September 25th, Granon to Belorado (15 kilometers):

Much of what I remember was the wind.  When I left Granon in the pre-dawn, I could see the Camino stretching out far into the distance, and with the wind and brisk morning temperatures it was the first morning that actually felt chilly.  A solid portion of the first hour is spent walking with Diane from Alaska, a chipper middle-aged woman who claims she is a slow hiker but who succeeds in setting a pretty quick pace.  

This is the day I actually get lost on the Camino.  People have talked about this moment, I’ve read about it, and I’m still not sure how it happened... especially when there are GIANT SIGNS ALL ALONG THE WAY:

Here’s what I recall: Diane and I are walking along.  There is a long, straight portion next to the highway, heading toward a village in the distance.  I want to stop, go to the bathroom, and grab a granola bar from my pack, so I do.  Diane and the people walk on out of sight.  Less than five minutes later I follow, and I swear I see a yellow arrow pointing toward a visible village in the distance along a dirt road to the left, directly perpendicular to the road.  I turn left, right?  

About half an hour later it occurs to me that I haven’t seen a yellow arrow in some time, and that the village I’m approaching looks… somewhat… abandoned.  At this point it’s go all the way back to the road, or keep going forward.  Shortly before the village, next to a small backyard garden, I see a tiny cardboard sign stapled to a fence, pointing to the right along a footpath heading through what are obviously sheep pastures.  At some point in the distant past, the sign may have been yellow.  Maybe.

I don’t know how long I stare at this sign before I hear someone whistling at me from the garden.   There’s an old man standing there with a  hoe beckoning me over, and he basically tells/shows me on my map that I’m the idiot that turned left when I obviously should have continued forward, along the road, like every other intelligent pilgrim did when I wasn’t looking.  HOWEVER, all is not lost, because if I merely follow the cardboard sign, I’ll get to the top of a saddle and see the town I want in the distance and arrive in record time.  It’s not a diversion to a murder hole, it’s a shortcut.

Trust in providence, I tell myself, and off I go.  Sure enough, when I get to the top of the hill (ignoring all the ‘private property’ and ‘no trespassing’ signs), I can see the town I’m supposed to be walking toward.  I can also see tiny little pilgrims trudging along next to the highway way off to my right.  

So I book it into town, find the café, get my cup of coffee and when Diane shows up a few minutes later, ask what took her so long.  

The rest of the walk is through grain fields into driving winds.  Headwinds.  It’s a ‘put your head down and push on’ kind of day, where mostly I stare at my boots and keep telling myself to just go a little further.  I see plenty of pilgrims along the path, but the whole process feels lonely and vast as the horizon stretches out in all directions and people walk at their own pace – conversations are difficult and stilted because the noise of the wind steals our words away.  I see plenty of people I know, but we pretty much just smile, curse at the wind, and plod on.  

Coming into Belorado I’m heading past the newer, fancier albergue on the hill and into the old town when Gitte calls down to me – she’s stopped for lunch at the new albergue and so I go join her.  I order up my standard: a café con leche, orange juice, and a jamon bocadillo and we watch the steady stream of pilgrims come shuffling into the town below.  The weather looks cloudy and overcast, and I’m looking forward to finding my hostel and getting showered up, and so I’m sad when Gitte says she’s moving on to another town.  Little do I know, this is the last time I’ll see her on the Camino.  When I think of her now, I mostly remember her laughter and how she’d break out a menthol cigarette the moment she sat down, anywhere.  

The hostels in Belorado proper seem to be clustered around a couple of blocks, and after I pick one and get my stamp, I can’t help but feel less than impressed with where I’m staying for the night.  The bunk rooms are closely packed and poorly ventilated, there is a warm kitchen area with tons of photos of past pilgrims, and an open courtyard in the rear that would be very nice – but it’s chilly and drizzling outside and so I have a difficult time finding a place to be comfortable.  My bed is surrounded by a group of older French men who I will see sporadically over the next week – they are loud and seem visibly irritated that I’ve been assigned a top bunk in between them, and the guy below me immediately gives me some kind of sass, in French, when I start arranging my things.  I try to find some common ground in Spanish, to no avail, and I’m so tired I give up and ignore him.  

It’s one of those moments when I know exactly how non-English speakers in America feel – I know I’m not doing anything wrong or rude, but these guys can’t seem to grasp that I don’t speak French and increased volume or repeating whatever they want to tell me will not magically teach me the language.  

So I go out to explore the town, wander around to the parque central where I run into the Irish boys Paul and John, a guy I’ll call Michigan, and Welsh Rob on a break for lunch – all folks I’d met the night before in Granon.  I spend some time at a café facing the square as an afternoon rain shower comes down, sipping strong coffee and reading the end of Ken Follet’s The Fall of Giants.  It’s a welcome counterpoint to the Elderly Rude French, and after the siesta hour I wander in and out of shops and back toward the hostel in search of dinner.

Dinner is a communal meal upstairs; I end up with four people I haven’t met, the unofficial ‘English’ table with Barry from South Africa who I will enjoy running into again and again all the way to Santiago de Compostela.  He’s a bald older guy who bears a striking resemblance to my stepfather, and Barry’s quiet reservation and clipped speech gives him a solid, engaging dignity.  That sense of personal class, alongside his open, welcoming friendliness leaves me jealous – I typically feel rough and uncouth in that kind of company, but the conversation is easy and the night ends well. 

September 24th, Navarette to Granon (46 kilometers):

My Anti-Blister, Self-Care Plan from the day before is basically this: I’ll met Gitte for breakfast early in the morning and we’ll walk from Navarette to Najera, then catch a bus from there to Santo Domingo de Calzada, a larger city with a special connection to the Camino – it holds the museum and church dedicated to Saint Dominic of the Road, a man who spent much of his life building roads and bridges for pilgrims along the Way in the 11^th century.  This is where I plan to stop for the night even though I know Gitte is headed further.  It seems like a smart compromise, I won’t have to walk as far and I’ll give myself some breathing room for the future if my feet don’t heal as quickly as I hope.  

First, I get confused by the time and leave Gitte waiting for nearly an hour, so when Joseph and I come sauntering downhill from the albergue she’s visibly irritated and I am immediately ashamed and embarrassed.  Then, the bar we were to meet at is closed, so the three of us end up wandering well out of the main, older part of town and into the more modern section before we find a place to eat.   It’s a strange little café, with some sort of lottery machine in the corner and a widescreen television over the tables.  I’m distracted by the moving pictures as Joseph tells us all about how dumb the Spanish king is thought to be, but we are not allowed to have an opinion or repeat this observation… because we aren’t Spaniards ourselves.  There’s also a trio of attractive and smiley, though standoffish, young women eating at the café. They have really nice gear.  It matches.  It's clean.  It's the opposite of us.

When we say goodbye to Joseph in the bar, I feel a bit of sadness and remorse.  It’s not often that I feel connected to or immediately friendly with other men, but for whatever reason he and I seem to have a connection and I’m sorry to possibly see the end of him.  These aren’t things that you can easily express in words to a middle-aged Spanish man as you’re hurrying out the door at 7 in the morning, but I do my best with a “Vaya con Dio” and a firm handshake.  He seems sad himself and reluctant to go, but maybe I’m just imagining it.  

Later in the day, Santo Domingo holds all kinds of fascinating turns in the streets, tightly-wound corners and looming stone buildings that put me in mind of what I consider ‘authentic’ Europe – the kind of city well-suited to a Jason Bourne movie or a Woody Allen romance – and Gitte and I gladly, cheerfully pay the fee to go explore the museum and cathedral.  I remember being frustrated that I cannot capture the sheer height of the clock tower or church, alongside the close, ‘oldness’, of the streets.  The perspective just won’t fit and I know that when I get home and show these pictures to my friends and family, it won’t be enough.  

The museum is striking, it’s the first large place I’ve spent time in that so dramatically displays its’ roots in the Camino de Santiago.  There is also an exhibition of the life of Blessed Theresa of Calcutta, and I’m struck by the effect of Christ on this person’s life – I’ve read a small amount about the woman, and what stands out for me is the idea that faith can work on us in such extraordinary ways, ways that inspire the world to ask deeper questions about how we are meant to live our lives. 

I love museums, how quiet and reverent they can be in the morning when few people are out, and it’s nice to have the freedom to take my time and explore.  I like that the silence of the cathedral forces Gitte and I to communicate with mostly our eyes and facial expressions.  On the way out I buy a simple red rosary, which to this day might be the best 2 Euros I’ve ever spent.  

Maybe it’s the rest from the museum, or the amazing weather, or feeling afraid of saying goodbye to another friend on the Camino, but after we leave the church and Gitte pushes me to continue on with her to a tiny town 6 more kilometers down the road called Granon, I cave.  

By the time we get there, I’m so frustrated about my feet, my willingness to be peer pressured, how absolutely tiny this town is compared to the relative comfort of Santo Domingo, and Gitte’s chattiness that I’m bordering on angry and snappy.  There is one restaurant that looks less than appealing, and a parish albergue connected to the church of John the Baptist that immediately does little to recommend itself: there is loud construction outside, an open floor plan with no beds, only mattresses, two cramped showers, and did I mention the construction?  

Listen close, kids, here is a lesson.  I’ve been sucked into a quick judgment.  I will be proven wrong.  After I utterly fail to take a nap, bothered by the jackhammers and the chatter of a couple from California in the corner, I shuffle down into the common dining area (admittedly a beautiful conversion of the church’s attic, with high open windows and a welcoming fireplace surrounded by comfortable chairs) and fall into a conversation with the British hospitalero.  Over the next few hours while we sit, drink tea, and wait to start dinner, I meet so many new faces and people I can’t keep up – it quickly starts to feel like a family reunion with all the attendant hustle and bustle.  Our schedule for the evening has been set: at 6 we all come down to the kitchen and prepare the food into large pans and dishes – the Spanish hospitalera directing us from the tiny kitchen like some kindly general – and, once finished, walk the food over to the town baker who will graciously bake the food while we go to mass.  

Again, the pilgrim’s mass is gentle and touching – the wooden pews in this ancient stone building are full of pilgrims, the priest is kind and welcoming, the liturgy familiar and comforting, and the blessing afterwards leaves me feeling both special and humble.  

Dinner is magical.  After the mass we go, as a group, to the baker’s to literally sing for our supper – each nationality expected to sing in chorus a song from their country.  Us Americans fall into ‘Ring of Fire’ which is a good choice because I know the lyrics.  Dinner itself is served on two massive rows of tables, Harry Potter style, under the peaked roof of the common room, 60 or so energetic pilgrims packed in and laughing, passing plates down the rows, cracking bottles of wine and water, chomping on bread.  Toward the end of dinner we are asked to each stand up and say our names, countries of origin, and a reason why we have come on pilgrimage.  

Listening to so many people name their diverse and sincere reasons, even the explanations that are vague and unformed, is damn humbling.  Obviously we all come from different places, have different stories and backgrounds, but to hear the roll call in this dramatic way serves well to put me in my place: humbly among an amazing group of people whose reasons are all as valid as my own.  When my turn rolls around I leave it at “I’m here for discernment, and to listen to whatever God wants to tell me”, which is a terse answer, but an honest one.  

After the dishes are done and the night starts to wind down, people have started to lay down in sleeping bags and the conversations have fallen to low murmurs and quiet cadences, I open one of the rooftop windows and stick my head out to stare across at the church steeple and the stars above.  I know literally nothing about the constellations and the night sky, but I remember being a teenager to sneak out of the house and go lie down on the road in the field below my parents’ house at night, staring up at the stars and aching for something larger than myself, some eternal and immense sense of connection to history, to the larger world, to the workings of faith.  Weird how that works out. 

September 23rd, Viana to Navarette (23 kilometers):

Leaving in the dark of the morning, I am both too late for the Danes (who take off at 5AM) and too early for the rest of the pilgrims I know, and for a while I walk alone in substantial amounts of pain.  My blisters are a constant source of pain and worry at this point – I both refuse to take a day off and don’t know what else to do other than bandage, pray, and curse.  I know that I’m resilient enough to muscle through, but I’m really hoping that I won’t end up slogging through pain every day just to get to a town and limp through the evenings, distracted from the purpose of pilgrimage.

Somewhere in the early morning, before Logrono, I meet up with a tall, lanky woman from Chicago named Brooke who accompanies me into and beyond the city.  We stop for breakfast at a Way-side café in the middle of this strangely quiet city – midmorning the previous night’s wine festival has left the streets empty, the town quiet, and not unsurprising amounts of wine bottles and trash on the ground.  

Breakfast is delicious, we sit with an older couple from Canada who I will see intermittently over the next month, and after getting lost navigating our way out of the city and onto the bike path that leads away from Logrono (and having a surprisingly touching conversation about the state of the Catholic Church in America), I stop to investigate my feet and she pushes on.  She’s aiming for 40+ kilometers a day, and that’s crazy talk.  She’s a witty, highly intelligent woman and I’m sad to see her go – the challenging and reciprocal conversation has kept me from thinking too closely about my feet.  

The next section largely weaves in and out of wine country (we crossed into the Rioja region from Navarre already) and through a large park/wilderness reserve area that has bicyclists, families, day hikers, and picnickers happy in their element.  In the early afternoon I stop at a shelter to chow down on a leftover bocadillo and run into yet another Canadian couple and Martina, the German woman from Hostel Jakue.  We walk together for a while and talk about organic farms and living sustainably for the end of the trek into Navarette, where I catch up to Joseph on the edge of town.

What I should probably say is that the day is blisteringly hot, there is almost no shade, and I’ve found the one measly shady spot next to the wall of an ancient, ruined pilgrim’s hostel where I can relieve my bladder (on the sunny side) and then sit and stare at my ruined feet in deep, deep irritation when Joseph comes merrily traipsing up along the path and asks me how things are going.  It’s enough to get me moving and make the final push up the hill into town, grumbling all the way. 

Navarette is large enough to be interesting and small enough to see in a few minutes’ walk – Joseph and I splurge at the private hostel on a shared double room and then go in search of food.  It’s a great time to practice my Spanish and after getting some local recommendations for a place to eat we end up at a pilgrim-centric bar facing a tree-shaded square.  Brooke is there taking a break for an early dinner, and so we get to share an outside table with amazing small plates of paella and tall, cold glasses of beer.  

After a much-needed nap at the hostel, this is where we all end up again for dinner: Gitte, Jeppe, Joseph, myself, and a random Irish woman named Emma.  Round two of the paella for me (did I mention that by the time this walk is over I’ll have lost 12 pounds?  Considering what I ate along the way, it’s a wonder I didn’t gain 20.  Paella is… not ‘lite’.  Anyhow.) and the rest of the night devolves into laughter and conversations that float in and out of languages and coherence.  It’s another good ending to another (admittedly rough) day on the Camino, and I have a plan to deal with those blisters… tomorrow.