Orisson, the most detailed notes I would take the whole Camino, I wrote about accepting my limitations and my slower natural pace with humility and grace. After all, I reminded myself, "I want to enjoy myself. I don't want [the Camino] to become an experience in torture." The thing that really humbled me was how much just walking around on a very small patch of the earth, your own natural home, can make you feel nervous and inadequate. I figured then the only way to deal with it is to accept that the earth is a very contoured place, and some of its contours will feel easy and comfortable and some will prove unfamiliar (say, a flatlander like me trying to cross mountains or an islander trying to cross the vast dry plain of the Meseta) and challenging--but it's all parts of the same earth that nurtured you, it's all walking ground nonetheless. It's a bit like trying on a different culture or language--different and frustrating, but still valid forms of day-to-day living and communication. At times the adjustment will be awkward or clumsy, thus very humbling--but maybe that's what most pilgrims on the Camino are looking for.

In Santiago Cathedral, a priest pushing off the botafumeiro (incenser) during All Souls Day mass

There it goes! The botafumeiro swinging up to the rafters in Santiago Cathedral

Me, swinging in Cee

I didn't put it all so philosophically in my note. Just fragments of thoughts, and fragments of wonderings about the people I'd meeting in the weeks ahead. I wondered how many of them were like me, how many were people trying to sort something out. I wondered how many of us were unwittingly (or maybe full wittingly) physically and topographically mimicking the emotional ups and downs of our lives by attempting the Camino and thereby hoping for some kind of catharsis. And then I stopped all this wondering, and put down my pencil, and watched and listened to the griffon vultures fly for awhile. I looked out at all the daisies and Queen Anne's lace and blue irises dotting the fields beyond the albergue. And then I watched as a group of Catalan men in pink shirts strode up the road, checked into the albergue, and then came out one by one to sit by and talk to me.

My Irish friend Aileen (from the South)

My Irish friend Garth (from the North)

Pilgrim dinner in Burgos. Friends from Australia, Wales, the U.S., Germany, Finland, and Quebec

Pilgrim dinner in Santiago. Friends from France, the U.S., Scotland, England, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Germany

Impromptu celebration with Catalans and Castilians at albergue in Itero de la Vega

Impromptu celebration at albergue near Pambre with friends from France, Germany, Maine, and Madrid

The next day, when I walked on to Roncesvalles, I knew for sure I was keeping the right pace. It seemed a long walk from Orisson to Roncesvalles, and as I walked the distance I kept thinking there was no way I could've made the whole journey from St. Jean the day before. Not without crawling in on my hands and knees.

For the rest of the Camino I'd like to say I handled every day with as sound judgment as my first. But that wouldn't be true nor realistic. Some days I walked too far when I should have stopped earlier on, and ended up paying for it with blisters or huge fatigue. Other days I didn't get very far, not because it was my natural pace or because I found a town or albergue early on I really wanted to stay in, but because of pure laziness. I cried more than a few times on the Camino. I had my peaceful times, my sad times, my frustrated times, my neutral times. I met people I didn't really like, whose company I didn't enjoy. I encountered rude locals as well as friendly ones. Bad memories overwhelmed me at times when I was walking alone for too long. I whined in my head when I was really thirsty or needed to get to a bathroom or just generally uncomfortable but was still too far from any village or shelter. I swore out loud at pesky flies and gnats and swatted at them like I was trying to chop down an attacker twice my size. I was lonely. I wanted to be left alone. I wrote hate letters in my head to people who'd wronged me. I sang Lady Gaga and Janis Joplin and Lucinda Williams songs out loud but just barely when no one was around. I worried someone would overhear that I can't sing a note. I lingered and left mementos at some religious sites and shrugged at others. I regretted going on the Camino. I was glad I came. I was as graceless and self-pitying and self-contradicting as it probably is to be.

Sue from South Korea. She had her rucksack cover personally designed with her image and her nickname (Lucky Girl) 

Mural in Olveiroa, on the way to Finisterre

The thing is, all the while I was handling the Camino like an ass my own strength and grace snuck up on me. Steep uphill climbs that kept me from doing even 10km my first day got easier for me. Not that I still didn't sweat or take breaks--but I stopped worrying about the fact that I was sweating or stopping to catch my breath every few minutes. I had long since accepted that this was my own way of getting up the steep parts, that this was my own pace--and I realized how much energy the worry had been stealing from my strength before when I found now I could keep going much farther, with little problems, once I made it up the high hills. My climb up into Galicia and O'Cebreiro went like this. Everyone said the climb to O'Cebreiro would be a bear. And yeah, it was pretty tough. But it was also near the end of the Camino, and I'd been walking for nearly a month and up and down several high points by this time.

My friend Jeremy in Santiago, with his "pilgrim's hat"

Me near Ages with a real pilgrim's hat ;)

When I made it to O'Cebreiro I took a rest by the roadside, only to meet a couple old Japanese women heading back to their tour bus who wanted to take pictures of me (a real pilgrim!) and ask me all about my clothes, my backpack, my journey... "I respect you," one of the old Japanese ladies said to me. I nearly cried. Japan has just been through a horrific earthquake, and these ladies were old enough to have been children during World War II and the nightmare days of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All I just did was sweat my spoiled American behind up a hill with a backpack. I'd expected to stop at O'Cebreiro for the night, but now I didn't want to--I wanted to (and could) keep going.

Reaching Galicia, Celtic Spain

Me in O'Cebreiro, picture courtesy of Japanese ladies

The day I walked into Santiago, I walked 40km, and I thought that was a test of my strength and endurance--and I suppose it was. But it was my choice to take on that challenge near the end. After arriving in Santiago, another, unexpected test presented itself to me--one for the emotional and religious side of me rather than the physical, for my heart and soul. I think I handled it with grace. I think I made the right choice and did the right thing. But I spent a few days a little confused about it. I wondered what another woman would have done. I wondered if my conclusion was normal.


On the Meseta

On the way to Finisterre

Then my favorite walking partner stepped in. Aileen had left the Camino in Estella and gone back to Ireland, but came back to walk to Finisterre from Santiago. I walked with her. While we walked she reminded me of what I learned my first day on the Camino and was already forgetting. Don't worry about another person's pace. Find, trust, accept, and respect your own. Listen to your body, listen to your heart--and do what's best for them. Go slow if that's how you go. Stop when you want to stop. It's not a race--"it" meaning the Camino, life, love, healing, forgiveness, trust, faith, whatever it is that's set you to walking, whatever it is you're looking for or running from on the road. Some walk the Camino in 20 days, some take twice as long. Some start from farther away--they start with a handicap. Some take 10 minutes to heal, to forgive, to love or to trust. Some take 10 years--or all their lives. It's not a race--it's a journey.

You get a piece of paper when you get to Santiago. That's it. You get a passport at the beginning and a piece of paper with a blessing on it at the end. And they're just that--a passport and a blessing, not a map, not a secret solution. Your compostela is an affirmation of your being alive, an acknowledgment of your adventure and your journey on a contoured road and a contoured life. It's not an answer. The Camino is just something people do. Something wonderful to be sure. It's something you've done now. You'll do other things. As long as you do them in your own time, at your own pace, then you can't say you're not handling life with grace.

Santiago



Santiago



Santiago