pilgrim

Arriving at Puente la Reina

You’d think an historic pilgrimage route wouldn’t need a recently-updated guidebook.  And, for much of the Camino Aragones, that assumption is reasonably correct.  However, on what became my last day on that route, I learned that older guidebooks only work with a healthy dose of flexibility.

After getting lost leaving Tiebas, I planned to recycle my guidebook as soon as possible.  Unfortunately, I’d used the book to make plans for the day before setting off that morning.  I intended to spend the night in the albergue it mentioned near La iglesia de Santa Maria de Eunate, an incredibly beautiful Romanesque church standing alone in a field.  Even to my agnostic sensibilities, the church felt undeniably special and sacred; I found myself deeply absorbed in the act of sitting – and then singing – inside it.

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La iglesia de Santa Maria de Eunate

But, there was no longer an albergue nearby, so it was onward to Obanos.

When I arrived in Obanos, the town was fully involved in a celebration.  A band was playing in the bandstand, people (some of whom were dressed to the nines) danced in the streets, and food stands were set up around the central plaza, near carved wooden statues.  While I enjoyed wandering around and enjoying these eye-level statues, larger-than-life replicas of religious figures were unloaded in the town.  After I’d explored for a while, I headed to the albergue to drop off my bag and eat some dinner.

Big surprise:  It was closed.

By this point, after little shuteye the night before and some 37 kilometers of walking and getting lost, I was very ready to lie down.  Instead, I got what Quiver once called “morale on a plate” (some patatas fritas), shouldered my pack, and headed onward once more.

While I’d intended on sleeping on the quiet Camino Aragones rather than the Camino Frances, the bustling route most people simply know as the “Camino,” I now had no choice:  The next town was Puente la Reina, an important destination on pilgrimages of ages past and today, a town where several routes converge into one Camino bound for Santiago.

And, that’s why at 7:20, 13 hours after I’d set off from Izco that morning and a solid five hours after most pilgrims had finished their day’s walk, I shuffled into Puente la Reina, a little road weary, a little footsore, and a little wide eyed as I took in the town, which was overflowing with pilgrims.  As walkers had for centuries before me, I had arrived.

Remembering the Camino

It feels so long ago, the way that my skin smarted after a day in the Spanish sun, the joyous and multilingual conversation at a communal meal, the quiet of an albergue in the twilight.  My memories of the peaks seem too green; those of the water at the end of the Earth, too blue.  It’s been nearly one year since I left to walk my Camino.IMG_20160724_183350_656

In the year since then, the Camino has remained as dear to my heart as it was when I entered Santiago, eyes overflowing with brine, on the day I celebrated four Lyme-free months.  I’ve looked back with fond memories of the mountains I climbed, people I met, and towns I sought shelter in.

But, as no hike since my Appalachian Trail thru-hike has, the Camino has left me at a loss for words.  When asked about the pilgrimage, I find myself struggling to explain the details of the journey, let alone its personal significance to me.

What I do know is that it was a walk I would repeat in a heartbeat – but also one that I’m sure I could never quite replicate.  In its gentle, patient way, the Camino invited me to step outside my comfort zone, to explore and contemplate and consider.  It invited me to feel and appreciate and wonder.  What I found was unique to myself in that place and time, and I imagine I’d find something different on attempting to return.

And, even while I search for a way to articulate the meaning I found and continue to find in my Camino, I see my quiet, respectful awe shared by others: fellow pilgrims, who, too, struggle to put a journey across a country, a journey back in time, a journey within themselves into words.

Lost on the Camino Aragones

One big problem I faced on the Camino Aragones was my tendency to get lost.  It wasn’t that the path was tough to find; in fact, it was well marked.  It was just that, at times, it — and the Chemin d’Arles, for that matter — was a “choose your own adventure” type of trail.  I had a tendency to choose the path less traveled (and highly recommended by my less-than-useful guidebook) and end up wandering around in some field.  Such was the case on my last day of the Camino Aragones.img_20160625_064313_118.jpg

After a sleepless night in the albergue of Izco, where the entire 30-person town seemed to be up until the wee hours of the morning very loudly celebrating an occasion that those of us not from the town knew nothing about, I woke up early and attempted to hit the trail just as the other pilgrims were waking up.  One problem:  The albergue’s door had been closed from the outside and was nearly shuttered up by a metal overhead door.  The door hadn’t been pulled to the ground, so — at the encouragement of the Spanish pilgrims — I slid under the door and out into the cool morning air.

The night had been stormy, and the morning was filled with the dramatic light of a cloudy sky.  The wind whipped around me, and I zipped up my fleece to my chin. Walking down the gravel track, I enjoyed watching the sun slowly climb through the clouds, creating a spectacular and ever-changing array of colors, light, and shadows.  I wished I had some wool with me; I’d have done some plein air felting!img_20160625_065643_608.jpg

As the day went on, I found that I seemed to arrive in sleepy hamlets just as the church bells were ringing, marking either the hour or the half-hour.  In the United States, it’s my experience that there are usually at least 10 miles separating adjacent towns.  In northern Spain, it wasn’t unusual to find villages just a kilometer or two apart, with farmland in between.  Each named village generally had its own place of worship, and each village was laid out in its own way.  It astonished me that more of the villages hadn’t grown and melted into one another in the centuries since their establishment.

In the afternoon, I walked into Tiebas, a tiny town that looked as though it would be bustling, if I hadn’t arrived during siesta.  Instead, I found almost-eerily vacant streets under a sky still threatening more rain.  The only person I saw in Tiebas was driving a big white van around and around the town.  The van had a megaphone on its roof and was blaring on loop a message for women; whether the message was political or commercial or something else entirely was beyond my comprehension.

Because of the praise the guidebook extolled on a route to Eneriz, I decided to follow its advice and leave the Camino.  I exited the town under an overpass, where warnings about “zoombies” had been graffitied.  I walked along railroad tracks, heading toward the factory that I was supposed to pass before finding myself in farm country.  Next to the factory was an overgrown field, beyond which, it appeared to my nearsighted eyes, people were walking on a quiet road.  Certain that the road must be the one mentioned in the guide, I began traversing the edge of the field to get to it.

Fifteen minutes later, all I had found were two shoefulls of grass awls and a bit of frustration.  Perhaps, in the land of Don Quixote, I had seen some mirages of my own.

An hour after I’d begun my detour, I checked myself for ticks at the railroad tracks, passed the “zoombies” warning again, and headed back to Tiebas, prepared to discard my guidebook at the next recycling bin I came to.

To be continued…

 

A Long Day on the Camino

Now, I love the thru-hiking community dearly, but I can’t help but notice certain patterns to the conversations at shelters, watering holes, or shade trees:

“I just crushed 21 miles.”

“Yeah, I’m easily at 3.5 miles an hour — uphill.”

“Your pack looks like the new Gregory model.  I looked into that one, but then I chose one that experts say beats it on every level.”

“People say this trail is rocky, but it’s nothing compared to Mahoosuc Notch.”

“Guess I need to go grab some water.  This filter has 3,000 miles on it, but it will probably last a bit longer.”

“I should be in Canada in just a couple months.  Everyone could if they really put in the effort.”

There’s so much bro talk!  I try my best to avoid such conversations, but sometimes, especially when it’s clear that the speaker imagines he’s the most seasoned/fastest/toughest hiker there is, it’s too hard to resist asserting myself.  When Ant would catch me discussing pace or mileage on the PCT, he’d start calling me Rainbro Dash.

Years of these sorts of experiences had convinced me that that’s just the way the backpacking community was, and I’d stopped thinking much of it, bro-ing out when need be but (probably like many other hikers) relishing the deeper-than-gear-and-bro-talk conversations that happened one-on-one.  And, that’s why I was completely caught off guard by the absence of bro talk on the Camino de Santiago.

In the albergues at night and along the way, pilgrims didn’t discuss the number of miles they’d gone that day or on their journey. Pilgrims didn’t discuss pace.  There wasn’t any talk of gear.  No one exchanged resumes or tried to impress each other with tales of their adventures.

So, when I put in my first “big-mile day” on the Camino — my first marathon day of the trip — the only social consequence of my exhaustion was the way my sun-muddled brain struggled to string together Spanish sentences for the hospitalera.  I think the absence of external motivation made the day seem both more surreal and more fun.

Shadow selfie
The strong Spanish sun
Grasslands, badlands, and the Pyrenees
A lunar landscape indeed
Towers standing sentry
The brilliant blue reservoir
Trailside flora and fauna
On a Roman road in the high moorland
Ruins on the Camino Aragones

The day had begun in Arrés, a tiny hillside town of 40 people.  I hadn’t slept much the night before, but I hadn’t cared:  I was in good company and had enjoyed my first communal Camino dinner.  We also breakfasted together, and then I set off.

I was on the Camino Aragonés, and the day seemed to dawn hot and just get hotter.  Along old rural roads, shade was limited, but I found a few cooler places to rest occasionally.  Most of the time, I was too busy marveling at the area’s “lunar landscapes” to stop walking:  The valley of the Rio Aragonés is dotted with eroded bad lands where nothing grows.

The middle section of the morning involved a brutally hot walk along a deserted new highway which may or may not have been the Camino.  (It’s a long story.)  It provided stunning views of a bright blue reservoir beneath long ridges, before yellow arrows led me downhill.  They took me along an overgrown, forested path, where a crumbling old ermita waited in a clearing, still providing a quiet place of worship and meditation to pilgrims.

Most of the Arrés crew stopped for the day in another small town under the towers of a medieval castle.  After cooling off with them, I continued on my way, surprised to find that the trail ascended into a forest.  I walked along a forest road, and the mid-day sun provided little shade, so I found a good spot and enjoyed one of my favorite components of a long day’s hike: a trailside nap.

When I woke, I headed toward Puenta la Reina once more and soon found myself in high moorland.  A longtime fan of The Secret Garden — I answered to “Dickon Sowerby” for about a year — I have a special love of the bioregions known as “moors,” and reaching the heathered highlands late in the day, already elated from exertion, was enough to make me quite high on life.  By the time my journey up there was over, I was thoroughly windblown, thoroughly sunbaked, and thoroughly happy.

Depending on the elevation gain, my favorite hiking days are generally 24 to 32 miles long.  That length seems to allow me enough time to stop and smell the roses and take some scenic breaks — such as my dinner break under a tree near the descent to Undués de Lerda — but still walk long enough to find a lovely hiker’s high.  As an Irish pilgrim told me, “When the body is tired, the mind feels good.”

That night, my mind was wonderfully quiet and content as I made my bed at the albergue.

Lescar Rainbow

My First Night on the Camino

The first pilgrim I met on the Camino was an older man who’d walked years before.  I think.  He only spoke French, and I only spoke English; nevertheless, we talked for half an hour or so.

As a local caretaker of the “hostel,” he’d come to the refuge in Lescar soon after I arrived.  He added my name and stats to the register he kept — I learned that I unusually young, alone, and American — and encouraged me to make use of the beautiful country home Lescar offered pilgrims on their journeys.  Then, he gave me a huge, colorful scallop shell to carry to Santiago.

The welcoming refuge
Cathedral in Lescar
Dafydd and my first sello

When he left, I went to sleep, still exhausted from London and the travel.  I was awoken by late-hiking pilgrims — young, American pilgrims!  We were all surprised to see each other and have easy conversation.

As we ate dinner and discussed our love for Bernie Sanders, the skies opened up.  So thankful for a roof over my head, I watched the storm from the windows.

By the time we were doing dishes, Arianna from California called the rest of us to look out to see a rainbow.  Sure enough, over the field next to the house stretched one of the most vibrant rainbows I’ve ever seen.  As someone who’d hiked more than 4,000 miles as “Rainbow Dash,” I couldn’t help feeling that the occasion was auspicious.

Rainbow in Lescar

Rainbow in Lescar