State of Place

Guided by Shadows:
A Westward Walk to Santiago de Compostela

Contents

Roncesvalles to Zubiri
Zubiri to Pamplona
Pamplona to Puente de la Reina
Puente de la Reina to Estella
Estella to Los Arcos
Los Arcos to Viana
Viana to Navarette
Navarette to Nájera
Nájera to Grañon
Grañon to Tosantos
Tosantos to Agés
Agés to Burgos
Rest Day in Burgos
Burgos to San Bol
San Bol to Itero de la Vega
Itero de la Vega to Villalcázar de Sirga
Villalcázar de Sirga to Calzadilla de la Cueza
Calzadilla de la Cueza to Sahagún
Sahagún to Reliegos
Reliegos to León
Rest Day in León AKA One-Person Dinner Conversation
León to Villadangos del Páramo
Villadangos del Páramo to Astorga
Astorga to Rabanal del Camino
Rest Day at Rabanal del Camino
Rest Day 2 at Rabanal del Camino
Rabanal del Camino to Ponferrada
Ponferrada to Villafranca del Bierzo
Villafranca del Bierzo to La Faba
La Faba to Triacastela
Triacastela to Sarria
Sarria to Portomarín
Portomarín to Palas de Rei
Palas de Rei to Ribadiso
Ribadiso to Monte de Gozo to Santiago
Breakup with the Stick

Roncesvalles to Zubiri

Last night, on the eve of starting this absurd walk across Spain in the summer, I dreamt that someone cut off my feet.

But today by following the arrows I made it down the mountain. It’s 3 p.m., and there’s nothing to do except wash socks and hope they dry.

Descending the steeps into Zubiri, my knees and quads smoldered. Because of the pain, I draped a half hour of worry over a half hour of walking fine. Fine walking that brought me to the bottom.

Zubiri to Pamplona

Walking through the Basques’ land, I see what they’re fighting for.

Muscles ache, but I’ve made it to a bed. Lying stretched here with a nose clogged from foreign pollen — and that’s only half of what needs to be uncorked.

The non-stop food sharing seems to be calming everyone down. My teeth even tingle from peer-pressured candy. If the feeling is sugar, the scent is sausage. A stick of chorizo competes with drying socks.

There’s not much of a hostel scene. We’re in bed at ten and out of it before the sunrays fork away the morning fog.

Pamplona to Puente de la Reina

There’s something that says ‘keep walking’ when I should stop to pull up  socks or readjust laces. Just to that next tree. But I’ve never perceived on-path maintenance as lost time, and don’t expect to.

I move to tie up the bag of trail mix or gumdrops after taking a last handful, in case someone comes around the bend. Old habits. I don’t feel good about it and try to break through, to say, “Hey, you want to tie the bag up? Ok, we’ll wait until the next person comes, then we’ll share.”

Atop the Alto de Perdón, a man came near with a bar of chocolate. Like a crow, my eyes locked onto the foil. Heard myself say “Buenos días?” A greeting phrased like a question due to failed suppression of the question I should have asked. Fought to keep my eyes off the bar.

Even though I could have found out by walking ten feet, I asked if he bought it from the man selling coffee out of the motor home. He ended my games and offered a piece. Took it and thanked him. It was good, but left me wondering: How to handle this situation next time?

Later, in town, I met a man holding what appeared to be food. Just a little bit of something in a cellophane wrapper. I didn’t want it. Because it probably wouldn’t taste good? Because he didn’t have surplus? Don’t know, but I managed to ask him, without insinuation, for directions to the market. He pointed the way, then smiled and gifted half of a Grade A chocolate chip muffin.

Puente de la Reina to Estella

Bodies know how they want to rock, and feet know how they want to walk.

Estella to Los Arcos

After Villamayor, the trail headed into farmland under unchecked Sun. Found a good rhythm and time passed smoothly. At one point, the contrails turned the horizon into a cartoon sunrise. Other times, X’s and staves. Winding past ruined farm buildings and a defunct monastery, I almost stepped on a lizard laying eggs.

Inexplicably, a bus schedule is posted in the Los Arcos albergue.

Nostalgia and insight are easily confused.

Los Arcos to Viana

I’m a venture capitalist. Like the outfitting in Granada, every buying decision rests on the question, “How will this support the walk to Santiago?” Make sure each moment I’m managing the biz. Or at least I try to.

Got to Viana around 1 p.m. and have resolved not to leave this bed until 6. Today is a rest day, and I mean to rest. No idea whether the cracking in my ankle is good or bad. Guessing bad. Due diligence?

Hot on the top of a triple bunk. Snotclogged nose, itchy eyes. Heartburn rising. What are the consequences of hiking a week straight in the same pair of boxers?

Met a man at dinner who’s surprised he’s still learning things at fifty. He asked what age I wanted to be. “How old I am right now,” I said. Saying something aloud helps you convince yourself it’s true. Seems it could be dangerous.

Viana to Navarette

Feeling disappointed, trying not to be pissed off. Staying at a self-proclaimed tourist albergue because the municipal is full. Full from the exact moment I thought I had a bed. The sign completo went up on the window and soon as I could see the window.

There’s no love here, but there’s a very edible chunk of chocolate cake in the garbage pail. Need to sleep. Who knows how many more nights will be this way? Legs need rest. This is prime breeding ground for get-there-itis, highly contagious.

Just trying to relax. It’s the French group and me in the bunk room. Ten French folks. Watched them get turned away from the municipal albergue in Viana yesterday because groups aren’t admitted. One of the men threw a tantrum, got in the hospitalera’s face and was eventually pulled away by his cohort shouting, “Merci! Merci boku!”

It was ugly. And sad. And them’s the rules. Broken-down solitary pilgrims need beds. As a group, you have a better chance against the elements.

This will help build appreciation of the not-for-profit lodgings. It’s a lesson. In what? This isn’t about looking for things that reinforce my current worldview. It’s about seeing things as they are. Isn’t it?

One must always contend with people who know exactly where they’re going. Contend is probably the wrong word.

And remember the goal. To make it to Santiago, by whatever route. There’s a 74 year-old French woman out here who recently had a tumor removed from her back. She can do it, I can too. Brendan, an Irish Brit, walked out of his front door three months ago, caught a ferry to Holland and started walking. Tonight, he’s down the road at the municipal albergue.

Anybody want some salty chocolate from the trail mix bag?

Not feeling so bad about the French group anymore. Made a list of everything I could think of that we have in common.

Navarette to Nájera

Journal entries aren’t something to “get out of the way”, as I recently caught myself thinking. They’re medicine, though I wish they could do something about my cold. Blame the albergues for the snotclog. It’s like the first month of college all over again.

I’ve flaked off all the big stuff, my dandruff’s now reduced to dust.

Twenty times a day it’s the same story. Why I’m here, what I’ve done and what I’m doing next. It’s expected, and I often initiate the same conversation. Here’s the story, as close to how I tell it as possible:

“I studied here in Spain two years ago, in 2003. Graduated from college in 2004 and said, ‘The only thing I want to do is go back to Spain.’ So I worked for a little and made it happen. Moved back to Granada a couple months ago and I was working in a bar down there. But, you know, I started falling back into the study abroad routine, going out all the time, partying, just doing the same stuff as before.

“So one night I was sitting on a rooftop with a friend, watching the sunset, having a beer, and he mentioned the Camino. I knew what it was, and I asked him how long it takes to do. He said about a month, five weeks. At that point, I had about six weeks left in Spain, so I said I’m gonna do it. So I bought all the stuff, shipped a bunch of things home, left the rest with a friend in Madrid, took the bus up to Roncesvalles and here I am.”

To our right, a wall of red rock the size of an apartment building rises out of the ground. No one knows what to do with it, so they’ve built around it.

I met a man who spent eight years in India trying to lose his ego. He said it only worked when he left. His girlfriend wears stockings made of heat rash and has blisters the size of dried apricots. I translated while the hospitalero cut them open.

Nájera to Grañon

Pilgrims have slept in the attic of St. John the Baptist’s church for centuries. The stone steps say as much. My sleeping bag is on the floor, like the rest here.

After the (mandatory) 8:30 evening mass, the pilgrims went upstairs with the hospitalero, his laughing, cross-eyed helper from Valencia and the priest. We arranged two long tables and the forty or so of us sat down, unaware of the hospitalero’s plans to demolish our hunger.

First, a mini-paella with oysters and shellfish. Cracked a shell to shards in a pilgrim frenzy but my teeth remained intact. The hospitalero filled my bowl a second time.

Next, garlic soup. My appetite was just getting warmed up at this point and the priest knew it. He put a bowl down in front of me with a hand-sized slab of beef. “Especially for you,” he said, and I had the privilege of eating the flavor meat. (This marked the second time a priest offered a special treat, the first being Father Garanzini, President of Loyola Chicago, distributing pastries after a friend and I crashed his party and abused his booze.)

Swabbed the remains of the soup with thick bread slabs. Next, deviled eggs so smothered in deviling the egg disappeared. We each got two. Put mine down the hatch and had visions of Cool Hand Luke. For a minute, thought I’d puke. Took a few sips of milk (probably not the best idea), a bit of bread and all was well. Swabbed again and a basket of cookies appeared, followed by a tray of chocolate. Last, a perfect Spanish orange. Now that’s a meal you can walk on.

The priest had some announcements after dinner and I translated to English. There’s a reservoir of power in translation land. Did my best to cut out everything except the core of the message. A particularly long advisory became, “Respect sleeping people.” All credit goes to our tongue’s precision.

Afterward, dishes and cleaning, and together we pilgrims proved efficient.

In Nájera, Brendan the Irish Brit suggested trying to make Grañon today. I’ve seen him off and on since Viana, where we met over dinner. His t-shirt said, “Big, Beautiful and Curvy”— a reference to the acoustically innovative church music recording studio near his hometown of North Shields, of course.

He’s easy to spot from afar—his white hair is usually messed into a dollop of whip cream and his gait is a locomotive-strength limp, aided by a knee brace and ivory-handled cane. He gave me the green light to eat dark chocolate full-throttle, touting the magnesium’s cramp-stopping powers.

He’s walked the Camino before, but this time he’s raising money for charity. As mentioned earlier, he started walking to Santiago from his front door in England. And today he crossed the 2,000km mark.

Grañon to Tosantos

I think of Lord of the Rings when it’s early, fog covers the green hills and the trail leads into the unknown. But really, walks like this inspire work like that.

Spent the morning picking stones out of my boots every few minutes.

Tosantos to Agés

Words fail.

Tonight I’m sleeping in Miss Honey’s cottage from Matilda. From arrival, I’ve felt something in common with Anja, the Norwegian woman who lives here. Anyone would probably feel the same way. Really, it’s just a hope for something in common, for the generosity gene. She’ll speak any language you’ve got. Spent 40 years with Doctors Without Borders and now runs this refuge, Casa Caracol (Snail House). Her motto: Cook, Eat, Sleep, Dream.

The cottage is in its original condition—white walls, heavy wooden doorframes just tall enough to take off some head. Ancient beams with white ceiling arched between, and on the walls, writing. The name of every pilgrim who has sheltered here, when, and where their home is. Also, a dartboard-sized drawing of a snail. Winding around the shell’s spiral, more names. The names of everyone who’s worked on the house and what they’ve done. Sometimes just “advice.”

Anja on choosing your life’s work: Ask your stomach or your feet. Don’t ask your mind. Your stomach will be able to ignore what others expect of you.

Today, I walked over a mountain, through forest the entire time, wearing  rain pants, poncho and hazard green backpack cover, water bottle in hand or clipped to the sternum strap. Going up was great, but the tendons behind the left knee started hurting on descent. Took a break, sitting in the damp post-drizzle and Voltarenized it a bit (you know, Voltarén, the European Icy-Hot). Then back to walking—tiny, limping steps, babying the knee. It got worse.

I’d always walked without a walking stick, but today I wanted one. Needed one, even prayed for one. Scanned the sides of the road for a few minutes, got lost in my thoughts and stopped looking.

Came to a cement trail marker at a fork in the path. Five sticks leaned against it, cut and carved by hand. Whittled smooth, with red ink initials on the top: R.I. I tried one out, then tried another. No good. Putting back the second stick, a third fell to the ground. As soon as I saw it I knew it’d be perfect.

The rest of the day I owe to the stick. My knee pain faded away, things are as they should be and I’ll walk with a stick tomorrow. Thank you.

Agés to Burgos

Twenty-seven hawks circling la Sierra de Atapuerca.

Walked around an airport today. A surreal circuit, it took hours. Industrial wasteland outside the fence: trash piles, burnt mattresses, ditched cars, rust, cracked ground, hobo firepits, a few anemic trees. Mounds of debris limited the horizon. It’d be hard to get help out here. More than once, I passed a car parked between two mounds, nose out, with a man sitting inside. Sometimes reading a map, but always just sitting. This scared me.

Burgos is the first large city since Pamplona. I’ve gotten some strange looks, and I know they’re used to pilgrims by now.

Elia from France looks like he could be 20 or 50. A boyish face with messy hair, bright patient eyes and smile creases all over. I guessed 26. He said his oldest daughter is 13 and I guessed 38, correctly. He started walking in Le Puy, has been to Santiago, and is on his way back to Le Puy. He said he’s doing the Camino to keep a promise and didn’t go into any more detail. Elia is fluent in English and German, obviously French, who knows what else. He’s an executive for a large water treatment company and has lived in London, Prague, Munich, you get the picture.

I wondered how someone with such serious business could take the time to walk from Le Puy to Santiago and back. He just asked for the time off and got it. “People have a lot more freedom than they think,” he says. No complaining about the third person plural there.

Tonight we ate in the garden, everyone speaking French or German, or to me in English. A salad, then spicy baked chicken with boiled potatoes and cauliflower. Flan and Oreos for dessert. Oreos! I’d resisted the temptation to buy boxes of Oreos a few times so far, but they finally found me. I ate ten. Some sort of tiny, mildly sweet European cookie also made an appearance.

I’m a fugitive from the ego. (Probably should take out that I.)

Rest Day in Burgos

Slept on a beautiful mattress last night—out cold—and my dream cracked me up in my sleep. I smothered my face into the pillow, attempting to avoid waking the elderly German couple on the other bunk. Success doubtful.

This morning the hospitalera treated us like shameful one-night stands and rushed us out the door as quickly as possible. I’m here, on a riverside bench, waiting for the Spanish day to start. Energy, plans, goals, wishes, hopes, desires and digestion build up inside, only to be met by metal screens over storefronts. At 10 o’clock I just might pop. Doesn’t she know we most need a refuge in the city?

Burgos has almost an inch of pollen on the ground. Not New York pollen, which I can inhale no problem, but Spanish cotton ball pollen. It sticks in my beard and makes my nose turn to cement. Already one nosebleed today from blowing it. In Sun, the pollen swirls into tornadoes and looks like the start of an Upstate snowstorm.

Burgos to San Bol

SAN BOL! From the way people slurred it, I expected a cave. Instead, Isabel, the German hospitalera with blonde dreads, served me tea as soon as I put my pack down. Two others live here, Julio and Alvaro. (I still haven’t figured out the love triangle.)

We have no electricity and no bathroom. I mean, as Isabel says while sweeping her hand across the horizon, we have the biggest bathroom in the world. We have windows, Sun and earth. A spring-fed swimming pool, ice cold.

I’ve been here two hours and have already washed someone else’s dirty undies and seen Isabel jump in the pool wearing only a neon pink inner tube.

Isabel used to be a pilgrim, but when she saw San Bol, she knew she belonged here. She’s been here ever since.

Also here for the night is Gary, a South African furniture importer. It’s his first day of the Camino and he’s carrying enough cash to get both of us to Santiago and back with plenty of wine breaks. On holiday, he usually motors around the Continent in his classic car. He says he’s never seen anything like this.

We’re on the meseta now and it’s amazing. Everyone talked about how there is nothing between Burgos and León, how they want to cruise right through. Yes, there’s nothing, and it’s stunning. Only flat green fields. Flat. Empty. No, full of wheat. The breadbasket of the Roman Empire. My mental image of Strawberry Fields Forever has been forever altered. The sky starts at knee level. Today as I walked a path stretching straight to the horizon, a single cotton cloud hung above me like an empty cartoon thought bubble. Just one cloud, all else blue. I stared at it for a while. There was nothing to trip over.

Flanking the trail, soldier-height stone walls made of skull-sized knobby white rocks rolled out of Roman plow paths.

I plopped into the San Bol ice pool. Shocked, I had to keep moving, so I scrubbed my armpits and shouted. After I got out, I noticed the bottom is covered in coins.

The following band names are scratched into San Bol’s table: Take 5, Police, Duran Duran, Aerosmith, GN’R, The Cranberries, REM, Nirvana, Van Halen, Green Day, Bon Jovi, Offspring. Someone was here when I was in middle school. Someone in middle school will someday be here.

I’ve worn these shorts 24/7 for two weeks. Big news in the first world.

Just before dinner, Isabel jumped shrieking and naked in the pool. Well, not completely naked–she had a pink seamonster innertube around her waist providing redundant buoyancy.

When darkness fell, we lit about a hundred candles.

San Bol—Once the site of a pilgrim leprosy hospital, Arroyo San Bol is an enigma in the desert. Here lie the ruins of the San Bauldilio convent and town, which were mysteriously abandoned in 1503. Some claim plague, others suspect a link to the expulsion of the region’s heavy Jewish population. The only remaining building is the pilgrims’ refuge.

My translation. I’ve lost track of this internet source and the original author remains unknown.

San Bol to Itero de la Vega

At 7:15, we all still slept. A late wake-up and a big bread breakfast. Passing pilgrims stopped at San Bol for coffee as we prepped to leave, including a same age, same county girl whose friend’s brother is my brother’s friend. Too bad she pulled off her boots and parked like Isabel. Wondering if she’d disappear forever, I left with another late start, a no-no on the meseta.

Had a long lunch in the ruins of the convent of San Anton. For dessert, I chugged as much water as possible, then headed down the road to Castrojeriz. Left Castrojeriz around 2pm, out of town on a tree-lined path. The path made a turn for the biggest hill around and it was Over the Top, Stallone style.

It took 30 minutes to climb the surprise hill under boiling Sun and hat stealing wind. There weren’t supposed to be hills on the meseta, though this formation was less of a hill and more of a crease on the crust of the earth. I crossed the top and descended into a patchwork valley. Still, nothing in sight, nobody. Sane people don’t walk during this time of day.

Sun held its palm against my forehead with increasing force as my water ran out. With an inch left in my bottle, I started playing games for motivation. I walked to a red flower. Then to a yellow one. Then to a pebble. Then to a patch of grass. Half a mile to my right, a tractor crawled back and forth through the wheat. The game got me to the horizon and a fountain. A fountain with a sign—water not treated. I sat on a bench and ate two prunes, all I had (not counting a can of pulpo gallego, which most likely would have ended my day right there).

Prunes gone, the trail became a road and a village appeared. My morale rose: I’d make it. Just as quickly, the road veered away, luckily this time toward where I planned to stay. The Ermita de San Nicolás, where everyone says the Maltese Buddhists wash your feet.

I’m sure they do, but I didn’t find out—full Ermita, no beds, no rule-bending, had to keep walking. Veronica, the English oldie-goldie who lives in Paris, had already checked in and sat lounging. She loves to explain how the present is different than England. Today, she skipped her evaluation and said I looked dead (she may have used “dreadful”) and gave me chocolate. The magnesium-packed goodness, chugged water and a consolation apple from the Buddhists got me to Itero de la Vega, 2k away.

And that’s fine. Just a cool early-evening walk down a tree-lined path beside the river. Just 2k closer to Santiago.

“Where do you see yourself in five years?” “Now.”

Itero de la Vega to Villalcázar de Sirga

Hide and seek with Sun, game on. I’m stowed away in a park under a tree. My socks and shoes dry on a metal slide, my pack hangs on a branch. Slept on the grass until my snores woke me up. My first blister’s arrived flamboyantly. Not sure if I should pop it. Probably will.

Made a goal of being present today, but suffered an ego backlash. An hour spent tracing my life story as closely as possible. The first time ever done straight through. Confusing.

We ogle cathedrals and their age, the energy they’ve absorbed, but looking at land is infinitely more humbling. If you want to see something old, look at a rock. Staring at Sun counts too, until you can’t see anymore.

Ended up popping the blister before leaving the park. The blister arrived late, showing up on the stoop of my left big toe after two weeks of walking. This initiated me into the Santiago Blister Busters Association and ensured I’d receive direction in all rites of blister maintenance from fellow pilgrims.

Entered the collective by breaking one of the key rules: Don’t pop and walk. For half an hour, every step torched my leg. Then the pain mellowed out and my limp disappeared. For the sake of the open wound submerged in sweat, I didn’t push it farther than the next town.

In Villalcázar, the albergue appeared shuttered, fallow this season, closed for whatever reason. I headed to the church (does it count as a cathedral?) to have a look around, do some networking, and hopefully dig up a place to stay. Francoise from France, the first pilgrim I talked to, had a spot in his casa rural. Said he’d had to rent it for the night because the town offered nothing else except a 3-star hotel. I’d halve his cost, yet still pay about 4 times the price of an albergue.

When I asked a shopkeep for directions to the closest ATM, she shrugged. None. Back to Francoise to explain that I couldn’t pay him the 20ish euros until tomorrow. Exercising charitable credit (I’d probably disappear), he said that’d be OK.

I bought rice, eggs, tomato paste and an onion with the few coins in my wallet. We headed to the house to cook an approximation of something my Italian roommates used to eat. Upon arrival we found unexpected houseguests at work in the kitchen, having claimed the second bedroom. A potbellied French man, past 40, and a pigtails-and-glasses college girl from Montreal. They finished cooking quickly, wolfed it down and disappeared upstairs.

I started the rice, and when it didn’t seem to be cooking, looked more closely at the package. It was some sort of brown rice—and the marathon began. As the wait dragged on (punctuated only by screams and thumps from upstairs), Francoise took over and made a sauce from the egg, onion and tomato paste. We dumped the half-cooked rice into it and began to eat as quickly as possible before the food got cold.

The owner of the house might have seen our struggles through the front window and showed up with the timing of a telemarketer. Plate steaming before me, he explained that his rates are per bed, not per room. He expected the same amount from me as from Francoise. I didn’t have it and wouldn’t ask Francoise to spot it. I explained my destitution and prepared for a night on a bench. With a faux-Eureka moment, the owner suggested getting a cash advance at the hotel.

My exhaustion demanded I pay for my bed and eat the loss, so I put on my sandals and shuffled through chilly air to the hotel. The desk clerk asked how much I wanted, then explained he’d have to make it look like I’d stayed there. I filled out a room reservation, handed over my credit card and agreed he could put a small commission on top of the withdrawal. Whatever. He ran my card and paid me from the register.

Walked back wondering how far the owner of the casa rural liked to draw out his schemes. Would his buddies now mug me so the (newly) broke American could be evicted and a set of sheets kept clean? After running through a few possibilities, it almost felt like I came out on top by handing over half of my wallet to the owner. Finished the dinner, went through the nightly foot care rituals (now lengthened by the popped blister) and fell into bed around midnight.

Without a crowd to wake me up, I steamrolled my watch alarm and woke up around 8:30am. A brief breakfast, improvised blister care and a few km’s downhill to Carrión de los Condes set things up nicely for a run-in with Sun.

Villalcázar de Sirga to Calzadilla de la Cueza

Nature recruits poets.

Today I set out from Carrión de los Condes on the longest desolate stretch of the Camino at 11 a.m. 17 kilometers of no food, no water, no civilization. Negligible shade. Bad idea to start so late.

Bad idea to hand my last orange to my Irish friend Kevin. Must have already been a bit heat loopy when I gave it, halfway across. The handoff occurred as I sat down for lunch and he got up, finished. He left and was the last person seen until reaching Calzadilla de la Cueza.

Hit the road after lunch at peak heat, around 2pm, and soon mounted a bucking bull of emotion. Fury, towards the taxi ads tacked to skinny trees; sorrow, for dead young soldiers in Iraq; purpose, as if a nation marched behind me; joy, eating a square of chocolate; laser precision, rationing water.

Said “thank you” about 1000 times in succession, each with a slightly different inflection than the previous, because I figured it’d be good for the soul.

Still, the whole time I was in a developed country. Had a cell phone in my bag and could have called a taxi if things got out of hand. This was no Shackleton expedition, no Livingstone plunge. The path underfoot had been followed since prehistory. I was the only thing being explored. Seventeen kilometers, measured against any true trek, is bubblegum.

But the Camino’s not a trek, it’s a walk. A month-long Sunday afternoon, nothing to do but stroll, the opposite of our usual daily sprint. The seventeen kilometer stretch becomes significant only when measured against the rest of the Camino and its routine.

It’s a mean experience, midway between Santiago and France, midway across the meseta. Crossing it in good health requires the proper alignment of provisions, water, timing, weather and strength. Any of these in the wrong proportion can lead to sickness, even death. The longest unsupplied stretch of the route, it’s an opportunity to recognize our proximity to disaster, something which we often overlook at home, even as we propel ourselves at mangling speeds atop tanks of explosive liquids, separated from an eternal crunch by painted stripes.

After trying to best the Camino, I went on autopilot: sock wash, shower, footcare, email. Getting weaker. Went to bed on a stomach that had seen a day of only fruits and sweets. Crashed. Flies attacked my face. Hot. Bundled into the sleeping bag to dodge the flies. Zipped it up, hood on. Stopped the flies. Woke up, mouth dry. Sipped a half liter of water. Floated downstairs. Deuced. Deuced again.

Walked on a tightrope to the only restaurant in town. Drank a Gatorade. Bought another and sat outside, listening to Italian spandex bikers argue about money four feet away. Went into the restaurant to deuce. Walked upstairs, got called back down by a waiter. Carefully back downstairs to another bathroom. Dizzy. Deuced towards dehydration. Walked out of the bathroom sweating. Bought another Gatorade to go. Saw the loud girl from Quebec, from last night, and she asked if I wanted soup. I waved her off and stumbled out front.

Saw a mother and child and pressed on, the whole ten feet to the corner. Turned the corner, spotted my target and puked onto a sewer grate. Four torso-length vomit pulls, painting the corner of sidewalk that must be rounded to enter or exit the restaurant. A good way to put someone out of business. Wiped off my calves, feet and sandals with a tissue and threw it on the pile.

Adrenaline surging, I made a hasty exit. A minute up the road, soup sounded good after all. I asked an ancient Spanish couple if they had any. Denied, I popped Belushi eyebrows at a woman in a parked car. She recoiled.

Got back to the refuge feeling fugitive. Floated upstairs, brushed my teeth and tongue, cleaned sandals in the shower, popped an Advil and went downstairs to eat bread. Picked my socks out of the grass beneath the clothesline where they had fallen and repacked the backpack. I ate, sandals on, while a man mowed grass. He rolled over rocks and I raised my feet. A bird crapped on my leg. Went out front, ate bread, and listened to machine-gun Spanish. Jean-Francois from Quebec gave me figs. Just finished them and now sit in a pool of amusement.

To my body—I’m sorry for pushing you over the edge. Do what you need to teach me to respect you. We won’t walk between two and five anymore. Please accept this apology and hopefully we can go back to being a team. Sincerely and with the deepest humility, Brett

Calzadilla de la Cueza to Sahagún

Jazz band used to be the highlight of my week!

Last night, through my messiness, a German girl caught my eye. Also with blonde dreadlocks, I stereotyped her as a twin to Isabel. She spent the night in the hospitalero’s room.

Santiago: 315k

The refuge in Sahagún is a semi-renovated church, gutted and made into a monstrous loft apartment. A bit scary: I got the last bed.

Sahagún to Reliegos

Up before dawn, held the flashlight with my teeth for nearly an hour and worked on my feet. Two hours into nowhere, found a loaf of bread on a bench and ate it. A digging and pipe project alongside the path provided the rest of the morning’s excitement. The grey polymer water pipes, three feet wide, announced Made in USA.

Arrived in El Burgo Ranero at noon and learned it’s possible to put lentils on a sandwich. Washed my socks and slept on the floor for three hours.

Woke up late from the nap and left at 5:45 p.m. for an evening stroll to Reliegos. Another dry run, no fountain to count on. Worried about making it before 10pm and walked faster than I should have. Overworked my Achilles—both.

Got into Reliegos around 9:15 and bought a bar sandwich for the park bench. An old lady living next to the bar had her own idea about how pilgrims should eat. She snuck outside and placed an orange on her windowsill, then pointed at it, then at me, then at her eyes and went inside. Unsure if it was a gift or if I should just watch it for her, I wrote a thank you note and went over to grab it like a big squirrel.

When I got close, her Dutch door opened and there she was, standing below sidewalk level, four feet tall, bottle opener in one hand and a Fanta in the other. She asked if anyone was in the street. Only an old man with a cane, approaching at a pace that didn’t seem to threaten our privacy. I said it was clear.

She leaned out to hand me the Fanta and the man clicked into her view. Scared, she retreated, hid the bottle and wouldn’t acknowledge my presence. I turned, surveyed the square and whistled. After the man plodded past, she dumped the Fanta into my water bottle and told me to run. Meseta rip-offs end at her door, but don’t tell anyone.

Reliegos to León

Due to the late arrival last night, I slept on a mattress in an empty downstairs room. It wasn’t a space issue, it was just easier. People upstairs were getting into bed as I headed out for dinner. This morning, with no crinkling plastic bag symphony, I overslept again. Foot care was fast, though, no crowded bunkroom hassles.

As soon as I got on the road—-Pain. Cartoon cannonballs dragged on chains behind my feet. Ankles throbbed. Feeling tendons shred with every step, I began to doubt that today would bring León.

With baby steps, the ankles cooled. Ate fruit and more fruit and refilled my water bottle at least ten times. The succession of towns knitted together along the path kept my spirits up and I entered the León valley as the heat peaked, a bag of farmstand cherries in hand. Skirted the siesta shutdown thanks to a shopkeep’s patience and made a ham and cheese sandwich in the park, in a rose garden in the shade.

Although it was only 3 p.m., the albergue only had a few beds left. Racing seems regular and the crowd here feels uninspiring. Two men yelled and demanded I take my muscle cream operation outside, due to the stink. Please–the Camino is nothing if not the menthol scent of Voltarén! Many here will start walking tomorrow, and they’re nervous. After today’s tough morning, it’s especially contagious.

I will not allow the walk to be rushed, even if it means I don’t see Finisterra.

To pilgrims, a city is a chance to stock up. The provider of provisions. Needles for blister popping (my one is charred black from sanitizing matches), a lighter, a new tube of Vaseline, and most likely a stop in the sweet shop.

You could walk to Santiago blind, following the sound of Swiss knives snapping shut.

Do “crowded bunk room hassles” really exist? It’s only impatience with sharing confined spaces. The past few days have been a trial. Walked alone, friends scattered a day ahead or a day behind or just plain lost, the heat heavy and the overall pain index rising.

Rest Day in León AKA One-Person Dinner Conversation

I’m having a chalkboard-advertised pilgrim dinner special at Bar Sidería, or at least trying. Could always eat some raisins from the bag in my pocket. Spain moves slowly and I’m just hungry. Waiters and waitees alike are waiting for the cook to show up.

Finally became a bohemian without even trying, Granada street froth of the song and dirty dog variety. Sat down at a terrace table this morning with Stefan and his Norwegian friend because we knew Jean-Francois of the fig fame, well-established with two empty coffee cups and a bald head glistening in the Sun.

The two unknown Germans at the table left and familiar faces appeared. Josh from New York and Kat from Germany, previously the hospitalero bed-sharer and now my acquaintance, today playing the role of Josh’s traveling cigarette dispenser. Another pilgrim stowed his bag beneath the table and started playing flute across the street, collecting coins in his open case.

He finished and our table erupted into applause. Leonese heads up and down the terrace turned. Yes, we’re here with everything we need to survive, are fully mobile and will sleep wherever it’s reasonably flat.

My primer plato just arrived, a white rectangular heated plate of macaroni. Macaroni on a hot chiclet.

I’m ready for the last third of the Camino. Weird Celtic terrain, cowbells and witches, twin sierras. Three weeks on the road and this is my first non-sandwich meal in a bar. The drink options are water or wine, same price. And I thought they were only culturally interchangeable.

It’s hard to write verse over dinner. The chewing screws the rhythm.

So I always do it wrong. Just used the bread plate for the pasta and the eating plate as a saucer of sorts. Yes—here’s pork with fries. Toasted tubers doused in vinegar. Thought I’d get something closer to chunks of potato, but secretly hoped for fries all along.

We try
Doing things
We haven’t learned

A half-rhyme shows you’ve considered. My knife is sharp. For a period of time, if you asked a friend of mine how he was doing, he said, “I’m always good.” I’d like to believe we all are.

Horizon hills
Take us back
To shared beds.

The Spanish pulse beats
So slowly there’s never
A chorus of sirens.

The little things are distracting like dessert. Bring on the flan! The whip cream beats the flan! And the flan flogs!

It’s getting late and I’ll go to bed feeling guilty. Just spotted: A dump truck named Sara.

Is there a better way to share the funk than rolling down windows and turning up speakers?

León to Villadangos del Páramo

At dawn, walked beside the river and its bench bums from our outskirts albergue back to the Camino. As usual, the Camino’s bridge would have been obvious without the arrows.

Icing my Achilles tendons. Today happened. Stalked a major highway the entire way up to Villadangos. Like an guest-room grandma, we plodded on, irrelevant beside the buzzing. The sky is clouded and I’m hoping for no rain. We’ll see.

It’s time to move from “what am I going to be?” to being.

I’ve turned my loneliness into postcards.

Villadangos del Páramo to Astorga

The waitress at Sidería Luís, Astorga, is also the cook. She gave a list of first plate options, chose macaroni again. Second plate—another list, then she paused and held my gaze before adding something special.

Lacón.

No idea what lacón is, but according to her, it’s muy suave. Gave her the go ahead with enthusiasm. I suspect she wants to turn me into a lacón aficionado. And she just returned with a hopeful smile and asked, “Te gusta el queso?”

Do I like cheese? Oh yes. And she just returned a third time with an ice cold 1.5L of water and offered to throw my Nalgene bottle in the freezer. Amazing!

In Hospital de Orbigo, a priest pointed out a secret trail to Astorga. The classic longer-but-worth-it route and welcome break from highwayside walking.

We’ve got macaroni. Ton of cheese. Ham! Is that a mussel?

Lacón is in the house. I’m a fan—it’s top shelf ham. So the ham in the mac was a teaser! Sorry to say I’ve rushed into another meal and have only thanked the server.

Astorga to Rabanal del Camino

Climbed out of Astorga and left the meseta for good. In Murias, the last building in town flew a Brazilian flag and hash clouds. Walked in looking for leftover bread and ended up with a full breakfast. Astounding.

Big Brazilian smiles all around. A man with three gold earrings, long hair and a single dreadlock ate Cocoa Krispies. He’s on his way back from Santiago, headed somewhere. He talked about karma and then set up umbrellas to block the morning Sun.

Moving on, the trail climbed, lined by yellow flowers. On the outskirts of Santa something, a British man sold coffee and bowls of breakfast goodies out of his RV. Stopped and took him up on the offer, sipped coffee while looking from one ridge to the next through close clouds. He lives in the RV eight months of the year and makes me want to do the same.

The coffee pushed me into town, but arriving brought me back a thousand years. The town is the Camino, which enters through a gap in the fieldstone wall. Everything is stones and ancient wood. Creaking signs hang over creaky pilgrims recharging in the street.

It’s the type of town in which you could buy a vial of poison so old, if used today the cause of death would be indeterminable. Mass started at eleven and I went. A man in church was sick—black rough skin hung from his skull, his face a rack for cancer.

I’ll stay at the monastery in Rabanal for the next two days for increased silence. When will I have another chance? We’ll talk later, bell’s ringing. Time to unfocus/refocus on Gregorian chant.

Rest Day at Rabanal del Camino

Don’t really know what to do with my notes from Rabanal, so they’re presented below with minimal filtration. Two days at the Monte Irago monastery show my susceptibility to the influences of environment.

A Benedictine-approved library, silent meals and three or four chant sessions a day cannonballed my naked thoughts into a pool of reflection without even a pink inner tube. Although I sought anything with a ring of truth, I wonder if I went off the deep end.

Today, I stay. Mindfulness—hope to begin to inch my way toward it. Silence. Non-judgment would be great. It’s OK to aspire to more than I think I’m capable of, but I fear that too much striving won’t be good. One step at a time. Let the self be steered by the divine in all things. Be still. Write freely on white.

Skipped the breakfast at Gaucelmo and will eat with the monks at seven. Needed all my powers of rationalization to abstain—argh.

“In the morning sow your seed, and at evening do not let your hands be idle; for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.” Ecc. 11:6

“One who is slack in work is close kin to a vandal.” Proverbs 18:9

“Listen to advice and accept instruction, that you may gain wisdom for the future.” Proverbs 19:20

“The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to want.” Proverbs 21:5

“Whoever loves pleasure will suffer want, whoever loves wine and oil will not be rich.” Proverbs 21:17

“To watch over mouth and tongue is to keep out of trouble.” Proverbs 21:17

Some want to go fast, I catch their cold.

Rest Day 2 at Rabanal del Camino

Just finished a book. Something new to think about while walking tomorrow. Today is the second day at Monte Irago. It’s three monks with a full-size guesthouse next door. After eight hours of reading, I’m a bit overwhelmed but figure the notebook is fine.

Feels like I’ve been here for a week. Reading, writing, Gregorian chant. Cuisine! Monks can cook. We eat in silence. Last night it was spaghetti in an inky squid sauce, al dente and not sloppy wet. Some melting pork fillets, and today, exemplary chicken paella. Not used to writing about food, less so reviewing it. Needless to say, any food on the Camino is great, but this is truly gourmet.

The paella had the wild look of haute, as if the monks dumped in a trowel of garden to finish it off. Just begging for an amateur to ask if it’s edible.

I’m a slow eater. Everyone finished and I still had a solid ten to fifteen forkfuls left. I’d never eaten in silence while five people waited and watched. We weren’t close together, but spread in a ring around the room. Each of us facing into a horseshoe of faces, classic Greek theater. I became painfully conscious of every bite, every swallow and almost broke down laughing. Forced into awareness of consumption’s necessary synchronization, I almost choked. I never knew what it meant to eat until now.

The message of the book—love. After finishing it, went down the road to buy fruit for tomorrow. A new wave of pilgrims packed the tiny store, stocking up, and outsider anxiety slapped me. Got my fruit and stood where I thought the line ended.

A woman in front bought her basket’s load with a big bill and the old clerk slowly made change. Second in line, a man with a backpack, spandex and designer shades slid his energy drink and apple onto the counter, cash in hand. He pushed them closer. Then closer, closer still. Looked to the clerk, the lady, his stuff, the register.

Caught myself thinking, “This guy’s an asshole,” and more generally, “typical French asshole.” Then I remembered the book and tried to love him. And the slow clerk. And the lady getting pressured. Platonic, of course—no mountain deli orgies in the works. I don’t know if it’s, “tried to feel love,” “to give love,” “to wish love,” “to show love”—so I’ll just say tried to love. They have their own battles too.

I’m baffled by the atomic implications of what I eat.

Rabanal del Camino to Ponferrada

El Acebo, dropped
Into the mountain valley
Like a broken tile.

It’s late and I need sleep. A 32km day, the most so far if anyone’s counting. Almost all downhill after a quick climb to the Cruz de Ferro. The way up passed through Foncebadón, a once-abandoned town now on life support. It was plague-ish and I could live there.

Part of today’s walk passed through forest fire zone, full trees bent into wicker bananas, others twisted into death. I was alone there.

In El Acebo, I wanted to buy lunch but had only enough coins for bread. Asked the old woman in the dark shop for a loaf and displayed the change. She pointed out that bread alone isn’t a meal, and gave me a slab of chorizo. Made and ate a sandwich while walking.

Ponferrada to Villafranca del Bierzo

7 a.m.

And to celebrate my Dad’s birthday, two Spaniards argue. It’s a common sight. When speaking Spanish, the amount of words needed to express displeasure gives annoyance just enough time to boil over into anger. (Surely that can’t be true.)

Not rushing, just drinking a cup of tea hoping to pre-empt the sore throat creeping in. Plaster nose is back, most likely due to last night’s stay in a 160-bed spectacle. And because I forgot two apples and two tomatoes at the supermarket register yesterday. Didn’t walk back in order to save my feet.

OK, getting kicked out now, time to walk.

Tomorrow will be a roundhouse to the hairline, 30km uphill. Upmountain, that is. But on top we’ll hit the G spot. Galicia. Distance to Santiago signs are frequent now, but they say nothing about tomorrow’s climb.

I have weather-aversive learning: puked in the heat, now get nauseous thinking of it. Outrageous heat, the hospitalera says they’re talking on the news already, heat rising through the night and into morning. If the heat makes the news in Spain, it’s hot.

Have no idea if I’m making too much food. Tomato with mozzarella and basil, boiled potato, empanada, three yogurts and a blob of membrillo.

Walked 23km today, but short days can be the hardest, especially when it’s 2 p.m. and you have 3 or 4 km left, and you know that’s just a sliver so you keep going, into the heat, which makes each kilometer feel like 3 or 4, leaving you aching with awareness that you won’t see water till town and have only your hat to hide you.

But one day at a time. This is Spain’s Westchester, El Bierzo. Rather, Westchester is the Bierzo of New York. The Bimmer surplus makes that much obvious. Had a mildly homesick email session and flirted my way into a free slice of empanada.

Villafranca del Bierzo to La Faba

Stinginess weighs down a backpack.

Have always been a fan of the intimate session. Besides beds: sharing a drink, a couple chord changes, maybe a telephone call. It’s always been about listening. Back and forth, bouncing.

Solitude is the basic intimate session. You listen and hope the bouncing doesn’t drown you. Even alone, there’s someone who has a habit of jumping in, crashing the session and demanding an ear. But I think I know enough about intimate sessions to know that we learn how to make sure it’s invite only.

Much depends on location, the right spot or state. Knowing how to get there and the ritual of it. Letting things lead to a “that’s exactly what I needed” feeling. Because isn’t as much of that feeling exactly what we need?

Maybe “I” is too self-centered. How about “that’s exactly what was needed.” It needed to be done. It’s what the moment required. And we only know what’s needed by listening.

It’s lunch and I’ve been up and down a mountain already. Set out from Villafranca and took the trail past Turn Back! Oz signs. Climbed at airplane rate like a Soviet subway escalator.

Up, up, up, watching the highway curve below. It hugged a knoll, a lesson in power. Not even Robert Moses could have forced the road to curve like that if the bump wasn’t there. But yet it curves and the bump just sits.

Along the ridgeline (a few feet below, actually, out of Sun’s reach–hide and seek with a star, like paparazzi games), over the top and into a chestnut forest. Met a farmer and refilled water bottles from the tank in the back of his truck. Ate an especially hard-to-peel orange. The descent yielded a new blister, crushing my right ring toe into a pinched point.

From then till now the roads have been getting smaller. I’m lost in the capillaries, up near La Faba. Winding towards Galicia’s border like a smuggler, sweating over a plate of patatas bravas, the countdown to heartburn is on. Need the fuel after an albergue-terrace lunch of canned pulpo and apple. Immediately afterwards, walked in on a woman in the bathroom–just out of the shower and as of yet untoweled. No big deal for either of us.

Hello, I’ve swallowed a lit grill. Brave potatoes!

La Faba to Triacastela

A guy called me out for saying “I’m good” to refuse a tea offer. It may have been a translation issue, although translation may have allowed him to see the root of the remark. He said that saying “I’m good” implies I only drink tea if I’m bad.

Countered that it means I’m content, and feel no need to consume more, or anything. It could also mean I’m afraid tea will upset a good state, or it will make me feel bad or worse, or it could mean I’m simply in a state I don’t want interrupted, up or down, like the dinner drunk who turns down coffee.

Kat (remember her? with the dreadlocks?), beside him in his tent, said nothing.

Atop O Cebreiro, a lady climbs farther, into a taxi. Her knee hurts and she has convinced herself that she can’t walk downhill. I’m dreading the descent too. Expecting the triangle toe to explode soon. Pain-free moments have been rare. It’s always around, though often pushed out of consciousness

You have to protect the knees, the quads, back-knee tendons, shins, back-ankle tendons, front-ankle tendons and heels. I’ve enjoyed a cocktail of blisters, cracks, rubs, chafes, pinches, stubs, twists, near-sprains, pulls, turns, pokes, tape sags, sock bunches, thorn snags, sunburns, heat stroke, hunger, dehydration, lack of good sleep, allergies, mudbutt, constipation and overall weariness. And then there’s the mental side of things. Did I forget to mention heartburn?

Nature is the world’s best seducer.

Got buzzed by a horsefly,
Flirted with a butterfly,
Recoiled at a rubber glove.
In a ravine, someone above
Ambushed me with apples.

Have to get used to getting started. Just getting started.

How can anyone find Joyce boring? Compared to Ulysses, Mr. Toad ain’t got shit.

Chugging water again, prepping for a drop into the deep fryer. Expecting three hours to the destination, will leave at 5:15. Ate lunch in a round Galician house-thing. It reeked of theater, so I’ll say “thing”. Regardless, it’s great to be in Galicia.

Clouds, maybe a storm coming, gonna butter the feet and be out.

Walked a bit with Andreas from Germany. Nearing 40 years old, he’s spent the last fifteen in banking. Arranging loans from the US and Japan to emerging markets, scheming so investors felt safe, as he said.

He quit his job and is moving to New York in August. He’ll do a stint at Gotham Writers’ Workshop and then go home to write for a year. If he hasn’t made “progress” by its end, he’ll re-enter the business world. Fifteen years invested in high-yield bonds. He says he has to try it, has to at least be able to say he tried.

Glad a met someone who shares my dream. Maybe I can push my midlife crisis to now and crawl through it Shawshank-style.

Eric develops real estate in Colorado. He leased a condemned bridge from his city, tore it down and built a new bridge 80 feet wide with a strip mall on top. He referred to Machu Picchu as a power spot. He also made me a few thousand dollars by disclosing simple value-adds, to be claimed on the sale of my first house.

Why are we so often like winter cars, impossible to start?

Triacastela to Sarria

Know where your thoughts are. Routine allows focus, streamlines, forms a form like the sonnet. Lowers the price of mental oil.

Routine:
Get up between 5 and 7 a.m. (usually 6-6:45)
Brush teeth, drink .5L water or more
Pack sleeping bag
Begin foot maintenance or move to where can
Lay out materials
Use knife to cut gauze toe covers
Iodine on the blisters
Tape gauze covers on toes (both thumbs, right ring)
Tape back of ankles
Anti-fungal cream on the feet
Vaseline on the feet
Anti-swelling cream on the muscles
Socks (inner, outer)
Knee brace
Put on first boot
Put on second boot
Pack bag, stuff stuff where it goes
Pin any wet socks on bag
Stretch
Chug water
Refill water
Put on bag, carry water and stick
Hit the road
Walk
Breaks for intake/excretion
Sit down every two hours for 15 minutes, maybe longer in a café
If very hot, stop at an albergue or bar between 2 and 5pm (avoid alcohol)
Arrive at albergue
Show credential
Get stamp
Give money
Find bed
Try to remember to remember to stretch
Sit down
Exhale
Take off boots
Take off socks
Put on sandals
Set out sleeping bag
Stretch
Launder socks
Hang socks
Eat (bar or cook)
Shower (maybe), at least soap feet
Bonus: Get supplies in town, read, write, nap, sit outside
Stretch
Brush teeth
Get in bunk
Cream feet
Set alarm
Link watch to bedpost
Drink water
Bed (9:30-10:30)

Sarria to Portomarín

Lots of pilgrims start in Sarria (just over 100k from Santiago) to qualify for the Compostela, the holy high five, the Vatican validation. You need at least 100km for the afterlife benefits, the break on the death tax, a 50% reduction in purgatory. Starting from here, you can get away with wearing sandals or soccer shoes. It’s a testament to the breadth of our community that some of us gasp upon learning that others have been walking for a month or more.

I keep my slow and solid pace and make it from town to town.

The Camino in Galicia is paved with cow dung. Sidestepping it would add a mile a day.

A German Shepherd reared up and barked at me. I waited for the chain around its neck to snap taught. The dog came forward and the chain did too, attached to nothin’ but the dogg. One dog with nine feet of chain. Luckily, he was a good guard and stayed at the gate. He’s probably seen more pilgrims that any hospitalero or hawker on the trail.

Most of the day rolled through linked villages. Galicia is one big village and every day there’s a parade. A book I read was right: “You’re never far from some sort of building.” All is tiny family farms bumping into each other, halving themselves (at least) each generation, all with house, barn, grain store and requisite crazy canine.

An old man with boxer arms and a beer gut stood building a stone wall, giving stones flattops with the butt of a maul.

The end of the day descended towards Río Piña. Pine River’s big, big enough to make its width your first thought. Walked across it on a flat bridge, reminiscent of something thrown up in wartime, and then up Inca temple steps through an arch into Portomarín.

Now I’m in the municipal refuge feeling like a refugee. Every day the crammed bunkhouse, the same tribe, moving. Some join up, some disappear. Pilgrims and refugees, who would have known. No wonder being on the move can galvanize a nation.

Dropped some graffiti on a yellow arrow: Skunk Funk. Bought passion for €1.23 in the form of a Cornetto cone named Pasión. Understand I need to build wealth, but it’s really about keeping that spark in the eye.

Have been indulging more and more as Santiago approaches. Then again, there hasn’t been an open market in three days. Menú de peregrino, coffee, ice cream—even tried the torta de Santiago. Memorable, but there’s no need to try again. It’s Entenmanns’s crumb cake without the crumbs.

Heard B.B. King’s Everyday I Have the Blues leaving old speakers and a second floor window, presumably off vinyl. Parked underneath and ate dark chocolate, usurping the blues.

Portomarín to Palas de Rei

A full albergue upon arrival. Scouting for someone with whom I could negotiate floor space, ran into new friends. An Italian couple who started in Sarria. We’d walked together for a bit on their first day, they heard my juicy stories of the Italian roommates back in Granada.

The couple had decided they could do better than sharing half a bunkbed, and booked a private room in a private hostel. Geared up and moving out, they offered me their newly vacant mattress. I trusted its cleanliness. The albergue remained full, but now I had a bed.

Finally sent a letter to a professor. Wrote and mailed it as fast as possible, hoping to capture unchecked emotion. Come to think of it, I try to do everything on gut instinct these days.

Said I wouldn’t do it, but I’m eating the torta de Santiago again. It came free with dinner; I wouldn’t summon it on its own. The Entenmanns’s element makes me homesick.

Palas de Rei to Ribadiso

Another did-it-again. Ordered coffee and tostadas without looking at the menu, which felt great. Thankfully, I noticed the hollow, “Oh, it’s only that big?” feeling I got while waiting and watching others receiving the same. Noticing lets me shelve the disappointment for now and enjoy the view.

No idea where this is but would be happy with Melide—a 14km morning without a break. (Notice how the language I chose promotes conditional happiness.)

Finally sitting in the shade. This is meseta-like ground: few trees, low bushes, heavy heat. Hope to return to fairy-tale Galicia on the other side of town. Walking feels like a victory lap now, strolling from third to home on a homer. Today and tomorrow, that’s it, plus the hop from Monte de Gozo.

So much of creativity is giving yourself the opportunity to create. Many have said this better.

Seven p.m. and it’s hot. Stopped 2km before Arzua at a riverside campsite, Ribadiso. We have bunks, peace, quiet and space.

When insights are coming quickly, one must take care not to unload too much in casual conversation or risk sounding prickish.

Landscaping provides a framework for nature’s creativity. The most basic, a row of trees. A bordered lawn.

My father scratched our names into the church bell tower’s ladder with a key. Setting an example?

Obligatory queues are renegade minutes.

At Ribadiso, a German girl wore a black string bikini and drank beer from a black can while dipping her feet in the river. Had seen her earlier in the day; she sent a smile while I waited for the tostadas. Sat down next to her and we started talking. She showed me her passport picture. Hm, brown hair, I thought, and wondered if she’s a natural blond. After a while of chatting, we agreed to meet that night on the bridge just outside the gate at 12:30 a.m. (She was on the trail with her father.)

Got to the bridge on time and waited. Eventually, someone seemed to be approaching. I called out. They disappeared in the dark and it got quiet again. I went back, searched around, found nothing. Still tell myself she tried, confused the rendezvous point and gave up, feeling jilted.

Ribadiso to Monte de Gozo to Santiago

Got to Santiago yesterday in the morning, went to the witches’ café, nursed a coffee for two hours and wrote a page or so of haiku. So simple.

The walk before yesterday almost broke me. Almost 40km from Ribadiso to Monte de Gozo. Not too hot through the morning and early afternoon. Stopped for lunch at 3 p.m. in Arca de Pino, thinking it could only get cooler. Filled up on a sandwich of tortilla Española and tomato, a frozen Snickers bar and all the latest Top 40 videos. Stepped outside—whoops. The temperature had spiked. It’ll be ok, I thought, I have water and a shady path. A shady path which became a fully Sun-blasted path in about 15 minutes.

The intersection of history and present requires pilgrims to walk around the Santiago de Compostela airport. Bigger than the Burgos airport, it gave a seminar in scope. Size. The area needed for jet-powered transportation goes much beyond the runway: Terminals, parking, overshoot zones and rows of lights like breadcrumbs. Walking the perimeter could take an entire afternoon. Like Burgos, it was surrounded by no-man’s land–this time a heavily wooded area, the type that bodies are always getting dumped in. And again, every so often there’d be a car tucked into a cut in the trees with a man inside, a map covering his face. Fear crept in.

By the time I rounded the airport and reached the next town, I was long out of water, had been denied same by over 15 bikers, had eaten The Emergency Orange, and continued on oblivious to a budding delirium. Just the typical balance issues and thought walls that could be chalked up to muscle exhaustion.

Stopped at the first Calippo umbrella and drank about four liters of water at a table next to the bikers who hadn’t shared, plus downed a Gatorade and an ice pop.

Headed out in full defense mode: liter of water in the pack, reserve bottle full, hat over a drenched bandanna. A bit tipsy up the hill out of town. Popped an ibuprofen and a magnesium to boost my confidence.

Looking back, this may have been mild hypoxia, water intoxication, even though I felt goofy before chugging. Not sure, no way to know now.

Rolled into Lavacolla around pilgrim dinnertime and chugged even more water. Pilgrims drinking wine on a café terrace stared while I asked the bartender where to find internet. He said go behind the hotel and ask.

I went behind the hotel and found a dead end ringed with houses and yippy guard pups. No commercial activity whatsoever. Asked a couple tinkering with an unlit barbeque where to find the internet. “Go up the stairs and ask inside.” Inside the house next door? If you say so.

An old woman answered the door and I asked. She grabbed her keys. I followed her down the stairs, around the corner and into another building. She opened a door to a classroom bloated with what looked like social initiative-bought machines. Sweet. Sat down, emailed and paid her 50 cents when my bladder was about to burst. Classic corruption, better than nothing.

Pissed on the first grass I saw, in broad daylight, in the middle of a square surrounded by streets and buildings, ready to pivot if anyone came up the surrounding streets. Grabbed groceries, got a gift of gonna-dump-it-anyway cake with my bread purchase and began the last 5k to Monte de Gozo.

On a visit from Granada up to Santiago with a friend in 2003, we walked these last 10km of the Camino as a day trip. Not sure what type of seed that experience planted for this one. Having been to Santiago once may have made a successful arrival at the destination more plausible, may have somehow reduced any reservations that would have kept me in Granada five weeks ago. Maybe it just made the idea of heading north click more cleanly.

Having walked it before somehow sped it up. The surroundings didn’t overwhelm my thoughts and I cruised, detached, floating, feeling done. Over Monte de Gozo, past the TV station and its friendless antenna. Got a bit lost trying to find a way into the camp at Monte de Gozo, and again had to circumnavigate a chain link fence.

The Monte de Gozo camp is as lonely as the peak, a tourist Mecca, 30 bunkhouses, 800 beds and only two of the houses are for pilgrims. (Maybe the capacity is for Jubilee Years in July.) Walked in at 9:55 to learn registration ends at 10. Hustled up a 150 meter incline to bunkhouse 30 and collapsed in front of the desk.

Got the stamp. The security guard (hospitaleros don’t wear uniforms) tried to put me in a room with a Spanish couple I’d seen a few times on the way. I resisted and actually had to explain why such an arrangement probably wasn’t the best idea. Eventually he provided the key to an empty room. Threw down the pack and made a sandwich. Ate a bit, felt dizzy and sick.

Surprisingly, a two-pound sandwich isn’t the best follow-up to the longest one-day walk of your life. It’s a sandwich that takes energy to consume, and my body was having none of it. Gave the rest of it to a pair of college-age Mexican guys who’d just arrived. It must have been a welcome complement to their fist-sized bag of weed.

Straight to bed with the trashcan beside me, praying I wouldn’t puke. The room spun into sleep immediately. Ten emergency midnight pisses later I woke up for real, ready to rock into Santiago.

Did it the way I used to wrap up semesters—an enormous push at the end with negligible sleep. Coasted into Santiago through an invisible mist, snacking on the way. The bells rang during the arrival, a  sequel to the Santo Domingo chicken. Good luck.

Parked directly opposite the Obradoiro façade and prayed to the top of it, like millions before and who knows how many to come. Took some pictures, thought of nothing, ate granola bars and explained the pilgrimage to British cruise passengers who had never heard of the Camino. Told the same story to their friends. Soon after, got down to business with haikus. Yes.

Breakup with the Stick

Threw my walking stick as far as possible off the end of Finisterra. End of end-of-land. It didn’t reach the water, but that’s OK. It’ll live with the rocks on the cliff and enjoy the view.

The stick arrived in the rain of Montes de Oca and left in the same breed of wet, a Finisterra drizzle. It carried me over two-thirds of the Camino, switched off lights, scratched calves, battled thornbushes, drove off dogs, scraped sand, gave me a place to lean, and (again) took an immeasurable load off my tendons and knees.

It cracked but never broke. The crook at the top proved a perfect grip for easing descents. Light and strong and never a splinter, although it would give warning pricks if disrespected. I loved and love that stick.