Day 3 or Muchas Ampollas

Notes on Day 3, February 27, Roncesvalles to Larrasoana.



Morning:

Last night I slept in a 13th century monastery. Don´t get excited. It was not the heavy stone walled, cavernous, echoing medieval hall I had envisioned either. Instead we all slept in a dry-walled room with 18 WWII era infirmary style metal bunk beds. Adequate? Yes. But definitely not the Hogwarts experience.



We all set out together from the monastery refuge at Roncesvalles, but soon staggered as we each established our own pace.



The morning mist was heavy in the valley. I felt like Frodo leaving The Shire.



Even the trees in these Navarrese forests could be Ents. Each aged and silent beech is moss carpeted and with its own gnarled face, everyone different, they appear magical enough to come alive.



I walked past pastureland with grazing horses and sheep bordered by overgrown wire fences and boxwood hedges. (Needless to say I dodged a lot of shit on the trail today).



I listened to cow bells tinkling like wind chimes and birds singing because who wouldn´t sing in a place this lovely? Every pore in my body inhaled the dewy air, the scent of the grass, the smell of the stony dirt under my feet.



And then it happened. At 10:35am, in a tilled back country field bordered by grazing horses, it happened. I had a meltdown. The first of my trip. And no, it wasn´t because of my ex or that whole hot ugly mess. It was because I wasn´t sad. I wasn´t exactly happy either, but I wasn´t sad. Instead, I was glad to be right where I was, in that overwhelmingly, enchantingly graceful spot, with the sun climbing over the mountains and making the mist glow like heaven, I was glad to be there.

I have left my heart behind in the foothills of Navarra, Spain.



Afternoon:

First, a word about chafing: ow.

...Sometimes on the trail, you just can`t even force it to work. Like when you stop every ten feet to wheeze like Darth Vader without his helmet and curse your feet and your 60 plus lbs of divorce fat. But other times you hit your stride and before you know it you´ve rocked out a kilometer.

...I wish my feet would decide to make peace with this Camino thing because they are not going to get out of it. They need to just calm the hell down and get with the friggin´ program.

...Now I wish my feet would just fall off already or my heels would go ahead and burst into the flaming, seeping blisters ("ampollas" in Spanish) they are rearing to become and get it over with.

...When you go uphill, your feet and your ass hurt. When you go downhill, your feet and your knees hurt. Either way your feet hurt and complain vigorously that you are going to owe them a very expensive pedicure when you get home.

On the camino I met a peregrino headed away from Santiago (he was a few coo-coos shy of a clock and spoke an impenetrable mixture of German, English and Spanish at me) who told me that he had met the Dutchman, Hunn, on The Camino and that Hunn was going to try and make it to Pamplona today. You´ve got to be kidding me! Pamplona was another 15.5km after the death-wish inducing 27.7km to Larrasoana. If this juicy bit of Camino gossip is true, Hunn is freakin' crazy. I knew there was something wrong with him when he told me he loves Rush Limbaugh. Dude, he´s Dutch. What´s up with that?

I find that I am talking to myself out loud a lot on the trail. Like I´ll say "thank you" to no one in particular when I see a trail marker at precisely the right moment to avoid a freak-out that I might be lost. Or like when I see a steep uphill coming down the road and say "I gotta climb that? Aw, dude, that's fucked up." Or like when my feet are hurting and every added step makes me cry out for a lethal injection I´ll say ¨Really? I have to go around the gorge? Can´t we just have a bridge here? Just a little bridge? Or how about even just a rope to swing across?"

Evening:

Holy $&%! (insert expletive of your choice - I am trying to tone it down). I have walked 27.7km today and I have seen hell and it looks like the bottom of my feet.

Today almost killed me. My guide book says that physically speaking, these first few days of The Camino are a bit of a baptism by fire. Personally, I think this is an understatement. You know all those Renaissance paintings of sinners getting chewed in the hungry maws of Satan a la Dante´s Inferno? It´s a bit more like that.