Waking up in Sahagun, in the
beautiful albergue, to a beautifully crisp and sharp morning over the city was
deeply sad, as I knew this was the day that Susannah had decided to skip ahead
in search of gear and Linde and I were going to say our goodbyes halfway along
the route, in Caldazilla where I planned on stopping. She was headed further to
make her timeline to Santiago de Compostela and I needed to begin slowing down
rather than end up in Santiago with four or five days to spare.
Goodbyes are hard for me, and
awkward, and as we walked into the main part of the city and came closer to our
crossroads, I found myself without words and failing to come up with a way to
properly say goodbye to Suse. I didn’t
know at the time that we’d reconnect in Santiago, that I’d be blessed with a
fitting reunion a couple of weeks later, and so after she turned left to our
right I don’t remember saying much on the walk out of town. The outer suburbs of Sahagun were quiet and
green, and Linde and I soon found ourselves heading along the Via Romana (the
scenic route in the guidebook) past farms and along the railroad tracks.
My mood matched the terrain –
spare, empty, and quiet – but when Linde and I finally gave ourselves a break
around midday for a Way-side snack I was beginning to feel more companionable. We stopped in the shade of some small
brush-like trees, found places to hide and relieve ourselves, and fell into an
easy rhythm together. In the most basic way,
Linde’s insistence on pushing forward and her bright blue pants helped to keep
me moving on one of the hardest days I had on the Camino.
When we walked into Caldazilla,
the town was smaller than even my liberal expectations, and the municipal
albergue was not yet open. More than
anything, Caldazilla reminded me of some town on a lost highway in the Midwest,
flat and open and lonely. Linde and I
saw a friendly face in Kim from Texas at the town bar/café and so we sat down
and ordered soup and coffees. Soon we
were joined by Barry from South Africa and his friend from California (whose
name I still cannot remember and didn’t write down); in the course of our
conversation Kim gifted me her copy of The
Imitation of Christ, a medieval meditation on Christianity I’d never before
read. As a threesome, we headed out
together, Linde having convinced me to skip Caldazilla and do some off-Camino
routefinding to follow her to El Burgo Ranero for the night.
When Kim decided to keep going toward
Reliegos at the crossroads of the Camino and a major highway, at 2pm, I was
worried but her bright confidence and ‘can-do’ attitude reassured me – I’ll
pick up her story later when I see her in Leon.
Linde and I headed off along asphalt and into the sun and I struggled to
remind myself to trust that Providence would see me safe and sound for the evening.
An hour later when we reached town
(and after a confusing hobo-like jump over railroad tracks and wandering
through tightly packed, empty neighborhoods), my mood had shifted toward the
positive and as we were greeted by the hospitalera at the municipal hostel her
enthusiasm and cheer convinced me it had been a good choice to keep going. I’d get one more night with Rubia, and the
unique hostel was beautiful – all mud walls, large tables downstairs, a full
kitchen, and bedrooms upstairs underneath exposed roof beams and hosting
balconies looking out over the town square.
Linde and I enjoyed the hot, hot
showers (in adjacent stalls, thank you) and sung off key songs… ok, I sang off-key songs, happily, into the
steam and tiles. We found a grocery
store and picked out healthy food to cook for dinner… ok, I picked out the food
and Linde cooked it, and when we sat down at the huge table we were greeted by
a French Canadian couple named Danielle and Jean-Louis who I would see and walk
with through the end of my pilgrimage.
As we ate, more pilgrims came in and bustled about; the hostel felt like
warm happy home in the cooling night, and when I sat outside on the bench in
the square to pray a rosary and look up at the stars that night, I knew I’d
made a good choice.
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