First up on this stage is a village named Irache where the
infamous wine fountain awaits pilgrims – a fountain that pours free red wine
generously provided by the local winery.
Imminent dehydration aside, the idea of fortifying myself with red wine
at 7AM gets me up and moving pretty quickly.
The day is overcast and comfortably chilly as the dawn gets
going behind me; when I reach the Irache there is already a small crowd of
pilgrims taking turns drinking wine from their shells and taking photos. The wine is free… but it is not good. Let’s be honest, though, it’s free. I take my sip, have my picture snapped by
Paulo of the Brazilian Booming Laugh, and keep moving.
The first part of this day takes me through rolling farmland
and an actual forest, which makes me sad I didn’t think to come camp out the
night before. I’m unclear on Spain’s
camping laws/ordinances/whatever, but as there are well-used fire pits in the
trees I’m guessing it would have been ok.
Through this whole stretch I’m basically by myself, given time to pray a
rosary for my family and for strength for myself, and when the coffee hits I’m
able to find a well secluded place in the woods to dig a cat hole to do my
business. That’s actually the thing that
makes me feel most at home on the Camino… a small, filthy connection to home,
and work, and life in the wilderness.
Coming out of this section and heading toward the next café
in the distance, I come up on a man and woman who are about my age and look
vaguely friendly. My natural instinct is
to say hello and keep pushing forward, but I know that I want tothere were take
risks and just talk to people without expectation or embarrassment, and so we
end up walking and talking together for several kilometers. They’re from the Czech Republic, recently
finished with college, and determined to make 35-40 kilometers a day. It’s an easy conversation, the first of
innumerable fast acquaintances that will grace me over the next 5 weeks, and
when I stop to get coffee they move on.
In the café I run into Tom the Hungarian Documentarian again,
and, as I’m getting ready to leave, in walks Susannah from Australia. We spend the next portion walking toward the
imposing Monjardin in the distance, ragging each other about our hiking speed
and hills, blisters and the ridiculousness of coming halfway across the world
to walk hundreds of miles for personal reasons.
It’s a fast friendship that feels right and natural, and when our
different speeds separate us I feel sad to say goodbye, even if it’s only
temporary.
That’s the trick with the Way: I was glad I went alone
because it freed me to make the pilgrimage my own, independent of anyone else’s
needs. I was glad that I had ultimate
freedom in determining what I wanted and needed along the way, great stretches
of time to be alone and be quiet with God in my heart. I knew that’s what I went to Spain to
find. Being alone made it easy to meet
everyone along the way without worrying about social dynamics… but there was
always that possibility that the person you met and felt connected to might not
catch up, or you might not catch up to them, or circumstances and events would
mean you wouldn’t see them again, wouldn’t get their contact information, that
‘Adios’ meant, permanently, goodbye.
So there was always an element of sadness to the transience
of those relationships, and still I was, and remain, grateful to approach
people in the moment, with Christ in my heart and an openness to whatever would
come.
There was a portion of the day where I walked damn near 8
kilometers with a Canadian retiree named Don – goofy, kind, almost bubbling
with optimism – who proceeded to tell me more than I would ever need to know
about the Canadian pension and retirement system. If you have questions, just ask.
Like magic, I’m alone again when I come walking around a
corner to find Susannah waiting at the crossroads at Fuente del pozo de
Baurin. I still have no idea how she got
ahead of me, because I’d last seen her in the distance as I pushed up a
mountain, but she plays it off like she was waiting for me to catch up. Los Arcos is on the horizon, and that’s where
we head, through hay fields and farmland, drenched by sunlight.
In town we pick an albergue called Casa de Abuela that is
fancier than I’ve seen so far – big open windows in the bedrooms and a small,
but comfortable kitchen area that gathers the pilgrims after the mandatory
showers have been had. Bearded Red Ryan
is there with Bald Ralph, the two British women from earlier roll in (Blonde
Rebecca and… the other one) and sit down across from us. With a crowd of sarcastic English speakers
things quickly become raunchy and loud, Rebecca refers to me as ‘the cute one’
which opens the door to massive amounts of teasing, and when we start sharing
our reasons for coming on pilgrimage I tell them I’m considering a religious
vocation.
Note: If you want to immediately quash any romantic
attraction directed your way from an attractive blonde British woman, tell her
you’re thinking of becoming a priest.
In any case, Susannah and I head out to explore the town and
find the square in front of the church filled with pilgrims. There is strong sangria for 2 shiny Euros,
and immediately after getting our drinks the clouds break and it pours
buckets. I realize that the drains in
the middle of the stone streets in Spain have a purpose as it quite literally
floods the street, but we are warm and dry and on our way to becoming drunk
under the stone awning of the bar.
Gitte and Jeper show up, there is a delicious pilgrim’s
dinner in the basement of the bar, which leaves me warm and full of laughter
and sleepy, but most of us still manage to finish dinner in time to run across
the street to my first Pilgrim’s Mass in the medieval church.
This mass is where my Camino shifts, begins to feel more
like a legitimate pilgrimage. I can
follow the liturgy in Spanish, but the effect of participating in the mass with the village residents who are
opening their doors and kindness to us pilgrims and asking little in return,
with fellow pilgrims who all have their own stories and struggles, passions and
beliefs, with the priest who offers mass every night to a new group of
pilgrims, asking them to pray for his church as they pray for us on our
pilgrimage… well, it’s something else entirely.
I couldn’t articulate it at the time, but in Los Arcos I started to feel
the weight of that history – that my companions and I were participating in
worship in the same churches, in largely the same way, as pilgrims for the last
1,200 years, compelled to go on pilgrimage in a foreign land for largely the
same reasons, in largely the same fashion: trusting in God, trusting in the
compassion inherent to humanity, with little more than our love and gratitude
to offer in return.
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