Day 11 or The Detour not Taken

Notes on Day 11, March 6th, Najera to Santo Domingo de la Calzada



¨The only way out is through.¨ - John Bradshaw

Today´s 21 kilometers was mostly along a merciful dirt and gravel track running through wide open, rolling farmland, snow dusted mountains in the distance.



Today I wanted to take the detour to Cenas. There is a 12th century monastery there that supposedly contains sublime original alabaster windows that fill the interiors with a diffuse and ethereal light, as well a sarcophagus from the 13th century reputed to be one of the finest in Spain. But the detour route was not well marked, (grumble, grumble, grumble). I missed it and by the time I realized it I was too far along the normal route to turn back.

So I took the ¨normal¨ route, but I could not get the detour out of my head. I was disappointed about missing the monastery and it´s imagined wonders and I tried all day to figure out ways to go back (without walking back that is). Perhaps I could catch a bus in the next town? Perhaps in the next? the next? But my bus never came and I missed my monastery and my sarcophagus and my alabaster windows.

And I thought about how for years in my marriage I could not get the detour out of my head there either. I took the ¨normal¨ route and married, but for years quietly, if not consciously, yearned for the detour. It was an underground river of doubt about my marriage that ran through my gut, sometimes a barely perceptible trickle, at other times a geyser I worked hard to suppress. I never told a single soul about my doubt, and the resulting pain waited patiently outside my door and grew until I could not longer ignore it.

The thing about Pain is, it knocks softly at your door while you try to sleep, try to ignore it. None of us want to let Pain in. So you roll over and put the pillow over your ears, trying not to hear. But Pain will keep knocking, louder and louder, and your sleep, your life, will ever be fitful and restless until you get up, walk to the door, open it, and invite Pain in. You have to let Pain sit on your couch, give it a cup of tea, look directly at it and then say, ¨Now, what exactly do you want with me?¨ And Pain will say softly, ¨I´ve been trying to tell you, you´re not on your path.¨

And I listened. I am proud to say I finally listened. Because by the end of the worst of the treacherous worst of my marriage, I began to have visions of myself as a raging and terrified tiger imprisoned in a rusting and dank metal cage. I could feel the corroded metal of the bars under my grasping paws, smell the filth and squalor of my prison, and sense the claustrophobic constriction of the cell I was in. And when I could no longer deny that the cage was in fact, my marriage, I told my husband I needed a divorce.

And now I am retracing my steps back to the detour I was yearning to take long ago. And you know about my monastery at Cenas? It has been there since 1170, so I can reasonably bet it will be there a bit longer. Maybe one day I´ll make it back there too.

Later:

For what seemed like miles in the afternoon there was no place to sit for lunch until I finally found a very unattractive concrete well in a very unattractive spot, sat down and took out my pan (bread), queso (cheese) and jamon (ham) and sniffed the air. ¨What smells like shit?¨ I looked at the bottom of my shoe. Nope. The road? Nope. My armpits? They stank pretty badly, but not like shit thank God. I turned around. ¨Oh. It must be the 12 foot high pile of shit behind me that smells like shit.¨ This is wine country after all, and it only makes sense that they fertilize the vineyards with manure. It just figures that the first place to sit my weary butt down for 8km was by muy big shit pile. It seems miraculous that this shit, literally, is at least partly responsible for some of the divine wines I have been sedating myself with on this journey.

But I was richly rewarded at the end of the day´s trek. The cathedral in Santo Domingo de la Calzada is a thrilling mixture of 12th century Romanesque and 14th century Gothic architecture.



It is a fortified church, and for 20 minutes by myself I roamed ¨The Defences¨: low, narrow stone corridors and tightly spiraled steps leading to the battlements above the portcullis and overlooking the town. Ahh, Europe.



And the albergue in Santo Domingo de la Calzada was an ancient affair too; the kind of place I have been waiting for. An old monastery with an imposing entrance under an ancient stone archway, across a patterned cobble stone courtyard, and up worn stone steps to an set of heavy oak doors.



Let´s take a brief moment to talk Spanish doors. Doors in Spain look like they were built to keep Lucifer himself at bay. And given Spain´s long history of occupation and conflagration with the African Moors, I guess that makes sense from Catholic Spain´s perspective. But they are massive, thick and bold, presumably made of the legendary Spanish oak. Sometimes they are painted once bright but long faded colors, but mostly they are painted brown. Rich, deep shades of chocolate, now withered and weathered. They are studded with fearsome, menacing decorative iron rivets, some round, some sharp and pointed like diamonds, others elaborate and swirled. Their aged black iron knockers are shaped like fists. They leave me awed and incredulous and desperate to know what is beyond them. I can´t get enough of them.



Anyway, the albergue had a door like this, and the dormitory was way up in the attic with low slung, ancient hand-hewn timbers criss crossing the angled ceiling and jutting out from the walls. Ahh, Europe.



The toilet was in this little cubby hole of a spot, like they had refurbished the entire attic with a dormitory, kitchen and shower room and then said, ¨Fuck! Where are we going to put the crapper?¨, and then found two square feet of space in a dark corner where the roof angles down sharply to stick it. Another of those hand hewn timbers hovers right over the toilet. If you are not careful, you´ll gong your dome on it when you stand up to flush. Which I did. Three times. Ahh, Europe.

And I finally got my plate of vegetables tonight. Andre the German made pasta with a magnificent sauce of peppers, zucchini, jamon, and tomatoes. I threw together a little fresh salad of cucumbers, tomatoes, Spanish olive oil, salt and a splash of red wine. Carlos the Argentine poured the wine, Veronique the tattooed and pierced Parisian drank it, and Stephanie from Friebourg, who couldn´t move at all because her knees were shot, sat at the table and waited for the rest of us. We sat down together and ate and talked and drank. Ahh, Europe.