After a restful night toe to toe
with Rubia (our bottom bunks faced one another), we mustered ourselves up and
awake to cross the street for breakfast at the single café in town – a bar
warmed by fierce radiators and boasting several televisions all turned to the
morning news. This was the day I’d set
out on my own again after breakfast – Linde was heading across the north side
of town to catch the train further ahead and I knew it was time to part.
I am terrible at goodbyes. Literally terrible. I avoid thinking about the actual moment
until it’s right on me, and then I choke at saying the things I really ought to
say. I'd like to pass this off onto my
belief that the universe will reunite people again when the time is right, but
really I’m just shit at saying farewell.
So when breakfast is finished and
Linde and I step out into the street, I completely fumble. There’s a hug and a meaningful look, but with
the sun coming up behind her and the crisp morning air lending the world a
gentle clarity, I really ought to have said something memorable. I at least should have taken a damn
picture. Instead, the look and the
memory will have to do.
The walk to Mansilla mostly
followed the senda along the roadside
– a consequence of abandoning the scenic route through Reliegos the previous
day to overnight in Ranero – and although the landscape was largely featureless
in a generic sort of way, I found it easy to lose myself in prayer and the
rosary. I kept passing, and being passed
by, people whose faces I recognized but hadn’t really spoken to, and I told
myself that I would quickly find common souls along the Camino despite having
left my friends behind.
Somewhere, directly adjacent to
the roadside, I walked past one of my favorite Camino monuments… it remains one
of my favorite pictures of the entire trip both because of its’ unassuming
placement between a farm and the highway, and also because of its’
seriousness. This is the kind of thing
you wouldn’t be likely to see back home; I imagine people might be threatened
by the religiousness or angered by the use of public funds, but on the Camino
these monuments spoke more to the communal history of the Way than an
insistence on doctrine.
When I came into Mansilla de las
Mulas, I basically had one choice – the municipal hostel in the center of
town. There were a couple of albergues
on the outskirts, but I tried to always choose the hostel closest to the
church. Walking into the office with my
pack and hiking poles, I was struck by the amount of touristy knick knacks on
sale and began to worry that I’d walked into one of ‘those’ hostels, but as the
hospitalero led me through a large central garden to a separate building with
wide open windows and laundry lines strung across the gaps, I saw plenty of
pilgrims happily going about their business with coffees and bath towels and
laundry and guidebooks. On the top floor
of the dorm I was offered my choice of beds and I walked around trying to
figure which room looked the most appealing; this was where I first said hello
to Liz and Chris from London who would become fixtures along the last part of
the Camino, as well as ran into the Quebecois yet again, and as I was setting
up my sleeping bag I saw Leonie and Agnes waving to me from the building
opposite.
Downstairs, the courtyard tables
filled quickly for midafternoon drinks and chatter, and as I talked to Leonie,
Agnes, and Lucas instead of reading my book, I watched the Irish cousins from
Granon file in with their friends – an Italian woman named Jessica, and a young
woman from Switzerland named Vittoria.
They were shockingly beautiful and intimidating, especially as they were
stretching and doing yoga as they made their introductions.
Later I went out for a coffee and
enjoyed the scenery along the main street, sleepy during the afternoon
siesta. I randomly fell in with a recent
college grad from Florida named Jim and a guy from Wales also named Rob for
dinner – they basically pulled me up from the café table to walk to the
restaurant nearby for a pilgrim’s menu.
We were the only pilgrims there, which felt strange and funny in such a
nice dining room, pestered by the television above blaring an incomprehensible
Spanish game show.
I left early to make the pilgrim’s
mass – that night was the feast of St. Francis and although I couldn’t
interpret the homily I tried to contemplate what I knew then of Francis, his
personality and legend. Since reading
Fr. Martin’s My Life With the Saints, I’ve thought often and
consistently about these people and their responses to the gospel, and St.
Francis’ prayer is probably the prayer closest to my heart and quickest to mind
when I feel in trouble.
Finishing the night on my own in
Mansilla felt ok. Not great, not
terrible, but strongly settled into the Camino routine and faithful that my
experiences would continue to be positive and rewarding. I tried to recognize that in itself as a
blessing, and ignore the sound of the French men snoring around me. I slept well, and woke up to darkness and the
walk into Leon.
- Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
- Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
- Where there is injury, pardon.
- Where there is doubt, faith.
- Where there is despair, hope.
- Where there is darkness, light.
- Where there is sadness, joy.
- O Divine Master,
- grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
- to be understood, as to understand;
- to be loved, as to love.
- For it is in giving that we receive.
- It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
- and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
- Amen.
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