Wednesday: She dreamed of James

Over following couple of days, as they cross my mind, are a few other odds and ends accumulated during the trek....Here´s one---on the second day walking, I fell in for about an hour with a woman from an Eastern European country (I won´t say the name in deference for her privacy). She told me that she knew very little about Christianity, having been raised largely in the time when religion was, if not prohibited, certainly looked down upon. I had noticed in Roncesvalles that she had been very visibly moved by the pilgrim blessing at mass, and I mentioned that to her. And she told me this story---she said that in the week or two before she left, she had a dream one night of an old man who was sitting on a cloud and smiling at her, and then she was also standing on the cloud, and the old man told her she would be safe--she had interpreted this as being ST James telling her that he would keep her safe... She had begun her trek on the same rainy day that I had, and at one point found herself high up in the Pyrenees when a light fog descended around her. And she told me that at the moment she remembered her dream and felt as if she was in fact standing on the cloud just as in her dream, and she said it gave her a great feeling of security.
I crossed paths wtih her three or four times briefly across the next two weeks, as we alternately would speed up or slow down. I noticed that she often attended mass, and although she couldn´t really have known what was happening (both because she didn´t understand Christian ritual and spoke no Spanish), she seemed to be peacably there.
When I retired from the pilgrim playing field, she was still cranking forward, and I guess that she will make it to Snatiago, with the old man smiling at her!