Day 34 or My Shepherd´s Dilemma

Notes on Day 34, March 29, Triacastela to Sarria

Yesterday in Triacastela I pulled off a clandestine albergue switch. I had paid my 3€ for the municipal albergue, but it was dirty... and wet, and I was feeling picky and restless, and I quietly ducked out of albergue and abandoned Joe and Roberto and Elainie for the comfort of a cozy private albergue in a converted old stone house with heat and a private shower and extra blankets.

Roberto had told us how a priest in Madrid said a blessing for him and Elainie at a mass they attended before their Camino, and he advised them to remember to ¨be humble.¨ But I was not feeling humble or meekly grateful yesterday, and the closer I get to Santiago, the more I want in the way of comforts again. In the beginning I thought ¨you want me to sleep on dirt? Ok! great! dirt is quaint!¨ Now I walk into the albergue and immediately ask if there is heat, hot water, blankets and internet. My humility is evaporating like my money.



Last night I said goodbye to Maria and Pepe because they were taking another route to Sarria and I did not expect to see them again. But that sadness aside, the weather cleared today (natch), and I had the trail to myself this morning past lovely low dry stacked stone walls that crisscross the fields and pastures.



I stopped for lunch and sat on just such a stone wall that bordered a small pasture with about nine gray-white sheep and three fluffy spring lambs. They stood munching the grass and I munched my left over walnuts from Enselmo, which I ate with some dark chocolate I had bought. Mmmm, crazy good.



And one of the sheep wandered over to me and gobbled the orange peel I dropped at my feet. I was happy to have fed him what was probably a rare treat. And then the sheep dog ambled over and I tossed him the rest of my ham. And we picnicked together for a while before I noticed the shepherd sleeping in the sun in the far corner of the field. And such a swell of peace and wonder at this bucolic, simple, contented life filled me.



In the afternoon I walked through low canyons of moss and fern where sunlight dappled the trail. The way weaved through grey stone hamlets, the towns forming like pearls on a string along the path. Yesterday Joe had observed that ¨I´ve never seen so many derelict buildings in my life,¨ and I hadn´t wanted to say it, but he is right. The poverty here seems to be pretty deep. The Camino is the only
thing running through some of these villages, and the abandonment is the by-product of the younger generations fleeing to the cities looking for work. More often than not it is the old women, clad in skirts and aprons or smocks and golashes, that I greet while they are herding the cattle down the road in front of me or tending the cabbage patch by the trail.



And then the thing I have been fearing this entire trip finally happened. The dreaded bathroom emergency. And, well, remember Adrian? Yeah. Well, let´s just say I fertilized someone´s field today. Nuff said.

I got my 20k done in about 4.5 hours today. I was not trying to go fast, but I still had some of Elainie´s algae in my bottle and that shit really does work and I am determined to find some when I get home. It is probably illegal, but I don´t give a rat's ass. It turned me into Speedy Gonzalez for three days!



So I arrived in Sarria and had time for a nap and a trip to the store and when I was heading to my albergue I saw Elainie and Roberto climbing the main street into the old section of Sarria. And Joe was there and Maria and Pepe had come after all!



We hit the town for dinner at an expensive restaurant way too nice for the way we all smelled. Joe and I rhapsodized on our body funk during the walk to the restaurant. He complained about two French people (of course they were French, Brits hate the French), and said ¨I must´ve got caught in a bad slipstream or something because I started retching.¨ I´m surprised he hasn´t fainted yet from my body funk. I am about to. Jesus.



Dinner was by far the snazziest and richest (I mean flavor-wise, but price-wise too) food I´ve had the entire trip. I ate a gorgeous buttery sopa de marisco (seafood soup), and pimentos de Gallego (roasted red peppers with garlic and salt and drizzled with the brightest, greenest, fruitiest olive oil you can imagine), and a fat steak smothered in a queso sauce that is making me fat just to think about.

At dinner I mentioned my lunch on my stone wall with my shepherd far afield, and Roberto said ¨We talked to that shepherd!¨ And what I heard then broke my heart. No one wants to buy his wool anymore, so he just burns it and sells the fluffy, fuzzy white lambs to butchers for meat. And all at once my naive, romantic image of that bucolic, contented, simple shepherd´s life dissolved in a wave of guilt for not being a vegetarian and for wearing machine stitched clothes made by Chinese children.