Author: Sonya

Notes for a New Day will recount some rather older days during the next few months – journal entries from my pilgrimage on Spain’s camino in 2013.

After an hour or so zipped into my sleeping bag I am finally warm, and have finished the book I had grabbed off of my towering bedside stack of “Books to Read Someday” before leaving for Spain. I had brought The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch with me because it fit the bill – very thick, but very light. I had not read anything by Murdoch before, and shortly into the book I knew I had found a new author for me. Her descriptive writing doesn’t mask her great sense of story. I don’t know if this is typical of her books, but there are many moments with the nearly slapstick sense of a whodunnit. And then, rather suddenly – on page 465 in fact – it became apparent that this was the perfect book to bring on the camino. The central character, Charles, is writing a diary, doing a lot of self-reflection and ultimately shedding many old thoughts and concerns. A character appears now and then throughout, but in fact hovers over the whole story, and that character is named James.  We’re on the Way of St. James, remember.  At the end, lots of words about love and trying to do a little good in the world, and then, the final sentence. An Asian casket, said to hold a demon, which had hung in the apartment where James lived has fallen and broken. The story’s narrator, Charles, finishes by saying: “Upon the demon-ridden pilgrimage of life, what next I wonder?”

You cannot make this stuff up.

The girl in the next bunk has the book now. Though Kate is from Germany she tells me that she enjoys reading in English. I’ve included a note on the endpaper with my email address, asking anyone who comes upon the book while walking the camino to contact me if they also find this book to be a perfect companion on their way. (in fact, one person did email me months later though we didn’t get into an extended online book discussion and it wasn’t clear if he made the same connections between book and experience that I did).

This day ends with dinner at the restaurant next to the albergue. We are seated next to the most delightful couple imaginable – Paul and Roisin from Dublin. He works for an Irish MP and had a lot of questions about American politics. (This was 2013 fortunately, so those questions were a lot easier to answer). Paul tried very hard to understand American attitudes towards gun control, but I wasn’t able to illuminate that topic for him much. A really enjoyable and lively conversation. If we all approached life as though we were constantly on pilgrimage maybe we would meet strangers with more sense of inquiry and camaraderie and have many such conversations.

What next I wonder?

Notes for a New Day will recount some rather older days during the next few months – journal entries from my pilgrimage on Spain’s camino in 2013.

Something I forgot to write about a few days ago – from the day of walking that was worse than childbirth. We had not seen anyone else walking that day, and so, besides the cold wind and fatigue, there was also a loneliness around us. My son suggested we play games of GHOST and Botticelli to keep our minds off the cold, but really he was just trying to help me stay focused. I think he may rightfully have been worried that I wouldn’t make it. When we approached the town of Cruces I told him to go ahead and find an albergue and get warm. He did walk ahead, because he couldn’t have possibly matched my snail’s pace, but at turns on the camino he would wait until he saw me so that he could point the way and I wouldn’t get lost. We were in a maze of ugly new apartment buildings at this point, but were led eventually into a very small, nearly extinct village. I was so cold, truly chilled to my bones (I might remind you, this is May!), head down against the wind, and sometimes I would look up and see what would turn out to be a large recycling bin, instead of what I had thought was my son in his blue rain poncho. I think I might have been close to hallucinating, but we were led to Pedro and Virgen de Guadalupe and all was well. Or was that a hallucination too?

This morning Sibyl and Basil – okay, you know these weren’t really their names – fed us a typically worthless Spanish breakfast before bidding us buen camino. The day was not too long – 24 km – but so strange. Lots of climbing – we must be quite high, now in San Juan de Ortega. Along the way a memorial to some of the victims of the Spanish Civil War in the middle of a long, desolate walk through mud, pine forests and moss-covered deciduous trees that had not leafed out yet only added to our unease. It felt and looked like late winter, and the memorial was as stark as the landscape.

Notes for a New Day will recount some rather older days during the next few months – journal entries from my pilgrimage on Spain’s camino in 2013.

In the night I realized our host reminded me of “Doc” in the Back to the Future movies. He awoke us at 6:00 am or so, and had “breakfast” on the table for the pilgrims at 6:30. HUGE cups of cafe con leche, at least three times the size of a normal coffee mug. The cups were from a matching set of mugs with Disney, Looney Tunes, and Warner Brothers characters on them.  You cannot make this stuff up.  (As a friend commented after last week’s post, thank goodness I wasn’t imagining us in a Tarantino film).

We walked seven and a half hours today, nearly 30 km to Belgado. Today’s walking was difficult…but not worse than childbirth! Warmer temperatures helped. We walked that distance, however, on very little food. Spanish breakfasts of coffee and toast are not enough to walk seven hours on. We wanted to stop on the way for fruit and a sandwich, but somehow never managed to be in any of the small, blink-and-you-miss them towns during the 45 minutes a day that stores seemed to ever be open. There was no food to be found, and a Cliff Bar discovered in the bottom of my backpack around 2:00 pm was the most delectable treat imaginable, divided between us and savored .

We decided to shuffle our weary bodies past the first albergue in town, since it looked like something from Gatlinburg, Tennessee with hillbilly peregrine cut-outs pointing to the entrance (have I mentioned that you cannot make this stuff up?).  Too cheesy even for our bone-tiredness. We got into the town proper and saw another albergue next to a church, but an elderly Korean couple outside didn’t give it a ringing endorsement, so we dragged ourselves another block further and discovered an albergue run by the couple from Fawlty Towers, known here as Albergue Caminante – Basil obsequiously showing us to our (private!) room, and his wife Sibyl at the desk in a mail-order medieval dress. I know it was mail-order because I have one very similar. Neither speaks English, but they are funny and charming and I’m so glad we found our way here.

The pilgrims’ dinner was cooked for us by a Romanian woman and served by our hosts. Paella, meat, and vegetables. And lots of wine of course. We shared a table with a couple from Innsbruck who set out last year to walk from Austria to Santiago, but didn’t make it and so are finishing the trip this year, a woman from Romania who works at her country’s embassy in Holland, and a man from Ireland who looked like a jockey. A silent group, which forced me into the role of social butterfly. I don’t love it, but I’m not bad at it either. In retrospect, though, maybe everyone was just tired and enjoying their food and silently hoped I would be quiet!

Every sort and condition is found on the camino. From baby Olivia to young school children on holiday with their parents, hippie wannabes in their 20’s, and couples of every age. Some met while walking the camino, some have walked from their homes in France or Holland or Germany, some have grown old together and walk in a way that suggest they truly are two parts of a whole. People of many nationalities, but not many colors. People of all shapes and sizes too, from the long S-shaped bodies of the bicyclists, to paunchy and frumpy middle-agers, to wiry old-timers. Many would surprise you as potential pilgrims, and those hobbling on sore feet aren’t always the ones you might expect.

Notes for a New Day will recount some rather older days during the next few months – journal entries from my pilgrimage on Spain’s camino in 2013.

“Windswept” in books sounds poetic, rather romantic, and perhaps just a bit glamerous. Windswept for 8 hours on the camino is none of those things. People in the towns are wearing their winter coats, while people on the camino are wearing everything that they packed. Heads down against the unrelenting wind, each day colder than the last.

We arrived at an albergue around 3:30, and after a few hours in my sleeping bag I am finally feeling warm again. It seemed that we might be the only guests at the Albergue de Virgen de Guadalupe, run by an artist who signs his paintings “Petrus.” At first I thought we might be in a Hitchcock film, because this is a strange place. Perhaps it used to be a barn? Our host has an odd, unblinking look that was scary at first, but then we were joined by a German named Thomas at our nearly silent dinner and I thought we might now be in a Bergman film. Then four more pilgrims joined us – a jolly German named Holger, a severe-faced, tattooed Finn named Janne, a very young Brazilian, Pedro, walking his second camino back-to-back, and a German who spoke flawless English named Jaclyn. Janne, Pedro, and Jaclyn are traveling together, she on a bike and the others walking and running. It’s an odd trio, and now it seems that this might be a Fellini movie.  Different languages, slapstick comedy, non-sequitors. It was surreal, and got only more so.

Our host offered to take us down to the village church after a dinner of lentils and barley. The churches we had come across during our days on the camino were almost always locked, so I was glad, now that we no longer appeared to be in a Hitchcock film, to take him up on his offer. Using his own key to let us in, he lit the altar candles, told our little group to hold hands and asked that we say The Lord’s Prayer in our own language. He then gave us communion from reserved sacrament. Possibly none of this would have been approved by the local priest, but it was actually very lovely. My first religious experience on the camino.

Notes for a New Day will recount some rather older days during the next few months – journal entries from my pilgrimage on Spain’s camino in 2013.

Bit of a dismal day, so windy and cold – an unusual weather system is moving through apparently. My bunk bed doesn’t allow me to prop myself up to write, so I lay on my back and write holding my journal over my head.

Last night we stayed in Viana, after a day of walking a mere 19 km. My legs are/were incredibly sore and I just couldn’t do more. In Viana we stayed at a hotel-like hostel. Private room, private showers. Such luxury! On the pricey side at 40 euros, but so nice to not be in bunks, and it was very quiet. We somehow found ourselves at a pilgrim’s lunch, which then precluded a pilgrim’s dinner, and I missed the camaraderie of being with other pilgrims over dinner and a bottle of wine. Lunch was rabbit – too many bones – and chard with almonds. I can truly say that there was nothing recognizable about this food. Nothing chard-like or almond-shaped to be seen. We’ve eaten lots of Spanish oranges though, and they are amazing.

We went out around 6:00 pm to buy a little food, see the church and look around the town. Sleepy and empty, like every smaller town we’ve been through so far. Around 7:30 pm, however, I decided to go and get some more fruit and something to drink.  Well…it was a different town! Children playing everywhere, grandmothers watching babies, every store open, an art gallery revealed just across the street. Energy and life in abundance. I bought a bottle of grapefruit juice (1.95 euros) instead of the large box of sangria (1.05 euros). As we had been told, wine is plentiful and cheap.

Today, we’ve walked 23 km to Navarette. Again, my sore legs wouldn’t go any further. I think my son is tired too, so I hope I’m not too much of a drag on this enterprise. Along the way, at the top of a windy hill we saw a young man with a table on the roadside. How entrepreneurial! Flasks of tea and coffee, fruit cookies. No charge, pay what you want. I found this to be an excellent business model, since what we took was worth far less than the 2 euros I gave him. We talked for some time with him and learned that he had been in Poland, but had come back to Spain to escape the cold, only to discover it was colder here. Not many pilgrims today.

Several times I have wanted to draw what I see. That’s not an urge I have felt before. Photos can’t capture what interests me – the expansive vistas and magnificent wildflowers in such array and abundance. The rolling hills almost appear cartoon-like in their simplicity. Photos are too small, or too literal. My drawing efforts are not worth reproducing, but I did try.

Notes for a New Day will recount some rather older days during the next few months – journal entries from my pilgrimage on Spain’s camino in 2013.

Every muscle in my body hurts. Every one. I am so tired and agonizingly sore that I wondered at one point, imagining one of my children on the railroad tracks with a train speeding towards them, if I would have the energy and strength to run and push them out of the way.  That is really tired. More pain than I can ever remember feeling, except perhaps (and only perhaps) childbirth.

But it was all worth it! The scenery and weather today were absolutely glorious, even if we were dragging ourselves, step by silently labored step, to Los Arcos, which is a mere 14 km from the previous town. The very first albergue we hit had a room. A huge relief! A dormitory with seven bunkbeds, all full now, I think. I am prostrate on my upper bunk, finally finding a little strength to write this mess, after lying still and aching for the last hour or more. My son is below, reading and not feeling much more energetic than me, though I his young muscles are probably not screaming with the same outrage as my now-beyond-middle-aged ones.

But I want to write about someone else we met last night at the albergue in Lorca. As a group of bedraggled pilgrims sat in the sun, a young woman rode into town on a bicycle with a baby strapped into the back seat. Most of us expressed some shock – who takes a baby on the camino? and where was the baby’s helmet? I learned soon after that the baby and her mother were to be in our room. My displeasure must have shown (I needed sleep!), because the young mother quickly assured me that her baby slept very well and wouldn’t disturb us, which was mostly true that night. In fact, baby Olivia was utterly delightful, teetering around our room and checking on each of us. In the morning, as we said our goodbyes, I asked why she was biking the camino and she said that she wanted to experience the generous and kind side of people. That traveling with a baby was so difficult and people were often not very nice about it (oops), but that on the camino she had only experienced generosity. She told me about one young man who had helped her through the mud of the previous day, and a group of girls who handed the baby from one to another and then the bike itself through a particularly treacherous spot. I looked at Olivia and asked, “are you helping others to be kind? How good of you to do that.” She had already helped me to be kinder.

****

The pilgrim’s dinner tonight was not particularly good, but the long table was full of interesting people. Four Canadians, two of whom were retired firemen and another who had walked the camino five times. And I was seated next to a mother and her son – there are lots of mothers and daughters on the camino, but this is, so far, the only pairing like us that we’ve encountered. I have to admire my son for being brave enough to walk with his mother. I gave him lots of chances to say no, but maybe it helped that I was paying for everything! Oh, and the woman I sat next to is an Episcopal priest from South Carolina. Of course.