Acabo de peregrinar.

Well shucks, man, I finished.  No more walking.  That is, no more Walking, no more pilgrimage.  This morning I woke up at 9:00.  9:00!  On a typical Camino day I was up at 6:00 or 6:30 and walking within about 20 minutes, or earlier if it was going to be a really hot day.  By 9:00 I’d be a couple towns down the road.

And I took a shower…in the morning!  Camino showers were in the afternoon, partially because by the time I reached the albergue (pronounced “al-bear-gay” by the way) I was in desperate need of a shower but also because showering makes your feet all wet and soggy and soft, and  more vulnerable to blisters, so inadvisable in the morning.

And today I expect to only wear my sandals.  My shoes are on vacation.  Smelly, smelly vacation.  On the outside windowsill.

Sleeping in, showering when I want, and wearing only sandals are three things I enjoy…but it is really tempting to give them all up for the sweat and blisters and uncertainty of walking.  Maybe there’s a shaded little beach next to a river just beyond that hill…  Maybe a really interesting person from who-knows-where is in the next albergue.

But I am done.  And it’s weird.  And it’s good.  Tonight I will go to bed in the same place I woke up.  (Well, same city anyway, I am still day-to-day on accommodations…if anyone knows of a couch I could sleep on tonight, let me know.)  I know where the nearest store is, and a good bar, and a bench in the shade.

When I was here before, three hundred kilometers ago, I was surrounded by the energy of finishing.  My pack of five-ish fellow walkers counted down the kilometers to Santiago, and up arriving it was satisfaction, celebration, and farewells.  I was the only one not done, not going home.

Then I walked to Finisterra, and the albergue and town were saturated with that same sense of completion.  People burned their hiking boots and threw their walking sticks into the sea.  It is a tiny town and buses back to the city leave every couple hours.

Then on to Muxia, where it was the same, everyone was finishing.  And back to Finisterra, same same.  Back to Muxia.  Again.  Including the Dutch couple who walked all the way from the Netherlands, three thousand km or something like that.  Oy vey!

I bused to A Coruna, where I joined up with a fantastic Scotsman named Charlie to walk the Camino Ingles back down to Santiago.  Again, arriving in the city had a culmination feel.  Same same, but different.

This time I was actually finishing.  And because the Universe has a sense of humor, Charlie was not.  He stayed overnight and took a bus south the next day to start the last section of the Camino Portuges.  I was on the other side of the fence now.

So now I am finished.  I can sleep in, let my blisters heal, and maybe finally tell you about Manjarin.  I stayed up late reading last night.  I bought a heavier bag of groceries today.

I’m sure there are more things I would like to say about this, but right now I am going to go for a walk.  No, a stroll.  I am going to go for a stroll around town.  Slowly.  My backpack stays here.

Futbolista

Blech, I was trying to write a post about how business is contaminating the Camino, and it is just too wordy, so instead here’s a note about soccer.

I don’t know if you have been watching the World Cup, or were already aware of this, but Spanish soccer fans are lunatics.  I watched the last game (sorry Germany, it surprised me too) in a town whose name I can never remember and whose size confuses me (why is it so big?  There is nothing there!) and our table of three pilgrims stood out as the only people not wearing jerseys.

You could feel everyone holding their breath off and on until Spain finally scored.  Everyone jumped up and we were all yelling and screaming and bedlam and I felt something hit my feet and looked down into the glazed and confused eyes of the guy wearing the Spanish flag as a cape who had been sitting next to me and was now passed out on the floor.

He was so excited by the goal he literally fainted dead away.  It was only after a couple more rounds of high fives and finishing the song-chant that anyone could control their enthusiasm long enough to pick him up.

Poor guy probably lost all memory of the goal.  The good thing for him though is that since then they have replayed the game and goal about forty-seven thousand times.  Yesterday there was a pack of a dozen jersey-wearing fans walking around Santiago and they saw a TV showing the game again.  They were headed to the Cathedral, but since it was minute 64 and they all knew the goal comes in minute 72, they decided to stand in the street and wait for it.

Eight smiling minutes later we had cheers and a song, and then they were back on their way to church.

The Company We Keep

The formal Camino ends at the Cathedral in Santiago, but you can extend it to Finisterre.  From there you can further continue to the other side of the peninsula to a small town called Muxia, which has its own legends, a striking sanctuary church, and a sea that was stormy and gray.

I am still a couple hundred kilometers short of my 1,000 km goal, so two days ago I walked the 30 km up to Muxia, then yesterday walked back.  On the way up I walked with Michael from Denmark, on the way back with Yoshino from Japan.  The path was the same but the experience totally different.

Michael has been homeless for years.  He has been addicted to hard drugs, served time in prison for a bank robbery, and been hunted by Middle Eastern gangsters.  He served in the French Foreign Legion to escape for awhile, and the military left its stamp on him.  He wears camouflage pants and a sleeveless olive T-shirt, and has the quick, firm-bodied movements of someone familiar with violence.  He walks with two dogs on short chain leashes, has buzz-cut hair and sun-weathered skin.

Though not overtly aggressive, he has that “problem with authority” and frequently gets into arguments with albergue owners.  Unable to find a place to stay with his dogs in Santiago he slept in an abandoned building on the fringes where rats ate his last remaining money.  With two bags on and the dogs, he moves like a compact tank, despite only being around 5’6”.

When we were walking through a tiny farming town and stopped in some shade to eat our bread and cheese lunches, an old woman kept a suspicious eye on us from inside the house opposite and all the neighborhood dogs barked at us without pause for the entire time we were there.

Yoshino is a petite Japanese woman with a ready smile, open pretty features, and a willingness to talk to anyone.  She speaks excellent Spanish and I think everyone in between Muxia and Finisterre yesterday learned that it was her birthday.  Everyone enthusiastically wished her a happy birthday.

When we stopped for a break we chatted with a local lady who made very sure we knew how to get where we were going; people she said hello to called out tips from upstairs windows.  Sitting on the beach in Finisterre we made friends with a local fisherman who guided her throughout the town looking for a salon to get her hair cut, his plastic bag of fresh calamari on hold until she had an appointment.  (The locals here, as in most places with heavy tourist flow, are somewhat separate, and though friendly, they are not overly quick to engage you in conversation).  The dogs we passed all approached, wagging their tails, and sometimes paced us for a while in friendly companionship.

Now, obviously the presence of Michael’s dogs has a lot to do with at least the last one, but the disparity of experience on the two walks was glaring.  Their physical appearances and demeanors heavily determine the lives they experience.  They are also both great people, and I am thankful to have met each of them.

One of Michael’s dogs, Keisha, he found beaten with a bat and shot with a pellet gun.  He nursed her back to health and has taken care of her for five years; she still get upset when people take pictures of her, mistaking cameras pointed at her for guns.  He carries a second pack in front, heavy with dog food, and does not leave them alone even when that means he has to sleep outside too.

Nevertheless, when we got lost in the woods I was aware that it was just me and Michael and his dogs, with no one else around.  And to my shame, I passed a beautiful scene that day and did not take a picture of it because I didn’t want him to see my camera.  To be honest, this is mostly because of my own fear of being perceived as spoiled and privileged, but I have to suspect that there was also an element that I didn’t want him to know I was carrying anything expensive.

He is very open about his mistakes in his past, but is trying to turn his life around.  He was happy to get his certificate of having completed the route to Muxia, which he will send with his Compostela (the certificate for completion of the Camino) to his son who he has not seen in 11 years.  His son is 13.  He wants his son to “know that his dad is capable of something.”

But people don’t see that, they see someone who has lived a hard-bitten life, and who has done whatever it takes to get what he wants.  And they are cautious around that.  The police question him regularly and shopkeepers keep an eye on him.  I was not surprised to hear that he has spent time in prison.  I met and very much liked people he reported as being intolerable assholes.

Michael and Yoshino will never be perceived the same (at least until age has blurred them both to innocuousness).  Yoshino’s generosity of spirit shows through and people immediately trust her.  Michael’s bad choices have left their marks, but hopefully his good ones will show up too.

For me, I have poorly patched battered jeans (which I love), but a ready smile.  I am an unknown (and usually scruffy) young male, but a greeting for everyone.  I guess we all make our own caminos.

The End of the World

I have seen the End of the World.

And to be honest…it’s actually pretty nice.  Pretty severe, even harsh at times.  I was surprised by the number of tourists and the tables selling bric-a-brac souvenir kitsch.

The symbol of Santiago (i.e. Saint James) is the scallop shell, and it has also become the symbol of the Camino de Santiago and its pilgrims in general.  There are plenty of local legends of Saint James showing up to save dying pilgrims with water from his scallop shell, and back in The Day, pilgrims would take home a shell to prove that they had completed the Camino.

The problem is that the city of Santiago is about 100 kilometers from the coast.  The word Compostela derives from Camino de la Estrella that is “Path of the Star” with the legend regarding the rediscovery of Saint James’ body involving a vision-blessed shepherd following a star to the west to find the tomb (which may sound familiar if you didn’t nap through the entire Christmas service).

Pilgrims are an intense lot (kind of the original Extreme Sports crowd, only with less Gatorade and more diphtheria) so many pilgrims continued to follow the path of the star onward past Santiago to the farthest western point in the (medieval) world, a town called Finisterre, as in Fin de Terra, as in “End of the World.”

I, despite my lack of either Gatorade or diphtheria, did likewise, and so found myself one bright June day, sitting on the fiercely hot, jagged rocks below the lighthouse that caps the peninsula about 4 kilometers west of Finisterre (the End of the World is actually not quite at the end).  It is a drastic place, and you can feel the weight of all the powerful moments pilgrims have had here over the years.

(This is despite the busloads of tourist who manage to walk all the way from their buses to the tables selling souvenirs.  I don’t mean to scorn them, it’s cool that they want to come here, but the folding tables piled with mass produced crap seem profane in such a place.  As an example, the Spanish word for any shell is concha, though Santiago’s symbol is specifically the scallop shell.  The tables however were piled with conch shells, despite their irrelevance to Santiago and this area entirely.)

One of the traditions for Finisterre is to burn something, usually some of your clothes.  I suspect the irritation of a month of the same two shirts and the relationship between the perseverance of sweat and the effectiveness of hand-washing have something to do with it, but it is at heart a purification ritual.

Purification is a recurring element on the Camino.  You bring a stone from home to leave at the Iron Cross in the mountains of Leon, and/or one in Santiago, and/or you burn your clothes in Finisterre.  The idea is always to leave behind something from your life that you want to get rid of.  Destroy it, purify yourself.

I thought about it for a whole slew of kilometers, and not that my life is perfect by any means, but to be honest there isn’t really anything I feel like burning out of my life.  So I reversed it, cuz I’m just Mr. Unique like that, and took something from The End of the World instead.  A little piece of quartz, fits between two fingers and kind of hangs there by itself.

It is a reminder of the lengths humans have gone to to try and rid themselves of their mistakes.  Of the unthinkable vastness of human experiences and this chapter of my own.  Of the temporary nature of reality, from a place that was considered for centuries to be the westernmost point in the world, and here I was sitting, a guy who had spent his entire life up until a couple years before, far far west of there.

So greetings from the End of the World, the beginning of some, and the continuance of mine.

Como se dice "squat"?

The Camino de Santiago is, among other things (more significant) a cheap way to travel in Spain.  The albergues (pilgrim hostels) generally cost about 5 euro per night, and often have kitchens so you can cook your spaghetti and dump that can of tuna in and eat on the cheap.

Even so, it adds up, so I have been cutting corners by occasionally sleeping outside, which is of course worthwhile in its own right, though after a sweaty day of walking I miss the showers dearly.  (And I will definitely be dry-cleaning the sleeping bag when this trip is done.)  A couple nights ago I had decided to sleep outside, since it was beautiful weather, and the first albergue I had checked that day was 12 euro.  (12!  What is this, the Hilton?)

I heard the albergue would let me shower for free though, from the waitress in town who I bought my daily bocadillo from (seriously, I am so sick of Spanish bocadillos...I don't mean to be ungrateful to my host country, but Spanish cooking is tremendously unimaginative.  White white white bread, eggs, and jamon do not a cuisine make!  Sorry, had to get that off my chest).

So I headed over post-haste (what does that mean?  I think I am losing my grip on the English language...) and found the albergue was in an empty building.  It had a rusting swing set out front to indicate that it was once the town's schoolhouse, and I found myself wondering if they had built a new one, or if the town kids had started escaping this town earlier than usual.  It was basically a squat, thin mats thrown down on bare floors, bare bulbs hanging in a couple of the rooms, nothing in others, except for one very important difference: the bathroom had a massive new water heater.

Praise Santiago!  Like I said, it has been blazing hot lately, and I spend most of the day dripping.  By the evening it cools down though, and I am generally not a fan of the cold shower when I am not in Mexico.

Anyway, the point is that I slept in an abandoned schoolhouse, which was pretty cool.  There was a farmhouse across the street whose cow lowing in serious irritation for awhile, and the farmwife offered to make us cups of coffee in the morning for a euro each.  I loved it.

P.S.  "Squat" in Spanish is the same as English.  I suppose it would have the little dots over the u though....the umlaut thingy.

Facing death by Beethoven and Babe.

I was singing the cheery song from my last post (the one about not dying from contaminated water) yesterday when I came upon another one of the tiny towns that dot the camino.  They are generally beautiful and tragic interludes.  Villages too small to have a post office, where you rarely see any sign of life, maybe an old woman wandering around or leathery man sitting in the shade who responds to your “buenos dias” with a raspy voice so heavily dialected that you can’t understand the words even though you know what they are.

A lot of the houses are empty shells, roofs caved in, doors padlocked shut with heavy chain or missing entirely, and it is likely there are neglected farm implements rusting away in the alleys or behind houses.  It seems to me that all the children leave these towns for the cities as soon as they are able, and you are left with these ghost towns; the only steps in the streets are the passing strides of pilgrims and the shuffling scrape of the elderly.  I can only imagine the stillness of the ones off the pilgrimage routes.

So, like I said, normally I find these towns beautiful and tragic, and I have to resist the urge to whip out the camera to take pictures of every decrepit doorway and lined face.  This one was different.  The village was literally about six houses long, less than 100 meters, with no sign of human life visible, but a surplus of canine life in the street.  Snarling, growling, barking canine life.  How can half a dozen houses have more than a dozen street dogs?  And why are they all so pissed?

My first response was to back my weary pilgrim butt out of town, where I waited until they calmed down, then tried again.  I admit my heartbeat was faster the second time, and as soon as I made it through my second response kicked in, which was anger.  What the hell, man!  This is a shit town ON the Camino de Santiago, and they leave their dozen bloodthirsty hounds in the street?

Anyway, there’s not really a point to this story, I just wanted to tell you what I’ve been up to.

Oh, and when I backed out of town at first to let them calm down I stopped next to two houses, the first shattered and the second whole.  I went up to the whole one to ask if the dogs were actually going to kill me and saw through the window the refrigerator door hanging open, rusting, the cabinet doors decaying off their hinges, the floor covered with the detritus of an abandoned house.  It was creepy.  Then from the ruined one came deep grunting growling sounds.  As I leaned over to pick up a couple stones to carry in my second attempt at crossing the town (just in case, you know?) I straightened to find myself face to face with the largest pig I have ever seen.

Normally this would have been cute, but with a little animal-induced adrenalin already in my system all I could think of what that part in Hannibal where the pigs are eating people’s faces.  I gotta stop watching movies, man.

Today's Deep Thoughts on the pilgrimage.

So walking the Camino is a form of meditation, and a great time for introspection, but I’d be lying by omission if I let you think I was over here pondering The Mysteries of Life all the time.  To be honest, I am usually thinking about the same random stuff I normally do (despite my efforts to “live in the Now,” thank you very much Eckhart Tolle) such as movies I’ve seen, places I’ve been, and the big one: conversations I have had, may have, or should have had.

You know that last one, where you think back to interactions and suddenly think of what you should have said.  According to Chuck Palahniuk (the author of Fight Club and other, better books) the French have an expression for this that translates to “Spirit of the Stairs” because that’s when the right thing to say comes to you, when you’re on your way out.

I have to say “according to Chuck Palahniuk” because none of the French people I have ever asked about this have had the foggiest idea what I was talking about.  They generally reply something along the lines of “Je ne sais pas what the fuck you’re talking about.”   Excuse my French.

This morning it was singing new words to other songs.  You know The Killers song about “Are we human, or are we dancing”?  First it was “Are we tuna, or are we salmon…My roe are spawning, my scales are grey, and I’m on my way across the ocean, but am I a tuna, or am I a salmon?”

Then it was “Do you like Paul Newman, or do you prefer Ted Danson?”

It is blazingly hot lately, and the water fountains are of three types: labeled as potable, labeled as “without sanitary guarantees,” or unlabeled pipes sticking out of hillsides.  I chugged a couple liters from one of these mystery fountains and spent the next twenty minutes singing (to the tune of Happy Birthday)

Buena Suerte a mi,
Que no me muero aqui
Por haber bebido mucho
Agua lleno de pp.

(Good luck to me, that I not die right here, because I just drank a bunch of water, full of peepee.)