Setbacks and negotiatons

I´m currently in the rather large town of Fromista, approximately 60 km west of Burgos, the first of two major cities we´re going to encounter in the province of Castille y Leon. Burgos is a major milestone in our journey; it represents the conclusion of the first of three major legs involved in the Camino Frances (St. Jean-Burgos, Burgos-Leon, Leon-Compostela). We´ve now hiked over 300 kms, and have just under 500 kms to go.

Heading into Burgos, Paul was having some difficulty with terrible blisters all over both feet. Consequently, he was forced to bus his way into the city to wait for the rest of us to walk in a couple of days later. I didn´t know what to think of the idea of ¨busing¨ one´s way through any part of the Camino. It seemed to defeat the purpose of the sacrifice and effort involved in a proper pilgrimage. I was happy to charge into Burgos on foot, knee swollen and Achille´s tendon throbbing. Little did I know that, for me, the ¨rest day¨ we took yesterday in Burgos would rapidly devolve into a nightmare of gastrointestinal pyrotechnics. If I made one trip to the bathroom yesterday, I made 25. At one point I´m pretty sure that I saw ¨The Light.¨ Ibuprofen and Imodium helped to do away with the terrible symptoms of what would appear to be a cold run amok (food poisoning is another option), but regardless my weakened state required that I too ¨bus it¨ a ways across the meseta if I wanted to keep the timing of our pilgrimage on track.

I was extremely bummed out last night, considering as I tried to fall asleep if the Camino was still worthwhile if marred by the stain of gasoline. Seventy-year-old women and terrifyingly obese chain-smokers were doing it, why couldn´t I?

The perfectly-groomed, pancake-flat green carpet of the meseta that I was watching from the bus window several hours ago seemed to stretch out into the distance as infinitely as the sky above it. The bus was empty, except for myself and the driver. Combined with Paul´s tastefully-selected CDs and meditations on the gorgeous new part of Spain we were entering into, I kept coming back to the oft-heard phrase around the albergues that ¨everyone has their own Camino.¨ Mine changed today. While I´m still not sure whether or not it´s for the better or worse, it´s changed and there´s nothing I can do about it. As my Irish friend mentioned off-handedly one day, the Camino is something like a ¨small life.¨ I havne´t really done enough trekking in my day to know if this applies to hiking generally, but at times I feel constantly bombarded by the metaphorical connections between life in general and life on the trail, and what the trail teaches one about life. For instnace, on the way into Burgos, pilgrims are forced to walk 8 kms on sidewalks bordering a highway and massive industrial facilities. It´s claimed to be the worst part of the entire Camino. The sidewalk is easy to make way on, but the flatness and hardness of the ground tends to destroy the feet of pilgrims unprepared for a bout with the urban jungle. Paul and I are slowly realizing that it is the uphills and not downhills that we should be worrying about; technical downhill sections destroy your knees and take almost as much time as steep ascents. While every part of the Camino is challenging in some way, the uphills can become (at times the most enjoyable part of the day. Here´s the extrapolation (again, pardon if this isn´t making sense and things have descended into delirium): be weary of the ¨easy sections¨ in life. They´re often more challenging and less satisfying than you think.

Several days ago, we had dinner with a very nice French couple who had done a great deal of hiking throughout Europe and France. They´d been all over their country, the continent, and the islands of the Mediterranean, and they we´re finding the Camino so disappointing that they were going to stop at week´s end. There was too much trail either near of on highways, too much walking near the less-than-picturesque parts of Spain. Aside from the fact that no trail (with the exception, perhaps, of the trail on Malorca that was described by the couple) can be beautiful all the time, I couldn´t help but think that this couple had missed the point of the whole experience. Firstly, I´d like to think that the Spain we´re getting to see is ¨real Spain¨--small villages in the middle of nowhere where little or no English is spoken, parts of Spain hidden by postcard-makers. Secondly, the way I conceive things (and here recall the mantra: ¨everyone has their own Camino¨), this trek is meant to be a challenge, maybe even a ¨test¨ in every sense of the words. Life isn´t always pretty; ¨crappy-looking industrial areas¨ can be found in the midst of almost every single day. But you move through them, and usually you´re greeted with a stunning vista, and if you´re not greeted by that vista immediately, you keep moving until you see it. You value beautiful moments all the more when you´re working hard to find them.