October 16th: Triacastela to Sarria (19 kilometers):

I remember the walk from Triacastela to Sarria being dreary, uncomfortable, soaked in rain and fog, and ending with a twisting, unappealing slog from the city’s outskirts to the upper tiers of the ‘old city’.  Given that I was still feeling weak, and being sick had forced me to say goodbye to many of the people I’d known earlier on the Camino, I wasn’t the most pleasant pilgrim to be around that morning.  I definitely recall being grumpy and unresponsive to several pilgrims, and although I stopped at a couple of bars in the morning, I only got coffee instead of food and stayed mired in my irritations. 

There was a bit of confusion on the final approach to a huge roadways and crossroads immediately before the stone-tiered steps led upwards into the old part of the city where many of the hostels were clustered.  I came walking up to a group of pilgrims, I believe newcomers who were starting that day or a day before, and told them to keep a sharp eye out for the yellow-painted arrows on the street, lampposts, and trash cans.  I gathered from our conversation that they were expecting signs of a more… substantial nature and hadn’t quite picked up on the haphazardness of the Way. 

The rain kept coming, and I resigned myself to the brutal uphill steps away from the commercial center and toward the church; I was disappointed to note that the church nearest a string of hostels on the left-hand side of the street was closed and had no sign for a pilgrim’s mass.  Clouds loomed, the drizzle nearly soaked through my rain gear, and I was ready to find a spot for the night. 

I don’t remember which of the albergues Brierley recommended, but I had my pick.  Each one offered the varying services, but I was looking for two things: a washer/dryer, and a pilgrim’s meal provided.  In retrospect, I’ll admit that I didn’t look very hard.  I walked into one place that looked particularly hotel-like, and was welcomed into a comfortable foyer – in the room beyond there were two huge dining tables being prepared and a kitchen tucked into the back, stairs led up to the right onto three floors of rooms with bunks overlooking the church and the city, and the entire thing looked designed by an Ikea pro with time to spare.  It was very, very homey compared to the chill and the mist outside, so I put my Euros down and followed the hospitalero up to my bunk. 

I was placed in an upstairs room overlooking directly onto the church, whose towers rise high and close and seemed near enough to touch.  I was shortly joined by a couple from Vermont, Jerry and Kathy, who were old and gentle and a little bit snarky.  Then Belgian Daniel, who chose the bunk under my own, Gabrielle, and down the hall from us – Lotus, the Naked Peregrina, who came in from the rain in a torrent of loud cackles, complaints, and strange proclamations.  I wondered if I were in for a rough night.  But I got my things into the wash, got myself reasonably clean in the chilly showers, and went downstairs to wander about. 

Back in the commercial district, I walked many, many blocks before I found an agreeable ATM and a pharmacia… which led to a ridiculous conversation with the pharmacists as I tried to explain that I needed both medicine for cold symptoms and some magic pill to keep me from enjoying the ongoing excitement of explosive diarrhea.  I’d heard tales of some mystery combination of meds that would make me instantly better, and after some tricky hand gestures and pantomimes, they stacked me up with several boxes of pills and sent me on my way, less than 20 Euros poorer. 

I ran into Danielle on the street and happily tried to start a conversation, but she was in a hurry to get back to Jean-Louis who was laid up in a hostel one town ahead with some significant tendon pain.  She was going out in all directions, and I wished her luck and decided to wander around more before heading home for the night.  I walked a few kilometers back toward the tourist hotels to find an internet café where I could print out my boarding passes for my return flight, and my reservations for my hotel back in Pamplona.  I found a genuine outdoor gear store on the Camino that sold all the gear I might have needed 400 kilometers ago, and all of it was so ridiculously over priced as to be downright prohibitive. 

Back at the hostel I found two things that literally changed my whole week – first, on the bookshelf I found a copy of Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, which is one of the best fucking books I’ve ever read.  Gilead is hers, too, and both of those novels take moments of the profoundly ordinary and infuse them with a sense of wonder, mystery, and magic – and she does it without ever reaching for anything expressly magical.  It’s all in the phrasing, and that is pure genius. 

Waiting on dinner, the second thing happened.  When I came downstairs I realized I’d be sharing a table with Lotus, Gabrielle, the Vermonters, and Daniel… and I had my reservations about dear Lotus as well as the negativity from the northerners I’d heard earlier.  I had my judgments. 

Sitting in the den, though, I was drawn into a conversation about film and how film narrative has changed, and although that was interesting, the compelling piece was how each person’s personality really came alive in our conversation.  I was able to laugh and enjoy time with them, and by the time we sat down for dinner I was glad to be part of their crowd for the night.  Lotus and Daniel knew each other already, and she plied us with stories of his kindness and secret compassion – like how he rescued a kitten in one town and carried it under his shirt for three days, hiding it in his hostels, until he could find it a home.  Daniel, for his part, grumbled and blushed and tried to hush her, but I was struck by the knowledge and again impressed by how much I admired him.  The Vermonters and I talked about politics and our fear for the election, our difficulty understanding the conservatives in our country, especially with respect to how they treat the poor and marginalized.  For them it was a human imperative, for me, spiritual. 

Toward the dessert course (i.e. Emptying the Wine Bottles), an Italian pair came in the door, dripping wet and asking desperately for a room.  The hospitalero rushed them upstairs to get them squared away, and they shortly joined our table.  The man was older, perhaps in his 60s or 70s, and his daughter may have been a few years older than me.  He carried himself with a sense of confidence and style – shaved head, easy posture, tortoiseshell glasses… and she was, quite frankly, one of the most immediately beautiful people I have ever seen on earth. 

I’m not saying that lightly.  Later, when they went up to bed before us, the men at the table gave each other glances as if to say “Seriously?”, and when Lotus realized what was being communicated she jumped in with an equally robust and direct observation: “That woman is fucking gorgeous!”.  I have this belief that all people are beautiful if they allow themselves to be fully present, and that all people have aspects of their physicality or personality that are charming… and also that there are some people who just knock you out of your socks.  It was interesting to see the whole crowd respond to her beauty before anyone said anything – especially since although the man spoke adequate English, she spoke none and did little more than smile at our rowdy conversation. 

I went to bed that night with the windows open and the church bells ringing the hours, more optimistic for the next day and feeling energetic.  I thought about how strange it was to be able to walk into a new foreign city, navigate the stores and services I needed without help or supervision, to fall into a crowd of fast friends from a scattering of countries and find joy in this dreary place.  I thought about my parents’ approach to travel and new circumstances and my limited exposure to real exploration as a child, and fell asleep grateful that I was comfortable, joyful, and engaged in Spain – by myself halfway across the world. 

October 15th, O’Cebreiro to Triacastela (22 kilometers):

My first day after the Vesuvius Virus, at least prior to an uneasy brunch, was mostly a blur.  I have a vague sense of leaving O’Cebreiro and following the Camino into the Galician landscape, which almost instantly swapped Spain for Ireland in terms of disposition and weather.  I was lucky to have missed the driving rain from the day before (Game Postponed Due to Illness), and although the sky was overcast and there was a persistent mist, the temperatures were easy to bear and I remember the walk as easy. 

In the first village, I stopped in a crowded bar for my first food and coffee of the day, shakily finding a table in the back corner and wedging my backpack into the corner.  The place had the demeanor of an English pub, all dark hardwood and low ceilings, and smelled of strong coffee and toast.  I remember having only two options – coffee, toast, jam, butter, and orange juice, or the same items without the juice.  I dodged the orange acid bomb and waited on my toast; the bar became quickly crowded and I found myself sharing my table with three older women: A silver-haired Irish woman and a married couple named Pepper and Lisa who were from Virginia.  I immediately warmed to the American couple. 

We made conversation, ate, and left.  The first half of my day was a strange bag:  the weather was foggy and decidedly Gaelic, and although I more or less remember the walk through ridiculously green forests, the downhill trajectory off the mountain, and the sun coming out as I approached Triacastela in the valley… many of the details are lost to my efforts not to get sick.  Some of the details that do stand out:

Debating, and risking, a tuna and tomato empanada at a roadside café where a random American suggested I try the weird carbonated Gatorade that is sold in Spain.  It was good, and my stomach held.  

The anxious, high-maintenance American woman, a day-tripper, who kept running back and forth along the Camino snapping photos and yelling loudly to her husband about her observations, mostly negative, who pissed me off so much I walked through several of her photos because I just didn’t give a damn at that point. 

 

Several very nice people who offered advice on how not to feel like crap and ignored my social cues of “I feel sick and disgusting, but I’m walking, please give me some space.” 

That weird, intoxicated feeling of walking 22 kilometers on almost no food, then suddenly becoming equally ravenous and nauseated at the first smell of warm food. 

In any case, when I got to Triacastela I was feeling decent, and walked around the town to scope out the possible sleeping situations.  There weren’t many pilgrims around since the ‘recommended’ stop was still a few kilometers ahead, but the ones who were noticeable were clustered around several outdoor tables at the restaurants on the main street.  According to the guide book, the town had housed three castles, none of which remained.  I briefly explored the graveyard next to the church, noting an abundance of Camino iconography, and taking a few minutes to pray in the chapel. While I was there, the priest was busy cleaning and readying the chapel for mass, but I ventured a brief conversation with him in Spanish and he struck me as kind. 

I decided to stay at a network hostel called Complexo Jacobeo that, for less than ten Euros, offered what seemed like a ridiculously nice place to stay.  Full kitchen, smaller rooms with wooden bunks and thick blankets, expansive bathrooms, a large downstairs area, and laundry.  Given my level of filth the day before, I wanted that laundry so bad I could taste it.  I checked in, dropped my stuff, showered, and grabbed a washer before checking my email.

While I was sitting there, a young woman came in and commented that our backpacks were the same (Osprey Kestrel 48 Liters, aka The Best Pack Ever), and introduced herself as Katie from Virginia.  We ended up bunking together in the same room as the Cuban expats I’d met earlier – me below and her above.  She can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think we actually swapped packs at one point.  In the lazy afternoon nap-read-relax hours, she pointed me toward a grocery store that actually sold English-language novels, and I went in search of fiction. 

I grabbed a few things at the store that I thought would be good for my stomach – yogurt, milk, cereal, bread, and… candy.  All remarkably poor choices I’d realize much later, but let’s face it: If you’re sick in Spain and feeling low, Lucky Charms sounds like a great idea.  The book section was remarkably well stocked, and I was shocked to see Kazuo Ishiguro, Paul Auster, and a ton of Haruki Murakami.  Not what I’d expect alongside the obligatory Dan Brown and company.  Nothing jumped out at me. 

I’ve forgotten to describe Katie.  At that point on my pilgrimage, coming out of sickness and feeling old and busted, I needed her youth, energy, and optimism.  I’m still grateful for it, and how later that night she introduced me to Mandie and Melissa, all college friends on the Camino.  Katie was bright, intelligent, insightful, and funny.  After long stretches of being serious and thinking about serious things, she and her friends were a breath of life.  Looking back now, it’s hard to comprehend that I didn’t spend more time on the Camino with them than I did.  I’d finish the pilgrimage with them in Santiago, but at that point I didn’t know it or plan on it.  What I do know is that watching Katie get out of the upper bunk was one of the funniest and most awkward things I’ve ever seen.  It was like a box of elbows and knees falling down a flight of stairs.  Katie, love you.

I hung out with those three in the kitchen for a while, taking advantage of their generous offering of leftover pasta, before heading out to the pilgrim’s mass.  I was looking forward to my nightly mass again after a couple of days, and expected the small country chapel to be memorable.  Little did I know. 

By the time mass was to begin, there were only five of us in the chapel.  I remember the gentle Spanish couple I wrote about before, and a couple of older German or Austrian women I vaguely recognized.  The priest reminded me of nothing so much as a swarthy Nikita Khrushchev – and he immediately swept us up from the pews to sit behind the altar on benches and enlisted us as readers in the mass.  He had pre-printed cards in as many languages as we had between us and a missal printed in a binder with the day’s readings in English, Spanish, German, and French.  I was both touched that he was so quick to involve us in the mass, and saddened that Triacastela offered so few congregants that the priest had a plan in place for tiny masses.  It felt unfair to his commitment, his obvious love of his chapel and his willingness to meet our needs as pilgrims.  When we made our offerings of peace to one another, he took a moment to encourage us not to just shake hands at a distance, but hug each other forcefully and with enthusiasm.  One of the best memories I have from the Camino is the feeling of being bear-hugged by this large, happy priest, as if I were one of his family. 

Of course, we are family, by virtue of being members of the body of Christ, and connected by that love and compassion… but it’s not often that we express it in that way. 

Santiago, and the end of my pilgrimage to the tomb of James the Apostle, companion of Christ, was one week away.  

October 14th, O’Cebreiro to O’Cebreiro (0 kilometers):

October 14^th.  The Day of The Vesuvius, aka The Day I Vomited for Ten Straight Hours.  WARNING: GROSSNESS AHEAD.  I did not hike this day, I did not attend mass, I did not venture further from my bunk than the bathroom until after 7PM – and then only because I was so weak from hunger that I had tunnel vision. 

There are no pictures from October 14^th, although if I’d had the forethought of my friend Katie, I could have taken some excellent self-shots from the hostel bathroom at 4AM. 

Instead, the night and day went something like this: I woke up at 10PM to the first rumblings of trouble in my gut and shuffled my bleary-eyed self to the bathroom.  Nothing doing.  I came back to my bed, drank water, tried unsuccessfully to fall back asleep.  Things get more… insistent.  I return to the bathroom for round two of the waiting game.  I have a sense I might need to throw up, but it’s just not at that point yet.  Back to bed, to the grumbles and snores of a hundred other pilgrims.  I notice outside the weather is dramatically stormy. 

Ten minutes later I’m racing to the bathroom, where I spend 90% of the next 6 hours in a cement stall the size of a coat closet, crouched over both the toilet and a rapidly filling trashcan at the same time.  There is a tiny prison window in the wall in front of me, and it will not close… which is just aces since I am definitely running a fever, experiencing alternating hot flashes and cold chills, and the temperatures outside have dropped to just above freezing and a driving rain is… um… driving itself through the window and onto me. 

I guess I should have been grateful for the light shower given my increasing level of filth (Ever seen a 2-liter coke bottle explode?  There’s a significant kill radius, and I’m in an enclosed space.), but mainly I was just cold, wet, and miserable.

I have adventures during this period, mostly involving searching out fresh rolls of toilet paper in between bouts of projectile vomiting.  Emptying my trash can into another, larger trash can with a lid, without being caught.  Attempting to drink water unsuccessfully. Crying.

Around 7AM I have, I think, come through the worst of it and fall fitfully asleep.  I know I won’t be able to get up and hike that day, and I’m convinced I have food poisoning.  I am unresponsive as Robert, Esther, and company get up and leave, and the short periods I am awake I am terrified and depressed that if I can’t hike for more than a day I will most likely be unable to finish the Camino in time to get back to the U.S.  Think on that for a minute.  It was a low, low point. 

Around 10AM I am woken by the hospitalera who has come into the room to clean.  I get up and attempt to tell her I am sick and beg to stay another day.  She doesn’t understand.  I pantomime a fever, vomiting, and diarrhea until her eyes get big and she nods her head, gesturing for me to go back to sleep.  On my way to the bathroom a couple of hours later, she has found an early-arriving pilgrim who speaks a tiny bit of English to ask me what I need.  I ask if there is a soda machine anywhere, and if there is a place to get ibuprofen.  She says no, but she can call a taxi to take me the 15 miles to a pharmacy or the 30 to a doctor.  I say no, but I feel so sick that I believe I’ll eventually have to go to the hospital, I’ll lose all my money, and go home having come so close to the end of the pilgrimage and left it unfinished. 

When I come out of the bathroom, she and another hostel worker are moving my stuff to the bed closest to the bathroom.  The next time I wake up, there is a giant bottle of Coke next to my bed.  I have no idea where the hospitalera got it from, but it’s there.  When I wake up after that, she has found a pilgrim who has an entire sheet of prescription strength ibuprofen for me – Danielle, the Canadian woman who was herself sick in Astorga. 

Finally, when I wake up with enough confidence to clean myself up a bit and go in search of food, I look everywhere for the hospitalera but can’t find her.  I remember as a blur, more the idea of a kind, soft-voiced woman than an actual person, but I’ll be damned if her small caring actions didn’t save me from wholehearted despair when I was sick.  I don’t even have the words for how grateful I feel.

When I walk outside the hostel, there is freezing rain and it is so cold that the 100-yard walk to a bar leaves me shaking with chill.  I go in, slump at a table, and order soup.  The waiter offers octopus stew and I almost puke on the table.  In my weak Spanish I ask if he just has vegetable soup, some bread, and a soda, and he says yes, backing away like I’m a plague creature. 

I sit there, sipping my Coke, alone, until a thick, robust man in his 50s leaves the bar and comes over.  I tell him frankly that I’m sick and won’t be good company, and he says it doesn’t matter.  His name is David, from Belgium, and he first orders a plate of octopus and then essentially forces me to eat my food, punctuating his own conversation with orders, “Eat!  You must eat or you will die!  Eat, my friend!”.  While I’m tackling my soup, he tells me that he has walked from the front door of his house in Belgium all the way to Spain and will complete the pilgrimage in honor of his first grandson.  He never knew his grandfather, nor did his father know his great-grandfather, so his tribute is to go on pilgrimage.  He tells me that he worked in an industrial plant for years but now trains police dogs in his retirement. 

As he eats his octopus, he stops after nearly every bite to let loose a series of brutal curses in English, Spanish, and Dutch.  Apparently it is delicious, but painfully spicy. 

David is robust, matter of fact, large of heart and presence, healthily thick of neck and chest, with just enough silliness about him to remind me of a Hobbit.  He’s the kind of middle-aged man I want to be.  Dinner is good, I leave the table feeling better, and return to the hostel to get an uninterrupted night’s sleep. 

October 13th, Villafranca del Bierzo to O’Cebreiro (31 kilometers):

My most vividly joyful day on the Camino de Santiago was also one of the longest.  I woke, rolled out of my bunk in the corner, and made my sleepy-eyed way down three flights of stairs to the lobby where the owners had set up a buffet breakfast.  It was a small room, and crowded, and the early morning confusion of many pilgrims vying for spots in the toaster and the rapidly diminishing coffee felt hectic until I squeezed myself in at a table with Pepe, Rosa, Bill & Jan the Canadians, and a young quiet Spanish couple I only barely recognized.  The man looked a bit like Stephano, but with a kinder face, and his girlfriend or wife was the mirror image of a young Rachel Weisz. 

With such intriguing faces across the table at breakfast, laughing and making plans for the day, comparing notes and blisters and passing bread and jam, I walked out the door into a navy-blue cold morning fully intent on taking the low route through the valley.

When I came to the decision point just up the block, though, I looked right across the bridge and toward the roadways and tunnels, and left to broken cobblestone street that shot starkly up past ramshackle houses and disappeared into mist and curves.  I could see the mountain on Route Pradela right in front of me even though it was a substantial distance away.  A couple of pilgrims walked by, poles clacking on the stones, and turned right.  But Pradela whispered to me, and I listened.  I went left, striking out on the steep uphill, and within moments I could look down onto Villafranca under the fog as the dawn just started to break over the far valley wall.  It was deeply magical in that moment – I’d walked myself up above the earth, above the village, above the other pilgrims, and into a gorgeous elevated path that continued into the clouds. 

For the next few miles I climbed onto the mountain, following the one path as it widened, narrowed, took twists and turns through cuts and draws, ran a ridgeline, rose above the power lines, and took me into a different world.  I could look back and see the terrain stretching out for miles behind me, Villafranca twinkling in the morning underneath the bright rising sun; I could look below and see the road through the valley, pilgrims stretched out along the senda.  Closest to me were clouds and pine trees that reminded me of nothing so much as North Carolina and parts of north Georgia where I grew up and played as a child.  There were wide sections of pine needle carpet that could have been lifted from my parents’ back yard. 

And the entire time I was up there, I didn’t see a single other pilgrim. 

There were signs of other pilgrims everywhere: yellow arrows, waymarkers, and rock cairns (to which I added my own).  But for the hours I walked in the morning before crossing over to the other side and dropping down to meet the main route in a village called Trabadelo, I was alone with my thoughts.  My mind wandered all over the place: to my walk with Brother Sam and the Franciscan response to the gospels (I sang, loudly, skipped rocks and laughed at birds), to the breakup with Anne that in a complex way brought me to the Camino (I literally prayed the rosary until the bitterness and anger went away), to the gratitude and strength I felt given by God through the people I’d met and the sheer experience of going to a foreign country to participate in this incredible pilgrimage.  I was physically full of joy – something above and beyond the excitement of a trip, above gratitude for its’ own sake, above happiness.  It felt spiritual and plugged into what, for me, are our must sublime emotions.  It was the kind of joy that allows you to take delight in the smallest, and the largest things. 

Trabadelo was initially confusing, but after some wandering around I found a market and an open café sitting above the main Camino.  When I walked in, I saw Esther and Robert sitting at a table, and after I dragged my brain back into the real world from its’ mystical cave, we were laughing and sharing coffee.

I should say, Esther and I were sharing coffee.  Robert was drinking red wine.  His third glass.  At 11am.  When I realized he was drunk, I instantly withdrew and went to the bathroom.  I didn’t want to be that person, to step back from another pilgrim, but I felt fragile and contemplative after climbing Pradela.  When I came back to the table, he’d already taken off, but Esther was still there and we left together.  On the first stretch of flat road toward La Portela de Valcarce, she was distant and quiet, walking at different paces – so we kept awkwardly leap-frogging.  I stayed in my head, and she in hers, and all we exchanged were smiles. 

Somewhere before the village where I planned to stop at Albergue Brasil, we found a matching pace and started talking – first about our home towns, and dogs, and work, and then venturing into deeper subjects.  By the time we walked past the albergue, I was feeling energetic and reluctant to part with my friend, so we kept walking.  We stopped for coffee and sweets in a town called Herrerias – a gorgeous bakery run by a sharp-tongued, impatient woman who nonetheless loaded us up with delicious food and chided us for sitting outside in the midday chill.  A couple of younger Asian pilgrims came in as well in the middle of an argument, and Esther and I chuckled about their histrionics; up above us was an elevated roadway bridge that reminded me so strongly of the Blue Ridge Parkway that for the rest of the day I could not shake the impression.

Shortly thereafter, the Camino began to climb – one of the steepest continuous sections as you climb through several tiny villages on your way to Galicia province and the apex at O’Cebreiro.  The climb seemed to last forever, and although it was a bright, dramatically sunny day, I began to worry about making it to the top in time.  Esther and I picked up our pace, becoming drenched in sweat and slamming snacks on the way instead of stopping at the bars and cafes; the string of villages were so much like Valle Crucis and Boone that I started having intense flashbacks and nostalgia for my old home – including the roadside cows and broken fences. 

In the final village before O’Cebreiro I passed the Coloradans sitting outside an albergue, and they invited me to stay rather than walk on – they’d been hearing that some of the previous seasonal hostels were already closed for the year and so the municipal hostel in O’Cebreiro promised to be crowded, but I had kept myself going with the promise of the 12^th century chapel there, and so I continued. 

We walked into the town blinking and confused – on the far side there was a road discharging tourists from cars and buses, but between was a tiny, tiny village that could have been lifted wholesale from medieval Spain.  Low rock buildings sat under thatched roofs, there were no streetlights, and the whole thing could fit in a city block.  The church stood dominant on one end, the hostel on the other, looking over the valley ahead and the final push to Santiago. 

In Galicia the hostels are well-funded and run efficiently by the government, and you can tell.  The xunta packed 500 pilgrims into three stories like a barracks, and although it was massively crowded, loud, chaotic, and the showers had no doors, people were friendly and excited.  I got the sense that many pilgrims were starting here or had just started and were justly filled with first-week enthusiasm and giddiness.  I felt like a veteran, an old hat, with my three weeks’ experience. 

Esther and I ran into Robert and one of his friends, and we first went for a mid-afternoon beer at one of the three restaurants just across from the church.  I was bundled in all of my clothes but still felt cold – two weeks later O’Cebreiro would be under snow due to the elevation and its’ location as a buffer to the weather coming in from the ocean to our west.  I left them a bit early to explore the chapel prior to mass.  I didn’t realize beforehand that Iglesia Cebreiro was run by Franciscans, and I first spent time in prayer at the grave of the priest who largely reinvigorated the Camino de Santiago.  He is buried in the church itself, just to the left of the altar.  I remember feeling such overwhelming gratitude for this man’s efforts – a life’s work that helped ease the way to pilgrimage for so many, a life’s work that resonates in the hearts of hundreds of thousands of former pilgrims. 

From the monk at the ‘gift table’, I paid 5 euros for a small book by the Bishop of Lugo about the Camino as a fundamentally Christian experience.  Aside from the gospels themselves and Fr. James Martin’s The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, there isn’t another piece of spiritual writing that has had such a profound impact on my faith.  Period.  I’d go so far as to call it life-changing, even though it sounds cliché. 

The mass was full, and beautiful, and celebrated in multiple languages.  I ended up sitting next to the Spanish couple from breakfast – and when the Our Father came around I appreciated the man’s lack of hesitation to grab my hand through the prayer.  He seemed full of faith and happy to celebrate the liturgy.  I thought about how Queen Isobel would have celebrated her own mass in this very chapel when she went on pilgrimage and felt momentarily overwhelmed and dizzy from the largeness of history.  The facts I could understand, but getting my brain around the concept proved difficult.  I was starting to feel more comfortable with the Spanish mass, and when it was over I smiled at the couple next to me and reluctantly went outside for dinner.  

Esther, Robert, Twan, Korean Li, and Polish Greg and I all ended up at a place that resembled a pub in England: dark heavy wood, large tables, good beer, and hot food in abundance.  I spent the meal laughing with the newcomers at Robert’s stories from the sea, and when we left to go back to the albergue I was in high spirits.  When we went into the enormous shared bedroom, we realized that all of us were randomly right next to each other in the bunks – a fact that cracked Esther up into girlish peals of tears and laughter; it felt like a sleepover in middle school.  For an hour or so after, it sounded like one as well, as our section would become quiet only to break into raucous cackles when one person or another would make a raunchy joke in the dark.  It was lovely.  

October 12th: Ponferrada to Villafranca del Bierzo (23 kilometers):

Morning at the municipal hostel in Ponferrada was busy and crowded; I came disheveled into the kitchen to find nearly every seat at the table full.  I looked around for a place to sit only to see Danielle and Jean-Louis, the friendly Quebecois from the meseta, motion me over and offer some spare yogurt and grapefruit, and we made small talk about the day.  I didn’t know then how much time we’d spend together in the last stretch of our pilgrimage, and I ventured outside to find a proper bar with breakfast food.

Across the empty parking lot and the main road was the only open café I could see, a place full of cigarette smoke and hastily commanded by a thick-chested bear of a man who took my order ‘My Cousin Vinny’-style (one breakfast, coffee or tea).  There were some familiar faces – mostly on the ‘familiar’ rather than ‘friendly’ side, and I ended up sharing a table with a Cuban expat couple in their 60s who were on their fourth Camino.  The man spoke at top volume from underneath a curled cowboy hat, talked about how much he loved living in Atlanta, and joked about how every time they’d finished the Camino ‘it was the last time’, but after a few years his soft-spoken, demure wife would begin to talk him up for another 500 miles through Spain.  They finished and paid before me, and I soon followed them into the early morning.

Ponferrada in the early, early hours of the morning was the only place on the Camino I felt persistently nervous: the Way was poorly signed, the streets twisting and winding their way through increasingly dodgy, poorly lit areas, and there were still crowds of young men lingering around the bars under smoke and neon lights.  I wandered around for quite some time, checking the guidebook to little avail, and eventually fell in with several other pilgrims who showed similar signs of concern.  Through a series of hand gestures and one-word sentences, we followed what appeared to be a natural course through a school campus and out of the city via the bridge, our course taking us into an outlying community with a beautiful, quiet stone church.  As the sun began to come up, it granted a beautiful light to the statue of Mary out front, and I was glad the Camino had taken me past this point.

Most of the rest of the morning was the same – wandering through several suburbs of Ponferrada, stopping at a roadside bar for a late brunch where I drank coffee at the table outside and watched the pilgrims shuffle past, and eventually finding my way into more wine vineyards.  I had planned to cover a lot of ground, and even though I stopped at nearly every opportunity to explore the chapels and villages (always, always in search of coffee), I made very good time.  Nearly two-thirds of the way to Villafranca, I stopped at an upscale café adjacent to the village church to have a late lunch.  There was a wedding wrapping up at the church, and its’ revelry and volume spilled out into the street, children and old people laughing, and I was struck by how much I wanted a friend alongside me.  In that moment, on a bright sunny day with coffee in front of me, I wanted either Vittoria or Jeppe there to laugh and be silly, to revel in our sweat and toil together. 

The stretch from lunch to Villafranca became quickly tedious, following the road for the afternoon as temperatures rose and I shed my layers in a vain attempt to keep from sweating.  By the time I began the long climb uphill, I looked as if I were back in Georgia in the summer: rings of sweat around my neck and down my back, empty water bottles clanking against my pack.  Oh, and some of the signs were… mildly confusing:

When I crested the ridge to my first view of Villafranca del Bierzo, however, the effort paid off: Villafranca rests carefully between hills like a picture of medieval Europe, and my imagination was active as I walked into the city.  The first few hostels on the outskirts of town looked unappealing, and I needed to find an ATM, so I headed toward the parque central. 

Cobblestones.  Steep cobblestones.  After a full day’s walk on dirt, gravel, and pavement, with bruised feet and an aching back, cobblestones are close to torture.  Those damned cobblestones wound their way to the city center, bringing me, cursing under my breath with each step, to an open square full of tables, restaurants, and (thankfully) banks where I got my cash and plopped down on the sidewalk to catch my breath.  I’d forgotten that it was a national holiday as well, and the town was feeling festive.  Mindful of the hour, I got up and pushed on to the hostel across the river, a place called Albergue de la Piedra I’d heard recommended. 

I walked in the door to a tiny kitchen/reception area immediately ahead of two other pilgrims, a blonde woman and a man who looked exactly like a young, grizzled Charlton Heston.  Before we could ask the price or pull out our credencials, the couple running the hostel had us sit down, take off our boots, and brought us coffee.  A golden retriever wandered up and sat on my feet; the hospitalera told me his name was Conan because “He is muy fuerte”.  The pup wagged his tail and licked my hand.  De la Piedra welcomed me in like a second home, and before I knew it I’d been shown around, offered use of the laundry, chosen my bed in a gorgeous fourth story room open to the air and boasting heavy, comfortable beds, and been given a brief history of the building.  It seems the couple had built the hostel themselves, making use of the native rock as a fourth wall that ran from the ground floor to the ceiling… I was jealous of their commitment and lifestyle. 

The two pilgrims from earlier and I were the first ones in, and so we made introductions (Esther from Copenhagen and Rob from Charleston) and threw our laundry in together.  Esther lay down for a nap; Rob and I went in search of drinks and conversation.  Right around the corner from us was a café overlooking the bridge, and after he bought himself wine and me coffee, we sat on the balcony and told our stories.  Rob was a merchant marine in his twenties who had come on pilgrimage at the last minute (beginning in Leon), brutally damaged his feet in the process, and decided to become a priest.  A Jesuit, no less.  This he told me in such a direct, earnest manner that it was a while before I realized his manner was the result of his constant intoxication. 

I struggled with Rob, to be honest.  My gut reaction was to be judgmental and pull away from his drunkenness, his want to ‘instruct’ me on matters of faith, and his poor social timing.  I’d come on pilgrimage to be still of heart and mind, to focus and accept, and this guy was going out in all directions and quickly attaching himself to me in the short time we talked.  But as I sat there, listening, I recognized that judgment and worked to let it go, to practice just being with another person and grateful for their company. 

After our drinks were finished, Rob went out to explore and I went back to the hostel, finding Esther reading on a couch upstairs.  I sat down on a couch across from her and we started talking.  Her English was good enough to communicate facts but slow to recognize sarcasm, but we did well enough.  We shared our stories and talked about our respective professions – she worked in social services with teenagers as well. 

Esther told me the saddest reason for going on pilgrimage I heard the entire time I was in Spain, but I won’t repeat it here. 

A strange thing happened as we talked – I found myself rapidly, powerfully attracted to her.  Despite her immediate sadness and sorrow, she exuded a vibrant sense of life and fullness coupled with a feminine goofiness that somehow worked.  It was something of the sense that she was a person who had always, and would always, be fully genuine in any situation.  Maybe I can’t adequately describe it, but it was there.  For what it’s worth, in that conversation I loved her goofball laugh and her clever expressions, her calm assuredness and how she sat like a cowboy, legs splayed and boots propped up on a chair.  It was one of those moments where I wish sincerely there were a way to say "You are beautiful, and special, and recognized" without sounding like a creeper, without expressing intent. 

Soon, Rob returned from his wanderings, irritated that no grocery stores were open on the holiday, and we decided to go to the restaurant across the street for their pilgrim’s menu.  Walking into the restaurant, Casa Mendez, we ran into Fanny and Marc – the French couple I’d met on my birthday so long ago – and we all found a table together.

Casa Mendez was more upscale than I was accustomed to in small towns, with a wide round table and proper silverware laid out.  I had to ask the French which fork was for which dish, and for most of the meal I was happy to be quiet and bask in their delighted banter.  They were both quick to insist I return to do the Camino from Arles, their hometown, and quick to insist that the ‘rude France’ stereotypes are untrue outside of Paris.  If France is anything like those two, I will be happy to go one day.  I laughed at the banter until my sides hurt and watched Rob down glass after glass of wine, topped off with some strange green dessert liquor.  By the time the check came he was, in a word, drunk. 

We finished the night around our table with a discussion of which of the three paths to take in the morning – the standard route along the roadway, a more scenic route over the mountains for most of the way to the west promising rugged terrain but little civilization and few waymarks, or the eastern path over Mount Pradela which would merge with the Way a little over halfway to O’Cebreiro – the town marking our entrance into Galicia province and the official final stretch of the Camino de Santiago.  Still undecided, I followed my companions back to the hostel and went to bed excited, thrilled, and more than a little sad to move toward the end of my pilgrimage.  Little did I know what was to come.  

October 11th, Molinaseca to Ponferrada (7 kilometers):

Breakfasted at the hostel with Sam and the same crowd from the night before; it took me a bit to screw up my courage and ask someone to take a picture of he and I before I ventured out onto the Camino, intent on making my way just a few short miles up the way to Ponferrada… and promptly walked back inside for another cup of coffee.  Rain was happening, and since I wasn’t going far for the day, there wasn’t any reason to hurry on. 

I was sad, however, to watch the pilgrims throw on their ponchos and head out into the early morning rain – I was acutely aware that my choice to linger in Ponferrada and visit the Templar Castle there meant I’d probably not see these folks again.  I’m terrible at goodbyes, as I’ve said before. 

Once it became light and the rain lessened, I made my way down the road and wound all through several suburbs on the way into Ponferrada – the Camino at this point wasn’t particularly interesting but for the fact that there was no place out of sight to go to the bathroom.  For a while I played leap frog with the same older couple as the day before, and by the time I made sense of the confusing way points on the grey streets of lower Ponferrada, I was desperate for a restroom. 

Literally across the street from the castle’s edifice is a Godiva café, where I could already see pilgrims crowded around tables under the brightly lit neon displays; it was an obvious choice.  When I walked in and dropped my stuff in a corner, beelining for the facilities, an older French guy I’d talked to at dinner intercepted me to grab me by the shoulders and insist I buy an apple cupcake.  Hijinks ensued as I tried to both ensure him I would in the future while extracting myself en route to relief.  When I came back from the restroom, he was gone, but I got the cupcake.  It was delicious. 

Since the castle wasn’t to open for an hour or so, I made my way through Ponferrada, to the wide flat square past the clock tower and in front of the Ayunamiento, explored gift shops with a variety of Templar-oriented trinkets, a Spanish-language comic book shop that was exactly like every comic shop I’ve been in across the U.S., and had lunch. 

On the way back into the castle I stopped by the church, the site of a Marian vision, and ducked through the heavy wooden doors into the dark, silent, incense-full church. The only thing well lit was the altar piece showing Mary in splendor, and for a moment I stood there, imagining what it must be like to have visions of the Virgin.  I thought about blessings and joy. 

When another visitor came in, cracking the doors to let a shaft of light into the church, I realized there was another person sitting, head bowed, on the next to last row.  I recognized Brother Sam, and after he was finished praying I sat down beside him, whispering my gratitude at running into him again.  We walked outside and talked about our plans for the day, and this ‘second goodbye’ felt like a blessing, felt easy, felt natural.  I did, as usual, completely forget to get his contact information, which I realized later.

The Templar Castle was empty in the first few minutes of its’ visitor’s hours, and I had my time and leisure to explore the ruins, imagining knights along the walls looking out over the various sections of Ponferrada.  High on the defensive positions, peeking through arrow slots, it struck me how much the position of the castle must have been its’ advantage.  Although the guidebook had made snarky comments about the touristy aspect of the castle, I found it easy to appreciate the site and let my mind wander, imagining how much time and effort it must have taken to build it, how cold and strong it must have seemed to live there, battles. 

Then the apple cupcake came back to haunt me, and in the very, very nice bathroom in the Castillo de Templarios, I broke a toilet.  I made my escape quickly. 

In Ponferrada, the municipal hostel is on the far outskirts of downtown, across a busy street and parking lot, down the Calle de Peregrinos and behind a gate.  Ominous as it seemed, it immediately struck me as welcoming – there were many pilgrims waiting in the courtyard outside for the building to open at 2, and there was a sign encouraging us to make ourselves welcome, to shower in the garden bathrooms, to hang out laundry, etc.  When the doors opened, I checked in between a Californian guy I vaguely knew via Barry and a gorgeous young French woman who I thought I knew, but upon asking her name, didn’t.  Her girlfriend was also gorgeous, in that Tegan and Sara kind of way.  Asymmetrical haircuts, oddly fashionable.  Unfair.

After the typical shower and shave, I spent a few hours waiting on a good time to go out for dinner and the mass.  The Asian couple and several of their friends literally took over the kitchen area, and this time around I made confusing introductions across the language barrier.  The Japanese guy referred to himself as ‘Jim’; he and his girlfriend were the only of their crowd that spoke any English but we made do.  Their food, stir fry and some potato dish, smelled amazing and made me jealous.  I couldn’t think of a proper way to invite myself in, so I went out into the twilight in search of food and mass.

Walking up the Calle de Peregrinos yet again, I passed proper bars with leather-jacketed men smoking cigarettes outside, the first time I’d seen the like in Spain.  I spent a good 45 minutes walking from restaurant to restaurant in the old city looking for one that was open, to no avail.  Hungry and anxious not to miss the mass at 7, I got angrier and angrier, until I rounded the corner into the square facing the church and saw a placard being placed outside a warmly lit café and open tables underneath the stone awning. 

It was a perfect meal – personal sized stone fired pizzas and a pint of thick, dark beer suggested by the waiter.  He’d studied in the U.S. and spoke great English, and I was grateful to have an easy conversation with a friendly face.  For the first half of my meal, I was the only person there, until Mary and Joseph came wandering by and took my suggestion to try out the pizza.  We made small talk after they made their orders, and I paid and walked over to the mass nearby. 

When I came in, I didn’t see any other recognizable pilgrims, but the church was full of older women chanting some Marian responsorial I didn’t recognize.  It may have been ‘Queen of Heaven’, but in my post-pizza-beer easiness, I enjoyed listening to the repetition and ritual, allowing my mind to wander and think more about those Marian visions from earlier. 

The mass itself was slow and beautiful, the priest had a deep compelling voice he used to great effect, and as the church filled up I found myself sandwiched between a family and two wrinkled old women – who didn’t shy away from holding hands during the Our Father and patted me, grinning, on the shoulder when the priest called the pilgrims forward after the mass was finished.  Looking out over the assembled crowd while the priest read his blessing in English, Spanish, German, and French, everyone looked happy and joyful, and so was I, feeling blessed and rested after an easy day exploring. 

And just to add one more fine thing to the day – when I went back to the hostel, I ran into Joseph Maria in the parking lot… so just as I had said goodbye to Sam in the morning, I found myself blessed with another friend I thought lost on the Camino.