Camino

I have been back in Vancouver for a little over a week. It has been almost two weeks since I left my friend and Camino companion David Hill at the train station in Burgos. We had awoke in Atapuerca, the tiny assemblage of stone buildings on the Camino, after walking daily for the previous 12 days. So here I am trying to summarize such a fantastic adventure after the fact. I did keep a travel diary and had decided not to blog during the walk. Trying to concentrate on the 'moment' I suppose.

Like my other blog posts I will have photos tell the story and try to stick to the facts. Of course which photos to choose? I found myself constantly stopping to capture the wind blowing across a green field, the spire of a distant building or some shot of David looking heroically over a distant pathway. Background facts; I walked with David who proved to be the most fabulous companion. I was asked recently if going with someone took away from the 'spiritual' aspect of the journey. I guess it depends who that person is but in David I had a very present, upbeat, open and completely compatible companion. Want to talk about deeply personal history or your most private fear? check, want to engage a solitary walker that we are closing in on? check, "How about another beer (or wine, or tapas)"? check, want to double over laughing at a ridiculous antecdote?, check, want to invent stupid acronyms for unsavoury body functions brought on by 20k of walking (SWAC - first word is sweaty last is crack)?, check. You get the picture.

Ironically our first steps on the journey were not with each other - decked out in our new ponchos and walking canes - but with two stellar mid 30's Brits who I had befriended on the bus from Bayonne. Joe was 36 (we celebrated his 37th birthday at a bar in Pamplona) and coming to grips with the sudden passing of his brother. David fell in with Andrew, Joe's funny companion who was joining him for the first week. We trod out of St. Jean Pied du Pont into the cold and building snowflakes. That we began with these two fellows and within 10k had met at least a half dozen more, was a theme of our walk. Meeting people, hearing deeply personal stories, chatting idly with strangers was a true joy. I will remember walking into Pamplona on about the fourth day, following the traditional Camino shell insignias in the pavement and yellow arrows painted on the buildings, into this large Spanish city feeling as though we were part of a community. We were not alone, we walked into this city, into its lovely city square, on the lookout for fellow pilgrims who inevitably we met. "Where are you staying?" Meet up later for supper?" You had 'family' when you wanted it or intimate companionship or solitude. You got what you needed or wanted on any given day.

While encounters and new aquaintences are a joy the Camino is, of course, about walking. In total we walked for 12 days and covered about 260k or about a third of the entire Saint Jean route. There are many Camino routes that crisscross Europe all ending in Santiago in north east Spain. In the later days we were passed by many doing the trip on bikes and early on we stayed at hotels where we encountered a group who were travelling on horseback. One day we came upon a young fellow struggling with a small white horse who was straining to get at fresh grass on the side of the road. The horse carried saddlebags and a very sturdy saddle and stirrups. This pilgrim was walking from Santiago and had bought the horse a few days into his walk. He was heading to China on foot and horseback.

Walking was for the most part a joy. Ongoing conversation helps but the act of putting one foot in front of another, swinging a wooden stick and a sublime landscape is a great liberation. You simply don't think about what you need to do in the hours or days ahead. The kilometres pass by, the pathway rising and falling, going around corners, fields, roads, through small settlements with churches and bell towers. I you are fortunate, as we mostly were, your shoes fit well and your joints hold up. I found I could walk through most minor aches and the odd beer or wine enroute helped. As did Ibuprofin. On two days David and I chose to go solo. These were a gift. I used the opportunity to practice a breathing exercise I read about in a slim volume I carried by Thich Nhat Hahn, the recently deceased Vietnamese monk. "Calm", "smile", "present moment", "wonderful moment" - words and phrases that corresponded to each breath and brought on a slower cadence to my steps accompanied by the sound of my wooden staff hitting the hard ground. Alternately I would sing out loud absorbed for a few kilometres by trying to recall the opening words for Rocket Man. I kept coming back to Shelter from the Storm by Dylan. For me it was a perfect Camino song.

I think about the question "Did walking with someone else limit the spiritual aspect of the Camino?" It makes me wonder what is the 'spiritual' in this exercise. With one exception I can say it didn't reside in any structure or church. The exception being the mass David and I attended the evening before we left in St. Jean Pied du Pont. Raul, our American Catholic who we would run into at the most random times ("The Camino will be your 'teacher'" he said to us when we first met - the first of a number of perplexingly meaningful messages we were told by random pilgrims) told us about the mass and blessing for pilgrims being held in the church. It was a warm send off. So what did I find 'spiritual'? Talking so honestly with David on the trail - whenever one of us told a 'truth' we would invariably stop and look directly at one another for emphasis. Our conversations would unearth strong feelings that I would process later in the privacy of my room writing in my travel diary. Humming to myself on the trail, the freedom of no cares, the aforementioned sense of community.

Every city, town, hamlet had its church. Old stone edifices, mostly closed, that I would drag David into just because. But they were dark and cold and frozen in time. In Logrono and later in Bilbao we would see church processions through town, statues of Mary or Jesus being processed, drums beaten, bodies swaying, horns blowing. It would seem these rituals were vital. But the buildings held no meaning for me and we didn't partake in the rituals. I think of Francesco, the enigmatic Spaniard who was dealing with lukemia, walking the Camino for the 15th time (I think). We met Francesco when we joined him at a dinner table. He was warm and shared his hard won Camino wisdom - the three Camino stages - one being physical hardship, two the mental hardship as we are faced with our deepest troubles (the 'sword' that hangs over us) and finally the third when we have walked enough distance to pass through the first stages and we can now take down that sword, look at it with compassion and keep walking. The sword remains but we have made peace with it. Over our days Francesco would appear, be in warm conversation with a fellow pilgrim, then could be seen walking out of town on his own.

I could write pages. I do have to note some of the wonderful people who made our time so much fun. Luc and Marie our French companions who we shared many meals with. Daisy and Scott and Roddy and Barb some of the really fun and inspiring Americans we met. Joe, Andrew, Emily and Rachel - the twenty and thirty somethings who were gracious enough to let me and David hang with them and pretend we too were young and relevant. Our 'gurus' - Raul, Francesco and one of the coolest of the cool pilgrims Chris - the tall, streamlined, light travelling Aussie / Italian / Swiss guy with the superb beard and smile. He gave me the ultimate cryptic comment when I asked him how tall he is (for the second time) he looked through me and said something like "I am trying to learn how to live a pure life", to which David muttered to me in his typically smart alex tone "Hughie I think you should be learning to live a pure life" - wtf!

So here's to the pursuit of the 'pure' life. I leave off with a bunch of pics which tell the storey well. I do want to share impressions of our last kilometers walked. We were headed to the smallest of the villages we had stayed in - Atapuerca. It was late afternoon, the sky was dark and over the nearby hills rain was falling. We walked on a small road with no traffic, the church steeple of the town in site. The cluster of buildings, one of which was our 'hotel' in view. We were coming to the end of our 30 km walking day, fueled by a few glasses of wine and beer imbibed over the course of the day. I was deeply content. Perhaps we had collapsed Francesco's three Camino stages into twelve days as I felt I had, at least temporarily, made peace with my 'sword'. We rounded into town and as raindrops fell we ran right into friends Emily and Rachel who we hadn't seen for about ten days. That was the Camino - gift upon gift. Buen Camino!