Learning How To Walk: Santo Domingo de la Calzada to Sarria

Caminante Caminante, son tus huellas el camino, y nada más; caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar. Al andar se hace camino, y al volver la vista atrás se ve la senda que nunca se ha de pisar. Caminante, no hay camino, sino estelas en la mar. Walker, the way is your tracks And nothing more. Walker, there is no way The way is made by walking. By walking you make a path And turning, you look back At a way you will never tread again Walker, there is no road Only wakes upon the sea. Antonio Marciado ¡Hola! After writing to you last from Santo Domingo de la Calzada Mario, Joe, Justin, Florian, Jurgen and I continued on with Bijan and Isabel from the US to the little town of Belorado. We passed the first albergue with the atmosphere of a tourist resort to the place run by a kind volunteer hospitalero. He was skeptical that the ruins on the hill above the village were those of a castle, as guidebooks liked to claim, and upon learning that I had studied archaeology he sent me up to investigate for him. I climbed up the hill behind the old church with huge stork nests in the belfrey with Kyle, from Arkansas, to have a look at the site. It was very interesting, constructed of the vernacular style of round cobbles embedded in mortar and encorperated into the natural rock formation. I figured it might have been a defensive feature as it appeared to have a human dug moat on the side that lacked a natural slope and a 180 degree view of the countryside, but it was neither large nor well engineered or situated and had nothing strategic to defend. That evening I worked around a group of five Portuguese bikers who eminated an aura of agression and disrespect, as I attempted to make pasta for Florian, Joe and I, but after I had convinced them to let me use the only pot after they were finished cooking we had a nice meal in the garden. The next morning the same bikers got up before dawn and talked, laughed and farted loudly and turned on the bright lights, waking up everyone else. We were all somewhat resentful of them, but they taught us to be conscious of our interactions with our fellow pilgrims, and I wished them a buen camino as they sped past us on the road. We walked up and down hills, through forest, and past lines of windmills, and the presence of the highway not far away got Florian thinking and discussing with me. The highway, he proposed, was a symbol of modern society, fast, loud, invasive, unobserving, and unconscious, while the camino that we walked upon represented an alternative based on faith, generosity, flexibility and connectedness with the world around us. He observed that of our group of friends we had walked the longest, and yet we trailed the furthest in the rear, walking the slowest. We paused at San Juan de Ortega to visit the cathedral with the relic of another Saint who had worked in the 11th Century to improve the Way for pilgrims, then, enjoying the walk, continued on to Ages. Seeing that the others were getting tired I stopped with them there, but I lay in my bed in the little town and cursed my stupidity for not having continued the short distance to Atapuerca, perhaps the most important archaeological and biological anthropology site in Europe. The next morning my heart broke a little as I walked past the closed information centre and up the rugged and ancient slope past the barbed wire of the military zone which barred my entry to the shrubbed landscape which enshrined the site, only 3 km away. Dark and bruding clouds raced across the sky, like in a paleontology documentary, and a feirce wind tore against me, carrying heavy raindrops. I dug a stone from the ancient ground and laid it at the foot of the cross at the summit and descended into Burgos´ industrial area with Isabel and Bijan, the saintly catholics resciting the rosary into the gale. We walked past the airport and along the six-lane highway through Burgos´ industrial area and commercial suburbs, sickened after the tranquility of the rural countryside, and were releaved to finally arrive in the old town. We lined up with the other pilgrims to check into the albergue in the renovated 18th Century building, and I was stunned as I turned around and was caught off guard by the sight of the cathedral. I stood transfixed by the stone lace of the crowning spires, alive with carvings. When I entered the cathedral after it re-opened after siesta I was as dumbfounded as Mario and Jurgen who I saw inside, their jaws hanging. I walked through the medieval Gothic, Renaissance, Rococo, Baroque, and Classic ambulatory chapels adorned with tombs, paintings, carvings and decoration of as many eras. The transcept spire was a vision of heaven, the distant crystal skylight exploding light down upon the carvings that circled up towards it. My jaw hanging and neck aching from staring upward, I continued into the apse chapel, known as the cathedral within the cathedral, to find the floral crystal skylight there which was as achingly beautiful as the transcept one was awe-inspiring. My stunned senses were somewhat soothed in the cloister, softly illuminated in stained glass. After leaving the cathedral, feeling like I´d been beaten into a state of tranquility, I joined the others for drinks and paella to bid farewell to Jurgen, the pleasant German IT law professional who had been walking with us for some time but now had to catch a train to return to Starsburg the next evening. He had not initially intended to finish the Camino in the one time, but now he was sad to be leaving and we were sad to be loosing him. Afterward Mario, Joe and I went to the pilgrims blessing in a chapel of the cathedral before bed. I was awoken, probably around 3 am, by loud revelry in the streets on the morning of Corpus Christi, and the next morning as Jurgen and I prominaded the town waiting for the Museum of Human Evolution to open the entire city was dead silent and abandoned apart from ourselves and the pidgeons. The Museum never did open: when we, along with several others waiting outside, pointed to the sign which stated that it was open on fiestas the woman inside promptly removed it. Instead I bid a last farewell to Jurgen and headed to the monastary where a crowd was gathering and huge manikins of warriors and queens were waiting for the procession. I heard mass with the archbishop, crammed in the standing room behind the choir, and was rather surprized that there was not enough bread and wine to give everyone communion, leaving some very disappointed faces on the day of remembering Christ´s body. The procession left the monastery, with the huge manikins in the vanguard followed by dancing boys and knights in Renaissance garb, the clergy in their white robes, a military band, and the rear was taken up by a show of martial force by a regiment of goose-stepping soldiers. I found Isabel and Bijan as I waded through the crowd toward the park where the festivities were continuing, and we wandered around enjoying tapas, ice cream, traditional dancing, and tortillas baked in ovens and paella stirred with oar-like spoons in massive dishes. Eventually, as the days pilgrims were arriving, we fled the haze of cottontree dust and cooking smoke and set out on the Camino. The road was beautiful with flowers, flattening into the meseta, and after about 20 km the ground dropped away suddenly into a bowl which held the little town of Hornillos del Camino. There Isabel and Bijan continued on and I remained, sitting in the dying rays of the sun at the foot of the church wall with all the other pilgrims, including Florian, Ned - a UVic prof! - and a classical guitar-playing German. I slept in the village gymnasium, the albergue being full, and although it was a large space with few sleepers it also had good acoustics and one snorer. The next day Florian and I walked with Flavia, an Italian, to the ruins of the convent of San Anton. The ancient gothic ribs rose broken toward the sky, home to birds and a little albergue that had been built into the side of one of the walls. We wandered, astounded by the mystical fantasy of the place, and Florian found a guitar sitting on the albergue table and asked me to play songs that I had written. We played together a bit, and the hospitalero came over and offered us wine and began to play Spanish songs. The pilgrims from Barcelona, Belas and Mariam, arrived with their guitar and shakers and soon a crowd began to grow, singing and clapping along. One could not have imagined a better setting for a concert! After a great time we filtered away, and I remained to draw the ruins in my journal before continuing on. I entered the town of Castrojeritz, approaching the Romanesque church which stood by the road overlooked by the ruins of a castle which was perched on a steep hill that jutted up from the flat valley. I cooked dinner for Florian, Kyle and I that night, and the next morning Florian and I climbed out of the little valley and along the plateau, a flat table of land that rose to meet the flat table of cloud above. The earth plunged away bellow us as we reached the edge of the plateau where the wind slammed into our chests as hard as the sight of the view... The meseta, the flat plain of northern Spain, stretched before us, the horison fading into the depths of the distance, and the wind raced across it from the Atlantic to meet us. We cried "Ultreia!" and descended into the flatness singing Every Valley from Handel´s Messiah. We held out our arms and let the wind carress them, as though we were flying, and leaned into the unrelenting gale. We spent the night in Fromista, playing guitar in the albergue garden with Belas, Mariam, Ned, Flavia, and Leana, and visited the Romanesque church which sparked some anger by charging an entry fee which is common in Spain but which we felt was wrong. The following day we continued to Carrion de los Condes where Flavia cooked Italian pasta, Ned a great potato dish and greek salad, and we played guitar and sang long into the evening. The next day was a long expanse of unbroken meseta, and I sat down on the road, the distant pilgrims disapearing behind my lowered horison, and meditated upon the flat place where red earth met blue sky. I sat there, like the many beetles upon the flowers, until Belas passed and said "He must have run out of chocolate" (I had explained my chocolate addiction to him, saying that it was the fuel that allowed me to walk) and I burst out laughing. We parted ways in the next town as Florian and I continued on to Terradillos de los Templarios, an old Templar stronghold where there was one bed remaining in the albergue and I happily slept on the floor. I walked out of the village the next morning as the sun rose over it, gilding the fields, and Florian caught up with me as I explored the next village of subterranean hill-homes and adobe buildings. We meditated together, and I continued to meditate as I walked into Sahagun. There the bull pens were errected in the streets for the evening´s fiesta, and a very kind hostess served us deliscious pastries at the cafe. I crossed the busy highway to take an alternate route along the route of the 2000 year old Roman road, and caught up with Gordon, Geena, Daniel, Nathan and Kyle with whom I walked and discussed politics, anthropology and our society´s fate. In Calzadilla de los Hermanillos the cheerful service of the dwarf at the store more than made up for the quality of his bread, which Florian the Frenchman rapped with his knuckle and said "Oh no......" We had a great dinner, cooked by Zeb and Lindsay, a couple from Chicago on honeymoon, and were joined by our very jubilant hospitalero. The following day was 25 km of flat nothingness, uninterupted by villages or any other distractions and I walked through all of it in meditation, saving me the boring slog that other pilgrims reported to have experienced. In Mansilla de los Mulas, a little town still protected by a deteriorating 11th Century wall with Arab crenelations, Gordon from Scotland made a big spicy chili for Nathan and Daniel of Texas, Geena of Australia, and Florian and I. Afterward we sat in the courtyard, calmed by minimalist guitar and singing from three Japanese women, and shared drawings, poems, music and writing. I walked onto Leon the next morning, while many took the bus to avoid the walk along the highway and through suburbs of warehouses... Releaved to be arriving in the Old City, out of the noise and commercialism of the new town surrounding it, I checked into the Benedictine convent where I met Florian, Justin and other friends. Florian and I ate a great reunion lunch with Justin, who had continued walking with Joe and Mario when they had gone on ahead from Burgos and was now taking a rest day while they were up north where Mario was performing a wedding. After the meal of calamarie with its ink on rice, cod with peas and asperagus, and cheesecake I went to the great cathedral of Leon. Although the aisle of piercing pillars of stained glass did not inspire the same awe in me as Burgos' cathedral had, the relative purity of the Gothic form held an elegance second to none. After a day of prominading the town I went to the nun's evening prayer, before which a kindly old sister prepped us. "¿Todos peregrinos?" ("Is everyone here a pilgrim?") she asked us all. "Si," ("Yes") everyone replied. "¿Caminantes?" ("Walkers?") "Si." "¿Turismos?" ("Tourists?") Gordon was the only one who said "Si," and everyone else laughed. When the sisters blessed us after the evening of prayer, telling us with staggering heartfelt sincerity, as they did every single evening of the year, that their community was praying for us, we were all humbled by their care and dedication. The following morning I stayed in Leon to visit the pantheon of the basilica of San Isidoro, the Romanesque tomb whose low vaulted ceilings were vibrant with frescos sheltering the sarcophogi of dozens of kings, queens, princes and princesses of Leon, the 11th to 13th Century Emporors of Christian Spain. I then continued back into the plains beyond the suburbs of Leon to Vilar de Manzarife where I stayed at the Refugio del Jesus, a place with messages and drawings left by pilgrims on all the walls, and played guitar with Florian and Aaron of Australia (who put Florian and I to shame with his skill and knowledge) for Geena, Gordon, Daniel and Nathan. The next day Aaron and I walked across the plain until we encountered Florian walking with Miguel and Emmanual of Portugal who were singing movie soundtracks and possing their long shaddows with broad-brimmed hats on the earth path like cowboys from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Pausing by a cross in the shade we met a German woman whose calm reminded me of the purpose of the Camino. We walked with her for a distance until we met Gordon resting under a contorted tree, and the woman took a thumbpiano mounted on a rawhide-stretched frame from her bag and began to play. Her pure voice soothed the crystaline notes as they drifted up into the wind-rippled trees, and we were all astounded. The last notes had faded away and the trees had murmured a long conversation before we rose and continued on our way. We climbed up to a windy and barren plateau where a barefoot man sat behind a windbreak next to a lone compound and offered us organic food and drink, and he was anticipating the German woman's coming. She went with him behind the wind break and sang for him. We strained to hear the music through the wind, but recognized that it was not for our ears and continued on, the mysterious wind-swept notes beautifying the bleak plain... We tired quickly as we finally decended into Astorga, and we had a meal in the Plaza Mayor with Florian, Justin, Miguel, Emmanuel, Danial, Nathan and Geena, entertained by Miguel's torrents of Portuguese swear words as Portugal played Holland in the football game on the restaurant TV. For breakfast the next morning in the chocolate-manufacturing city I had chocolate con churros and a neopolitan: stunning! Justin's boots had been stolen and he was running around in borrowed shoes trying to find the culprit, and Florian had the worst blisters and the poorest moral he had had since Lyon. I left the little city past the Episcopal Palace, Gaudi's masterpiece of gothic-influenced architecture next to the romanesque/gothic/baroque cathedral. The German woman arrived in a little village as I was finishing snacking on some tapas there, and I steepeled my hands before her and said "Thank you for your music yesterday. It helped me to see God." The power of her uncontrolled weeping upon hearing the last words continued to stun me as I walked on, and I stopped only to write a short poem about the road and the feelings of that day. Today two roads ran together One white, one red Unintwined. There is a scripture inscribed In the stone of the Earth, Unremembered. Un-noticed, but remaining, Indecipherable, but on the verge Of being Understood With time. The albergue in Rabinal del Camino was a beautifully renovated old building next to a Benedictine monastery, run by the English Confraternity of Saint James. We were welcomed in perfect English - and Florian in perfect French - and tea and biscuits. Mario and Joe arrived to excited greetings, and they shared stories of the great time they'd had at the wedding. We all ate a meal together before going to evening prayer in the austere church where the German woman sang again. Afterward I meditated on the spectacular sky - pink and purple in the setting sun with a distant vertical rainbow - and upon the quartz stone, smooth and round from rolling upon the BC beach where I had found it, which I would lay at the foot of the Cruz de Ferro the next day. When I arrived there, silent amid the crowds of loud pilgrims and bikers and the refreshment vans which had come to commercialize the place, I sat and waited for all of the other pilgrims to clear. When they finally did I climbed the huge cairn, walking upon the prayers of one thousand years of pilgrims, and lay my stone touching the wooden pillar of the iron cross continued on without a backward glance. Suddenly I was in the mountains, descending through the beautiful landscape without ever having climbed into it, marvelling at every view... In Monlinaseca I checked into the albergue - a church that had been converted with a nautical design - and had dinner next to the Roman bridge with Dave, Andy, Florian, Justin, Joe and Mario. The following day I walked through Ponferada, past its Templar castle, through a little village where a man gave me a handful of some of the best cherries I've ever eaten, and found Joe, Mario, Florian and Justin just as they and I were about to stop in a park for lunch. We reached the albergue where we hoped to stay just as it began raining, but it was all reserved so we continued walking. Finally we arrived in Villafranca at the end of a 31 km day, its ancient monuments misty in the mountain valley. The mountain views were stunning the next morning as we climbed through forests to La Faba where Aaron, Justin, Florian and I stayed, and arriving in the little stone albergue next to the church in the tiny village felt like coming home. I made a pasta for dinner which all of the guys were very happy with, and Florian, the Lyonese from the gastronomic capital of France, gave me the ultimate cooking compliment: "I am sure," he said, thumb to forefinger, "that in a past life you were French!" As I sat playing guitar after eating the German hospitalera came running over and told me to come to play in the church for the evening prayer. The priest told me in a panic that it was his first day in the parish and he had come on a moment´s notice as the regular priest was dealing with a medical emergency. I told him I was glad I wasn't the only one improvising. I played the music for the prayers, and afterward one of my own songs. The next day I continued the climb into the province of Galacia and the town of O Cebriero as a mountain mist crawled over the crest and was discipated by the morning sun. I encountered the priest again, standing on the Camino in his black Franciscan robes chatting with the pilgrims in each of his eight languages, and he greeted me jubilently. "My musician!" After the gorgeous walk through forest and little stone towns I arrvied in Triacastela in time to get the second to last bed in the town which marked my 43rd day and 1010th kilometer of walking since Toulouse. Today, June 23rd, I walked through the forest and tiny slate villages to Sarria, via Samos, one of Spain's oldest monasteries. I planned to avoid this town where hundreds of pilgrims begin for the sake of obtaining the Compostellae in Santiago - a document prooving that a pilgrim has walked 100 km - but there is a fiesta here this evening so I have compromised. It is difficult to comprehend that there are only five days left to Santiago de Compostela, followed by another five to Muxia and Finisterra. I am enjoying the walk so thoroughly that I have slowed to a crawl and am taking all of the long-cuts that I can find, but I think I am also at peace with the idea of completion. I am still - kind of - contemplating plans for my return after the pilgrimage involving flying out from Madrid on July 9th and the posibility of a visit to Barcelona or Toledo, but that will largely wait until my return from Finisterra... I hope that you are all very well! Ultreia! Bradley Sarria, Galacia, Spain