Part Two
After lunch was over
and my plate cleaned, I spent some minutes watching the owner of the restaurant
cook his famous pulpo in a giant pot
in front of a window open to the street.
He was a large man, bald, full of energy and drenched in sweat,
gleefully shaking boiled cephalopods at the people passing by. I wasn’t sure about his marketing strategy,
but I guess if octopus is your thing…
Lotus
and I walked on; I said my goodbyes for the afternoon and moved through Melide
quickly. I wanted to be certain to see
one of the oldest cross monuments in Iberia still preserved at a crosswalk, but
I was also eager to get back to the contemplative countryside and away from the
tourists. At this point in the Camino it
was becoming more and more difficult to tell the day-trippers from the pilgrims
who’d walked the whole Way. Some were
easy to spot – their frantic movements, matching unblemished daypacks and unbroken
boots giving them away – but there were also plenty of faces that were just
unfamiliar, faces I couldn’t be sure I hadn’t passed 200 miles before or slept
across from in some meseta albergue. I
was anxious for quiet, for small gatherings.
Melide
was beautiful, I’ll grant you. Palm
trees sprouted up in the little squares and parks, and there were twisting
stone alleys branching off the main thoroughfare that I did take some time to
explore.
By
‘explore’ I meant get lost. I did go in
search of the church, hoping to stop for a rosary or afternoon mass, and although
I could easily see the spires and the cross reaching up above the buildings
around me, it seemed that street after street either took me away from where I
wanted to go or deposited me back on the Way.
It felt like a scene in a film where the protagonist winds his way through
a garden maze or labyrinth, unable to escape.
The Way kept coming back to find me, and I felt no fear or panic, not
even frustration, only a sense of amusement and acceptance of the message I’d
received. I’d gone in search of a
cathedral, of quiet reflection and simplicity, and found only the path, with its’
dirt and noise and joy. I can be content
with that, I think.
I
did make my way out of Melide, crossing the 50 kilometer mark on my way to
Ribadiso/Arzua. The Camino markers were
becoming more and more marked with graffiti, but I’d come to love the scribbles
and tags of other pilgrims. Let me
underline this observation – the Camino de Santiago is by no means a pristine route,
an unmarked path. I’ve read many
complaints on message boards about the trash, the asphalt sendas approaching a major city, the graffiti, and the roadside
altars. It’s true. All of those things exist in abundance. Walking the Camino is in no way similar to
the AT, or any other long wilderness trail.
I
love the graffiti, the sheer evidence
of other pilgrims. I love that in our
search for elevated faith, for a pilgrim’s experience, we were gross, and
dirty, and sloppy, and unavoidably human.
I adore our common filthiness, our hard edges and heavy smells. So there.
The
suburb soon turned back into farmland and the weather was sunny and pleasantly
cool, reminding me strongly of early fall in North Carolina. I remember walking along curvy dirt roads
next to busted wood fences that looked just like those I’d walked along as a
child. The Way took me to a small stream
next to which was a picnic table and my friend Katie from Virginia, lounging in
her hat and purple shirt. We decided to
walk the rest of the way to Arzua and she told me she was meeting Mandie and
Melissa there; it was easy to fall in with her and I was looking forward to
some banter in English, some human interaction to bring me out of my head and
into the joyful present.
Arzua
wasn’t much more than a spot in the road; there was the municipal albergue
crouching over the river just across a stone bridge; I could see pilgrims lying
in the grass on the bank underneath drying laundry smoking cigarettes. Katie and I walked on and stopped into a
private hostel called Caminantes slightly up the hill; I immediately committed
my 10 euros based on the beautiful wood beams, washer/dryer, and the beautiful
girl behind the desk. Katie and I made a
plan to split laundry later and I got myself situated in a back room and tried
to sort out the shower situation. The
bathroom was somehow situated between three different rooms, each with their
own entrance, and hosted both shower stalls with open ceilings and
toilets. I could not discern if it was
male, female, or both, or even if I was supposed to lock the door. I figured it didn’t matter all that much and
hopped into one of the shower stalls.
Before
I was done, someone got into the one next to me. It was a woman; she was talking. I presumed she was talking to me, in English,
so I spoke back, “Hello, yes?”. No response,
but her conversation continued, unaltered.
It was Lotus, and she was either talking to herself or singing along to
some music I couldn’t hear. I beat a
hasty retreat, not wanting to get caught in an unclothed conversation with her
or anyone else.
Laundry
with the Virginians was an event worth remembering – the hostel had one
washer/dryer and after we put our things in to dry we had to fend off an older
Australian couple from dumping our stuff to make room for their own. They were shady, looming in the corners and
skulking our secadora, ready to
pounce. We held them off, crouched on
the couches nearby and talking about ‘planking’, of all things.
For
dinner everyone in the town seemed to congregate in the one restaurant, a
high-ceilinged, stone affair with wide wooden tables and televisions incongruously
mounted in the corners like a sports bar back home. Dinner with the Virginians was good, and hot,
and loud – a room filled with familiar faces and rapidly emptying wine bottles,
the space filling with the expanding joy of pilgrims close to the end of the
Way. There was a giddiness present, and
when we realized the televisions above were playing uncensored footage of what
appeared to be bowel surgery, it was all the funnier for it.
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