Day 32 or Would You Like Some Algae With That?

Notes on Day 32, March 27, Vega de Valcarce to O´Cebreiro

Last night was quite possibly the coldest night I have spent in my entire life. No amount of girl scout camping could have prepared me for this. And I am thinking that there has to have been something Christina and her husband could´ve done to mitigate the meat locker temperatures (they had a space heater, don´t ya know), unless the hospitalero´s speech at dinner last night was an indication that he finds the ´suffering´ part of the camino essential. But good God, there is enough physical discomfort on the Camino without manufacturing more out of some puritanical spirit of imposed penance.

Speaking of penance, in medieval times, walking the Camino de Santiago was one way you could earn a plenary indulgence for your sins from the Catholic Church. In other words, you could buy your way out of purgatory. I don´t know, but I think this little trek has earned me enough plenary indulgence credits that I can pretty much be an evil terror the rest of my life and still make it to heaven.

This morning Elainie gave me some spirulina (I have no idea if I am spelling that right). It is algae. ¨Eets for energy, for today. You put een water.¨ I tell you these Europeans (well, Elainie is Brazilian, but anyway) are the biggest herbal, voodoo, homeopathic remedy pushers you´ve ever met. Already Corina gave me some fizzy drink to prevent me from getting sick. Ana gave me three green herbal capsules to take when I did actually get sick, and so far Elainie has given me ¨infusion¨ for digestion, special tea for sleep, and now algae for energy. I want to ask her if she has some special fungi to help me sweat out my ex.

So today we have the steepest climb of the entire Camino and she tells me I am going to need energy so she put a teaspoon full of the dried green algae flakes, which look like fish food, into my water bottle. I went along with it, just hoping this stuff was not going to give me projectile diarrhea or anything. Elainie swears by it. ¨With this, you will go to Santiago today!¨

I was the first to leave the Brazilian meat locker this morning. For fuck´s sake you could see your breath cloud inside the building. It was warmer outside, in the rain too! And the first bit of trail followed a low valley. The trees were encrusted in spongy lichen making the wooded glens look like they were blanketed in green snow.



Yesterday I watched some news footage of the flooding in Galicia, (I will be crossing the border there this afternoon), and I can already tell the rain is overwhelming the ground. It cascades in white sheets and rivulets right down the hillsides, creating waterfalls and streams where none were in dryer days. All this water makes me have to pee.

Peeing outside is no longer the elaborate affair it once was. Now I just drop, squat and go on the trail if necessary. I am like, lightning quick.

I am excited to cross from Castilla y Leon into Galicia today. Everyone keeps telling me I have to try the marisco (seafood), the pulpo (octopus), and vino blanco (white wine) there. With each drooling recommendation my expectations have soared exponentially so that if these gastronomic delights are anything less than otherworldly I am going to be mega disappointed.



The closer I get to Galicia, the more I see derelict buildings with rotting grey beams exposed, buckled stone walls and warped, caved in doors. Time has forgotten these places. And this is farm country, so there is a loneliness already to the landscape that is magnified by its empty barns and sheds.



I broke my hike today at a small bar run by the most incongruous pair. A four foot tall, white haired abuela wearing a decades old smock, a moth eaten black sweater and slippers. She is straight off a post card of ethnic Galicia. And her grandson, a punk haired, Playstation II addicted teenager. The difference in generations could not have been more stark. I sat with them for over an hour while I peeled each layer of clothing off and dried it by their welcoming and white hot fire.

Being wet at this altitude blows. The rain gets you from the outside, but with all the rain gear you sweat on the inside. You think ¨I´ll just pop in this bar for some hot tea and get warm,¨ but the minute you stop moving you get cold and you can´t wait to get moving in the rain again.



As I climbed higher that afternoon, the rain was turning the snow on the ground into slush and the trail was transformed into rivers of muddy poo, or pooey mud, I am not sure which. And my guidebook has promised stunning views of the Valcarce valley from this elevation of 1300 meters, but I can´t see shit. Just a wall of white fog that will not budge.

And then I was, and I am not trying to flatter myself in anyway here, I believe propositioned by the scariest looking octogenarian Spanish farmer I have yet seen. He stopped me on the trail and asked me if I was alone, and like a moron I said yes (actually, this is a fairly common question from peregrinos who are curious if you are doing the Camino by yourself or with friends). Then he asked me if I wanted an ¨hombre para la noche,¨ a man for the night. At least I thought that´s what he said, and he kept leaning into me and finally grinned showing a mouthful of metal capped stumps where teeth used to be. I may not have very high standards, but dental visits are a must if you are going to get into my bed, dude. And between that and the personal space invasion, I spurted out a hasty ¨gracias¨ and an ¨adios,¨ and got out of there before I became the top story on the evening news.

And then over a piping hot bowl of sopa de gallego that night in my hotel restaurant, I was hit on again! But this time by a much more respectable septuagenarian, who kept calling me guapa. ¨Guapa, guapa, I know guapa,¨ I thought. ¨Yeah! Brad Pitt is muy guapo!¨ I remembered Elena telling me the word for handsome in Spanish that night we watched Seven in the albergue in Los Arcos. And then another old man doddered into the restaurant, quickly ascertained my predicament, and humorously offered me his cane to beat off my pursuer.

By the way, my dessert tonight was a hunk of cheese made right here in O´Cebreiro, tangy and sweet, and covered with honey, (I passed the bee hives on the way in). I am in love with this cheese and want to take it home and make love to it. Una queso para la noche, por favor!

Day 31 or What a Painter Nature Is

Notes on Day 31, March 26, Villafranca to Vega de Valcarce

With my arrival in Villafranca last night I officially crossed the ¨less than 200 km to Santiago¨ mark. I can hardly believe it.

And amazingly, the outpost albergue woke us all by playing Gregorian chant this morning. They have redeemed themselves a modicum with that bit of coolness.

This morning there was a choice in trails. Literally the low road or the high road. The low trail followed the main road, the high road a mountain ridge. Not one, not one single peregrino from either albergue took the high road this morning, so in the rain I had this mountain ridge entirely to myself. And I spent the morning congratulating myself on what a fearless adventurer I was and what suckers everyone else was, because even in the rain, what a view I had!



Spring wild flowers speckled the mountainsides in shades of butter yellow, electric blue, rosy pink, smokey white, and lavender against a backdrop of the blue-gray shale in the hillside. The shale itself was streaked with veins of ochre, gold, umber and rust and was encrusted with minty lichens. These colors blended flawlessly with the lingering hues of last autumn: the straw colored grasses, the burnt sienna and vermilion of the spent ferns and the pumpkin colored leaves.

And I strained to remember my Wordsworth:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

It was this kind of morning, you know? I looked in admiration at the canvas I was walking through and mused, ¨what a painter nature is!¨ to so keenly pick out such glorious and un-thought-of juxtapositions of colors, such combinations and depths of texture.



The slate here is so exquisitely veined and intricately hued I keep thinking what a gorgeous kitchen counter top it would make and I want to bring some home with me but alas, it is too heavy.



And that was morning. By afternoon, after I had my fill of walking in art, the rain changed to sleet, and the wind drove the sleet so hard that it blew sideways into the ridge from which I was trying to descend. It caught in my poncho, making me look like an inflated puffer fish on the mountain, and I laughed and wished I had a picture of myself in all this ridiculousness. Until the wind finally tore my cheap ass poncho to pieces and rendered it useless. My gloves, feet, head, every bit of me soaked, I thought what a sucker I am for taking the high road and how intelligently cautious all those other hikers are for taking the low road. They were probably breaking their hike in some cozy roadside bar right now, drinking Mahou or San Miguel, eating jamon and tortilla, while I was up on that ridge thinking about how blue my corpse will look in the coffin when I die from hypothermia. It was a bit harrowing, I have to confess.

Elainie and Roberto had told me about this albergue in Vega de Valcarce that was run by a Brazilian couple. I knew they would be there, if they had made it this far today, because Elainie seemed so comforted about the idea of a Brazilian albergue, with real Brazilian food and other reminders of her home country.

And sure as I am divorced and still hating my ex, when the hospitalero gave me the tour of the women´s bathroom, there was Roberto brushing his teeth with Elainie!

We spent the afternoon in this Brazilian albergue with its rustic Brazilian artwork on the walls and mellow Brazilian music on the CD player, with Christina (who sang to everything) and her husband (whose name I can´t pronounce). Christina put my clothes (all my clothes - I wrapped my sleeping bag around my bare ass) in the washer (there was no dryer, so I was leaving a lot up to fate), and the temperature in this albergue was even more glacial than last night, so Elainie and Roberto and I crawled into bed in the afternoon for another siesta in self defense.

In the evening I went downstairs to find that Christina´s husband had built a merciful fire, that Elainie had kindly hung all my clothes on a drying rack by the fire and that everyone was crowded around the blood reviving flames with Pepe and Maria, a father and four months pregnant daughter from Valencia.



So the five of us huddled around the fire, the only six square feet of warmth in the entire albergue, and held our wet clothes up to dry and watched the steam billow from them. It was an intimate evening, as we were the only five in the albergue. Pepe (I absolutely adore the name Pepe and want to get a goldfish and name him that), is a retired genetics professor and now restores antiques. Maria is beautiful and petite and adorably pouched in the belly, with the exact haircut with the micro short choppy bangs I was trying for. But she can actually pull it off with her coal black hair and sweetly round face and perfectly pale complexion.



Elainie wondered where I was last night in Villafranca because they did not see me at the municipal albergue. They met this tall, gorgeous, blue-eyed Brit who had just chucked his misery-inducing corporate job and became a teacher. ¨He remind us of you!¨ Elainie said, and ¨Oh, and I thought, ´where ees Kreesteen? We have to introduce her to him!´.¨ And where was Kristin? Kristin was freezing her nose hairs off in the outpost across the street instead of happily ensconced in the clean, dry, warm municipal albergue with you and Roberto and Mr. Tall Handsome Brit because your guidebook did not describe the outpost as ¨legendary.¨ That´s where Kristin was.

Christina made us a home cooked meal of traditional Brazilian food and before dinner her husband offered a few words about the camino. ¨If your heart is open on the Camino, you will always learn. But if you´re heart is closed, you will suffer.¨ A bit ominous to be sure, but I know what he means. If you are not open to the physical discomforts, if you are not prepared to be cold and wet and dirty and smelly and share your bed and your bath and your food and your bandaids, you will be miserable here. Utterly miserable. But if you can find a way to be open and unfazed by those experiences, then you will be embraced by the surprising and nurturing comforts. Like those of a zesty salad followed by a main course of red beans, some sausage, and baked rice. It was hearty and warm and delicious. And for dessert, the most divine homemade dolce de leche I have ever tasted topped with gorgeous walnuts from trees that grew right there in Vega de Valcarce. It was a tiny dessert, only a morsel really, but transporting. Just enough to savor and contemplate its sweet nuttiness and then regret it´s too quick demise in your stomach and leave you longing for more.

Informational Update

I am in Triacastelo, and tomorrow I walk to Sarria.

I think I will be home on April 8th, if all goes according to plan. I have a lot of blogging I want to catch up on, hopefully tomorrow...

Day 30 or The Legendary Outpost

Notes on Day 30, March 25, Ponferrada to Villafranca

Morning:
Almost overnight the architecture in these border mountain villages has changed from that of the plateaus and valleys of Castilla y Leon. The warped, undulating roofs that used to be made of rusty Spanish tiles covered in bright green moss are now warped undulating roofs made of gray shale shingles shaped like fish scales and covered in blue-gray lichens. The buildings in this valley called Bierzo are made of grey stacked stone with pronounced second story balconies made out of black and gnarled timbers. They are not the sierra colored mud and straw homes that I have seen for so long.



Roberto can´t believe I started the camino in France and have come this far by myself. In fact, I have been told many times that I am ¨muy valiente,¨ very brave, for traveling on my own. And you would be surprised how difficult it is for me to accept this compliment about myself. Jamie Tarabay, who is my age and is Baghdad bureau chief for NPR, is brave. Not me. And yet I want so very much to be brave. Courage is a character trait that I ache to embody, even more than humor or generosity or patience. I am not sure why this is so, but perhaps if I am brave, I know I will endure. Endure this camino, endure my divorce, endure the uncertainty that is my life looking forward. Perhaps if I am told enough I am brave, at some moment I'll have the courage to believe it.

So I remember my mom telling me that when you refuse to accept a compliment from someone it is the same thing as saying they are stupid and don´t know what they are talking about, and I don´t want to be rude and insult Roberto, my new friend, so I have no choice but to agree with him that I am brave. And I am doing my best to believe it.

And apparently St. Francis of Assisi did the camino in 1212. So I am bravely walking in illustrious bald-pated footsteps too.



In the morning I breakfasted with Roberto and Elainie and then walked with them for much of the day. Roberto has worked for an American electronics company for 18 years and wants to chuck the bullshit and be a tennis program manager for a resort. It is a story I hear over and over again on the Camino, that the people who come here are searching for something more, or needing to change something about their lives, or simply needing time to think.



It only took four weeks, but I am finally used to the weight of my pack and can sling the fucker on with pretty impressive agility now. And it is about time, but I am beginning to appreciate the athleticism of the trail and take delight in its challenges rather than just look dully at an uphill climb and say ¨fuck.¨ My body has finally recovered its ability to adapt to exertion. For a year I was so exhausted that the thought of exercise made me want to go to bed and sleep for an hour, but now, I look forward to a day of kicking ass on the trail. It feels good to have a functioning (if slightly worse for wear), body again.



In the afternoon I left Roberto and Elainie behind and continued on alone. I waited for the ruminating to start, but miraculously, it didn´t. Adrenalized by the lovely Beirzo valley I was trekking through I found myself, unintentionally and spontaneously making vows of fealty to myself, each growing in boldness and commitment. ¨Never again will I allow myself to be told that I am selfish and believe it. Never again will I allow myself to be told that I don´t know what is best for ME. Never again will I allow myself to apologize for my feelings, my wants, my needs, my very existence. Never again will I hang my head in shame or guilt before someone else´s judgement. Never again will I allow someone else to define my reality or my experience or me. Never again will I allow someone else´s labels or categories or diagnoses of my feelings or behavior or choices invade my consciousness and become my own. Never again will I deny my own fear or doubt. Never again will I ignore my own instincts, my gut, my gut God, which is the truest form of guidance our bodies possess.¨ And on and on I went with my vows, until I could think of no more at the moment, but left the door open for more vows to come.

I was surprised at myself, my knightly, chivalrous self. I have decided to become my own defender, my own protector. And I marveled at the ease with which these far pleasanter ruminations came upon me today, and I realized they were the result of something my friend Marcie had said to me once: ¨You have to get really still within yourself.¨ To know what you are missing, to know what you want, you have to get still. And this litany of promises was born out of just that: stillness. I could hear myself instructing myself in exactly what I needed to do, to be, for myself.

Afternoon:
I am in an outpost. An absolute, Wild West, outhouse across the frozen fucking courtyard, outpost. Any minute now the fur traders should be arriving from Saskatchewan. My guidebook described this place as ¨a haven of hospitality and healing,¨ which is why I chose to come here instead of kip at the more institutionally austere municipal albergue. The guidebook also said this place was legendary. Hmmmm, is that because the dormitory is practically a treehouse? or because the shower water, which the hospitalero described as ¨caliente¨ is actually barely tepid? Or because the toilet is outside across a freezing stone courtyard? Oh, I can see this place is legendary all right.



This was by far the shortest shower I have taken, which is probably some kind of cosmic retribution for the fact that admittedly my hot water consumption on this trip can be described as nothing less than colossally inconsiderate. I can´t help it. I have had an addiction to obnoxiously long, fatally hot showers ever since I was old enough to take them and get yelled at by my parents for wasting hot water. And it is true that hot water in the albergues is sometimes scarce and you are supposed to leave some for everybody else. Once when I was camping out in a hot shower Pablo walked by my stall and shouted ¨Don´t esleep!¨ I am evil and selfish and I don´t care. But today the universe took its revenge and I froze in the shower room. And when you are that fucking cold there is nothing to do but take a nap in self defense. It is not that you are tired, really, just that you need to get your shivering ass under the covers before you turn five shades of blue.

And the German guys in their junk sling underwear are back and visually polluting the place again. Ugh.

And there is no washer and dryer here. I am getting desperate. My clothes are about to walk themselves to Santiago.

But this place does have high speed Internet. This is fucked up. How do you have high speed internet and no hot water? and no indoor toilet? and no heat in the dining room?

I was still a frozen block of ice after my siesta, so I figured I´d better get my body thawed and moving. I took a tour of the town where I had another (there have been about three) Under the Tuscan Sun moment and drooled over a gorgeous crumbling townhouse for sale in the medieval Calle Agua (Water Street). It was charming and in want of affection (and rehab) and I had to stop myself from wildly dialling the realtor´s number.



And I am glad to report that not all accommodations at the outpost were abysmal. Dinner was a lovely home cooked presentation of Bierzo stew (chorizo and cabbage soup) and huevos con fritas (eggs fried in paprika and olive oil and slapped on top of hot, salty french fries), and a dessert of apples straight from the local orchard.

After dinner, one of the volunteers at the albergue, a Brazilian named Adriano, asked me to read the lyrics for some of the songs he had written in English. At first I thought he just wanted me to correct his grammar and usage, but really I think he was compliment fishing. He could certainly play the guitar and sing, but his lyrics were on the generic side. But then, I can´t write song lyrics in my own language, let alone a second one, so props to him. I definitely do not have the courage to do that.

Day 29 or Oh No I Dih-int

Notes on Day 29, March 24, Acebo to Ponferrada

Oh. My. GOD. I ate. A bowl. Of Blood! That Morcilla de Leon I had a few days ago? That was blood people, BLOOD! Roberto told me last night. It explains everything about the dish, the blackish brown color, the hummusy texture, the smokey taste. Blood. I ate a bowl of blood. Oh yes I did. Gross.

And there were a couple of scrawny German dudes in the albergue last night who liked to scoot around in their skimpy skivies with their junk hanging down. It would have been fine if they´d looked like George Clooney, but they didn´t. Gross. I mean I have the sense to cover up since I am closer in physique to Roseanne Barr these days than Cate Blanchette (I will never be Cate Blanchette though, dammit). I mean, consideration people!

So I left the albergue early this morning in a hurry to escape the dangling German nut parade and almost immediately I missed Roberto and Elainie. I wished I had popped my head in their private room to at least say goodbye. And I thought about them all day, hoping they would make it to Ponferrada and maybe I could have dinner with them.



I have worn a cloak of loneliness these last few days. I have never read a description of loneliness that so perfectly captures the sensation like Liz Gilbert´s eloquent lines. If I had her book with me I would quote her, but she describes loneliness as following her home and climbing into bed with her, with his boots still on. Damn.

So I want Roberto and Elainie back to keep me company. I am not finished with them. And especially now because my plan from yesterday, my plan to ¨set down¨ the ruminations and mullings over my ex-it at the Cruz de Ferro, didn´t work. My symbolic unburdening just didn´t take. I know it didn't take because my mind took its usual position at the starting line of the mental marathon of divorce races again today.



When I moved into my new condo my girlfriends had a little Wiccan cleansing for me. And before you go get all freaked out, no they are not Wiccans, they are harmless cute little atheists, and Wicca isn´t devil worship anyway, it´s nature worship, and as far as I´m concerned nature is just one of the many faces of God, so no biggie. So anyway, we burned sage, we invited good into our lives, we banished the bad, and all was healing and cathartic and welcoming for my new home, until the end. We did this visualization where we needed to picture the person we were ¨sending away¨ (my ex, obviously), and utter some words of generous dismissal, and then imagine this person walking off into the unknown, away from us. And I felt this fierce refusal from my gut to let go, and a chorus of ¨I´m not ready! I´m not ready¨ resounded in my ears, and I began to cry so that I thought I might not be able to stop. It was too soon for me.



And again, when I stopped a few weeks ago in the little church in Eunate, I tried to deposit more than just some hopes for the future. I remembered Liz Gilbert on the top of the ashram in India, creating a place and a space to finally send all of her thoughts and feelings about her ex husband. Not that she would never think of him or be angry again, but that now she would have someplace to ¨send¨ these reflections so they would no longer trouble and consume her waking hours and her present moments. So I sat in that nearly millennium old church and cried and tried to carve out a harbor for my thoughts, and vowed that when the engine of anger started to rev again I would send those feelings to Eunate. But it didn´t really work. Each day as I walked, the engine lept into gear and propelled my mind as I propelled my feet. And I found I could not send them to Eunate. It was too soon for me.

And again, at the Cruz de Ferro I could not lay my burden down on the pile of rocks that years of pilgrims have mounded at the base of that cross. I tried to add my ¨rock,¨ but it turns out I am still carrying it.

I don´t know. Maybe I am trying to force a process of healing that needs to happen naturally, in its own time. I remember my first shrink (the first of many), when I went to him for depression medication and the first question I asked was, ¨how long before I can get off them?¨ He looked at me and said, ¨You remind me of someone who has broken their arm and wants to take the cast off a week later. You need time to heal.¨ So a broken arm takes time to heal, and so does depression, and apparently so does a broken heart.

And even though I left him, my ex, my heart was broken. Because I did try to love him, and because I realize that I don´t think he ever really loved me, and because by the end we were such scathing enemies and I never wanted to believe that could possibly happen to us, that we could possibly hate each other that much.

So as of March 13, the ink on the judge´s signature has only been dry three months, and I realize this is still a wound that is weeping and red. And I think perhaps what I need to do is to just stop obsessing about the fact that I am still obsessing. To just let the flame burn out on it´s own when all it´s fuel is burned up and finally, one day, I will discover with delight I am simply bored with dwelling on the whole mess. I am sure a more disciplined person would say, ¨If you don´t like your thoughts, just change them; make the choice.¨ But I have tried to ¨make a choice,¨ and that choice does not seem to be choosing me.

Which is why I am now thinking that this Camino, with its multitude of beauties and rigors and discomforts, is such a good undertaking for me right now. I think you have to sweat out the toxins sometimes, and be patient while you do that. And it is taking me a while to learn the lesson of patience on this Way. At least four times now (including today in Ponferrada) in the afternoons when I hobble into the albergues I am in such a hurry to take out my wallet and pay or find my pilgrim credential and get it stamped that I drop things or knock things over and the hospitalero has had to say, ¨tranquilo, tranquilo!¨ ¨Calm down, you are here now, rest, have some hot tea, there is no need to hurry.¨

So I did slow down and drink the hot tea the hospitalero gave me, and then had a shower and a nap. But in the evening I did not see Roberto and Elainie in the albergue, and so went to dinner alone. I felt sad to be alone at first, but my spirits were lifted when I was introduced to the most astounding Tarte de Queso in the world. Tarte de Queso is cheese cake, but it is not like any cheese cake at home. There is no congealed Philly cream cheese in this divine invention. It is like someone took the fabulous, tangy cheese right from this region and poof! turned it into a cheese torte.



After my revelation of a dessert I meandered around the imposing and dramatically lit Castillo de los Templarios, yes the castle of the Knights Templar, before wandering back to the albergue.

And guess who I saw sitting at the computer checking her e-mail? None other than Elainie. She saw me and I saw her and we exclaimed and kissed on each cheek and made plans to have breakfast together tomorrow. And secure in the knowledge that I had my friends back for another day at least, I went to bed.

Day 28 or Christmas on Easter

Notes on Day 28, March 23, Rabanal to Acebo

Before I had left Astorga I had bought some walking poles in a sporting goods store. I knew I still had two mountain ranges to get across and the chances of snow were good. I suppose that I could have paid 8€ for one of those walking sticks that are often sold at the albergues, but no. I had to pay 40€ for the super hitech, lightweight titanium poles with the professional-looking but inexplicable doo dads that you put on the bottom.



It took me a little while to get used to walking with them. Like when I raised my hands yesterday in triumph at finally seeing the sign for my destination, Rabanal, and promptly tripped on a pole and almost did a face plant in the mud. Or like when I stabbed my shoe with the pointy end and narrowly avoided impaling my great toe.



But damn I am glad I bought them. They really do help with balance and you can transfer some weight from your feet to your arms as you push off. And they have saved my ass a few times too, like when I slid on ice and went into the splits and almost tore myself a second vagina. That would´ve been an awkward visit to the gynecologist for sure.



After watching snow collect on my window last night, I was nervous as I stepped outside this morning, but the snow was not so deep, only enough to make it beautiful, not dangerous. As I climbed, the landscape reminded me of a dessert but with snow. The low shrubs looked like upturned broom brushes, reminiscent of cacti, and the brown earth mingled with the white of the snow.



What a gift of a day. The higher I climbed, the deeper the snow. It covered everything like Christmas. Clouds hovered low and shrouded the tops of the highest peaks. I think Mount Everest is something like 30,000 feet high. Today I climbed a mountain that is almost 5000 feet high. I am one sixth of the way to the top of Mount Everest. And it is so cold at this elevation that I will never, ever want to go to Everest until global warming turns it into the next Acapulco.



And thank God for people who are crazy enough to settle a mountain village, live in it in winter, and run the cheeriest little bar I´ve been in. I was in dire need of heat and sustenance, and a rest. So I sat my frozen pork chop of a butt on a stool in the bar in Foncebadon and ordered the most delicious cup of tea. But a few minutes later I saw some Spanish woman order hot chocolate with cognac in it. I frowned at my tea, looked at the bar keep, and said ¨me tambien!¨ He smiled and winked and gave me my spiked chocolate with a pat on the shoulder. I knew I was going to need something a little more fuerte to brace against the winter cold.

And I ate a beautiful bocadillo of my own invention. It consisted of lomo (the pork Ana had turned me on to) and some queso de Gallego (the local cheese) that I picked out all by myself in a local butcher shop full of local people ordering their daily ration of meats and cheeses. I make a damn good Spanish bocadillo I tell you. I should open a cafe and serve Bocadillo de Kristin's all day long.

The last night in Astorga, Ana and Liam were talking about how it is customary to lay something down at the Cruz de Ferro, the high point of the entire Camino. Most people lay stones at the foot of the cross that they have carried all the way from the start of their Camino. It is a symbol of unburdening yourself of something. I didn´t know about this and I hadn´t been carrying a stone to lay down. Hell I´ve sent extra weight to Santiago twice, I wasn´t about to go picking up rocks to carry. And it was too late to go back to the states and get my ex and carry his ass 550km no matter how much I need to unburden myself of him. So I thought, what can I lay down here?



And then it came to me, I can lay down my obsessing, my ruminating, my arguing with myself. At least for the rest of the trip, anyway. So at the cruz de Ferro, with its mini mountain of rocks of people´s burdens, I laid down my burden of an overactive mind, and promised that if I started ruminating again, I would not get mad at myself.



Tonight after I ate a dinner of Bierzo stew (Bierzo being the valley I am now entering), I saw Roberto and Elianie eating a few tables away. I joined them and we talked travel and all the places they have been, and I pulled out my map of Spain and Roberto gave me the most incredible itinerary for a three week car trip all around the coast of Portugal and Spain. It is going to be hard not to hang on here and do that, but this is the kind of trip you want to do in a convertible with friends, you know. Anyone interested?

Day 27 or The Church on the Fence

Notes on Day 27, March 22, Astorga to Rabanal

This morning Liam ¨took the piss¨ out of a hapless peregrino who was just starting in Astorga by informing him that it is tradition to walk the first stage in your socks. I could see this poor guy look up in minor panic, until I caught his eye and gave a slight shake with my head. Poor lad.



I started out wandering around Astorga for a while before I headed on. The cathedral is, of course, exceptional looking, and the second building by Gaudi I've seen is quite evocative, and much like something you would see in a Disney fairy tale. But I can´t figure out how we got the term gaudy to mean over-the-top obnoxiously awful when his buildings are quite simple and nice actually.



But today I missed my bro. There have often been moments on this trip when I´ve been reminded of our trek on the Continent 13 years ago. Like in Burgos or Leon or Pamplona. When I was 20 we got a couple of backpacks and Eurail passes and bummed around the continent for a couple of months. We made vulgar jokes and ate nothing but baguettes and butter and whatever cheap food we could find. We were accosted by Italian passport police, harassed by a Venetian hotel clerk who confiscated our passports, and we amused ourselves by finding unintended and disrespectful uses for certain silly French words like "fromage" (cheese) and "fruits de mer" (seafood).



Anyway, my brother embodies the Indiana Jones spirit, and I know he would love this trip (well, maybe not the freezing albergues or the mystery food), but he would be completely stoked about the architecture and the history and the back country trails.

I have always looked up to my brother. He is one of these unfairly monumentally talented people. At the age of two he was building skyscrapers out of Legos without the instructions. Once, when we were on vacation in Florida, he drew floor plans of our condo building for fun. But even these had a geometric prettiness too them that made anything I drew look like a smudge instead of what it was supposed to resemble. I was so jealous of his blatant talent I tore his artwork. I spent my life wondering what I was talented at and why wasn´t my talent as obvious as Arnold Schwarznegger´s accent like his.

Anyhow, my brother had my back this last year too. He flew down to ATL to visit my divorce lawyer with me, just in case I was too much of a blubbering (or enraged) mess to understand what she said. And last Summer, when I was in such shell shock from the way my divorce was proceeding that I didn´t know at all how to proceed with my life except that I knew I needed a place to live and I knew I needed to get out of my marriage as fast as possible, he flew back down to make a weekend condo-mania tour with me and give me his professional architect´s opinion about the condo I had chosen.

So after all this somber and soap opera year, I found myself reminiscing about the good old days with my bro in Europe and I hope that I´ll be able to take another trip with him and his family again someday.

But not long out of Astorga, my stomach monster started grumbling (this has not changed either since my trip with my brother). I can´t get used to the dining schedule here. Breakfast is about 7:30, but by 10:00 you are hungry again, and lunch in the U.S. is noonish, but here it is 1:30 to 3:00ish, and dinner in the U.S. is 5:00 to 7:00ish, and here it is 8:00 to 10:00ish. So needless to say I always have an excuse to eat. ¨Well, it is lunch time at home,¨ or ¨Well, it is lunch time here.¨ So I stop in this bar and another 4 foot tall grandma made me the best tortilla I´ve had yet, and the bar keep gave me a little slice of ham that made my eyes bulge like I had just seen the resurrection (oh, that´s tomorrow). But this ham was like a jerky, only thicker, softer, chewier, milder. ¨Es jamon?¨ I asked her in my faux Spanish. ¨No, Cecina.¨ I made her write the name down for me and when I left she gave me a little extra slice for the road, for free. So I wrapped up the precious morsel, like a treasured artifact to savor later, and continued on.



The last 2km into Rabanal were bordered by a wire fence into which pilgrims had spontaneously woven hundreds upon hundreds of crosses out of branches. The fence went on for forever, and with the snow falling softly this little section of trail seemed almost like a sacred place. It had the feel of a church, or what I think a church ought to feel like: quiet, intentional, unpretentious.



I am sure many of these crosses were put here because it seemed like the thing to do, but how many were put here with a hope, a prayer, a remembrance, or gratitude? And I don´t know what it is about falling snow, but it settles a peace, a quietness on everything that eases one into contemplation. It was a lovely afternoon, and I was reminded of another poem by Robert Frost.

Whose woods these are I think I know,
His house is in the village though.
He will not see me stopping here,
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer,
To stop without a farmhouse near,
Between the woods and frozen lake,
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake,
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep,
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

I entered the town of Rabanal looking for the albergue my book describes as a veritable oasis. Alas, the oasis is shut down for the winter, but as I turned to go back down the main street to the first albergue, I met Roberto and Elainie, a Brazilian couple who were determined to stay in the best albergue they could find. They did not exactly seem like the roughing it type. Roberto has the hurried air of a business executive and Elainie is one of those fine, beautiful Brazilian women, so elegant and olive skinned. So the three of us checked out two more albergues, both closed, and when they told me the first one had no heat, I was the one that caved and went to the hotel.

That night I climbed three flights of stairs to my little attic room with the low ceiling that I hit my head on three times. The only window a skylight above my head as I lay in bed. I watched the snow gather on the window pane, flake by frozen flake, knowing with half apprehension and half anticipation, that tomorrow I would be walking in it.

Day 26 or Tray o Parts and Tight Chaps

Notes on Day 26, March 21, Mazarife to Astorga, 32km

This morning in the restaurant the waitress/barkeep/cook/maitre-d/hospitalero asked me what I wanted for breakfast. ¨Tostado?¨ I asked hoping for some toast. ¨No tostado,¨ she said, only bread. So I ordered bread, and she toasted it for me anyway. And in Spain they don´t put your toast in a toaster, they brush it with olive oil and toast it in a cast iron pan. She brought it to me and smiled when she saw me looking so happy. Little kindnesses.

This morning I stopped in a small town for some bread. I waited in line outside the panaderia because the shop was only big enough to fit one normal person or two Kiera Knightly´s at a time. A little four foot tall old lady asked me if I was German (I get mistaken for a German by everyone except Germans). When I told her no, I was from Estados Unitos, she cried, ¨Madre Mia!¨and crossed herself as she looked up to the sky. Then she laughed and smiled and patted me on the shoulder and rambled in Spanish at me. I have no idea what that was about, but I hope it had to do with the fact that I came so far to do the Camino rather than Estados Unitos is a pit of hellfire and should burn for eternity.



In Hospital de Obriego there is a 13th C bridge that is one of the oldest and longest in Spain. I have no idea why it is so long because the width of the river is only about 1/6 the span of the bridge. But anyway, legend has it that in the 1400´s a knight, who was spurned by a lady and felt his manhood threatened, swore to defend the bridge against anyone who dared cross in order to regain his honor and dignity. Knights from all over Europe came for the challenge and he successfully fended them off for a month and hence, regained his dignity. Is that what I have to do to get my honor and dignity back after my humiliating divorce? Defend a bridge? Shit, I´m screwed.



And I had the biggest let down of a lunch today. I was looking forward to my Calamares Romana and was served what I am sure is frozen deep fried squid reheated in the microwave. And I have now tried flan in a couple of places and I have to confess, I just don´t get it. I mean c´mon people, we can do better can´t we?

In another little town I met up with Liam and Uwe again, who are my new heroes for their ability to just sit and not give a rat´s ass when they get anywhere. Everytime something cool happens or someone says something good, Liam whips out his little notebook and says, ¨It´s all goin´in the book, man, it´s all goin' in the book.¨ I just hope if I make it in the book, he makes my ass look smaller than it is and describes me as an American vixen in cargo pants.

Some new blisters on my heels can no longer be ignored. I have discovered this stuff called Compeed. It is like a second skin and all day long I couldn´t wait to just get to a farmacia and buy some of the trajically expensive bandaids of the gods and put them on my heels. But the 11€ bits of relief FELL OUT OF MY POCKET on the way to the albergue. So after my shower, when I was sitting down to enjoy applying my glorious Compeed to my bubbling heels, it was gone. Gone! I had to go back and buy more dammit, so I just spent about $40 on bandaids I will wear for two days.

I did not get to Astorga until around 7:30 owing to the fact that the hike was 32km from Mazarife. Holy crap I am completely done in.



The albergue was in a converted 18th century house with two foot thick walls, timber beamed cieling, and floor to ceiling windows with interior and exterior shutters. I was dying to know how this former upper crust home would have looked like when the original owners lived here. Now the ancient stone room I slept in sported 10 bunk beds and 10 smelly peregrinos.



That night, Uwe, Liam and I met up with three other pilgrims for dinner. Ana (this time a German) had heard about a restaurant that serves this traditional meal of a giant tray of random animal carcass parts, including pig feet. So we were all looking forward to our little culinary experiment in this restaurant far two nice for our stanky asses. And in the end, they weren´t serving Tray o´ Parts that night and so the only thing we could all afford was the fish soup, which was good, had lots of spinach and chick peas, but no fish. I think they waved a fish in the general vicinity of the soup or something.

During a discussion of our rain gear, Liam outed (ha ha) Uwe as having brought rain chaps instead of rain pants. Leave it to a gay man to bring rain chaps. Anyway, Uwe complained that he didn´t like them because they were too tight. ¨Really?¨ says Liam, ¨you don´t like tight chaps?¨

Informational Update

I am in Ponferrada freezing my tits off. Tomorrow Villafranca.

Oh, and I thought I was completely alone in this cybercafe and I just farted huge. And I just turned around and there is a dude right behind me. I am laughing so hard at my stupid self right now. :)

Day 25 or Have You Seen the Light

Notes on day 25, March 20, Leon to Vilar de Mazarife.

Holy Thursday dawned and the first morning Easter Week procession was gathering outside my hotel in the Plaza San Isisdoro. I decided to watch for a bit before heading out of Leon. I noticed one of the barge carriers had no shoes on. I pointed to his feet and said to the people next to me, ¨No zapatos!¨ Apparently someone takes their penance muy seriously. Walking barefoot on cold medieval cobbled streets? Either he´s crazy or he did some bad shit.



Today really tested my navigational abilities. They are not the best to begin with either. I got lost no less than three times. The suburbs of Leon, the signage, and my maps all conspired to confuse me. Once I started down a road and a car honked at me and the driver stopped to tell me I was going the wrong way (thank you random nice man). Once I had to slog across a poo filled field to a village to find out from a garbage man if I was going the right way. And once I walked at least a half a km without seening any trail markers, decided to go back, found the trailmarker saying that I was indeed heading right afterall, then retraced my steps and found the needed trailmarker ten feet further on the trail than where I turned back. Grrrr.



I did stop in a little shop and got some empanada (my first in Spain) for the road. The was not the little pocket of stuffed dough I´ve had in the states (Mexican you know). It is more like a stuffed pizza, but without the sauce, or the cheese. This one was chorizo and bacon. Nothing like pure pork fat and pastry dough. It was tasty, but it kept coming back up for visits by way of very violent burps for the next hour.

But once the confusion of the suburbs and the obstructions in my esophogus cleared, the trail opened out on wide farmland, past fallow fields with silvery winter grasses bending with the wind. The frosted mountains still beckoned and daunted from the distance. They loomed so large that they looked close, like I could be in the foothills in a few hours. But they are yet a few day´s hike away, and that means these beasts are huge.



But inevitably, like a scale returning to zero after it´s preoccupation is gone, my thoughts returned to my ex-it. It drives me insane that my mental set point is still set to him. I replay dramatic scenes in my mind, repeat heated words that were said, and futilly fantasize about changing the outcome of a history that is already indelibly written. ¨If only I´d said this or done that, that would´ve trumped him, that would have trapped him.¨ But then I realize that if I had indeed said A or done B, he just would have said X or done Y, and I´d be right back where I am, never having achieved that penultimate blow to his incomprehensible ego, never having found the right combination of words to leaving him standing, staring, mouth agape, unable to respond to my piercing truth.

It´s like an endless game of tic tac toe against a computer. No matter where you put your X, it is always a draw. No one ever wins. No one can. And so in frustration I find myself chucking my ruminations in favor of one fervent wish to the universe that a bomb drop on his house.

Which is why I NEED to follow my Aunt Linda´s advice and ¨just BE.¨

You see, my mom took a rather straight and narrow path into adulthood. Her sister, my Aunt Linda, on the other hand, did not. Her road had significantly more harrowing curves, detours and some dead ends. Which is why during this last year of crisis, when my mom did her very best to understand but couldn´t always relate, my Aunt knew my anguish before I even articulated it. ¨I know, I know,¨ she´d say, ¨you´re me.¨ Everything I was going through, she had already been there, taken that road, found that detour, hit that dead end. I am so lucky to have gotten so close to her this past year, and I am amazed at how prescient so much of her advice, so many of her warnings, so much of her hope turned out to be. I didn´t always believe her when she warned me, or told me things would get better, but it was some shred of optimism to cling to in the darkest moments.

Anyway, this angel of an Aunt is constantly reminding me, because I constantly need reminding, to ¨just BE.¨ And I know she is right. But how exactly does one DO this when one´s internal monologue is a perpetual litany of expletive laden insults aimed at one´s ex-it? The sole goal of which is to invent that zinger hum-dinger epithet which employs just the flawless combination of vituperative sarcasm and stinging wit that would've sent his dignity limping back to its hidey hole?

Just BEING doesn´t seem like something that should be so hard, and certainly not when you are hiking in Spain beside adorable Spanish sheep and carrying tasty Spanish clementines. It doesn´t seem like something we should have to practice, or like something we should be able to forget how to do to begin with. And I know we all are born with this ability. I watch my four year old niece just be when I am playing space ship or pirates with her. She is an expert at just being. When do we lose this? Because we do. And why is it so hard to find again?

So I thought of my aunt and my niece today and practiced just being. Giving myself a mental slap whenever my ruminations started to creep back in and take root. Reminding myself to look around and remember where I am!

On the trail I passed two pilgrims who embodied the spirit of being. They were lounging under a tree near the trail. They looked utterly content and in no hurry whatsoever to do anything other than just lay there. I thought this would be the perfect way to ¨be¨ for a while, and 1km later I found my own lonely tree in a field that wanted some company, and I sat down, took off my shoes and socks, drained some blisters, massaged my feet, and went to sleep. For a while on the edge of a field under the Castillian sun, too close to the ground for the wind to bother about, I rested, and breathed, and just WAS. And when I got up and moved on, I WAS all the way until I reached Mazarife, where I chose an albergue based on my book´s description of it´s ¨atmosphere¨.

It was another of those rehab terrors. The hospitalero had provided crayons for pilgrims to ¨decorate¨ the walls. Often they scrawled cheesy love poetry, syrupy spiritual platitudes, drew hearts and rainbows (hurl). But occaisonally there appeared the astonishing bit of artwork, the funny cartoon, or the witty proverb. And in the Albergue there were only two other pilgrims, the two pilgrims, in fact, that I had seen lounging under a tree on the trail earlier today. Liam, the Irishman from Belfast living in Barcelona, and Uwe (pronounced like the vacuum cleaner, Hoover, only without the H, or the R at the end for that matter) from Berlin. Uwe is the guy you want to be your doting gay uncle for life. Liam has that viscous Belfast accent where the words form in the back of the throat. I secretly repeat everything he says in my head just to practice that off the chain accent. Uwe met Liam on the train to St. Jean an they have stuck together for the entire Camino.

We had dinner together in the big hot spot in town, which is the only spot in town. I asked Liam what he does back in Barcelona. He used to be a barkeep but got tired of drunken assholes. ¨I guess you could say I´m a writer, but I haven´t had anything published yet.¨ So he is the kind of writer I am, the dreaming kind. But I quickly discern over dinner that with his sense of humor his name will be in print long before mine. And Uwe is quite possibly the sweetest man I have yet met on the Camino. He has a partner back in Berlin and a PhD and does something important and boring (according to him) in public transportation planning and is feeling, somewhere in the region of his heart, that it is time for a change.

On the way back to the Albergue Liam and Uwe asked me if I had ¨seen the light.¨ ¨If you´re talking about the light at the bottom of a glass of Pacharan,¨ I said, ¨then yes, I have.¨ But they showed me pictures of a real light they had seen in the sky right near the sun above Puenta La Reina a few weeks ago. It was an eerie light, casting a sharp vertical ray that sliced through the horizantal stratus of clouds. Strange and mysterious looking it was, so Uwe had gotten out his compass. The Light, as they called it, appeared to the west, hovering directly over Santiago.

Day 24 or The Leo in Leon

Notes on Day 24, March 19, My Day in Leon.

Holy shazam, Batman! What a day. What an incredible day!

This morning the priority numero uno was to find a hotel room, which I had some doubt of being able to procure owing to the Holy Week shenanigans going on around here. But alas there was room at the inn, well, the second inn anyway, and once I was installed in my little haven, I promptly and enthusiastically went back to bed.

But not for long, dear readers, not for long. Unlike the city of Burgos, which I wandered around aimlessly like a happily lost child in a colossal sweet shop, Leon requires a plan.



First, the cathedral. To be sure it is not the beast of a cathedral that Burgos is, but it is a more contemplative, sacred spot in my view. Whereas Burgos felt more like a gargantuan religious museum, Leon feels more like, well, a church. It is a masterpiece of 13th century French Gothic architecture and 125 stained glass windows flood its cavernous stone nave with jewels of colored light.



I found myself wishing I could hop on the Concord, fly to the ATL, wake my friend Sam (who is a stained glass artist) from her sound snooze, grab her and fly her back to Leon with me and say, ¨Will you just look at the insanity of this medieval artistry!¨ I know she would have loved it. The windows are divine, really. Of course there are the usual hues of purest reds, royal blues, emerald greens and cheery golds, but there were also tones of magenta, teal, amber and celadon that added depth and subtlety and happpiness to the light.



Outside the cathedral I noticed a sign that said, ¨Access to the Platform.¨ I figured this was some kind of external balcony, like Notre Dame in Paris or Chartres, so I eagerly paid my 2€ and climbed a wobbly scaffold staircase 70 feet high in the air, only to re-enter the cathedral through a window stone frame (without the window of course), and onto a platform halfway up the nave at the clerestory. And here I learned that the 1800 square meters of medieval stained glass are undergoing restoration and that access to the platform was opened to educate the public about the project. This was the platform where the windows in the clerestory are painstakingly removed, frame by precious frame, meticulously cleaned, exhaustively documented, skillfully repaired and gingerly restored back to their frames with new high tech protections from the elements and human goof ups. It was an obnoxiously cool thing for the cathedral and the Leonese government to do, let the public go up to the platform. I was googly-eyed the entire time, head spinning with fascination.



It takes a lot of energy to spend two hours being amazed, so I was feeling a bit peckish, and saw a chalkboard sign at a restaurant near the Cathedral that dared me: ¨Autentica Morcilla de Leon.¨ I had no idea what morcilla was, and crazed for the authentic Spainish culinary experience, I walked in and ordered it.

Whatever animal this used to resemble I do not know, but it had been cooked down to a dark brown, unidentifiable moosh. It looked a little like some things I had stepped in on the trail. So I wispered a quick plea that it not be horsemeat (apparently they eat that here), and tasted. Hmmm. It was kind of smokey flavored, with spices, although I could not tell you which ones. The texture was a bit legume-y, kind of like hummus. Oniony. I liked it. I really did. And I still have no idea what morcilla is (which is good cause if I find out it is puree of goat brain or something I´ll probably ralph), but at least I can pronounce it now (morTHEEya).



After my strange and tasty nosh I headed for the Plaza Mayor where I was gloriously surprised with the ¨Traditional Leonese Market.¨ Holy jeepers, Batman! The gorgeous fruits, the vibrant veg, the hanging meats (salchichons, chorizos, salamis, jamons, full legs of pork, mystery organs), the cheeses - beautiful creamy wheels with wedges missing to show sexy hints of their pungent yumminess. The pescaderia (fish monger) with the mounds of salt cod and the sound of her cleaver clapping against wood as she chopped the filets for her customers.



It reminded me of the frenetic market scene in a Christmas Carol (the one with George C. Scott). I was so enthralled, my eyes bulging as I surveyed this culinary Nirvana. You´d have thought I´d never seen an open air market before in my life. I watched hunched magenta haired grandmas fill their totes with this bounty and was wildly tempted to turn stalker and follow one of these hobbling old abuelas home and demand that she cook me dinner at pocket-knife point.



But despite the happening scene at the market, I still did not want to miss out on my siesta, so I returned to my hotel. And I had a bath too. Imagine my ecstacy when I saw that my tub had jacuzzi jets. Imagine my not surprise when they didn´t work. But that´s all good, because I still basked for an hour in a tub full of illegally hot water.



One of the most outrageous places in Leon is San Isodoro. Founded in the 11th century, it is one of the few basilicas in Spain permitted to say the Isidoran-Mozarabic rite of Catholic mass instead of the Roman rite. I spent the afternoon at this church-museum with my jaw perpeturally dragging on the stone floors. The kicker was the 11th century stone burial vault where over 40 kings, queens and princes of Leon repose underneath an exquisite frescoed ceiling which earned it the nickname: The Sistine Chapel of Spain. No offence to Michelangelo or anything, who I know was a pretty talented dude and all, but I much prefer San Isidoro, and it´s 400 years older than that one place in Rome. The frescoes are original, barely faded, barely restored. They are haunting and vibrant and captivating. In one grotesque scene, which my wee brain surprisingly recognized as a depiction of the Slaughter of Innocents, Herod´s soldiers ran swords through the bodies of babies. Yeesh. These Romanesque painters didn´t hold back either. I gather there was no MPAA around at the time to give this frescoe an R rating for violence.


(Hey! The picture above is not mine, I found it on Google Images.)

But my tour of San Isidoro, like my tour of the platform at Leon Cathedral, was in Spanish. And unlike Ana at the monastery in Burgos, these guides did not speak slowly and use hand gestures like they were talking to two years olds so I could understand. I stood helpless as gems of knowledge fell on my ears and remained stubbornly uncomprehended. I couldn´t understand what the lady was saying about the stoles woven by Leonora Plantagenet. I missed the explanation of the carved agate chalice from 1056. I was lost during the tale of the silver reliquery of San Isidoro that used to hold his bones.

I wished I had a pocket sized Marcelo (my Ecuadoran friend) to translate for me. (Actually, Marcelo is pocket sized, and I know he´ll forgive me for saying that cause he know´s I adore him, but I didn´t bring him with me). Why doesn´t everyone speak English? Why don´t I speak Spanish?

But instead of being enlightened with facts and figures, I had to be content with mere awe. Which maybe isn´t so bad afterall. There is an element of mystery to that which we can´t fully understand. Since I could not understand the guides, I could only imbibe these places through the raw senses. Feel the cold damp of the burial vault, sense the low light faintly illuminating the chamber from the cloister, gaze at the frescoes and contemplate the patterns, colors, and faces of the 900 year old figures. I suppose I came away with an entirely different experience than I would have if I had known what the guide was explaining.



Gaudi´s architectural masterpiece is in Leon. The Casa de Botines. Inside was a different masterpiece alltogether: a free exhibit of Leonardo da Vinci´s inventions, brought to life in working models. I did not know that da Vinci, in addition to his numerous fanciful flying contraptions, invented an inflatable innertube for floating in water, an underwater breathing mask, a pair of shoes, each like a mini boat, for walking on water. I was incredulous at how many machines and gizmos he dreamed up, and floored to realize just how many were practical failures at the time. But these ¨failures¨ are the seeds of so many of our modern inventions! So just imagine if da Vinci had said, ¨This whoozy whatzit doesn´t work. I suck donkey balls. I´m a failure. I give up,¨ and quit inventing? just quit imagining?

But he didn´t. He kept inventing, kept imagining, because he knew it was the idea that mattered. And today we think of him as a genious ahead of his time, not a failed inventor. And the whole thing got me thinking that I really need to re-adjust my thinking regarding my own fuck-ups.

And mulling over da Vinci and his multitude of brilliant failures, I found a spot on the Ave. Ordoño, the principal street running from the modern city (modern meaning 19th C) to the Cathedral. The atmosphere was like a carnival: vendors selling balloons and sweets, parents fussing over children bundled in scarves and hats with only teeny eyes peeping out, four foot tall old men (Spain has a surplus of people who are exactly four feet tall) jockeying for a spot on the parade route.



I tried to follow the procession, but at one point the sidewalk was so jammed there was no budging, and the choice was either to stand there for twenty minutes and wait for the clog to clear, or duck into the bar, whose door happened to be conveniently situated right in front of me. I´ll give you one guess what I did.

And so it was that I was served my first shitty glass of wine in all of Spain. But that´s ok, because if I learned anything from Leo tonight, it´s that they can´t all be successes, and the important thing is to keep trying, wine that is!

Day 23 or To the Cheater Goes the Spoils

Notes on 23, March 18, El Burgo de Ranero to Leon

This morning, in the mule crap town of El Burgo Ranero, Ana (the doctor who massaged me with olive oil yesterday) and her friend joined me for breakfast (at the same bar that blew chunky yesterday). She fished around in her pocket and pulled out her business card. ¨Thees ees my phone number. Jou call eef jou need anything, Ok?¨ I was touched. Clearly this woman cared about me. I have no idea why, but she cared about me enough to rub my meaty calves with oil and eat breakfast with me and give me her phone number. Maybe I reminded her of her daughter, I can´t say. I kissed her on both cheeks (Spanish tradition you know), and thought that was goodbye. But she and her friend waited for me to leave the restaurant, and began to walk with me.



And so it was that I spent a rather peaceful day on the trail with Ana. Sometimes we walked together and talked, at other times continued singly. We picniced around 11:00. Ana kept offering me all she had: half a tomato, more rosemary oil (this time for my salad), some lomo (smoked pork), nuts, dried fruit. I had very little to share in return and almost felt bad for taking all she offered. But then I remembered the words of Ana Maria at the Albergue in Belorado. On the Camino you have to learn to give, but you also have to learn to recieve. Ana showed me pictures of her lovely home near Barcelona. It looked so picturesque, so effortlessly comfortable. ¨Eef you come to Barcelona, jou can stay with me. Jou will be welcome like family.¨

And so we walked quitely, talked simply and ate together until we reached Mansilla de las Mulas, the mountains of the Picos de Europa standing sentinel to the north. When we reached Mansilla, I wanted to stay, and Ana and her companion wanted to continue. So we hugged and kissed and said goodbye. And I find myself struggling to comprehend this quiet kindness she showed me, an unexpected acquaintance of hers for no more than a few hours. Did she sense how much I needed a to be taken care of a little for a day? after so many solitary days of taking care of myself? Who was this woman with the salad oil and the softest voice and the kindest eyes?



I felt the loss when she left too. I wandered around the town not finding the same comforting shelter I found with Ana in the fugly town of El Burgo Ranero, even though Mansilla was much, much cooler. I poked my head in at the albergue, and it looked cold, and wet. Cold and wet is a combination I have come to despise, even if I encounter it daily. And I couldn´t bring myself to cross the threshhold of the albergue and hand over my 5 €. I just couldn't do it.

I pulled out my guidebook looking for an out. And there it was: in beautiful black and white. ¨You may readily recall the tiresome access into Burgos (do I? The memory of that day is burned in the back of my skull) along the busy roads into that city. Whatever your prior experiences and intention for this pilgrimage, there is the possibility to avoid the busy (and dangerous) main road into Leon by taking the regular bus service from Mansilla direct to the city centre.¨

That does it. I was saved! After Burgos I made myself the promise that if the puritanical guidebook author so much as mentioned the word bus again, I would take it. And for a mere 1.20 € I was happily perched in my gaudily upholstered motor coach seat eating cookies and gazing out the window at other more dedicated (or more enslaved depending on your P.O.V.) pilgrims who were treking along the concrete motorway on foot.

By the way, do you know how fast cars and buses go? They go, like, really fast. I have not been in a car in over three weeks and now I am in awe of the phenomenon that is modern motor travel. In just 20 minutes, 20 measley, itty bitty, teensey tiny, pequeño mintues we were in Leon. (It would´ve been 15 if we hadn´t stopped everywhere in between for more passengers). That´s it! 18.6km in 20 rediculous minutes. I can´t wrap my brain around it.

And I am not sorry either. At times I felt like I was riding through Gwinnett County Georgia for fuck sake, or Anywhere, U.S.A. with the bill boards, the road signs, the industrial buildings and box stores. Barfola.

Irish Charlie would be proud of me for refusing to be oppressed by the tyranny of the Camino. And if there was any lingering guilt on my part, I reasoned it away by deciding that by now I have taken enough mini adventure detours, explored enough towns and cities on foot, and gotten lost on the Camino and had to retrace my steps enough times that I have more than made up for my missing 18.6 km. So there. Guilt, Ye Are Vanquished!

I entered Leon with renewed feet and renewed spirit. I found the albergue tucked away in a convent and again I recieved more blessed reassurance that taking the bus was a stroke of genious. This albergue had heat. I mean HEAT! Enveloping, snuggly, toasty heat that emanated from the multitude of glorious, heavenly radiators and I knew I would not have to entomb myself under 18 stinky wool blankets tonight.



After droping off my crap and cleaning up. I set out to explore Leon. Then I got a wild hair up my ass and decided to get my hair cut. Doesn't everyone do this while hiking across a foreign country? See, before I left my friend George (fabulous hair person that he is), lopped off all my locks cause I didn´t want to fuck around with hair on this trip (point of fact: I have not combed or brushed my hair since I left the States). But I just wanted my bangs a little shorter. You know, kind of pixie-ish, like Mia Farrow in Rosemary´s Baby? So try not speaking a word of Spanish and walking into a salon and miming what you want done with your do. (I told you I got a wild hair up my ass). But she got the gist, and I got the bangs, and I was ready for my night on the town.



So I had already gotten oriented to the city earlier in the day, and I found out the Holy Week procession that night was going to depart from close by, and I found a spot in the crowd lining the street and wedged my way in. Apparently, and I think I vaguely remember reading about this somewhere like the doctor´s office a long time ago, but the Holy Week processions in Leon are of ¨international cultural interest¨ (or so my little brochure says). And after seeing one, I get why.



But first one must get over the mildly disconcerting resemblence of the costumes worn by the processors to those of the KKK. The pointed hoods are a bit, mmm, well, lets just say that if you were black and in the U.S. and you saw these dudes coming, you´d be hoping there wasn´t a tree nearby. And the guys with the rounded hoods look for all the world like medieval executioners. I had asked Ana what the hoods symbolized. She couldn´t tell me for sure, it was not an aspect of religion she ever took an interest in, but she thought they were a sign of penance, and that the hoods protected the anonymity of the penitent.



But intimidating resemblences aside, the ambiance created by these processions is at once somber and rousing. The streets are filled with the scent of incense. The barges are guilded, carved, festooned with roses, alums, birds of paradise, every you-name-it flower you can imagine. The staturary on the barges presents the scenes from Christ´s passion: the garden at Gethsemane, the betrayal of Judas, the carrying of the cross, the crucified Christ, the Pieta, the Virgin Mary, etc... Each barge is carried by maybe 70 or 80 pall bearers, each steping in time with the slow pound of the drums and the high blast of the trumpets. The trumpets are tiny and seem excuciatingly difficult to play judging by the occasional dischordant squeak escaping one here or there. But the music works. It swells, it thrums, it vibrates within you, it gets in your chest and haunts there.



Sure, we could mention the niggling incongruity of the sword carrying military escorts in a religious procession, we could quibble about the authenticty of a Mary depicted in royal blue velvet robes embroided with gold and other finery, we could question the humility of a church that processes with huge, ornate expensive looking silver crosses and silver lanterns.



But as far as sheer cultural spectacle goes, I could absolutely get down with it. I could enjoy it, marvel at it, and be thankful I´d gotten the rare opportunity to see devotion, penitence, mourning and rejoicing celebrated in this way. It is not done so anywhere else in the world as far as I am aware, so I was prepared to give over my piddling doubts and just observe, absorb and appreciate. To be sure the Leonese procession was not as moving as the intimate little Palm Sunday procession I happened on in Sahagun, but it was certainly impactful and stirring.

And finally, as if this monster of a day had not already had me doing absolutely every disparate activity one could do in a day in a foreign country, I went to hear vespers sung by the nuns at the convent that runs the albergue. We peregrinos sat in a brightly lit 18th century chapel and listened to the nuns sing, their high, soft voices filling the high vaulted space.

I was pretty wiped, but I think I could have listened to them sing all night.