Photo journey to come...

Enclosed with this post is (I hope!) a typical image from the camino. Once I get organized over the coming couple of days, I will post a few other photos that I took along the way that illustrate one or another aspect of life on the camino...Stay tuned...

A diminished Team Denmark perseveres...

I'm excerpting below an email I just received from Jan, who with two other Danes was doing the camino. We became traveling friends after overlapping at various steps along the way. I emailed to tell him I had to retire from the field, and you'll see from his response that his two compatriot-companions have also now had to stop. So, he's carrying on alone, carrying (metaphorically) their spirit and mine with him....You'll note that he has shed some weight from his backpack, as did I along the way. And one of the "life lessons" almost everyone learns on the camino is to "lighten your load"! In the camino, as in life, we end up carting along and attached to all kinds of junk that just slows us down and puts us at risk, yet it's very hard to start jettisoning stuff until circumstances force it upon us...Anyway, herewith, a few excerpts from Jan's email to me:

"HI Chris!

Glad to from you.But also sad news.Last saturday I started my second Camino of a sort.The first one was with Kjell and Inger.The second without them.Inger had terrible trouble with her one knee,So early saturday morning she/they had to stop.So it was a new situation for me to walk alone.........I also went to Farmacia because of problems with one leg .And I was told I had too much in the racksack.I took off about 5 kilos and sent to Santiago,so now I am flying ( almost).My spirit is high even it was raining heavely today,but beeing on top of the Leon Mountains was so beautiful that it was worth all the pains and averything.

I hope it cheer you up to know that when I reach Santiago I will pray for you.

Best regards from one third of Team Denmark"

Thursday: For Stats Lovers...

A few folks had asked about the distance stats on my trek. Here they are---I walked 227 miles (379 K) in my 13 walking days. That comes out to about 17.4 miles a day. Dumb!--in retrospect. The miles came pretty easily, esp at first, and my legs never really got tired, so I didn't really get obvious early warning signals of how that much mileage so early in the trek might be taking a toll on body and feet. At that pace I would have finished in 27 walking days, which is not a normal pace for the whole camino....My longest day was the 40K (=24 miles) from Villafranca into Burgos; my shortest was probably about 21 K (= 12 miles or so).

I'm astonished, the more I think of it, at medieval folks who would have done this in crude type sandals, or some of them barefoot entirely, without high tech hiking poles, lightweight fabric backpacks, etc. Of course, it wasn't as if they were walkig against a deadline, and if they pitched up somewhere for a few nights to let feet heal (or because a town was fun), that would have been fine by them. Only we (I!) have imposed the craziness of scheduling and minimum mileage per day onto the experience!

Home of the Whopper

I notice, about 3 minutes walk from the CAthedral, just at the edge of the medieval portion of the city of Santiago, there is a Burger King (one of only 2 American fast food places I´ve seen on the trek). Well, what else is there for an American to do? I stopped in, had a Big King combo menu for the very decent price of 5 Euros. It was very tasty, and the Europeans don´t even force fast food companies to print the health data of their products on the packaging, so I consumed my double cheeseburger pleasantly oblivious to the fact that i was freebasing cholesterol. It was a nice high.....So, when I come back one of these years to do the pilgrimage again, I suppose I can envision during the days of walking two moments to keep drawing me forward throughout the month-long trek----the moment of laying my hands on Santiago´s statue in the cathedral to pay my respects to the saint...and the moment of tucking into a flame-broiled whopper after a long diet of boccadillos.

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!

Not what Jesus had in mind...

I´m in Santiago---oddly, traveling the last 200 or so kilometer took no toll whatsoever on my ulcerated foot blister (I suppose coming by train was the trick that I caught on to only too late in the game!).
I attended the pilgrim mass in the Cathedral today at noon. I´m sorry to say it was disconcerting. There was a group of about 20 Italian politicians visiting, accompanied by an Italian bishop, who were escorted to what might be called special ring-side seats right by the altar. There was no special place reserved at all for the pilgrims who had arrived after their long trek--they seemed scattered around the church, and some of them were standing. Various folks seemed to be swanning around looking important and cow towing to the diginitaries, with no special attention to the pilgrims.
The gospel chosen for today (though not today´s gospel in the calendar, I believe) was, deliciously, one from Matthew which actually involves Santiago (James): James´s mother asks Jesus to give her son(s), Santiago and john, a special place in the Kingdom, and Jesus replies that in earthly kingdoms the powerful and rich assume places of honor, but in God´s kingdom the important don´t assume places of honor but serve those who have the least (I´m half paraphrasing--based on what I remember from the gospel itself and from hearing it in Spanish this morning). There seemed to me an obvious connection between the gospel and the pagaent we had all witnessed, but the homilist chose to preach on themes other than those in the gospel!
At the end of most masses in churches along the camino, as readers of this blog know, the pilgrims are called up for a blessing, and the whole church prays together for the intercession of James and Mary for our health and safety. The Cathedral mass, however, ends with no such humble petition. Instead, it ends with what can only be described as a a circus performance. Former altar boys will remember the thurible, that little brass bowl of incense that is used to incense the altar. Well, Santigao´´s cathedral famously has an enormous one, at least as big as a large man´s torso. Six guys pull on an enormous pulley attached to the cathedral ceiling to get this baby swinging, and it rides through an incredible arc, close to the ceiling of this large cathedral, from one side right across the chruch to the other side. The closest thing it resembles would be the man on the flying trapeze as the audience--and we are an audience, not a congregation at this point--follow its flight. Eventually they stop swinging it, and everyone applauds (what else do you do after a good circus act!). Then mass is over and everyone goes home...This great thurible has a venerable tradition, which I understand and respect---it (or predecessors) have been used for centuries, and tradition goes that it was put in place at first to overpower the stench emanating from pilgrims who would have been a bit ripe after months on the road. But by now any connection to those medieval brothers and sisters of ours has been extinguished by the showmanship.
A curmudgeonly rant? Well, a bit I guess. But I suppose after so many days in which the spirituality of the camino has "outperformed," it was too bad--though no big deal--that at the destination of the whole camino the spirituality fell a bit short (just as I myself, admittedly, fell more than a bit short in my pilgrimage!).
Anyway, the pilgrims all seemed happy--and if I was annoyed, none of them seemed to be. And, of course, their spiritual lessons, like mine, had all been learned before they walked into the Cathedral to pay respects to James....

Of upper bunks and 48-year old bladders...

I´m sure the previous posts might have been getting a bit oppresive for some, so on to more nitty gritty matters and one of my great triumphs on my short-lived camino. In younger life, I could sit at a negotiating table with the best of them, never showing weakness by meekly requesting a bathroom break. Let me freely confess that my 48 year old bladder is less robust, and when I first saw those upper bunks in refugios, many of which don´t even have ladders to go up and down, my first thoughts were 1. gee, I hope I don´t roll out onto the floor in my sleep, and 2. what if I have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night? Fortunately, I suppose because everyone lives in the camino in a state of semi dehydration, I managed to pass my upper bunk tests with the same bladder-stamina as when I was 20....

I had to learn what I supposedly knew...

Before going, and in early days of camino, I heard various people say things like, "Everyone has something they must learn on the camino," which at the time struck me as one of those romantic things people say. But I guess I´ve become a bit of a believer. Here´s one of my learnings---our little organization, pilgrimage for our children´s future, takes inspiration from a medieval sermon that explains the symbolism behind the scallop shell, which is the traditional symbol of the pilgrimage to Santiago. The sermon says that, just as the scallop is protected by its scallop shell, the the two halves of the shell symbolize for pilgrims the two great laws of charity by which we must protect ourselves: 1 to love God above all things and 2 to love neighbor as self....But though I put that language on the website, I only began living it on the camino as I got into trouble. In early days, I was a self-sufficient atom (which pretty much describes the way I live my life, I must admit!); only when afflicted did I become open to neighbor-love, in this case, acknowledging to myself that I´m not self-sufficient but a needy recipient of neighbor love--from people who sympathized, doctors who treated me, people who walked alongside or prayed or shared good spirits...

Enter Job....The new travail

So, after my last foot consultation and related posts, I thought I had my deal with God pretty much cooked: I would accept that I am not in control, and peacably walk what miles I could in final days before leaving Spain. But, that wasn´t quite all, as it turns out. I had been walking for the last week or so with chest congestion that I pretty much ignored, as it wasn´t hugely bothersome. Saturday night I started feeling rather feverish, and by Sunday morning quite weak. Having had pneumonia once in my life, I know that chest congestion, feverish, and weak is not exactly a winning combination. So back to the health center; it turns out that I must have been walking with a budding respiratory infection these last few days, and the doctor gave me a cycle of antiobiotics and told me not to walk serisously during the cycle. So, this is not my year to finish the camino. I accept and understand. "No mas,¨" as Roberto Duran memorably said to Sugar Ray Leonard---I suppose Roberto Duran getting beaten to a pulp by Sugar Ray Leonard is not exactly the best analogue of Job´s travails, and neither is the best analogue for my own more meager problems. But anyway, so it is. Rather than sit still for six days and then walk gingerly for a remaining few in fear of re-infection, I think the best course is just to return home on my shield rather than carrying it (as the Greeks would say) and preserve myself to fight another day....I´m writing this on Monday monrning, one full day into antiobiotics, which are a marvel. Fever gone, strength coming back. So, all is well....Lessons learned to follow...

So...my feet....

I went to the health center...Again, immediate service and no charge...what a country! Bottom line. The doctor said I can keep walking, but no more than 12 miles a day, and must stop in at health center again in 2-3 days. So, at that pace, I won´t be able to reach Santiago before I have to leave. So, I´ll walk as far as I can, then probably bus the last stretch to Santiago....Think of it this way: those of you who pledged per mile will have a discount coming! For me, all is well. My head is good, my heart is good, my body and legs are good, if I had a better left foot, all would be perfect!

Of Jesuit troublemakers and the Eastern bloc

It turns out that nicolas Bobadilla, one of the Jesuit founders, very learned and accomplished but a bit of a problem child, was born in the town of Baodilla where I had my enforced day of rest. Any Jesuit history fans in the mix can add color commentary on Bobadilla´s career.....I was sitting in the town church yesterday (Friday) evening, the end of my day of rest, when it turned out that two other pilgrims had arranged to say mass there. They were two Czech guys, I hadn´t known they were priests. about five of us weere in the congregation---me, a Hungarian woman, and two or three others whose identity I didn´t know. The mass was part in Czech, part in English, and some well known prayers in Latin; but everyone followed along and responded in their own languages as the prayers went along. It was moving to be in the company of Hungarian and Czech Catholics who haven´t always had it easy in recent history to practice their religion.

Community of Pilgrims

The community that forms during the camino is striking. Sometimes all of life seems collapsed. We make friends and have them for 2 or 3 years, share intimacies, and people go their own ways;in camino time a lot of this seems to happen within two or three days---you walk in sync with people, then they speed up or slow down and you lose track of them. I had anticipated lots of crazies and crooks (well, I´m here, aren´t I?). But in fact it seems, all in all, quite a sane group who allow, with remarkably good cheer, for snoring alongside others in close quarters, people using up the last hot water before you get to the shower, using the last sheet of toilet paper, and so on.
So since my foot problem became more severe and known, I´ve had---Sophie from Hungary, who floated along as nodding acquaintance, come up to me and say--I hear your foot is bad, may I look, I´m a doctor?.....And during the day of enforced rest I had to take, someone else who had left that morning called back to the alburgue to ask how I was......And Dorothea from Holland gave me a hug before she left and a postcard that said, to a brave man who is challenged to deal with blisters....When I started to walk this morning, Ingrid from Germany fell into step with me, even though I was going rather slowly at first, and walked with me 4 miles to the first town, mostly in silence, as a kind of accompaniment, before she went off....It was all very moving for me these tiny acts of human kindness that seem to characterize the pilgrims.....I was very touched. When I experience things like this it makes me feel: better for me to have had problems and experience this humanity at its best than to have sailed to SAntiago in my own self-satisfied bubble.

Pride goeth before a mighty fall...

so my philosophical musings on my feet...Some of you know that I agreed to give a talk on Sept 28, which gave me exactly 30 days to do the camino, a very aggressive schedule to begin with. Problems obviously weren´t in my plans (the key point being MY plans). And in the early days I wracked up lots of kilometers daily, probably too much in retrospect. So, I imagined myself more in control of myself--and the world, in a sense--than I really am....And my foot problem has been both humbling and freeing. It´s not my world after all, and I can´t control everything in it (to wax religious, for a moment, it´s God´s world, isn´t it). Oddly, I didn´t really feel deeply disappointed at the prospect of not reaching Santiago on my own terms. Indeed, today--the day that I could begin walking again--was in many ways my happiest day on the camino. I was just happy to be there, and happy to be alive, and happy to walk. I stopped to see the famous Romanesque church of San Martin at Fromista (google San Martin and Fromista and maybe you can find pictures, or maybe someone can post a link to some as a comment). So, as I looked at the church I was just feeling blessed that I had had a chance to see this not only once but twice in life (the other time was during a driving vacation of this part of Spain). So, God is good. We have today....Another post to follow, while I have time and working computer, about the community of pilgrims.

Bad Surprise at Boadilla, continued

Like virtually every pilgrim, I´ve been nursing blisters along the way. And, in fact, though the books and brochures usually talk about beautfiul the landscape is, I would have to say that ¨feet¨are as dominant a theme as any of the camino. You see people constantly attending to various sores, talking about them, etc. And, to be honest, on many afternoons, the whole experience is reduced to just trying to put one foot in front of the other. That´s all you think about it. I don´t mean to overly dramatize the experience: this is, after all, almost a vacation-like thing that I´ve chosen to do, and I can at any point stop, and I have credit cards to get me where I want to go. But it´s opened my heart at various points, as I´ve walked along on sore feet, to think of so many people, for whom I´´ve not been sufficiently compassionate, who must struggle every day with real pain, from illness, or mental illness, or homelessness, or great bereavement; and Í´ve thought as well how graceflly so many of these people put one foot in front of the other every day, not just on a short pilgimrage.......So, my bad surprise, I reach Boadilla, take off my sock, and see that one of my blisters, to say the least, hasn´t done very well during the day´s walk. I decided to go to the Centro de Salud in the next town, kindly driven there by the owner of the alburgue at which I was staying. I was seen immediately! By a doctor and nurse, who poked a bit, looked me over, did some lancing, then some bandaging, and told me I had to take a day of rest, then do one day of camino, and stop in the medical center of that next town to see that the blisters is healing ok and to have the bandage replaced. (By the way, I hate to involve the blogosphere in a conspiracy against my mother, but let´s not tell her about this just yet...and let me hope that she hasn´t decided today to ¨get on the digital highway¨!). They charged me nothing! How´s that for a health system...They weren´t deeply warm, but weren´t cold either...As I write this, I´ve had the day of rest, walked the one day camino, think that things are going OK, but have yet to visit the health center to have them check....So, next post: my philosophical reflections on my predicament, and then maybe I´ll give an update if I get back from medical center wtih time.

Day 13, Bad Surprise at Boadilla

Today a 29 k, about 18 mile, walk from Hontanas to Boadilla del Comanino (for a map reference, Boadilla del Camino is just before Fromista). Started in Hontanas, which I had mentioned was another of these tiny towns that seems to have found new life because of the camino. During its heyday (ie in the 12th century and for a few centuries thereafter!), there were loads of little towns, spaced out every few kilometers, simply because the camino was so popular, and pilgrims would need places to stay, eat, etc. From the early 20th century on, the camino languished in popularity, perhaps because it seemed old fashioned in a modernizing, secularizing world...and birthrates fell in Spain, as all over the devewloped world...and young poeople born in these tiny places increasingly deserted them for better opportunities elsewhere. So lots of these places went virtually dead....But the camino has been steadily increasing in popularity over the last two decades (i think the governemnt says that about 40,000 people did it last yuear, but I have to understand that better, because some people try to do the whole thing. Others go for a week, and every permutation in between). Anyway, it seems that some of these small places survive as much as anything on our passing through, plunkikng down 6 euros for the privilege of sleeping in bunk beds with 20 other pilgrims in a room...and plunking down another 8 euros for a dinner...and whatever other small purchases we make...I would also bet that there may come a time when it becomes fashionable to buy and fix up some of these very old houses one sees, or build new ones on farmland, because lots of these towns are short commutes from larger cities like Burgos aned >Leon...It´s just that Spain isn´t really a commuter culture yet in this part of the country...This post has gotten a bit long, so I´ll save the ´´´bad news´´ part for the next one...

Ways to Improve the Camino, volume 1

So in idle moments it´s occured to me---why the hell are we all stumbling over these rutted roads? I´sometimes imagine our medieval brothers and sisters returning to take us in and saying, ¨let me get this straight: you guys in the interim have invented tarmac and automobiles, yet some of you are still slogging over these rock strewn paths that we had to use? Hello!? We´re all taking the car!¨....New yorkers will remember when The Donald, Trump, once generously offered to re do a skating rink in Central park asa public service, and it occurs to me that The Donald might similarly be willing to lay down a tartan track (like in athletic fields) across the length of the camino for some promotional consideration, like The Trump Camino. I suppose that the track would also have to lead to a tall condo tower in the square right in front of Santiago de Compostela´s cathedral, so SAntiago would become a REAL destination, hihglighted by Trump Towers at Santiago....Other ideas for improving the camion are welcome...

day 12...Vultures over Hornillos...

I walked from Burgos to Hontanas, about 28 kilo...(someone has asked for cumulative milage and miles to go...I´ll calculate that when I can, but you can eyeball the portion completed roughly by looking at the map)...This stretch of the camino starts to enter the ¨meseta¨or ¨tableland¨of Spain. It goes on for a few days, mostly high flat plateau. The scenery doesn´t change very much, nor is there much shade. There weem to be a lot of grain or hay fields (what does a city boy know about that stuff), and it´s all harvested, so it´s all golden brown or brown landscape. I stopped for lunch in a place called hornillos del Camino--Spanish speakers can help us figure out what ¨hornillos´are. You arrive at these tiny towns around midday, and they are well and truly shuttered. Maybe there is one kind of ¨bar¨open that would serve a boccadillo^(like a slice of ham on a baguette) but there might not even be that. Walking into these places feels sometyimes like those OK Corrall shoot out scenes, when the bad guys walk into town and everyone has locked themselves in their houses to avoid the shootout. So, I and another pilgrim or two take the shade ofa church entrance, pull out our fruit and whatever else we brought earlier at a mercado, and I see buzzards starting to circle overhead, as if one of us might be looking close to death. Anyway, we made it out of there alive....The rest of the afternoon was a miserable walk through hot sun to Hontanas, another tiny town---in next post I¨ll write aobut how the pilgrimage is keeping some of these places alive...The afternoon sun is fierce, and the last few K. had the closest feel I´ve had so far to walking through the desert... Anyway, we made it to Hontanas, and usually the meals are very festive....I´ll also post aobut the meals upcoming...

I´m back...flurry of posts....

Sorry...there was virtually no internet accessbiliity for last three days as I crossed the meseta, so I hope I´m at a good computer now that I can monopolize for long enough to shoot out a few posts for past days, and I hope I´ll keep the days ordered correctly!

Update from Chirs

Greetings All,

We received a short e-mail from Chris today, he's doing well but had difficulty submitting his blog entry over the local internet connection.

Thanks again to each of you for your support of Chris and Pilgrimage for Our Children's Future!

The Lowney's (Philomena, Maureen & Sean)

Day 11---El Cid--a real Caballero!

Burgos is heavily associated with El Cid, who came from around here, and who was a swashbuckling type later made famous in the semi-legendary Song of the Cid, or Poem of the CId. It probably takes only about two hours to get through it, and I highly recommend it. It´s one of the great medieval epics, and it shows Cid (and the Spanish mentality!) as way ahead of their time. For example, as Cid rides off into exile--having left his wife and daughters at a monastery for safety, he keeps stopping and turning back, and the poem says that he kept looking back because leaving his loved ones behind pained him like the pain when a fingernail is torn off its finger.....Among the heroes of the story is a Muslim, Abengalbon, to whom, later in the story, Cid entrusts his family for safekeeping. And among the villains are two Christian princes (the infantes) who act in a cowardly fashion in a battle, and then take out their shame by abusing Cid´s daughters (typical--weak men vent rage on woman)....The poem was written at a time when the Christians were beginning to reconquer the Muslim parts of Spain, and in one respect Cid was meant to be a ´recruiting poster´for the reconquest, but he is a remarkably full character for the time, who doesn´t always think that Christians are right about everything, and who can befriend Muslims, and who has a keen sense of what is just, and who loves his family....We muslims, christinas, and jews have gotten ourselves into a terrible predicament at the dawn fo the 21st century. We can probably learn a thing or two from our medieval ancestors in Spain who had to navigate the same dilemmas, and, at their best, managed to understand that life is not always black and white, and we get in trouble when we try to make it so.

Day 11 in Burgos--Pay to Pray!?

This is my mental health day in Burgos, a charming city with wonderful Gothic churches and monuments. Everything about me is in great shape except for my poor feet. Some of the major cathedrals in Spain (here in Burgos and Pamplona and Santo Domingo) have a custom that one must pay money to enter the church (as if it were a museum). Even for mass, for example, one might only go in by a side door to a side chapel and not have access to the main church. Of course I understand what they are doing---there are countless tourists, many passing through without showing any reverence, and the upkeep for these big old churches is very expensive. BUT, if you ask one Catholic pilgrim, it´s a terrible, terrible thing to do, and exactly the opposite of what followers of Jesus stand for at our best: please come, you are most welcome!....I remember a story about St. Robert Bellarmine, the first Jesuit to be named a Cardinal, around the time of Galileo. The story goes--some Jesuit blog reader can correct me if I´m mis-remembering, that beggars used to come to the Cardinal´s palace and he used to give them what was there, and over time folks who were not at all needy just started showing up and taking advantage of his generosity. Someone told him he had to wise up, that people were ripping him off, and he replied saying that he would rather be ripped off numerous times rather than run the risk of failing to help someone who was truly needy. Yes, Brother Bellarmine! There was no charge to enter his church, I´m sure...Better to put up with dozens of wandering tourist types rather than risk turning away one person who might find peace and-or be found by God in the churhc

Day 10- Laboring Hard on Labor Day

I just arrived in Burgos. Its cathedral is a UNESCO world heritage site, and you really should google Burgos Cathedral to get a look at it.
I walked here from Villafranca montes de Oca....40 kilometers...That´´s about 24 miles, almost as long as a marathon. I´m totally exhausted. How can I explain the last ten kilometers, slogging through the sun through an industrial suburb of Burgos that was...apolcalyptic? Mad Max-ian¿ Truck stops, factories, strip mined bits, trucks roaring by. But thank God for Bridgestone tire. I passed by their factory, and sprinklers were watering the lawn, two of which were overshooting the factory fence. So I stood under them in the 36 centrigade heat for a few minutes, getting a bit of a shower. Anyway, I¨m here, and I´m staying in a hotel and taking tomrrow off. I just took a long bath. What a joy. No CNN on the television, that was the only problem.
I met my first Americans today, two California girls (as in Wish they all could be....). We met at a cafe where I stopped during today´s trek. They got to watch me take off my shoes, strip off my blister bandages, and examine my feet. I´m sure it must have been quite a turn on for them.
This is the city of El Cid, and I will post something about this hero one of these days...

Day 9 - Walking with Our Lady, Fatima

Today I went from Granon to Villafranca Montes de Oca--sports fans following progress on the websits´s map page won´t find either city. Granon is a little past Santo Domingo de la Calzada and Villafranca is a little past Belorado, both of which appear. What is Villafranca Montes de Oca? Sounds exotic, no? Maybe some scholar out there can trace the name. Montes would be like hills, and an Oca, someone tells me, is something like a swan---Villafranca´s hills of swans?
I had a very touching experience this morning. since I start in darkness, I´m usually walking as the sun comes up. This part of spain is filled with rolling hills that go off into the distance, most of them now brown fields (maybe something like hay was growing and was harvested). Anyway, it´s a very special moment when the sun lights up this landscape, and not long after sunrise a young woman passed me (yes, lots of people pass me---but i end up getting into town before many of them...my engine hums along in low gear, but when I shut it down by sitting down, it takes a lot of juice to get revved up again, my old bones get sore. So I tend to keep chugging along). Anyway, she passes me, and I notice she is holding a rosary in her hands. So, I say to her, hey look, and hold up my own rosary, which my mother gave me to take with me for the trip. Turns out her name is Fatima, and she shows me the cross on her rosary, which has an indication that it too is from Fatima. Thus my walk with Our lady named Fatima.
Tomorrow a long, long day---40 K, which would be about 24 miles, into Burgos, and I¨m planning to take a mental health day after that.

Day 8, evening, most spiritual moment yet on trip...

As noted, I spent the evening in Granon, which is a tiny town with a beautiful church with a striking, gilded altar (I guess the Incas and a lot of other South Americans were the providers of much of the gilding, not that they were consulted!)...As the mass ended, the priest called pilgrims up to the front of the church---there were about a half dozen of us--and said a prayer for our safety, then delivered a blessing. I had thought this was only the custom in Roncesvalles, but in fact it seems to be the custom at many churches along the pilgrim route, and one feels the community somehow takes the pilgrimage seriously, and indeed believes in praying to support the pilgrims. The prayer of blessing itself is standard (I´ll enter it in some other day´s blog), but then at the end of the prayer formula the priest added something very moving (for me, at leats). He said something like, "I know that you are coming here each of you for your own reasons. you are just at the beginning of this journey. Please continue with courage. If you are looking for peace, you will find peace. If you are looking for answers, you will find answers. If you are looking for God, God will find you." Perfect. Not: you will find God; Rather: God will find you.
Then, after dinner, it was the custom at this pilgrim refuge to have a voluntary prayer service in that same church. About 15 people showed up (of 35 who were staying in this refuge). It was a short service, and people read psalms or offered intentions in their own languages. Of those I knew, the little group included Hungary, South Africa, Spain, France, Argentina, Germany, and no doubt one or two others. So, it was very moving in this medieval choir loft to hear people praying in their own langagues. And it also gives me some sense of the spirituality of the journey--I go to mass daily, but I was (at first) surprised to see that only one or two pilgrims attend mass. But, at some level, most who are on the trek are there for religious or spiritual reasons, as you learn...Well, so much for the spiritual. I´ll try to come up with some bawdy post for tomorrow to keep everyting in balance!

Day 8 The rooster goes to Church

I´m in Santo Domingo De la Calzada, and I think I´ll head another six kilometer before calling it quits today at Granon. Santo Deomingo is a most famed stop on the route. The saint, so the story goes, was rejected by a religious order he wanted to join, and made a vocation out of building roadways along this pilgrim route. A Calzada is something like a highway or causeway, So he is St. Domingo of the Highways, basically....There is also a tradition surrounging the chruch here, which has a live hen and rooster inside the church. There is a complicated legend, I´ll report again if I remember it, that some pilgrim was wrongly going to be put to death, and was spared because a rooster crowed, or came back to life (or something!). So, ever since, they have kept a live rooster and hen in a cage right in the Church. (I don´t know if they take the rooster away during mass).....

Day 8 The Belgian machine lights the way

I started about 6:30 am today, and there were handfuls of pilgrims ahead of me. Everyone is trying to beat the heat by starting early. The camino is marked in urban areas often by yellow arrows painted here and there on pavement or building walls, and it was easy enough, with street lights in Najera, to make my way through the city proper. But then the road immediately gave out into a country path, and it was almost impossible to see anytning but the road directly ahead. Luckily for me, the Belgian machine, as I call him, came thorugh. He happened to be about ten yards ahead of me, carrying his flashlight, and finding all the arrows. I tailed him for about a half hour. Then as daylight came up, he was gone. We´ve been traveling to the same schedule, but he´s faster than I, so I suspect he hung back a bit just so I could follow his lead....Of those who started the first day with me, there´s a small knot of us who have been at each stop together---the Beligan machine (he doesn´t talk much, just smiles and walks steadily and gets to each place first--I don´t even remember his name), Tom from England, Miguel from Aregnetina and Franz and Ingrid from Belgium. Along the way we´ve lost Inge from Denmark, Sarkis from Brazil, and God knows how many others.

Mule skinners by the river salado

The other day we passed over the River Salado. When I was researching A VAnished World-----hey, have I mentioned to you that I wrote a book about Spain called A Vanished World??---I found this medieval guide for pilgrims that said there were always two guys with knives parked by the riverside, waiting for any pilgrim to water his mule in the river´s noxious waters. The mule would keel over and die (the guide claims), and the skinners would head to work.....The same guide, which attacks people from navarre mercilessly, says that as you pass through Navarre on the pilgrimage you will find that the Navaresse farmers put locks on the behinds of their mules, because (the guidebook claims), they want to protect their mules for their own private perversions. It´s all there in the guidebook....

Day 7, 18 miles, 100 degrees, cold shower

I went from Logrono to Najera today. Was it 100 degrees? Probably, my centigrade conversions aren´t so good. People throw around numbers like 34 and 35 centigrade...I know that´s hot. The refugio was out of hot water by the time I arrived here....I had lunch in a town along the way, cheese and baguette in the town square of a quaint village...Sounds picturesque? Well, picture me, my shoes off to dry off my feet, and the town stray dog wandering around, sniffing my feet and looking for a hand out. Some passers by nod hello. Others look the other way.