I’m still not sleeping so well. I’m tired enough that I fall asleep easily, but then about 2:30am my body is wondering what time zone it’s in and revives to think about that a while. From 4-8, then, it sleeps in fits and starts with weird dreams. I was at a conference wearing a very long robe for some reason in last night’s dream.
The morning walk was really quite lovely. We were worried we wouldn’t walk well (that might be first sentence I’ve ever written in which every word begins with a w!). But we were feeling better this morning, and the Camino going out of Comillas was on very nice manicured streets, and then went out along the sea for a few miles. Then we turned inland and started doing hills again. Once again, we were pretty whooped by the time we made it to our hotel in Unquera. This was the longest stage we’re doing (16.7 miles), and it was almost as hilly as yesterday.
The second half of the day it rained constantly — not heavy rain, but a drizzle without end. We limped the last mile to the hotel, took the elevator up two floors rather than the stairs, and soaked our feet in cold water in the tub. It took about an hour to revive enough to think about what to do next. Then I went to the supermercado to buy some snacks that would tide us over until dinner would be available at the restaurants. On the way back, though, I saw a pizza place that looked like it might be open. So I stopped and asked and found out they would serve pizza and pasta at the uncivilized hour of 7pm. I went back to our room and we ate some snacks to give us enough energy to walk again to dinner. It turned out to be a fun place: Pizzeria Bras.
My Google translator said that “bras” in Spanish means “bras” in English. We only saw women working there, but thought it would be strange to name your pizzeria after women’s undergarments. So we wondered what else it might mean. Chris spotted a sign saying something about returning to Brazil, and then the real give away was seeing the Guarana in the refrigerator. So when the matron of the restaurant returned, I asked if she was from Brazil. Her eyes lit up and she said “sim”.
She was not my Character del Dia though. Neither was the British woman we saw several times today. She first came upon us saying “buen Camino” as you do to everyone, and I had a hunch she didn’t look Spanish, so I said in English, “you’re going faster than we are, so come around us.” That made her start talking English in that north London accent that sounds like Adele, so I’ll just call her that since I don’t know her real name. Adele has been hiking since France and intends to go all the way to Santiago. And she’s not just doing the regular stages. Today her goal was to go 50 km which is about 30 miles. We wished her well, and she took off. Then in another half mile or so, she was standing beside the road, looking at a sign that said something about an alternative way, which was 3 km shorter. So we both decided to take it, and she took off ahead of us again. About 2 miles into that alternative way, the road turned and we almost went with it, but checking my gps, it looked like the alternative way should go straight into a much narrower path. We took it, and started up a significant hill. That went on for over a mile, and soon after that, Adele came up from behind us again. She said she had stayed on the main road, which went a mile down and then dead ended, so she had to walk the mile back, and then up the hill and caught us again. Once again we wished her well as she went ahead. Then we caught her again as she was pondering things at another fork in the road. I thought it looked like we should go left; she thought the right fork might be better. So we wished her well again… and never saw her again.
We also met up with the Taiwanese guy from yesterday again, and I asked if he was able to find a room last night. He seemed pleased we remembered him and was relieved to say that he found a room right by the beach and slept very well.
The most interesting character, and thus my choice for the Character del Dia feature of today’s post, was Dominic. Just a mile or so into the hike today on the very nice path on the outskirts of Comillas, a guy with bright red hair was walking toward us with a pack on his back and the telltale sign of a scallop shell dangling from it. Again, he gave off a non-Spanish vibe so I hazarded English, “You seem to be going the wrong way.” He laughed and started telling us in a thick Irish accent that he had started in Finisterra and is walking the Camino backwards. That’s kind of funny, because we also met an Irish woman yesterday walking toward us, though she was simply backtracking looking for her black cat pin that she had lost. Still, generalizing from my sample of two, the Irish seem to go about things in reverse! Back to Dominic.
Finisterra is literally “the end of the Earth”. If you keep going on the Camino past Santiago a couple more days, you get to the West Coast of Spain and the little village of Finisterra. Dominic started there and has been walking about 20 days, intending to end at the beginning of the route. We traded information about what the other can expect in their future in terms of landscape and hills. We said how hard yesterday was and warned him about it, while he said that his yesterday was OK. That makes me think he thought his path today was OK too, since our today (his yesterday) seemed equally hard as our yesterday (his today). We said something about not being able to train on hills like these being from Indiana. He laughed and said you can’t really train for this. He used to run marathons, but still the first week was very hard on the body. Now, he said, “when I start out each day my body says ‘I hate you, I hate you’ but then later it accepts things and says ‘OK, I guess I can keep doing this.’” Sadly we’re not going to be here long enough for that. Our bodies just keep saying “I hate you” and later in the day they say “I really hate you. Please stop.”
So why are we doing this? Dominic said he had originally intended to walk all the way to Milan, Italy. But now he’s going to stop at the east of Spain in San Sebastián, because “I’ve found out what I needed to.” At the time, it felt like too intimate of a question to ask, “So what did you find out?” But later in the day Chris and I were talking about it and wishing we had asked. What if he discovered something really profound that would change our lives forever?!? Chris speculated that he was trying to decide whether to join the priesthood or stay in the priesthood, and that he got his answer so he didn’t need to go past Spain (which, by the way, is still 12 or 15 days of walking for him!). Is that what the Camino does? Give you answers to existential problems?
Chris and I both came out here with heavy things on our minds. And before you come, you think you’ll spend your days pondering things and getting clarity. But we reflected today that we haven’t really reflected much because we’ve focused all our mental energy on putting one foot in front of another. One of the Ancient Greek philosophers (Aristotle, I think) said that in order to philosophize, you have to have your basic bodily needs met first. That is, you need some space in your life for ease and comfort in order to think about non-necessary things. I think there is some truth in that. The walk I take back home is 2.5 miles; it’s familiar; and easy. My body is practically on autopilot, and I think through lots of things. But here, I’m not sure where I’m going; I don’t know the language; I’m carrying a heavy pack; I’m going a really long way. Those things don’t lend themselves to the ease and comfort required for philosophizing. It’s grueling. And yet, it’s beautiful.
I said once today, as hard as this path is, it is really amazing to be walking it again. I like it. It is satisfying. It is elemental, in the sense that you put your stuff on your back and you propel yourself to the next place. There is something about willingly subjecting yourself to hardship that does something good for you. It does something to you in more than the physical sense. I wrote about this in the last section of my book The Sacred Chain, though there it was about camping instead of walking. Same diff.
Supposedly it will be an easier day tomorrow.