Last night, after another carb 'n' carcass bomb of a dinner at a restaurant with Chris and Christina, I returned to my municipal albergue where the dragon lady of a hospitalera would not give us any blankets (even though there were some), and where she would not open the other dorm room for those of us who don´t snore to be able to sleep in peace. Not at all in the Camino spirit if you ask me, so after bitching about her with a couple of other peregrinos, I left her a bit of a nasty note (I called her "La Diabla"), which was also decidedly not in the Camino Spirit.
But I slept tolerably, even without the blanket and with the snoring. Good God, without earplugs on the Camino I would be toast. I remember the first question Liam asked me when he met me. He eyed me with caution and said, "do you snore?" and he told me the story of a guy whose snore was so incomprehensibly over the top that Liam ¨thought the guy was taking the piss.¨ And each night Liam would make a loud noise with his fingers and lips (it sounded like a kazoo) to try and startle the snorers in their sleep, and each morning he would narrow his eyes at the offenders and say ¨there, that one right there, she´s the culprit.¨
This morning, like yesterday, another guy turned on the lights at 6:00 am. It seems like the closer we get to Santiago, the faster people want to get there, so the earlier they are getting up.
I marvel at how keenly sensitive you are on the trail to every slight, piddling discomfort. Each ounce of unevenly distributed weight in your pack, each teensy grain of gravel in your shoe, the niggling chafing of a buckle. But you don´t stop to fix it because getting started again is so hard.
My guidebook looks like it has been through a war zone. It has been rained on, spilled on, sweated on, dropped in water, in mud, in pooey mud and dried out by a fire. It has been stuffed in my belt, stuffed in my pack, stuffed in my pockets and taped back together. It bears silent witness to all I have experienced and born on this trail.
Today I had so much company in the way. Chickens, sheep, goats, singing birds. I am slowing down as I get closer to Santiago, not speeding up. I lingered over horses this morning. For ten minutes I stood transfixed by the sound of cows, their large heads just feet from me, munching the grass. I was hypnotized by the noise the grass made as the cows tore it and chewed, their large maws grinding rhythmically side to side, their big wet noses glistening in the sun. I have grown quite fond of these large lumbering lugs.
The farm dogs, who seem to love their lives with an abandon I wish I could embody, trot out to greet you cheerily at times, at other times they rush out to tell you to stay the hell away from their sheep. Either way they perform their duties with relish. And today a snake crossed my path and I watched in a trance as it slithered slowly away. And for one fleeting moment I saw a deer up ahead, petite and gray with large ears and an enormous white tail like a bunny´s.
I stopped in Melide for lunch and to blog. I figured it would take me another two and a half hours to get to the Albergue in Arzua, but I was meandering so slowly, so lost in peaceful thought, that three hours later I looked up with no idea where I was. I had not been looking at my guidebook at all (I used to be so diligent about doing my homework before a day´s trek, now I just go, trusting there will be a bright yellow arrow to guide me when I need it). I thought I might have overshot Arzua, which is a problem because there was no other albergue for another 18km. So I had to walk 300 meters to the main road just to find out I was still another 5km from Arzua. Am I slowing down to prolong the experience? I do not know. Perhaps I am. Perhaps I am just tired. Perhaps I am just needing to be quiet.
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