Nadine Walks

stories of trekking and travel

To Summer, To Travel, To Time

The great summer trip of 2016 begins in less than a week, so I thought it was about time that I check back in here with an update. And the only update I really have has already been said: I leave in less than a week!

Does time seem to be moving fast for anyone else? Like, really really fast? Until only a few days ago I was convinced that it was still May, that I had over a month to plan and prepare for my trip, that the days are continuing to lengthen, that summer was still far off.

But all of a sudden it was summer, and work had ended for the year, and the only thing that was looming before me was my big trip. I should be used to this by now, it’s been my pattern for the last three years: work ends around the middle of June, and I promptly hop on a plane for Europe.

So why does it feel like this trip is still weeks and weeks away? Last year, on the first day of summer, I was doing this:

I’d already been walking on the Camino for a few days, life at home felt like it was another world away.

My trip begins a bit later than usual this year, maybe that’s part of it. Or maybe it’s just that life is speeding by so fast that I yearn to hit a pause button, and give myself some time to catch up.

But there’s no stopping time so here we go. I think that finally, in these last few days, I’ve accepted that summer is here. I’ve gone to a baseball game and drank a coke slushey and had a dish of ice cream and spent a day at the beach. I’ve stretched in the lounge chair on my porch with my feet in the sun and read a book that I was too busy to finish months ago. Two days ago I went on a 10-mile hike; tomorrow I’ll try for 12-miles. This is the most hiking I’ve done in a long, long time, and well, it’s about time.

And then next week, I’ll leave for Europe. My first stop is England, something I don’t think I even mentioned in my Summer 2016 blog post. It sort of got lost in the shuffle of my mind, and stayed lost until just a couple days ago. But- oh yeah!- I decided to fly into London because it’s been a solid 15 years since I’ve been there and I thought it could be nice to do something a little new.

This photo is from my last trip to England, all those years ago:

My friend reminded me that our original plan was to spend a few days in London, then head to Stonehenge. But in 2001, Stonehenge was closed for 5 1/2 weeks because of foot-and-mouth disease, so we went to Liverpool instead (and honestly, this was probably my vote all along… Long Live Ringo!).

It’s a bit crazy to think back to that trip- parts of it that feel like a lifetime ago, other parts that are so recent in my memory I could swear that I was just there. Wasn’t I just there? Leaving notes for our friends on scraps of paper at the hotel lobby because this was just before any of us had a cell phone; crossing the street at the wrong end of Abbey Road (and causing quite the pile up of traffic in order to get a photo); battling a cold on the train to London and the endless cups of tea to soothe my throat; noticing that a small magnolia tree was growing in the front yard of the house where George Harrison grew up.

These memories are creeping in because I finally sat down and planned some things for my three days in England. I focus on these details for a moment- there’s a Jane Austen Centre in Bath! I can finally make it to Stonehenge!- but then an email pulls me into another part of the trip. It’s from the writer’s retreat in southern France- our host has forwarded a suggested shopping list so that we’re not overwhelmed when we arrive and are whisked off to the grocery store. And then I think back to my time there three years ago, and how I was overwhelmed, and didn’t buy quite enough food. Will that happen again? What will the village be like- will it be just as I remembered, or will there be changes?

And what am I like, this time? Three years wasn’t all that long ago, and yet, I know that I am different. And certainly, I’m different than I was 15 years ago, on that first trip to London and Liverpool.

Different, and yet… still me. Always me.

There’s more, too: another Amazon package arrived at my door, it’s a guide to walking the West Highland Way. And then I need to push the days in England and the writer’s retreat from my mind, and focus on Scotland. Scotland! I know nothing about Scotland! Shouldn’t I learn something, shouldn’t I do some research? A friend warns me about the haggis, and I wonder if I will try it.

And then, finally, in the very back corner of my mind, I remember that I’m also walking a Camino. That I’m returning to Spain. I’ve barely given it any thought, because this is the thing that feels the most familiar, the most comfortable. Other than breaking in a new pair of shoes, I haven’t done much in preparation. I have all my gear, I know where I’m going; this is the thing that I don’t have to plan for.

But remember just two years ago? My fretting and my fear in the weeks before I left for Spain that first time? Wasn’t I just memorizing the Spanish words for ‘I’m allergic to nuts’ and wondering how, exactly, I was to go about hand-washing my clothing?

Ah, time. I still don’t know what to make of it, of how quickly life is streaming past, yet of how far I’ve seemed to travel in what feels like very fleeting moments. I know that in August, I’m going to be back here at my computer, in my apartment, marveling over how fast the summer just went by.

Of course I will. But I’m not at the end yet, I’m only at the very beginning. So, here’s to summer! May it be the best one yet.

Solo Travel on the Camino

The school year is ending and summer is approaching and that means I’ve been asked, a lot, about my summer plans. I find myself explaining to a whole crop of new people that I’m going to walk the Camino. “What’s the Camino?” they ask.

It’s always the first question.

And the second question, once I’ve explained that it’s a long walk across Spain, is invariably this: “Who are you going with?”

But I had a strange experience the other day: I was talking to a principal at one of the schools I work at, he was telling me that he and his wife and kids are doing a big cross-country road trip this summer. He asked me what my plans were, and I started like I normally do. “Well, I’m going to Europe, to do a thing called the Camino de Santiago.”

His eyes lit up. “The Way? Seriously?”

Turns out he knew all about it, and we got into a long conversation about the outdoors and hiking and the beauty of moving yourself across a great distance.

But it wasn’t until I was driving home from work that I figured out what really struck me about the conversation, more than the fact that he actually knew what the Camino was. He didn’t ask one question about who I was going with, if I was doing it alone. It hadn’t even seemed to matter.

And I really loved that. I get why people want to know if I’m going alone or not, but sometimes I get a little tired of all the explaining I have to do. Like, “It’s actually really safe, you meet loads of other people, there’s always someone walking nearby.” Even with these explanations, people still sometimes give me a look. They’re confused, they feel sorry for me, they look at me as if I’m a bit strange for wanting to do something like this alone.

But after two 500-mile treks across Spain over these last couple of summers, I have to say, I’m beginning to think it would be difficult to walk with someone.

There are lots of benefits, certainly, to have a walking partner, or a small group to go with. Even I have to admit that sometimes, I’m a little envious of the friends that come to the Camino together. I’ll pass them, sitting tight around a table at lunchtime, bottles of wine and beer and baskets of bread and they’re laughing and joking. They get to share this great experience with someone who knows them really well. I think that would be a cool thing to do. And sometimes- even in a crowd (most especially in a crowd, perhaps)- the Camino can feel lonely. There were a few nights on my Norte last summer when I envied the pilgrims who never, ever had to worry about eating dinner alone, who always had a companion with them.

And there’s the safety issue, too. To be honest, I very, very rarely felt unsafe on either of my treks across Spain. Nervous, sometimes, when a dog barked loudly. Anxious when I hadn’t seen a yellow arrow for a long time. But never unsafe. That’s not to say that bad things can’t happen on the Camino, and as always (and especially as a woman), I needed to keep my wits about me, to be observant and aware, to do my best to not put myself in a compromising situation. And I continue to do that, any time I travel.

But these points aside, I really love my solo-Camino time. In some ways, it feels like one of the most special things I can give to myself at this time in my life, and I know how lucky I am that I can spend a month being totally and completely selfish. I walk when I want to walk, I stop when I want to stop, I can walk a 50+ kilometer day and I don’t have to try to convince anyone to do the same.

A solo-Camino might not be for everyone, but I think it’s a wonderful experience to have. Two summers ago, when I started walking away from St Jean Pied de Port, I was so scared. I’d barely slept the night before, I froze in my bunk because I was too nervous to get up to close the window because I thought I would disturb the person sleeping beneath me, the clothes I’d washed hadn’t dried, I wasn’t even really sure how to get out of the town and onto the path of the Camino. But then I started walking, and that first day still goes down as my absolute favorite Camino walk. It’s hard to describe the sense of achievement, bravery, energy, love, peace, pride, solidity that I felt as I moved myself across a mountain. Others who had come alone were already pairing off, walking in groups, finding their “Camino Families”, braving the Pyrenees together.

I walked alone.

I eventually made friends, and there were times- especially on the Camino Frances- when I felt like I wasn’t as alone as I would have liked. But here was the beauty of coming into this experience myself: at any time, whenever I wanted, I could separate myself. I could walk with others, I could walk alone. I could take a rest day, I could walk a great distance, I could eat french fries for twelve days in a row and no one had any idea.

And it wasn’t just being alone whenever I wanted, it was the ability to be with others. I still think that a solo-pilgrim on the Camino attracts others in a way that pilgrims in pairs or groups don’t. Many, many people approached me to say hi, to start a conversation, because I was alone. And I, in turn, approached others when I was feeling a bit alone. You’re going to meet people on the Camino regardless of whether you’re alone or in a group, but the opportunity for new friends increases, I think, when you’re solo.

People help you, too. They look out for you, they take care of you, when they know it’s just you (well, they help you if you’re in a group too- Camino angels help everyone). On the Frances, I had so many mothers and fathers out there. I even had a little sister and a little brother, and someone who reminded me of my own grandfather. People who asked me how I was doing whenever they saw me, asked if I was wearing my sunscreen, made sure I had a place to sleep, that I had enough to eat.

One time, on the Primitivo, a Spanish guy had been walking ahead of me. We’d left a cafe at the same time and he was fast, and soon he disappeared down the path. But a little later I saw him standing off to the side of the trail. He was waiting for me, and he explained that there was a large dog up ahead. “I didn’t want you to be afraid, so I waited for you, to help you pass,” he said. The same thing happened a few days later- a different guy, and this time, a cow.

I wish I could explain about all of this, when anyone seems concerned that I’m going off to Spain alone. I wish I could explain that I’m never really alone out there, that in fact, I think the Camino Frances is probably one of the safest places in the world for a female to travel solo. And I wish I could explain that going alone isn’t so bad, that actually, it’s quite wonderful. That sometimes it’s good to do things by ourselves, to learn what we’re capable of, to remember what we’re capable of.

I’ve got another Camino coming up- soon- and once again I’m going alone. One of these years I’d love to share this experience with someone, and I have no doubt that I will. But for now I’m solo, and I couldn’t be happier.

How we tell our stories (love on the Camino?)

A few days ago, I received an email from an online Camino friend. He was writing to tell me that he had just seen me in a movie.

“Ah,” I thought. “So they made the movie.” And then, “They included my part.” And then, “What in the world have I done??”

Let’s set the scene. I was 17km away from Santiago on the Camino Frances, two summers ago. I’d been walking with my Irish friend, and it was a long, hot day that seemed to never end. We’d had to walk much further than anticipated because all the albergues were full, but finally we found an albergue/pension on a quiet street just off the main path of the Camino.

You know who also found the albergue? A Swiss film crew. It was their last night on the Camino- they’d already been to Santiago, they’d finished filming, they were about to fly home. But then they heard that there was a couple staying in the albergue, and they didn’t have the love story angle for their film, and before I knew it, I was in a green plastic chair in front of billowing laundry and being asked questions about my Camino relationship.

Now, before I get to what I really want to write about, I need to set a few things straight. I was never in a “Camino relationship”, not really. I didn’t have a love story to share, I wasn’t even sure how I had ended up in front of a camera, but then again, that just seemed to be the sort of thing that happened on the Camino. And I remember that on that night, I was overwhelmed, and I probably thought to myself, “Well, why not just tack this onto the list of things that the Camino has thrown at me?”

This happens on the Camino, it’s something I continue to marvel at: how so much life is crammed into each and every day of the walk, how time seems to alter and bend. You meet people and after a couple days it feels like you’ve known them for years. You walk through ever changing scenery and you sleep in a different bed every night and there is just constant motion, constant community, constant stimulation.

And when I sat down for the interview with the Swiss film crew, I was so saturated with Camino experiences that I simply couldn’t keep up. I was still trying to process things that had happened to me weeks before, so I suppose I just sat down on the green chair and thought to myself, “The Camino provides?” and then started answering questions.

I think I’ve only ever told one person, maybe two, about this interview. Because once it was over, it was sort of tacked onto the list of “things that happened on my Camino that I don’t really have time to think about, or understand”. I was so close to Santiago at this point that all I really wanted to do was walk. I couldn’t really think about anything else. (And in fact, the crew asked if I could find them in the morning before I left, so that they could get a few shots of me walking. But when the morning came, I slipped out of the albergue quietly, and headed off towards Santiago).

And that leads me back to my reaction, when I found out about this movie: “What in the world have I done??” It’s not nearly as dramatic as that, I can’t imagine there’s much more than 30 seconds or a minute from me, or from my Irish friend (who was sitting next to me during the interview). But I have to laugh a little, and wonder what, exactly, I was portraying in that film. And what, exactly, the filmmakers wanted from us, how they chose to shape and edit words and images so that they could tell the story they wanted to tell.

They wanted a love story, or at least a piece of one. And my story wasn’t a love story, but I suppose that my Irish friend might have answered differently. And, as you readers of the blog will know, I was caught in my own eternal Camino question: be alone, or stay with others? Ultimately I began that Camino alone and I ended alone, but all along the way, it was a struggle. And I was still struggling with it, right up until the very end.

I remember one question that the interviewer asked us, he said something like, “So, I have to ask it: what happens next with you guys?” And my answer was something like this, “I don’t know. Maybe we’ll get married, or maybe we’ll never see each other again.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I was wondering where they came from. I knew I would never marry my Irish friend, but the thing is… hadn’t part of me wondered? Hadn’t part of me wondered at every person I met, every good-looking European guy (and there were so many on that Camino!) who stayed close to my side, who wanted to walk with me, who offered me a hunk of cheese? Love wasn’t exactly part of that Camino journey for me, and yet, it was also in nearly every step I took. There was a point when I had wondered about my Irish friend: “The Camino provides!” they say, over and over, and suddenly there’s a beautiful 6 foot 4 inch man who wants to walk with me, who listens to the same music as I do, who recites poetry, who buys me gummy candy. Maybe I could marry him, I thought.

And maybe that’s what you see, when you watch this film. Maybe that’s what I portrayed, when I answered the questions. Maybe that’s what the filmmakers want you to see and believe.

But that’s only one small part of the story, and it’s a part that’s not entirely- or even remotely- the truth of my Camino. In the past few days, I’ve thought about this a lot, I suppose I’ve been thinking about this all fall and winter, as I’ve worked on my book. What story am I choosing to share? What version of the truth am I deciding to put down on the page?

Once I was having a discussion (or was it a fight? I could never tell the difference) with my ex-boyfriend. I’d just explained my point of view on something, the way I was feeling, how I’d reacted to something he’d done or said. And he exploded, crying out, “But that’s only how you see it! That’s not what happened!!”

What? It was what happened, it was my experience of what happened, which makes it a version of reality.

There are a lot of different versions of the way things happen, the way we choose to remember something, they narrative threads we pick out from our lives, how we arrange things so that we can tell our stories. I think of how, somewhere out there, I’m a very small part of a Camino film, and how it’s telling some sort of story of my experience. One that I might not even agree with. And I think about how, right at this moment, I’m in the thick of writing another version of that story, a larger, more fleshed-out version. But already I wonder, “Is that really what happened? Did I really feel all of those things, say those things? Was that my experience?”

It was a blast being interviewed for a film. It captured something, some small part of my story- one that was reality or imagined I’m not sure. And it’s also been a blast writing this book. It’s been difficult and mind-numbing and even excruciating, but a blast. I’m capturing something. And it is my wildest dream that one day, you might be able to read my story, however I choose to tell it.

Because it just wouldn’t be right to talk all about a Camino film and not share details with you, here is some information: http://santiagoelcamino.com/dvd.html

 

The Luckiest Day; Cumberland Island Adventure Part 3

Have you ever had one of those days, a day that just goes so well that you think you must have been hit with a great big stroke of luck? I’ve had a few of these days, and whenever I find myself in one, I always think of that moment in Harry Potter when he drinks the potion Felix Felicis (otherwise known as ‘Liquid Luck’). Basically, the magical potion makes him lucky and successful in whatever he does. Not just a lucky moment, but an entire lucky day.

My second day on Cumberland Island felt like it was under the magic spell of Felix Felicis. It started with that beautiful sunrise: I’d stumbled out of my tent a little after seven and hoped that I hadn’t missed the sunrise. I walked quickly out to the beach, wandered down to the ocean, and looked up at the horizon. Within seconds, the first sliver of sun appeared. “What good timing!” I thought to myself.

This wasn’t the only good timing of the day, but that comes later. First, I made myself a cup of coffee, ate a pop-tart, loaded up my pack and then set out for an all-day hike of the island. I headed north, starting out on the Parallel Trail (a quiet path under the oaks that runs parallel to the main road) but at the first dune crossing moved over to the beach, where I walked for a mile or two. All along my beach walk, I was keeping my eyes peeled for sea glass (something I’ve been collecting since I was a kid). Somewhere I’d read that fabulous sea glass can be found on the island, but after a few miles of close and careful searching, nothing came up. And I’m a champion sea glass finder! I saw just about everything else- beautiful shells, star fish, what I believe was a washed-up hammerhead shark (!!), and more sand dollars than I could count.

When I finally gave up on my hunt for sea glass, I headed back across the dunes and onto Willow Pond Trail, where I walked east to west across the island. It was somewhere on this trail, in a bright patch of sunlight, when I saw something long and black move quickly in the tall grass. My eyes darted to the movement and the black thing slithered away. I tried to convince myself that it was a big lizard but the shape wasn’t right, the movement wasn’t right. It could only be a snake.

My mind began to play tricks on me as I continued to walk, and I jumped every time the wind blew. There may not be any bears on the island, but there were certainly snakes, and crocodiles, too (the park ranger pointed out a trail that led to a lake where I might be able to spot one, and I gave a fast “no thank you”). But that brief and harmless snake sighting proved to be the most nerve-racking experience during my time on the island; all things considered, that’s not too bad considering it was three days spent in the great wide open.

I continued on a network of trails, weaving across and up the island, my destination was Plum Orchard, one of the existing estates that Lucy Carnegie had built for one of her sons. And just before I reached Plum Orchard- when I was still on the trail but felt like I was miles away from anything- I heard another sound, saw something moving, but this time it wasn’t a snake. It was an elderly man on a motorized cart, wearing a wide brimmed hat and a light green polo shirt. I scooted off to the side of the trail to let him pass, but he stopped the cart and began to talk to me.

He seemed happy to learn that I was here for more than a day trip and that I was camping on the island. And then he seemed thrilled to hear that I was from Philadelphia.

“Philadelphia!” his voice lifted. “How in the world did you hear about us?”

We talked for a few more minutes, then I hesitantly asked, “Do you live on the island?”

He smiled before he replied. “No, but I’m part of the family who originally owned the island- the Carnegies- so I come here for a few weeks of the year with my kids and grandkids.”

It was now my turn to be thrilled. He told me that these were the 5 most beautiful days of the year in Georgia, that Plum Orchard was just up the road and I might be able to catch a tour of the property.

He gave me a firm handshake and then motored off down the tail, while I continued to walk. And within a few minutes, Plum Orchard came into view and, in yet another stroke of luck, as I walked up to the sprawling porch I saw that a group had gathered and a tour was just beginning.

The day had been about as perfect as you could get, but somehow- after breaks on the beach, hunting for sea glass, the tour of Plum Orchard, lunch at a picnic table in the shade- it was 3:30 and I still had to walk back to my campground. Supposedly, Plum Orchard was only 7 miles from SeaCamp, but I nearly doubled that distance with the winding, topsy-turvy route I’d taken on the way up. So I chose a more direct path on the way back, walking mostly on the Main Road (one more bit of almost incredible luck: just as I was wishing that there could be a side trail to take that would split up my time on the main road, a side trail appeared. What are the odds? I think it was called the Old River Trail, but it wasn’t on either of my maps, and by the look of the signposts, it seemed rather new. So I took it and it while it may have added just a bit of distance, it ran mostly parallel to the main road and was beautiful).

Despite the island being almost totally flat, the last few miles of my walk were exhausting. By the end of the day my phone was reporting that I had walked 28 miles. 28 miles!! When had that happened? I stumbled into my camp and nixed my plans of going back to the dock to watch the sunset. I ate dinner, crawled into my tent, read for a bit and was out by 9pm. And, thanks to the hours of fresh air and walking, I slept like a log- totally undisturbed by the lumpy ground or the rustling in the palmettos.

What a fine and lucky day.

Horses and Castles and Freeze-Dried Food; Cumberland Island Adventure Part 2

My first order of business- after arriving on Cumberland Island and setting up camp- was to explore my surroundings. Sea Camp (where I was staying) was at the southern end of the island; only a quick boardwalk stroll away from the beach, and about a mile and a half from the ruins of Dungeness, the old Carnegie estate.

The known history of Cumberland Island stretches back about 4,000 years ago, to indigenous peoples, the Native American Timucua group, Spanish missionaries, French pirates, English generals, Revolutionary War heroes. In the late 19th century, Thomas and Lucy Carnegie bought land on Cumberland Island (and eventually the Carnegie’s owned up to 90% of the island); they built a 59-room mansion called Dungeness, and later Lucy had other estates built for her children. The Carnegies left the island after the Great Depression and everything sat, abandoned and empty, for years. Dungeness burned in the 50’s, leaving only structural remains behind.

Dungeness was my destination for the day, and I planned a wide loop from my campsite: a walk on the beach to get down and over to Dungeness, and then a walk back up to the campsite on one of the many trails that ran through the island. During our ranger talk that morning, we were told that the loop from the Sea Camp dock, to the beach, to Dungeness and back was about 4-miles. By the day’s end, somehow, I had ended up walking 14 miles (and this would be a theme for me on Cumberland Island… I was seriously doubting the distances on their maps).

But did it matter that I walked much more than anticipated? On a place like Cumberland Island, walking around was one of the easiest things to do. The paths are all hard packed sand and just about totally flat. The weather for my three days on the island climbed from mid-60’s to mid-70’s and was nothing but sunny. If I walked on the trails, I was nearly always under the shade of the live oak trees, and if I walked on the beach, I was nearly always graced with a pleasant and cooling wind.

So I found myself wandering here and there, back and forth, exploring every nook and cranny.

And by the time I got to Dungeness, I was enthralled. Wild horses were everywhere: slow moving or standing still, in small packs of twos or threes. They stretched in a line across the great lawn of Dungeness, and it was an eerie and surreal sight: a water-less fountain, chimneys climbing to nowhere, the only thing that seemed alive were these horses, appearing and disappearing before my eyes.

Wild horses and Dungeness, Cumberland Island, Georgia

There were other people here, too, but not many: I’d read that only 300 people were permitted on Cumberland Island per day. This added to the serenity and deserted feel of the island; while more people were concentrated at the ruins and on the beach near the dune crossings, it never felt crowded or crazy or loud. There were no vendors, no tourist gimmicks, no large tour groups. Instead, it felt like I had somehow gained access to a place that not many people knew about, that not many people could get to.

And for a long time, this was the case on Cumberland Island. The Carnegies owned much of the island until the 1950’s, when they had the National Park Service come to check out the land. Over the next 20 years, there was some back and forth with plans for the island: efforts to designate it as a national seashore, then the interest of a developer, then another push to protect the land and keep it largely undeveloped. In the 70’s, the Carnegies sold it to the federal government and the National Parks Service, though there was a deal that allowed any living member of the Carnegie family in the 1970’s to retain their rights to the island through their lifetime. So now, the descendants of Andrew and Lucy Carnegie are still there (at least from time to time), and the island is also open to the public, but it remains a place of solitude, even wilderness.

And that was apparent with nearly every step I took- worn, wooden signs pointing towards crumbling cemeteries, armadillos scurried through the palmettos, miles and miles of sand and ocean without another soul in sight.

My day frittered away like this: crossing back and forth over the dunes, looking out over saltwater marshes, collecting firewood as I walked down a trail. When I’d first arrived and set up my campsite, I thought to myself, “The only limit on my time is the setting sun. I have all day to go anywhere, to do anything.” In a way, I had experienced this on the Camino de Santiago: time slowed there, and simplified. Here, too, there was a simplicity. Time didn’t matter so much, there was no schedule, there was no inside versus outside.

But to be honest, at first, the “no inside” thing was hard. That entire first evening, after exploring the island and returning to my campsite, I felt a little restless and off. My nerves returned: I worried that something would go wrong with my stove, that I would be cold at night (already, the early evening temperatures were down in the 50’s), that a wild horse would storm through my camp.

My stove worked fine (I’d bought a Jetboil Flash and it worked like a dream. My blogging friend Drew wrote up a great review, and just maybe it was his words that sold me on this particular model), the tip of my nose was cold while I slept, but my sleeping bag and sleeping pad and clothing layers all did the trick, quite nicely. And while I slept fitfully all night- tossing and turning and trying to find a comfortable position- as far as I knew, no animals had barged their way into my campsite.

I woke up early and wandered down to the beach just in time to see the sunrise, and I stood alone, no one in sight for miles, and watched as the sun peeked over the tip of the ocean, far off on the horizon. I thought about my first day and night of camping. They had been, for all accounts, a success. And as I watched the golden morning light shimmering over the water, I wondered what my second day would bring.

Sunrise over Atlantic Ocean, Cumberland Island, Georgia

 

 

Beware the raccoons!- Cumberland Island Camping Adventure, Part One

I’ve mentioned here before that I have next to no camping experience, but also that I got a tent for Christmas. One of my goals for 2016 was to take the tent out into the great unknown- “into the wild”- and use it, and I’m here to report that I survived my first ever, solo-camping trip.

I would almost go so far as to say that not only did I survive… I thrived. Though that might be pushing it a bit. Still, I’m racking my brain to think of something that went wrong, something I was woefully unprepared for, something that made me say, “I’m never going camping again!”

There was nothing. I wish sleeping on the ground had been a little more comfortable… and three days without a shower is a little much (there were cold water showers at my campsite, but I chickened out)… but this is camping. Being clean and sleeping comfortably are things I do in my every day life, and if a little dirt and discomfort were my biggest worries, then I’d say that my camping trip went pretty well.

But really, this trip ended up being about so much more than learning how to sleep and eat outdoors. It was elevated to another level by the location: Cumberland Island, a barrier island off the southern coast of the US state of Georgia. At 17.5 miles long, it has stretches of undeveloped beaches, salt marshes, maritime forest. It was designated a national seashore (and national park) in the 70’s, and is largely unspoiled and unpopulated. There is no bridge to the island- you need to take a ferry- no paved roads, no amenities. There are a handful of private homes but most of the island is designated as a wilderness area. There are birds and turtles and raccoons and armadillos and several hundred wild horses, that roam all through the island.


I’d anticipated that I would be blogging while I was there- that, since I was alone, I’d have nothing to do in the evenings and would use that time to write. But somehow, the days just slipped away and before I knew it, the sun had set and it was 8pm and I was ready to tuck into my tent with a cup of wine and cookies and my book (yeah, I brought a bottle of wine. I liked the idea of toasting my camping success each evening! So, not totally roughing it just yet).

Now I’m back, to my comfy and cozy apartment, and I imagine that I’ll devote a few blog posts to this trip. So here is part one: “Beware of the raccoons!”

I heard this warning multiple times- from a girl on the ferry ride over, from a park ranger giving us an orientation when we got to the island, from campers who had been there before.

“The raccoons are sneaky,” said an 11-year old girl on the ferry. “Last year, they took our pasta, and that was my favorite meal!”

I never got the name of the girl on the ferry, but she befriended me instantly (I always seem to make friends with the kids), and talked my ear-off on the 40 minute ride from St Mary’s to the island. She told me that this was the second year her family was camping on the island; she reported that last time, she’d pet both an armadillo and a horse (statements that I’m now questioning, considering how fast armadillos scurry away and by how many times we were warned to stay away from the horses). “I love this place,” she said, a slight southern accent to her voice, her blue eyes opened wide. “I hope we get campsite eleven again, that’s the one closest to the beach.”

As she talked, I found myself growing increasingly nervous. I’d felt the nervousness in the days leading up to my trip, and on the night before I began the long, 12-hour drive down to Georgia, I questioned what I was doing. Laying in a warm bed, four walls around me, a kitchen full of food and a bathroom with a hot shower, I wondered why on earth I was going to go camping for 3 days. This happens to me from time to time- I decide to do something and throw myself into the preparations, then just before it’s time to leave I get overwhelmed with the reality of what I’ve gotten myself into. I begin to think I was crazy to want to try something new, I begin to think that it would be so much easier to just stay home.

But that’s just fear talking: I hear it a lot, but I’m getting used to how it sounds. I’m also getting used to ignoring it, and then going and trying something new anyway.

By the time I was on the ferry my nervousness was mixed with excitement. Dozens of people were crammed in the cabin of the ferry- it was windy and cold outside, so we all squeezed inside, standing in the aisles. As the 11-year old continued to talk, I looked out the window: we were surrounded by blue water and strips of green land, deep colors with sunshine washing over everything.


Once the ferry docked at Cumberland Island and we all unloaded our stuff, the day-trippers went off to rent bikes, to trek over to the beach, or the ruins of the old Carnegie estate (more on that, later). The campers had to gather together for a quick talk from the park ranger, and then we were assigned campsites.

I felt a little awkward, sitting among groups of people: families who were loud and laughing, couples sitting close together with great, hulking backpacks. Everyone seemed surprised to find out that I was alone, and maybe moreover, that I was a girl and I was alone. But the woman next to me smiled and introduced me to her college-aged children, sitting behind us. And the 11 year old girl was in front of me, and gave me a high five and whispered, “Good luck” when I went to the front to get my campsite.

I chose the smallest site, and set off for the half mile walk to the campgrounds. I was loaded down with my stuff- my Camino pack on my back, a smaller backpack strapped to my front, a large duffel slung over my shoulder. But as soon as I moved away from the office building and began walking down the path, all of my fear left me, and I walked with a big smile on my face.

I was surrounded by so much beauty: a hard packed sand trail, bordered on both sides by a dense layer of palmettos- “little palms”- with their long, bright green leaves. Overhead were the twisting, gnarled branches of live oak trees, covered with draping Spanish moss, and the sunlight filtered through, giving off a shimmery, magical kind of light.


And once I got to the campgrounds, it was even better: those palms and the the Spanish moss were everywhere, creating natural borders between the sites, and a canopy of branches and moss casting shade over the ground. My campsite felt perfect- just the right size for one or two people- and I was able to set up my tent in a little area that was tucked away, totally invisible to anyone passing by on the path. I quickly stored all of my food in the food cage, and loaded up my pack with basic hiking/exploring supplies: lots of water, items for lunch, a first aid kit and a towel for lounging on the beach.

Just before I set off to explore part of the island I looked back: to my tent, hoping that I staked it down right, that a gust of wind wouldn’t knock it over. And to the food cage that held all of my food for the next three days, that I hoped was secure and raccoon proof. To the picnic table and the fire ring and the draping Spanish moss. This was home for the next few days, and I felt amazed and lucky that I had gotten myself there.


Stay tuned for more of my adventures (including some of those wild horses, a big black snake, and a Carnegie).

Daylight and Writer’s Block

I sat down at my kitchen table, just past 6:00 pm, my usual time. I poured a glass of wine and loaded up Ryan Adam’s ‘1989’ cover album onto Spotify and I pressed play.

This is how I write my book. It’s happening in very, very small increments, from day to day. My kitchen table, sometimes a glass of wine, always the Ryan Adams music.

But right now it’s a bit after 7:00 and I’ve written just a couple of really bad paragraphs, and mostly I’ve just stared out the window or I’ve gotten up a few times, and peeked at the bread that’s rising underneath a dish towel at the other end of the table.

Some days are just not good writing days, but this has been a particularly bad one, so I hopped over here, to the blog, instead.

Twice a year in the US we have daylight savings time: clocks one hour behind in the fall, one hour ahead in the spring. We sprung ahead last night, and while I don’t like losing an hour of my day, I love this time change. The days have already been stretching out, longer and longer, but now daylight will extend well into the evening and for me, this means a return to life.

I always hibernate a bit in the winter, and this winter was no exception. Despite the mild days and very little snow, I took advantage of the darkening late afternoons by coming home, hunkering in, and getting to work on my book. The progress has been slow but it’s also been steady, and right now, I have a pile of (virtual) pages, something that’s actually beginning to resemble a book. Well, probably I’m getting ahead of myself- mostly it’s just pages and some of it strings together but other parts just hang out alone, waiting for something to come along and connect them to the greater whole. I have a long way to go, but all of this winter writing has been getting me somewhere.

So I’m maybe all the more frustrated by the lack of focus tonight. I try really hard to guard my writing time, giving myself as many evenings as I can to sink into my routine and force out something onto the page. But in the past few weeks I’ve noticed a growing fear. It started sometime when the days began to lengthen and the sun began to shine a bit stronger, when the air felt warm on my skin. The fear whispered in my ear: “How are you going to stay inside and write when the world becomes beautiful again?”

Tree on the Delaware & Raritan Canal Towpath, New Jersey

The pattern of my life changes when winter starts to fold into spring- I go outside and stay outside, on long hikes and walks. I buy water ice and I spread out on a blanket in the grass. I plan things and see friends and show up more to the stuff that I tend to say ‘no’ to in the winter.

But what will this mean for my writing? What happens to the 6pm writing time, the mellow music and the glass of red wine, everything set up just so, so that I’m conditioned to sit down and work?

I’m not so worried yet, not really, but tonight hasn’t done me any favors. I know I’ll need to adjust my routines or find new ones, and I’m convinced that I will, because I’ve written too much of this book to stop now.

But in the meantime, I have to say, I’m so excited for warm weather and the slow approach to summer. My plans for July and August are all over the place- about every other day I come up with a new idea, and mostly, I want to do it all: another Camino. A writer’s retreat. A walk in France. A walk in England. A walk in Scotland. I fall further and further down the rabbit hole, collecting more information and ideas and items to add to my bucket list, and there are so many right now that I don’t know what to chose.

Not a bad problem to have. But before any of that, I have a mini-vacation coming up in a week, and I’ll be headed to Cumberland Island, a 17-mile stretch of land on the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of the state of Georgia. Maybe this is why I’m worried about my writing- it’s my first trip in months, and will cause a serious disruption to my very rigid routine.

But I have to say, I’m so excited to be getting away. I’ll be camping on my own for the first time: three nights in my little tent, in a reserved campsite that’s a stone’s throw from running water and showers. So for now, a perfect scenario. It’s also a stone’s throw from quiet beaches and numerous hiking trails, and maybe most importantly, instead of black bears there are wild horses. (Lets hope the horses don’t come stomping into my campsite, but even if they do, I’ll be far less terrified of them than a visit from a bear).

I still have to practice setting up my tent, and I’ve got to gather up some food and see if I can work the little camp stove that I bought a few weeks ago. But all the planning aside, I can’t wait to explore a new place and to sleep outside and watch the sunset over the ocean. And I’m also excited to blog about the trip, so even if I don’t get much book writing done in the next few weeks, you can be sure to have some blog updates about this upcoming adventure.

One way or the other, I’m plugging along. Just continuing to plug along: my book, the blog, myself, my car (oh boy, my car!), my dreams. I hope you’re all plugging along as well, enjoying the extra daylight (if you’re in the same part of the world as me), and making exciting plans for the future. See you soon.

Shadow on Hedgerow Theater, Rose Valley, PA

Into the Wild: Fear and the Unknown

I got a tent for Christmas. It’s a small and simple thing, maybe the smallest and simplest kind of tent out there: long and narrow and fits a single person, white nylon and a sea-foam green colored rainfly. I had to learn what a rainfly was when I was researching tents, and I had to learn how to set up a tent, too. I opened the drawstring pouch and pulled out a mess of nylon and polyester and aluminum poles that, surprisingly, snapped into place with what seemed like a mind of their own. I tugged the material down at the edges and unzipped the large, semi-circle door and crawled inside. It smelled new and my socks squeaked against the floor as I slid them down the length of the tent and then laid there, all stretched out, with enough room to flex my toes. I was in my own little kingdom.

I haven’t taken the tent outside yet; it’s the middle of February and the coldest it’s been all winter. So it’s been sitting in my living room, all folded up and sometimes I think about taking it out and setting it up, just for practice. Because my plan is to use the tent a lot this year.

tent view, shenandoah national park, virginia

This is not my tent. But it is the tent I slept in on one of my very few camping experiences.

Before I walked my first Camino, I had a lot of fears (and to be honest, I was pretty nervous before my second Camino as well, even though I had a good idea of what to expect). I wrote a post, nearly two years ago now, about bravery and fear and what it meant to me to be afraid of something, but to do it anyway. It’s something I still think about a lot, the idea of fear, and how to move through it.

A friend that I met on my first Camino told me something that has stuck with me. He was talking about his own fears, and told me the story of how he went into a forest and slept out in the open. He was so afraid of being alone and unprotected in the wilderness- afraid of wild animals, afraid of a wild man, afraid to be vulnerable.

So he decided to face the fear, and went out in the woods with only a sleeping bag and he stayed there overnight.

“Were you scared?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” he said, laughing. “I jumped every time I heard a branch snap. I barely slept at all.”

But when it was over, he found that he didn’t have the same kind of fear about being out in the wild as he did before.

A lot of people have stories like this, how we are afraid of something and then we face it and even if some fear lingers, it’s not as bad as it was before. Because we need to have the experience to know that we can do it, to know that it is not as bad as we might imagine. And when we do something again and again, sometimes the fear goes away almost completely.

Until a few years ago, I hadn’t ever given much thought to camping or backpacking or being out in the wild, at all. Despite having been drawn to survival stories for nearly as long as I can remember (I was captivated by the book The Hatchet when I was in elementary school, and I’m one of the few people who is still watching the television series ‘Survivor’), I was never really interested in spending a significant amount of time out in the woods.

campsite, shenandoah national park, virginia

And for a very long time, I just assumed that it was something that I wasn’t into- it wasn’t me.

But it turns out that there’s a big difference between never being exposed to something, and not liking it. Just because you’ve never done something before doesn’t mean that you won’t like it, or be good at it, or couldn’t learn to love it.

Three summers ago I went to France and stayed in the mountains in the south and hiked every day. It opened up something in me- the possibility that I might love the outdoors, and climbing things, and pushing myself. I might not even mind a little dirt and a little sweat.

Then I walked the Camino and it solidified the feeling I’d had in France, the summer before: I did love being outside. I did love pushing myself and doing something physically challenging. I loved hiking and walking and trekking. I loved the mountains.

cows and mountains, camino del norte, spain

Cows and Mountains, on the Camino del Norte

So you’d think after these experiences I wouldn’t question myself so much anymore, that I would throw myself into all things outdoors, right? And people have asked me about this, time and time again: “So, when are you going to hike the Appalachian Trail?”

And every time I would laugh and say, “Oh, maybe I’d do a few days of it sometime. But I really like having a bed to sleep in at night, and coffee breaks during my hike, and a bottle of wine in the evenings, etc, etc.”

And I do like those things. But I was also assuming that I wouldn’t like camping and roughing it and not showering and sleeping on the ground and strange sounds in the night. I wasn’t thinking about the other parts, though: the challenge of carrying everything I need to survive on my back, of setting up a little home every night, of the satisfaction of cooking my own simple meals and falling asleep under the stars and waking up to a sunrise, and all of that fresh, dewy air.

sunset, shenandoah national park, virginia

Sunset in Shenandoah National Park, Virginia

Here’s the thing: I’m still not sure if I’m going to like camping, or backpacking. I have a lot of fear about it. Fear that I’m going to be too uncomfortable or cold, that I won’t be able to figure out how to use a camping stove, that I won’t set up my tent properly. That my backpack will be too heavy or that I won’t like being dirty. Bears. Or that, after all these years and after challenging so many of the assumptions I have about myself, I still don’t think I’m the kind of person who does this kind of thing. I’m not an outdoorsy person. I don’t camp. I’m not a hiker. I’m not a backpacker.

But whenever I start to think like this and the worries and the fears creep in, I tell myself to remember the Camino. Remember the Camino! The lessons come back to me in a rush. When I started out, I didn’t know a thing. I didn’t own one piece of trekking gear. I didn’t know if I could do it. I was so afraid, and then I walked 500 miles, and I came home, so confident in my ability to just figure things out. I felt capable.

So I’m facing a fear this year- I’m going to go out “into the wild” (or maybe just down a trail) with my tent and I’m going to sleep outside and I’m going to do it alone. I’ll do it with others, too, if the opportunity comes up, but I also think it’s important that I do some of this by myself.

I’ve been researching places where I can go camping, and I’ll probably start out with car camping first, then maybe I’ll look for a bigger backpack and try out a couple days on a trail somewhere. Baby steps, single steps- I’m a big fan of them as you know. Maybe it will all lead up to something bigger, or maybe it won’t.

But none of that really matters right now. Now, it only matters that I’m going to try. I hope to write about my experiences of going out into the wild, and share them here. I have a little spring break coming up in March, and some ideas brewing, so stayed tuned!

Camping at dusk, Shenandoah National Park, Virginia

Camino Frances vs Camino del Norte: which is “better”?

“Which Camino did you like better- the Frances or the Norte?”

It’s a question I started to get a lot as this year’s Camino was ending, and oh boy, what a question. But people want to know, they want to know how these Caminos compare to each other, which I liked better, what I preferred about each of them, how they are different.

And it was too difficult to figure out an easy way to answer. Eventually, I began to answer like this- “I’m so glad that I walked the Frances first.”

But I don’t think that’s much of an answer at all. How can I compare? Both Caminos were wonderful, and in very different ways. I’m not sure that I would have loved each as much had I not done them in the order I did (and I wonder how the timing would have affected my experience, had I let more time go by in between the two walks).

This is how I look at these two Caminos: it was all, actually, just one big pilgrimage. When I arrived in Santiago at the end of the Camino Frances, all I could think was that I wanted to keep walking. I wanted to walk for at least another month, for another 500-miles. I felt like I was just beginning to reach deeper into the experience of my pilgrimage, just starting to identify the lessons that the journey was showing me, just starting to practice some things that I suspected I’ve long needed to practice. I felt like I needed to go back.

The Camino Frances, for me, was sort of like the guidebook for how to do a pilgrimage. It was the start, it’s what I needed to do first. It showed me a little (sometimes a lot) of everything: a physical challenge, social interaction, time alone, art and culture, religion and history. I was thrown into it all, and I sort of waltzed through: this dizzying, swirling, laughing dance down a long trail. I moved through the Frances with so much energy, and overall I felt like I had incredible good luck- a charmed experience, in a way.

But the meat of my pilgrimage? I think I got that this summer, on the Norte and Primitivo. I certainly got bits and pieces of it on the Frances, but it was almost like I needed the lessons of the Frances in order to be able to practice them on the Norte. And that experience- feeling like I was able to quickly settle into a ‘meaty’ pilgrimage and have hundreds of miles to walk and think and face challenging situations and practice being strong and independent- that made my 2nd Camino beautiful. It made it so, so special to me, in a different way than the Frances was special. I felt like I shared the Camino Frances with a hundred other friends; I felt like the Norte and Primitivo were all for me.

However, had I started with the Norte, I think I would have had a completely different kind of experience. I’m certain that I would have loved the scenery and the walks along the coast. I would have loved the interactions with other pilgrims. And if I had signed up for this Camino thing in order to have a long walk- a trek across a country- the Norte would have satisfied that expectation completely.

But I decided to do the Camino for a little more than that. I wanted the spiritual journey as much as I wanted to trek across a country, and in some ways, I think I needed to walk the Frances first. The Frances is the Camino, and I could feel the mystique surrounding it: words like ‘magic’ and ‘aura’ and ‘fate’ and ‘angels’ kept popping up. So many people connected to and noticed the magic of the Camino, and the more we talked about it, the more we experienced it. Every day had this energy to it, this feeling that anything was possible, anything could happen. It was a spiritual journey for me: I stopped in churches, I said little prayers, I thought a lot about what it would mean to arrive in Santiago.

Madonna in the Pyrenees, Camino de Santiago; the Frances or the Norte?

The Norte and the Primitivo were somehow more… real. Immediate. Grittier. Dirtier. More painful. I felt like I was trekking, in a different way than I did the year before. My friend Elissa and I noticed this instantly, after the first few days of walking. “This is not the Camino Frances,” we said to each other. While on the Frances I had gone to bed thinking, “What magic will await me tomorrow?”, on the Norte, my bedtime thoughts were either, “Will my blister feel better tomorrow?” or “When will the walking start to feel easier?”

This was a true physical journey for me, with rain and blisters and very long days of walking. And it was an isolated journey- I walked alone and stayed alone for so much of the Camino. I treasured this time, especially the entire days when I wouldn’t encounter a single other pilgrim. It made the pilgrimage feel like mine- it made it both more beautiful, and more challenging.

Walk to Pendueles, Camino del Norte

But after saying all of this, I understand that everyone’s experience is so unique: many, many people get into the meaty stuff of the pilgrimage on the Frances. In the end, I think I needed a good, solid 1,000 miles for the pilgrimage experience I’d hoped to have, but for many, 500-miles is more than enough. 100-miles is more than enough.

So to answer which I liked better- the Frances or the Norte? I don’t have an answer, not a real one. And they are so difficult to compare, but I will say this: both were incredibly beautiful. I just spent a minute looking through my photos from my walk out of St Jean Pied de Port and through the Pyrenees, and I marveled, all over again, and how majestic that day was. And then I look through some of those coastal shots I took on the Norte. Is one route more beautiful than the other? Is one route better than the other? They are impossible to compare.

Orisson, Pyrenees, Camino de Santiago

Coastal route, Camino del Norte; the Frances or the Norte?

For others who have walked multiple Caminos- what are your thoughts? The Frances or the Norte? Do others ask you which route you preferred? Do you prefer one route to another?

Next Post: Writing, Hiking, and Dreaming

Don’t Stop Me Now; Thoughts on Strength and the Camino

I was surprised the other day when I looked at a calendar and realized that I’d been home from the Camino for a month. A month already! It doesn’t quite seem right, especially since I just started working again, but even these work days aren’t “normal” yet. My days, for now, are spent working from home: sitting on a couch, or lounged out on my porch with my legs in the sun, or maybe spread out on a blanket in the park. I take breaks to walk to the library, to jog around my neighborhood, to drink more coffee. These are the slow, easy, waning days of summer. After Labor Day things will return to normal and maybe then I’ll feel like the Camino is far, far away. For now, it feels as though I only just stopped walking.

A few of my friends have commented on how I look exactly the same. “Sometimes I think that I should look at you and see some sort of difference,” one says. “Show me your calf muscles!” another says. But there’s nothing much to see: my body, that felt so very strong in the last few weeks of my Camino, looks the same as it ever did. Maybe the muscles that grew and strengthened on the Camino are still there- I suspect they are- but they’re hidden. They might even be slowly fading away. They must be; after all, it has been a month since I’ve done much long-distance walking.

These days I’m running instead, and when I say ‘running’, I mean ‘jogging’. And whatever jogging I’m doing is of the very, very slowest variety. But it’s a different motion than walking, and uses different muscles, and I can feel my body working, hard, to figure this out. And despite never enjoying running and despite still being convinced that this won’t last very long, I like the feeling of my body working hard once again.

I learned this on the Camino Frances, last year, but I really learned it this year. For those of you who followed my blog while I was on the Camino del Norte/Primitivo this year, you’ll know that I walked some very long days, especially at the end. I’m still a little surprised when I jot down the distances and add up the kilometers and see the amount I covered in my last week of walking. It wasn’t something I had planned on doing- at least, not until a day or two before- and I didn’t feel like I had anything to prove. I just wanted to walk. And to be very honest, I suppose I loved feeling strong.

A Camino conversation that I see come up from time to time- in facebook groups and on message boards- is “the pilgrim who walks really fast”. Sometimes there’s criticism and judgement around this topic; inevitably, someone will say, “I don’t understand why anyone would want to walk so fast. You miss so much of the beauty of the walk! This is not a race- why move so fast to get to a destination only to have to wait several hours for the albergue to open? Or, why walk huge distances only to arrive in the evening and then have to go to bed and do it all over again the next day?”

I understand these comments, sort of, but they always make me a little uncomfortable to read. Because I’m one of the fast walkers (though I had my days this year when I was the slowest in a group). Sometimes, when I’m walking fast, I worry that others will see me and think these same things- that I’m just flying through the experience, not stopping to smell the roses, not slowing down to enjoy the journey.

But it’s not true, and at some point along the way, I stopped worrying about what anyone else might think.

I love the way I walked my Camino, especially this year’s Camino. It took me a solid 10 days to find my footing and to rediscover my Camino legs, and even once I did, I still had a few very difficult walking days when I felt sluggish and tired. But something happened to me in my last two weeks of walking: I felt strong. Really strong. Stronger, maybe, than I did last year. The Norte and Primitivo were more challenging routes than the Frances, and this year I had to cope with a large blister and walk through pain (plus, walk through a few days of bad weather). But once the blister was gone and my legs started to get used to those hills, I often felt like nothing could stop me.

And it’s so hard to describe this feeling, but this is what I felt when I was moving so fast down the trail: I felt a bit like I was flying, like my mind was almost detached from my body and I didn’t have to really think or work to move my legs and my feet. The walking became automatic and almost effortless- even, at times, when I was climbing up hills. And when I felt like this, I didn’t want to stop, sometimes I think I couldn’t stop, even if I wanted to: I just powered on, usually under a hot sun, sometimes with music blasting in my ears, feeling free and strong.

It’s why I walked so many of those long days, in the end- I felt so good that I didn’t want to stop. And why stop if I was still feeling so good? So I kept going. My last day, the 52 kilometer day, that was maybe a little bit about proving something to myself, proving that I could walk a longer distance than I ever had in my life. I was curious- could I do something like this? What were the limits of my strength? And even on this last Camino day I continued to experience and learn new things: that my body could walk 52 kilometers, but it wasn’t effortless. My strength was waning, the steps were not automatic, I wasn’t smiling and dancing and laughing down the trail. I was trudging down the path, moving slowly, pulling myself up small hills, focusing- in the end- on what I had told myself from the very beginning: one step at a time.

I needed a break after that 52 kilometer day- and the multiple 40km days that preceded it. For a good two weeks after my Camino ended, I didn’t feel a strong need to walk. I still did walk, a bit, but not like I tried to last year. This year, I was happy to let my body rest.

But I love remembering how strong I felt, and I’m beginning to really miss that feeling. I’ve talked a little about how I might not feel a need to rush back and do another Camino next summer, but that doesn’t change the fact that I miss the walking: those entire days of walking, the flow I felt when my legs were strong, the joy of moving myself across a vast space.

And I have these moments, lately, when I take a break to go for a short walk around my neighborhood, and I listen to the music that I played on my Camino. Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” begins to play and I swear I can start to feel the Camino again. I start to feel my legs grow stronger and I begin to move a little faster. And suddenly, before I know it, I’m flying.

Crossing water on the Camino del NorteHappy and free, Camino del Norte

Next Post: Camino Frances vs Camino del Norte

In the footsteps of Monet and Hemingway; Day Two in Paris, and the end of my Camino

I’ve been trying to write a post about the last day in Paris and the end of my trip, and I’m reminded of why I loved writing in the moment so much: writing about something that happened several weeks ago is a completely different experience than writing about it when the memories are fresh, when they’re all around you.

So I’ll start how I often do, with what’s around me in the moment: it’s just after 8am and I have a half finished cup of really strong coffee on the table next to me. I’m in my living room and despite the early hour it’s dark in here; the skies are a thick grey and rain drizzles and pours through the trees, onto the stone porch that’s just outside my door.

I’ve had a disjointed and crazy and wonderful few weeks since I’ve been home: a day in my apartment, a week on the road. A few days home again and a few days back out. Back and forth, home and away, over and over. I have one week left of vacation before I return to work, and at the start of the summer, I was tempted to pack in as much as possible: go to Europe, walk the Camino, come home and travel south for a wedding and to see friends. Then take off again- maybe California, maybe Maine, maybe an impromptu backpacking trip in the woods. I realized I was totally unprepared to do any of this, and what’s more, I didn’t want to do anything big. I wanted to sit still for awhile- and even though I’ve been back and forth and continuing to move, there’s also been so much calm in the past few weeks.

I moved so much on my Camino. We all do- anyone who walks a Camino- and I certainly moved last year, but this time? I was running, sailing, gliding through Spain. I could feel it- even in the early days of pain and fatigue and blisters, I pushed on, I pushed harder, I made myself move. And by the end, I felt like I was flying. I’ll write more- hopefully- about how I did this walk, why I decided to walk those long days and what I got out of it- but what I’m thinking about now is my mental state, especially at the end of the Camino.

My mind was strong. It was solid and confident and settled. I was so present in my moments on the Camino, but towards the end, I was also aware of what would happen when I returned home, aware of how I felt when I returned home last year. I’d thought about this as I walked, I thought about this during my conversation with Andrea, on my last night in Santiago: the Camino begins when the walking ends.

And I thought about this on my last day in Paris. I did a small day trip out to Giverny, the home and gardens where Monet spent the end of his life, and where he did some of his most famous work. I lingered over this trip- I could have rushed to the Gare du Nord and made it on the first train out to Vernon (a town near Giverny), I could have hopped on a bus that would take me with the first wave of tourists into the property, I could have tried to enjoy the gardens and the pond before the crowds would arrive. But instead, I lingered over my MIJE breakfast, I slowly wandered through the streets of my quartier and over to the nearest metro. When I arrived at the train station I learned that the next train to Vernon wasn’t for nearly two hours, so I walked through the streets around the Gare du Nord, and found a café near a church. It was on a bustling street corner but inside the café was quiet. I drank a café crème and wrote in my journal and chatted with a man delivering gallons of milk.

I’d become confident with my French- or, at least, confident in attempting to speak- and the attempts paid off. The delivery man laughed with me, tried to teach me a few words, told me I had a beautiful smile. On my way out, I passed a waiter who was standing alongside the bar, and dancing slightly to some pop music that was coming from the stereo. When he saw me he grinned, “Il faut dancer!” he declared. I shook my head, laughing. “I’m not good at dancing,” I told him.

I waved goodbye, and the waiter, the woman who served me my drink, the delivery man- they all stood together and smiled and waved at me and wished me a good day.

It was strange- in a way- to experience something like that in Paris. I love Paris, but Parisians are often rushed and reserved and formal and they just don’t seem to smile so much. Not at tourists, not at people they don’t know. But those moments in the café were different, and I thought about this as I rode the train out of the station and into the countryside: I could have sat quietly at my table and not engaged with the man delivering the milk. I could have smiled politely and not tried to speak. I could have kept to myself, and remained to myself, as I so often do. But I thought of my conversation with Andrea, the Italian, and I thought of what I resolved to myself, just two nights before: that I want to keep the energy of the Camino with me. I want it to shine through and into my life. Maybe I was already practicing this.

When I arrived in Vernon, a town about 5 kilometers away from Giverny, there were buses lined up outside of the station to deliver tourists to Monet’s home. But I chose to walk. Of course I did! There is a flat walking path that runs behind houses and past fields, leading straight from Vernon to Giverny. Most took the bus and several rented bicycles but a few others, like me, chose to walk. And when I arrived in Giverny, an hour later, instead of going to see the gardens, I first sat down to a long lunch. I’d heard great reviews about the restaurant which is part of the Hotel Baudy- just down the street from Monet’s residence- so I found a table on the terrace and ate like a queen: a glass of Bordeaux and slices of fresh baguette. Salad with goat cheese, salmon, broiled tomatoes, crème brûlée.

When I finally made it to Monet’s home, it was packed with people. The gardens were beautiful but so crowded. I walked up and down the rows, admiring the flowers, but I didn’t feel particularly overwhelmed with the beauty or inspired by the setting. But then I walked through a small underground passageway and over to the Japanese water garden and when I saw the weeping willows and wisteria covered bridges and the pond full of water lilies- all of that green- for a moment, it took my breath away.

On my return to Paris I felt full of a quiet energy and inspiration. Those feelings followed me to Shakespeare and Company, an independent bookstore on the Left Bank. I’ve been there before- maybe I’ve been there every time I travel to Paris- it’s my favorite bookstore in the world. As I walked through the stacks of fiction I saw a pile of slim paperbacks, a black and white photo on the cover of a man standing in front of a building. I picked up the book- it was Hemingway’s ‘A Movable Feast’, and I promptly took it over to the register and handed over some euros. My dad had just mentioned this book, when he was driving me to the airport before my Camino. “Have you ever read Hemingway?” he’d asked. “You would like ‘A Movable Feast’, it’s the memoir of his early days as an ex-pat in Paris.”

I’d had no idea. For as many times as Hemingway has ‘appeared’ in my travels these past two years, I’ve never read a thing by him. And yet, ever since I walked into Café Iruna last year in Pamplona, with Ibai and Mirra and Ji-Woo, I’ve felt some sort of small connection with Hemingway. I think maybe it had to do with being a foreigner in Spain- out on this strange adventure, stepping through towns where he spent so much of his time. When I was in Venice, this past winter, I discovered a bar where Hemingway had spent his time, stationed at a corner table in the cold winter months, working on a book. It was Harry’s Bar, and I made a point to walk inside. I’m not sure why, but suddenly it seemed like if I happened to be in the same places where Hemingway used to be, I should try to track down his favorite spots. Maybe I was trying to capture those same feelings that I had when I was gazing over the water lilies at Giverny: that quiet, energizing inspiration.

And this year, on my Camino, there were the words from a local, as I was sitting in a bar, writing: “Hemingway started like this, you know.”

I started reading ‘A Movable Feast’ right away- that night on the stiff, narrow mattress in my hostel room, the next morning, leaning against the concrete wall in the underground of the metro, waiting for my train that would take me to the airport. Twenty pages in and he writes about Shakespeare and Company, how he was shy and poor and had to ask to borrow books. I ate up his words as I read, and I realized- amazed though I probably shouldn’t have been- that I really like the way he writes.

And this is how my time in Paris ended, these are the feelings that I carried back with me from my trip this summer: feeling strong, feeling peaceful, feeling quietly energized, feeling ready to come home, feeling ready to write, feeling ready to figure out how to keep walking my Camino.

café crème, ParisJapanese bridge, Giverny, FranceFlowers and pond, Giverny, FranceJapanese water garden, Giverny, FranceShakespeare and Company bookstore, Paris, France

Next Post: Don’t Stop Me Now

Crêpes and Cathedrals; Day One of Post-Camino traveling, Santiago to Paris

This is going to be a disjointed post; I thought about not publishing it at all, but I wrote the first half while I was in Paris and I like reading the immediacy of it. In fact, I loved writing that way while I was on the Camino: in the moment, from cafés and bars and sometimes the high perch of my bunk bed in a crowded albergue. But I’ve been home from Europe for over a week now- nearly two weeks- and the ‘real time’ of this post is no longer real. I’m not in Paris (however much I wish I were). I’m home and I’m writing about Paris and some of this I wrote while I was in Paris and some of it I’m writing from where I am at the moment… at a small round table in a Panera cafe, drinking an iced cafe mocha that was supposed to be a hot mocha despite this 93 degree heat, but I didn’t have the heart to tell the sweet and kind barista that she had made me the wrong drink. I don’t even really like chocolate coffee drinks, but this was something I used to order when I was 22, the year after I graduated college and wasn’t sure what to do and would spend time writing at a Panera in my hometown.

So I came here today, because I think I wanted to sort of recapture those feelings I had when I was 22, at least a little. I wrote a lot about France back then- my time abroad- and writing felt like this thing that was so full of possibilities, that had no limits. I didn’t think much about what I was writing and I didn’t share it with anyone and I only wrote for myself, and it was probably the easiest writing I’ve ever done. So I thought I would recreate the scene a bit and write about Paris and see if I can keep writing like I did when I was young(er), keep writing like I did on the Camino.

So here are some thoughts from Paris:

This could practically be called the 32nd day of my Camino even though my Camino ended. I’m counting it because I was following yellow arrows, in Paris, inadvertently, because I took the metro in the wrong direction. I shook my head at myself because I felt like I should have known better. When I realized my mistake I got off and switched platforms and tried to go in the right direction, but I wasn’t fast enough and almost got caught in the closing doors of the metro car. I should have known better about this, too. But I was flustered, maybe not used to traveling this way after walking for so long, maybe still half asleep, my body moving slowly. Whatever it was, I decided I needed to get out from under ground and find some fresh air, regardless of how far I was from my hostel. Far is sort of a relative term for me these days.

I started walking and soon came across yellow arrows. I think they could have been Camino arrows- maybe- and in any case they made me smile. I’m not sure how far I walked, but it didn’t feel too far (what is ‘far’, anyway, after having just walked across Spain?), but I was tired. I AM tired, I think I need to tuck myself away somewhere and spend all day in bed. But first I have this fast trip in Paris. It’s a little difficult to be in this city that I love so much and to feel so tired, but I’m trying to reframe the experience and just enjoy it how I can. If that means meandering around aimlessly, stopping a lot on park benches, finding a chair by the Seine and settling in for awhile, sitting in cafés and drinking coffee… I think that’s a fine way to spend time in Paris.

Leaving Santiago was easy and hard. In some ways I really felt like this Camino ended well and that I was ready for the end, but it’s always hard to leave something you love. And hard to leave people you’ve grown fond of. I have this scattered family all over Spain right now: they’re days before Santiago, in Santiago, on the way to Finisterre, on the way to Muxia, on their way home. I got to say goodbye to some but there are lots still out there, still walking their Camino. So in many ways, I wish I were still walking, too.

But leaving wasn’t as hard as it was last year. Maybe it’s because I was able to come back, and it showed me that if I really want it, I can always go back. Leaving Santiago doesn’t have to mean leaving forever, leaving the Camino doesn’t have to mean leaving forever. I don’t leave these people forever, either; the best parts of my day were the messages I received: one from Jill, wishing me a safe journey to Paris. One from Nicolas, telling me that he is 40 kilometers from Finisterre. And a comment on my blog from Krysti and John, two friends from last year’s Camino. We haven’t been in touch for a year, but they told me that they’d been following my journey this year since Day One. I was standing at the luggage carousel in the airport in Paris when I read that, and I had the biggest smile on my face.

It was right around this time when I looked up and noticed an older man and woman across the room, waving at me and pointing to the corner. That was when I saw what I was waiting for: my walking stick. How this couple knew that I was waiting to pick up my stick I have no idea, they must have seen me checking it in Santiago. There it was, in oversized baggage: my tall wooden stick, covered with a fluorescent green wrapping. Getting it to Paris wasn’t as much trouble as I feared; just 20 euros to check a “bag”, 7 euros to wrap the stick.

So maybe that’s another reason this feels like a Camino day- I walked through the streets of Paris with my pack on my back, the walking stick in my hand. I found my hostel- the MIJE, my home away from home- and put my stuff up in my room. I’m in a shared room, but right now there’s only one other person’s stuff next to a bed on the lower level. I’m on the second “floor” at the top of a narrow set of heavy wooden stairs. There are six beds up here but maybe I’ll luck out and have the space to myself.

(later)…

It turns out I was the only one in my section of the room, and I was grateful for it. I had been wishing for this, wishing I could have a single room somewhere. That I could just have an early night and settle in, curled up on my bed with my phone and some wi-fi and a Twix bar. I got to do this, but that came a little later. First I had to spend a few hours in Paris.

I remained tired throughout the day. I thought that maybe I should have had a plan, that I should have picked one thing I wanted to do and forced myself to do it because I was in Paris and even though I think I’ll always end up coming back, I never know for sure how long it will be until I return to this city. But instead I walked for far too long down the Rue de Rivoli, stopping in one shop after another looking for a plain and cheap t-shirt. Shopping was the last thing I wanted to do but wearing a fresh t-shirt was the thing I wanted the most, so I forced myself to do a little shopping. (I came away with a 5 euro blue t-shirt from Forever 21, which might be considered a little sad considering I was in Paris, but I was satisfied. I just wanted something clean and new).

And then I did the only thing that I ever really HAVE to do when I’m in Paris, and that was to walk by Notre Dame. It’s one of my very favorite places in the world, and it’s one reason I like staying at the MIJE so much; Notre Dame is just a 5 minute walk away. I stayed in this general area the entire night: sitting on a bench behind the cathedral, occasionally admiring the architecture, watching kids play in the park. When I was hungry I walked a short distance to the Ile Saint-Louis and found a small crêperie. The restaurant was narrow, the kitchen off to one side with a man flipping the thin crêpes by the front window, three tables tucked against the wall in the front room, and a larger seating area in the back. An older couple were eating in the front of the restaurant when I entered and I was seated nearby- feeling a little self-conscious being alone, but also comfortable in this small and quiet space.

I ordered off of their ‘menu of the day’- maybe I was still in the habit of pilgrim menus and menu del dias, or maybe I just wanted to eat a lot of crêpes. The first plate was a crêpe complet: ham, emmental cheese and an egg. A mug of cidre, a buerre/sucre (butter and sugar, simple but the best) crêpe for dessert. The crêpes were enormous and delicious and unlike anything I’d eaten for the past month in Spain. I ate slowly, dipping each forkful of my crêpe into the runny egg yolk, savoring the simplicity of the handful of salad arranged on the side of my plate.

I wandered around after dinner, crossing a bridge over the Seine to head back to Notre Dame. Families waited in line for ice cream, a man played an accordian, an endless wave of people snapped photos. I found a bench and settled in to watch the sun set, with the Seine in front of me and Notre Dame just off to my left. After a few minutes a young man approached me and began to talk. He thought I must be Swiss, I think I let him down by saying I was American. He stayed with me for ten minutes, telling me how he had just moved to Paris, that he loved this area of the city, that French wine was the best. I was polite but reserved and eventually he got the hint and left. Over the past month I’ve gotten used to talking to new people- it seemed as though I met a handful of new people every day- and for as much as I was craving company and connection at the end of this Camino, on this night- in Paris- I just wanted to sit quietly and watch the sun set.

And so I did. The night was soft and quiet and I was tired and satisfied and full. Full of crêpes, full of happiness, full of the Camino and everything I got to experience in this past month. So, one more day in Paris- one last little bit of travel and exploration- and then time to go home.

MIJE courtyard, ParisMIJE staircase, ParisNotre Dame, ParisCrêpe, ParisNotre Dame, sunset

Next Post: In the Footsteps of Monet and Hemingway

The things we can’t leave behind: the story of my walking stick

My walking stick was my constant companion on the Camino. I thought about this a lot as I moved through my walk: the cities and towns would always change, the scenery would change, the people would change- nothing on this Camino seemed to stay the same. Nothing except my stick.

It might seem a little ridiculous- and probably is- my attachment to a piece of a large branch that I found in the woods several kilometers past Deba on my fourth day of walking the Norte. But after I spent the first hour with that stick in my hand, it felt unnatural to walk without it. And it was my companion, it was this thing that helped me, day in and day out, the thing that was always by my side, the thing that I would never, ever, leave behind. (Some people might describe an actual person in this way- a real companion- but for a solo-walker like myself, I think a walking stick takes on a pretty significant role on a long distance journey).

I didn’t actually find the stick, it was Richard, back at the beginning of the Camino when he was part of my first (but brief) Camino family. Have I already written about this? I had told the others about wanting to find a walking stick, and had spent a good part of the morning’s walk looking off to the side of the trail as we passed through wooded areas, hoping to find the perfect fallen branch. And Richard found one, cut it to my exact specifications, shaved off the ends with his pocket knife and even put a ring around the top.

The stick became so perfect to me during my walk- the oils from where my hand grasped the stick caused the wood to become smooth and shiny. The stick was straight and strong, and more than once, people mistook it for something I bought in a shop, rather than something I found in the woods.

Others on the Camino named their sticks, but I never did. Or, rather, I just called it ‘Stick’ (clever, I know). A few times it got stuck in between large rocks and it would tug me backwards. I’d feel a quick shot of panic, that the end might snap off, that my stick could get hurt in some way. “Stick!” I would exclaim, before extracting it from the rocks and moving on.

But it remained perfect, all through my Camino, all the way until the end. It pulled me forward up that last hill in Muxia, when I was tired and exhausted and finished. That stick was part of my Camino.

At some point, I knew I would take it home with me. I’d had a walking stick last year, too, one that I bought in a shop in St Jean Pied de Port, one that look remarkably like a stick you might find in the woods. I loved it, and it was incredibly hard to leave it behind in Santiago at the end of my Camino. I’d considered trying to bring it home with me, but somehow it felt right that I leave it behind.

I’m not sure what was different this year (I suspect one reason is that I walked a more difficult Camino, and the walking stick aided me so much more); in any case, I was determined to bring it home. I strategized with others, I talked with a post office employee in Santiago, I got a list of companies that could ship things throughout the world. In the end, it seemed that the easiest way to get my stick back to the US was to simply check it as a piece of luggage on my flights.

So at the airport in Santiago, I walked over to a stand that wraps and secures luggage. I presented my stick to the man working there, and he laughed. He pulled large sheets of fluorescent green cellophane from a giant roll and carefully wrapped my stick in multiple layers. I’d payed extra for a checked bag, and dropped the stick off at the check-in counter. And when I arrived in Paris, there was my stick, sitting with a few other pieces of over-sized luggage, in the corner of the baggage claim area.

It was easy, and I was delighted that I’d found a simple way to bring my stick home. So I didn’t think twice about checking it on my flight home to the US- but this time, it wasn’t quite as easy. When I made it up to the check-in counter in Paris, the man looked at my stick and said, “You want to check that?” He seemed doubtful, and then gestured over to a blue cart that was far, far across the crowded room. “Put it on there,” he said.

The cart was empty and after confirming several times with other employees that this was the over-sized luggage cart for American Airlines, I laid my stick across the cart and I walked away. I had a heavy feeling, and wondered if I would see the stick again.

So when I arrived in Philly and stood with the other passengers of my flight at the luggage carousel, I was not surprised when I didn’t see my stick. Everyone else got their luggage until it was just me, watching an empty conveyor belt circle around endlessly. A kind employee was helping me- someone who seemed genuinely concerned about my lost ‘luggage’- and he spent a lot of time checking all the possible places where my stick could have gotten held up. Finally he looked at me with sympathy. “It must still be in Paris,” he said. “You can go downstairs and file a claim.”

Arriving back home after being away for 5 weeks should have been exciting or, at the very least, a bit comforting. But instead I went home feeling like I’d left something important behind. “It’s just a stick,” I told myself. It’s one of the lessons of the Camino- that our possessions don’t actually matter that much, that we need far less than we think, it’s the experiences that count- blah blah blah (I do think all of that is important, but when you lose something that’s important to you, even if it is just a piece of wood, it’s okay to feel sad and to feel that our possessions do, in fact, matter a bit).

Things have been a whirlwind since I’ve been home. I stopped at my apartment briefly but then headed right back out for a long road trip to South Carolina, to go to a good friend’s wedding (and I just need to note: the distance I spent 9 hours driving in one day equaled the distance I spent walking for one month). It was when I was in SC that I got a flurry of emails and phone calls about my walking stick. It had been found, made it on a flight to Philly, and was now being delivered to my apartment by a driver named John. He left me a message to confirm that he would be dropping off my ‘luggage’ (when he said luggage he laughed); I called him back and he asked if he was delivering a walking stick to me. “Yes, it is a walking stick!” I told him. He said that all the guys were trying to guess what it was.

An hour later I received a text from him. “I dropped it off by the mailboxes.”

So I sent a text to my landlord, asking if they could look for it and bring it inside, keeping it safe until I made it back home.

I knew I wouldn’t feel completely settled about it all until I was back to my apartment and had that stick in my hand. I finally came home last night, and when my landlord saw me, waved me over so I could get the stick.

He handed it to me- it was definitely my stick, still wrapped in the bright green cellophane- but when I held it I instantly knew something was wrong. The stick wasn’t straight. Back in my apartment I began tearing off the wrapping, worried that I would discover that it had been snapped in two. But when I finally uncovered the stick I realized it wasn’t broken at all. It was just warped. Really, really warped.

I have to laugh about it- all the care and worry about getting that stick home with me- and now that it’s here, it’s not the same, perfect stick that I walked my Camino with. It’s no longer straight at all, but bows out at the bottom half. It’s crooked, it’s changed. It’s my stick, but it’s different.

It’s propped against the wall now, in my living room. I like that I have it back, even though now it’s simply a souvenir, no longer a fully functioning walking stick. And I suppose it’s okay that it’s changed. Part of me wonders- was it meant to be left behind all along? Or, perhaps, maybe it served its purpose, and now it’s done. Finished, retired. “You weren’t meant to walk another Camino with me,” it’s saying. “Find another adventure, and then find another stick.”

stick and pack, Camino del NorteAirport stick wrappingWrapped walking stickPilgrim shadow, Camino de Santiago

Next Post: Crepes and Cathedrals

You’ll never walk alone; Day 30 on the Camino, Vilaserio to Muxia

I learned something about myself today: 52 kilometers is a bit over my limit. But… I did it! 2 days from Santiago to Muxia. I would never do it again and maybe it was worse because I had three 40km days leading up to Santiago, which means I did just a tad more than 200 kilometers in 5 days (and I don’t know that I would recommend this to anyone)… but I’m happy to have done it.

Part of this crazy plan of walking really long days was so that I could try to do it all: make it from Irun to Santiago, then be able to walk to Muxia, and then make it back to Santiago and have a little time to try to find people that I’d met along the way. I didn’t realize that I would want to spend time in Santiago after a trip to Muxia until I realized that most of my friends were behind me, so when I began to consider doing Santiago to Muxia in two days, a big reason for that was so that I could have extra time in Santiago at the very end of this journey.

But also, I wanted to see if I could do a 50km day. Last year I’d wanted to break 40km, and I did, and it was plenty. But this year I happened to hang around with some young guys who loved to walk really big days, and the idea began to stir around in my head- maybe I could do it, too. I think it was Simon who said to me, “Don’t you want to go for 50km, to see if you can do it?”

So I did, and I can do it. But not well. You should have seen me on the last 10 kilometers of the walk today: I was literally dragging myself to Muxia. And wondering why in the world I ever thought this was a good idea. And wishing that these weren’t the very last kilometers of my Camino this year- spent in the rain, small pebbles rolling around in my shoes, mud slinging up on my calves, nearly every muscle of my body aching, my eyes heavy because I need more sleep. If there had been a bar 5km or even just 2km away from Muxia I would have stopped for some coffee, just something to power me through. But I powered myself through, ending with a small, steep hill up to the albergue. I stopped in the middle of the hill, partly because I was exhausted, and partly to take a moment to recognize the end of my Camino. Despite my fatigue, I said to myself, “This was a good Camino.” And it was. And, honestly, not a bad way to end this Camino. It started with a steep hill in the rain and was ending with a steep hill in the rain, but the in betweens had been glorious.

The day started really well. I had been the last to bed the night before but the first to wake up in the morning (and this is EXACTLY the reason for my heavy eyes today). I was ready to go in 25 minutes, which I think is a record for me. 5:30am I was on the (dark) road, walking. And even though I walked in the dark for an hour, I didn’t get lost once, or even momentarily confused. My guidebook had decent directions, and I was vigilant about shining my flashlight around to look for arrows and waymarkers. I walked until 7:00 and stopped at the first open bar for a cafe con leche and tostada, and took a few moments to watch the sunrise, something I haven’t seen much on this Camino.

The bar I’d stopped at was also an albergue, and the hospitaleros looked at me as I drank my coffee. “You didn’t stay here last night,” they said to me. “No,” I replied. When I’d entered the bar there were lots of other pilgrims around, getting ready to start their day. It felt kind of good to have already been on the road for 90 minutes. I felt kind of tough.

That feeling lasted for awhile- I walked for a few more hours then took another coffee break. I ran into a German guy I’d met very briefly the day before, and later, passed him on the trail. “Wow, you’re fast!” he told me. I looked at him over my shoulder as I walked away, “I’m fast now, but maybe not so fast later.”

Truer words have never been spoken. After another hour it started to rain, and then my body sort of said to me, “I’ve had enough.” I pushed myself through until I could find a bar, and soon after I arrived the German guy and an Australian girl came in. We all sat and ate sandwiches and the goofy barman tossed rubber eggs at us. I get so confused sometimes because I don’t understand Spanish, but I don’t think this was a language thing, I think the barman was just a bit odd. He had a couple of rubber eggs and I guess they were a joke but maybe I was too tired to really get it. And I WAS tired- too tired for the barman with the rubber eggs, too tired for the good looking German guy who was telling me that he just finished a degree in counseling. I could have handled this at the beginning of my Camino, I could have handled this a few days ago (even yesterday!), but today? All I wanted to do was lay my head on the table and fall asleep.

And then, as I continued to walk, any toughness I’d had in the past few days disappeared. I hobbled through the last kilometers to Muxia, arriving around 6pm, and told myself that I was glad to not have to walk tomorrow. I pulled off my shoes and socks to discover another small blister on the ball of my foot (something I suspected was forming during the last 10 kilometers of the day’s walk… and how’s this for a Camino message? The blister was perfectly formed in the shape of a little heart. Love and pain and all of that… lots of symbolism here- the Camino’s final mark on me was a heart, and I had to laugh when I saw it). I arranged my sleeping bag over my bunk and went to take a shower only to discover that the stalls didn’t have doors. Second time for me on the Camino, but this time I was not the only woman in the albergue. I was not amused but what can you do? At least the water was hot.

I took a walk through the town and over to the end of the little penisula, where I walked over the flat rocks to stand facing the water as it crashed against the shore. It was rough and a bit wild, windy with dark clouds swirling behind me. But ahead of me, far out over the water, the sun was shining (I think another metaphor, perhaps). And as I walked on the rocks and climbed up a hill around the church, the sky began to clear and the evening became beautiful.

Walking back to my albergue I didn’t recognize anyone (and really, the only people I would know in this town were the German and Australian I’d met that day). I wasn’t sure how I felt about being alone; part of me craved it, wanting to just cook up a nice meal and do some writing back at the albergue. But the other part of me was wistful and a little sad- knowing that I was completely finished with my Camino, having just walked over 50 kilometers, wanting to somehow celebrate it, wanting to not be alone.

Back at the albergue I opened a bottle of wine and cut up some vegetables and settled in at a table to do some writing. Moments later, a guy walked downstairs and I squinted when I saw him. From where I was sitting, he looked an awful lot like Honza, the Czech guy from the night before. He looked at me, and then we both grinned and shook our heads. It was Honza, and I was really, really surprised to see him in Muxia.

“You didn’t walk the 50km today, did you?” I asked as he walked over.

“Oh yes, I did. And it was because of you, you put the idea in my head last night.”

I looked at him, worried about whether he hated me for putting the idea in his head.

He smiled. “And on the walk today I wanted to thank you, because I’m really happy I did it.”

So just like Simon had put the idea of a 50km into my head, I’d put the idea in Honza’s head. And as I stood talking to him, I realized that I wouldn’t be alone tonight after all. Honza was a new friend, but he was a friend who had also just walked 50 kilometers to get here.

We made a meal together- pasta and a sauce with chorizo, bread, wine. After we finished eating we took the wine up to the second floor terrace of the albergue, where others were gathered to watch the sunset. As we’d been cooking we’d found two candles in one of the kitchen drawers- a 5 and a 0. While surely someone else had celebrated a milestone birthday, Honza noted that these candles were also meaningful for us. So we stuck the candles into the top of two bottles of wine and held out our cameras to take a photo- the ocean and the sunset in the background. A way to commemorate our 52 kilometer day.

We sat on the ledge of a stone wall, Italians next to us, some French in chairs below us. Drinking wine and talking with a new friend as the sun set and the stars came out, I couldn’t have predicted that this would be how I’d spend the night of my last day of walking the Camino Norte/Camino Primitivo. But, in some ways, of course this is how it would finish: I always struggled with whether I wanted to remain on my own or to be with others on this Camino, and in some ways, the Camino wouldn’t let me be alone. I knew it back on Day 4, when I walked away from my first Camino family, passed under that bridge and saw the graffitied words: “You’ll never walk alone.”

And it was true, because even though I spent so much of the actual walking time alone on this Camino, the number of people I met and the short, but deep connections I made astounded me. I would walk ahead or behind but always, there were others just ahead or behind, as well. Nicolas or Honza, Guillemette or Christine. Moritz or Nicole or Richard or Elissa. And dozens of others. I never knew when I would run into my friends or run into someone new or keep walking alone but this is the Camino (and life, too): in the end, I think we never walk alone.

          

Next Post: Day 31 on the Norte/Primitivo

I Did a Crazy Thing; Day 23 on the Camino, Campiello to Grandas de Salime, 47km

 It’s 6:45am and I’m sitting in a bar in Grandas de Salime. A large cafe con leche was just delivered to my table, along with some tostada. Other pilgrims are outside- lots of them, but I tucked myself away in this bar to be alone. The scene this morning reminded me so completely of the Frances last year: everyone getting up around 5:30, heading out the door by 6:00, walking while it was still dark.I’m resisting it, just a bit. It’s crowded here and there’s a general sense of panic about getting a bed at the end of the day, so I worry that people are rushing through this, and it’s something I won’t do. I like walking fast and arriving at my destination early, but I also don’t want to pass up coffee stops and pausing to take photos or resting and chatting with other pilgrims. So I’m going to sit here and drink coffee and do some writing before starting the day, even though it means that I’m the very last to leave this town.

Anyone reading this who may have walked the Primitivo before might be thinking- why is she in Grandas? She shouldn’t be there yet, she’s a day early.

Yes, it’s true. Because yesterday I did a crazy thing. Yesterday was the Hospitales route, reported to be the most challenging day of any of the Caminos: a long route up and over a mountain and a big stretch without any resources. It’s also supposed to be the most beautiful route with outstanding views, and I was so excited for it.

I’ll get to the actual route in a minute, but for now, the crazy thing that I did: I walked the Hospitales, and then, along with three others, tacked on another day’s stage as well (and this was another challenging stage). My kilometers clocked in at 47 (I think about 27 or 28 miles), which is the longest day I’ve ever walked in my life.

We’ll see how I feel on my walk today (to be honest, maybe this is one reason it’s barely 7am and I’m sitting in a bar, not walking… I just need more of a rest).

But the day was pretty incredible, and as I walked I thought to myself: THIS is the kind of Camino day I’ve been needing.

It all happened by accident, or happenstance, or a combination of factors that came together in just the right way.

The Hospitales route was totally foggy as I walked; all week I’d been checking the weather on and off, hoping for a clear day, knowing that the views would be outstanding, if we could see them. I started walked at 6:00, in the dark, but knew that the skies were overcast and cloudy. The fog grew worse as I climbed up the mountain, and it reminded me of my very first day on this Camino, out of Irun: walking through a fog and only being able to see the path just in front of me. This day was better since there was no rain, but it still meant that I wouldn’t be able to see any of the sweeping mountain views that Hospitales is known for.

But the walk was still incredible: it was quiet and eerie and isolated and peaceful. There were some other pilgrims close by, a group of three that I’d met in the past few days, a French guy I’d briefly chatted with the day before. But mostly I felt alone because in the fog, you couldn’t see anyone even if they were close behind you or just ahead.

At one point I stopped during a steep climb, to sip some water, then continued on. Barely 20 feet away was the top of that ascent, and sitting on a rock was the French guy, Nicolas. It was incredible that I couldn’t see him until I was practically right next to him (his eyesight is bad, and he said that he almost got lost a few times. My guidebook warned against walking this route if it was foggy, but I’d say that unless your eyesight is REALLY bad, it’s difficult to lose the route).

During the descent the sun came out and I was treated with beautiful mountain views. I can only imagine what my previous few hours would have been like in clear weather; but as I’ve said with other things on the Camino: it’s a reason to come back.

Overall the walk wasn’t easy, but it also wasn’t quite as challenging as I expected. Maybe I had built it up too much in my mind, but I thought that last year’s Dragonte route on the Frances (an alternate route) was a bit harder- more up and down, and a longer stretch without services.

In any case, I arrived at the first bar of the day, in Lago, which was nearly 23 kilometers into the day. Sitting there was Nicolas, who had sped by me somewhere on the mountain. He’d started walking in Paris, so has been on the Camino for almost 3 months, but about a week ago had to unexpectedly fly from Oviedo to Paris to take care of some school stuff. He had been walking with a friend since Paris and the friend continued on the Camino while Nicolas was away; and now, Nicolas is trying to catch his friend, and is doing so by walking really long days (this becomes important, later in the story).

I joined him at a table and then we had a very “Camino” kind of experience: watching about a dozen pilgrims come walking up, some stopping at the bar for a drink, others passing by. We were soon joined by a bunch of people, including Guillemette, and a German guy named Moritz. During the conversation we talked about the day and how far we’d go; Nicolas was planning to go until at least Grandas, but possibly Castro, adding nearly 30 kilometers on to the day. We thought he was crazy (remember this, for later in the story).

But Guillemette, Moritz and I all agreed that the walk hadn’t been quite as bad as we’d imagined. In fact, we were all feeling pretty good. The next town with an albergue was just over 3 kilometers away and it was where I had been planning to stop for the day, but with how good I was feeling, I considered going another 4.5 further, to the next albergue. The others agreed; we’d see how we felt after the next 3.

As I walked, I felt so good. The Hospitales route had definitely been challenging but as I hiked up that mountain I felt really satisfied: my body was working hard but I could feel how strong I was. I arrived in Berducedo quickly (so quickly, that I suspect my guidebook might be wrong). I stopped in a small tienda to pick up a few supplies so I could make dinner in La Mesa (the next town with an albergue, 4 kilometers away), and then I walked on.

And during that walk, which was mostly flat and slightly downhill, I felt like I was flying. And just like that La Mesa appeared before me, and I’d felt like I’d arrived a bit too quickly. When I found the albergue, Nicolas, Guillemette and Moritz were sitting on the stoop, their shoes and socks off. They waved me over and announced that the albergue didn’t open until 6.

“What time is it now?” I asked.

“3:00,” Nicolas replied.

The albergue was in a town that had nothing: no restaurant, no shops, no bars.

Nicolas looked at me. “So that’s three hours. You could sit here and wait, or you could continue walking.”

I looked to the others. Nicolas and Moritz were grinning. “You’re both going to Grandas?” I asked. They nodded.

I then looked at Guillemette. “I’m thinking about it,” she said.

I sat down and took off my socks and shoes, pulled some bread and ham from my pack, and opened my guidebook. Grandas de Salime was another 15 kilometers away. If the walking were flat, that would be one thing; but as it was my guidebook warned of the long, 6km descent that could “devour tired knees”. It was marked as another very difficult stage, and I had already walked over 30 kilometers.

But as ever, I thought about what I was here to do: to follow my feelings, whatever they happen to be. To be open to the experiences presented to me here. And sitting around me were three people who wanted me to come with them to Grandas. One I’d known for several weeks, one I’d met the day before, one I’d met only a few hours before. The day was beautiful and I felt strong… I felt like moving.

I started to put on my socks and shoes and Nicolas looked at me. “You’re coming to Grandas?”

“I am.” Everyone cheered and we all stood up, refilled our water bottles, and pulled our packs on.

The next 7 kilometers were amazing. The day had cleared up completely and we walked up and over a mountain, passing a line of wind mills and descending down a forested path towards the Rio Navia, a dammed river with water so blue that it sparkled in the sunshine. The descent was actually fine for me, and not difficult like I thought it might be. We’d spread out on the walk but at the bottom of the descent we gathered together for a break and then continued walking. We marveled at the river and stopped again at a hotel with a bar, finding seats on the outdoor terrace. We turned our chairs so we were facing the mountains and the river, we sipped on our beers and took off our socks and shoes.

“It would be so easy to stay here,” I said. The others nodded, but we continued on for the last 6 kilometers. Those were tough, and I was tired- really tired- as we approached Grandas.

We hobbled into the city just before 8pm; it had been a 14-hour day of walking. The hospitalera had stepped out from the albergue and left a note saying that the beds were full but there were 10 mattresses available. Just after we arrived a large group of Spanish people walked in (looking fresh and clean, I’m not sure where they came from but it couldn’t have been far). We were all able to claim the last available spaces in the albergue, so it was full with 40 pilgrims. Our mattresses were lined up like sardines in the dining area; the tables and chairs were pushed back so we could have enough room.

Our day ended with a big and satisfying meal in a nearby restaurant; the hospitalera told us that we could stay out as late as we wanted, that we didn’t have to rush back for 10pm (the time most albergues close).

So we ate a three course meal: I had a full plate of spaghetti bolognese, followed by salmon and french fries, followed by ice cream, accompanied by wine and bread. Maybe not the healthiest meal (definitely not the healthiest meal), but I ate like I’d never seen food before.

For some reason, this day was just what I needed. I’ve written about this a lot already, but it’s on my mind nearly every day: how often things change on this Camino. I’ve met so many great people but they are always changing. And except for a great visit with an old friend in Oviedo, my last 10 days have been spent either alone, or with a very new group of people. To have traveled with this little group yesterday, a new Camino family, I realized it’s exactly what I wanted. Like everything else here, I don’t think it will last for long, but for now it is just right. And we had an adventure together, over dinner we held up our wine glasses and toasted our victory over the day.

          

Next Post: Day 24 on the Camino Primitivo

Camino Angels and a few luxuries to mark the halfway point of my Camino; Day 15 on the Camino del Norte, Pendueles to Celorio

I had a few walking options for today, and I talked them over with Richard and Jill and Nia at breakfast this morning. My plan is to arrive in Sebrayo in 3 days, the last town before the Caminos split and Primitivo pilgrims separate from those continuing on the Norte. From Pendueles it’s about 75 kilometers to Sebrayo, and with three days to walk, it would make a neat 25 kilometer/day distance.

But that’s almost a bit too easy. I had that big 40km day yesterday, and I thought it would be nice to take it easy today, with a short day and time by the sea. A 14 kilometer kind of short day (which at this point, is practically like a rest day). Tomorrow I’d like to stay at Casa Belen, an albergue I’ve heard great things about, and that would be about 20km, leaving another whopping 40kms for the last day into Sebrayo. That’s the plan, and I told Richard I would see him in Sebrayo, in three days. He’s continuing on the Norte, and my hope is that some of the other pilgrims I’ve met along the way will be there at the same time. As much as I understand that this is the Camino and sometimes you don’t get to say goodbye… I’d still like to say goodbye, if I can.

But today didn’t got as expected (because, after all, this IS the Camino and you can really only plan things so much here).

I started off leisurely, taking my time to pack my things after I finished the cafe con leche and tostada provided to us by our hospitalero, Javier (this was another great albergue, he even did our laundry! Albergue Aves de Paso). I started walking and almost immediately was on a dirt track leading towards the coast. The tracked weaved in and out of the trees and sometimes ran close to the water, and the entire walk to Llanes, my destination for the evening, was beautiful.

I wandered down to a little, deserted beach and found a perfectly smooth piece of sea glass. It was so perfect that I imagined it must have been tumbling in the sea for at least 100 years.

I took photos at nearly every turn, I stopped in a town for my second breakfast of the day and got a cafe cortado (a shot of espresso cut with just a bit of cream) and three pieces of what looked like a homemade cake. I only asked for a little of it (or, I think I did), but I’m pretty sure the woman working behind the bar thought I must be a hungry pilgrim, because she loaded the plate with three slices of the cake and handed it to me with a smile.

I arrived in Llanes and felt like I’d barely walked. It wasn’t even noon and I slowly made my way through the town, stopping for a map in the tourism office and finding my albergue. But it turned out that the albergue was ‘completo’, full, and didn’t have rooms reserved for pilgrims like my guidebook said it would. The only other albergue (also not just for pilgrims) was on the way into town, at least 2 kilometers behind me. I headed most of the way there, running into several of the pilgrims I’d been with last night. They were all walking on, saying there was another albergue just a few kilometers away in a town called Poo (ha!), that would open at 3:00.

The only problem with walking on was that Nicole was potentially going to meet me in Llanes. She had taken a rest day and then tried walking for a few days; her foot was still hurting and she was thinking about bussing around for a few days to beach towns. I went back to the tourism office where I could get wi-fi, messaged Nicole to tell her that I would be headed to Poo, and then settled in at a restaurant in Llanes for a long lunch.

A menu del dia was on my list of things I’d wanted to do today. A short walking day gets me to a town in plenty of time to catch restaurants still open and serving lunch, so I found one with a reasonably priced, 10 euro menu del dia: melon con jamon, grilled salmon, a small salad, yogurt with honey, bread, and an entire bottle of wine.

This is something else I’ve never done on the Camino: drank in the middle of my walk (though there are pilgrims who swear by it!). I figured that I only had a few kilometers to go, and that I wouldn’t drink TOO much of the wine…

I didn’t leave Llanes until at least 2:00, and felt so happy and content on my walk out of town. The wine was good, the meal was good, my legs were still feeling so strong, and I was walking with the mountains to my left and the sea to my right and the day was sunny with a cool breeze. I try to really notice the moments when life feels beautiful (on and off the Camino), and this was a moment I felt so deeply: it’s a beautiful life.

I got to Poo and the albergue was ‘completo’; this was another albergue that wasn’t strictly for pilgrims, and it seemed that a group of camp kids and their counselors had filled the place. I walked around the back to see if Nicole happened to be there, and the woman who worked there asked if I needed help. She showed me to a bathroom, told me to sit down for a few minutes, asked if I needed water and told me she would call to the next town and see if she could reserve a bed in one of the pensions there.

She spent a long time on the phone and when she hung up, told me that I had a bed. “There was only one bed left and a boy was about to get it, but I said, “No, that bed is for Nadine!”

This woman- Maria- gave me a strong hug before I left, wishing me a Buen Camino and I felt, maybe more strongly than ever before, that I had just met one of my Camino angels.

The walk to the next town was about 2.5 kilometers, and there was a point where I felt like I was in the most beautiful place I’d ever been. The feeling was probably a combination of things: being in the very middle of this Camino and feeling good, walking on a beautiful day, indulging in a decadent lunch, being graced with the help of a truly kind woman. And, also, being in a stunning location.

Celorio is a really small beach town, with just one Main Street, a few restaurants, a couple hotels, a hole in the wall supermarket, three tiny beaches. I found my pension and introduced myself to the old woman who was tucked away in a back room of the narrow building. “Mi llamo Nadine,” I said. “Si, si, Nadine,” she replied, and she nodded to me and walked me up a tight staircase and unlocked a door, gesturing me inside.

And I walked into a little wing: my own entryway, my own bedroom, my own bathroom. I have a double bed and a tiny TV and a fridge and MY OWN BATHROOM!! Everything about the place is old and rickety and wobbly but I love it. I’ve unexpectedly stumbled on a mini vacation in the middle of my Camino, and since this IS the middle, Day 15 out of 30, I’m taking it with open arms and am enjoying the small luxuries.

The only thing wrong with how this day turned out is that I lost Nicole (or, I never found her). We’d exchanged a few messages throughout the day on intermittent wi-fi, and I knew she was walking on from Poo, but I haven’t seen her yet in Celorio. Maybe we’ll luck out and somehow see each other in the next day or two before I leave for the Primitivo, I hope so.

So this will be a quiet night: alone in my room and soaking up the privacy. I’m going to spread out on my bed and have a picnic dinner of cheese and bread and tomatoes and apples, put on the TV just because I can, and then go to bed really early so I can be well rested and ready to go for the second half of this Camino.

            

Previous Post: Day 14 on the Camino del Norte

Next Post: Day 16 on the Camino del Norte

Inspiration

 

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

-Lao Tzu

 

 

“… For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

-Wendell Berry, The Peace of Wild Things

Camino Packing List

Nadine and backpack on beach, Camino del Norte

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