I took the top bunk for first time to allow the priest traveling with the young seminarians to stay in the same bunk room. I slept alright except for an extreme, almost cartoonish, snorer in the bunk behind me. The older Spanish gentlemen would interchange between wheezing, groaning, and something that sounded like hkhkhkgggglblbnknknkaaaaphooo…
Needless to say, I was fully awake at 3:30, and then fell asleep for a slightly late second morning at 5:30, where it seemed everyone was getting up earlier than normal…
I got it together in frazzled fashion, belt too tight, shorts too low, shirt too high, backpack straps all out of whack, with two semi dried socks hanging from the sides.
Right out the gate of the Albergue there were two semi lost pilgrim ladies trying to find their way out of the village in the dark… Somehow I was designated the guide and so I just used a combination of instinct and yellow arrows, using the bit of twilight and then my headlamp when coming up on an ambiguous corner or fork in the road.
As we made our way out of town, each of the three of us worked into our paces, one of the ladies, Klara from Vermont, clicking along at my pace for a while (I’m slightly faster than the average walker).
Klara had a slightly heavier pack than normal, with a little teddy bear attached to the back and a pilgrim shell with a peace sign on it (most pilgrims wear the shell on their backpack to identify themselves).
Klara is doing a five month camino, covering the French and Primitive ways as a loop, and she is taking time to stop along the way to experience local sites.
She is doing the Camino, in part as a means to seal with some difficult life events and circumstances in her past, and also as part of her quest to know Christ more.
She came to Christ through those difficult circumstances, events, and life choices, and has been devouring any scripture and supplemental teaching she’s found in her pursuit for Him.
After she is done with the Camino in October, she plans continue hiking, including to Jerusalem, as part of her means to know Him more fully.
Among many things, we discussed Christ’s explicit claim to deity and the only way to be reconciled with the Father, we discussed God doing away with sacrifice by the giving of His Son once and for all at the culmination of the ages, and we discussed true faith and it’s evidence as a heartfelt overflowing of gratitude having recognized our state apart from Him and his mercy in calling those of us in Him to salvation.
Along the way, I stopped at a “bar” (which in Spain and Latin America is a slightly different concept that that in the US) for a coffee and for breakfast.
After walking into the place, the bar attendant being in a night shirt and heavily made up with a raspy voice, and the two patrons having their last bear of the evening (at 7am), I opted out of the breakfast (perhaps to avoid the chance of getting cigarette ashes in my tortilla de batatas), and just ordered a coffee, holding out until later.
Upon leaving the bar it started to rain, and then more so, and so I suited up in my rain suit, which fit me a lot better in 2013 :(. Walking the camino in the rain can be nice if you have the right gear.
Only issue though, was the knee. I originally injured in my high school dojo doing a wave kick from horse stance, and then reinjured it playing Hacki sack at a bust stop in Brasil back when I was a kid, where I ended up having surgery in Sao Paolo. Well, with age, and rainy weather, the knee acts up on me and I looked pretty comically pathetic hoveling myself down the camino this day.
This walk, like most other days so far on the Camino, was an opportunity for exertion, determination, and catharsis. I’ve always been a cathartic or “broken”person when it comes to realizing my emptiness apart from Christ and to mourning my sin, a foreign concept in today’s increasingly dominant secular or deistic world views. As I walk along and contemplate the things of God, whether longing for the beatific vision, or mourning my transgressions, or just being overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude and humility, I often cry it out… folks may find that odd, but at the end of it all, I am able to bear burdens that might otherwise be to difficult, by God’s grace.
I later stopped at nice breakfast spot in Villalcazar de Silva, where I had some good conversation with two local wheat growers… I enjoy plugging into another world where I can, especially in Spain or Hispanoamérica, where it comes easier for me.
After this I continued the last stretch into Espíritu Santo, a very nice albergue ran by nuns, where the nun who registered me, about 65+ years of age, noticed my emotional and physical state and was very accommodating hand comforting. I had the best nights sleep in Espíritu Santo.
That afternoon during normal albergue daily routine, took time to observe, perhaps with discernment but not judgement, the various folks on the Camino, either for tourism or for pilgrimage.
While I think in some level, all of us are here, for some as an end and others as a means, to fill the Christ shape void, but I would say that many, and perhaps more and more every year, are not conscious of that, and are consciously here for adventure, distraction, for excercise (self included, :)) or for many other reasons related to the purging of guilt, frustration, and stress in general.
There’s lots of Camino conjecture as to what makes a “true pilgrim,” :), one might say that it is someone who, like Abraham, and Jacob, considers himself a “sojourner” here in this age, and setting their hopes on the next age, when heaven and earth will be reunited and those of us in Christ will be raised to our new bodies, “held in the palm of His hand” for eternity.
Later in the afternoon I tried to siesta, in spite of a few young men playing guitar and signing in the patio below. It would have been fine except they used the same two or three chords for every song, and were just off key about the whole three hours of their singing, and never could get past the 2nd verse of each song… I know I’m being particular, but it was another “burden” to bear that day :).
On another occasion I was amused by one of the nuns’ lively interaction with some local repair men as she was trying to get some electric work done urgently. It was an odd combination of yelling and belly laughing l, all mixed up together.
Up in the room, later that day there was a fidgety Italian guy folding and refolding the items for his pack, and then intermittently tapping the table and his feet while rolling his eyes and occasionally getting up to pace… I asked him if he was board, and he said very… I wondered if the Camino was right for him, but left it at that.
Also went grocery shopping and learned that donut peaches are called “paraguayos.” I learned this because it took me 20 minutes to discern the labels on the self service fruit scale until a kind gentleman helped me out.
What else happened that day?
Did a little exchange of goods, soap for Kleenex and the like, went to watch a pilgrim blessing at the church next to algergue, and then made dinner, where a Chinese women helped me figure out the stove, and almost slapped my hand when I was not doing it right. :). She did not speak English or Spanish, and y could only remember how to say police station in Mandarin, and to count to ten in Cantonese, so that was not to helpful.
Also, I and a cagey Spanish couple were the last ones to be eating dinner in the mess hall area, and they were overdoing the whispering and eye shifting so I decided to finish dinner early and avoid the awkwardness.
As I was washing dishes, some young British boys started a brief conversation and enjoyed my story of stopping and restating the Camino to finish, as well as my experiences in business.
Finally, to bed.