Camino Map

From http://www.willemswebs.com/album/camino/trip4.htm

May 3, 2007

Today was the first real relaxing day since I left South Bend. I spent time drinking coffee (cafe con leche) and writing in my journal before starting to walk. I walked for an hour or so with a father and son from Brazil. Then I spent most of the rest of the day walking alone which I needed. Walking up mountains, walking down, looking out at vast vistas of mountains and fields and villages. Some highways and towns. Infinite shades of green.

I liked Pamplona a lot and had fantasies of moving there. Completely a fantasy. Now I am in Puenta de la Reina (Bridge of the Queen). I walked past many windmills today--very modern and a bit ominous like giant mechanical soldiers. Riding the bus from Madrid to the start of the walk and again today, I think I have seen hundreds of windmills. I wonder how much energy they provide Spain. It has been a beautiful and tiring day, and the refugios is full of an Irish walking group to keep me in touch with my heritage.

Nutters

May 5, 2007

Rory Stewart, in The Places in Between, tells of a freezing day walking in Afganistan. As he is walking a jeep passes him with British Special Forces men inside. He says,

"When they reached me, an electric window when down..."You,¨said the driver, "are a fucking nutter.¨

This passage from my camino reading was especially with me yesterday. After I crossed this beautiful 11th century bridge in the picture, I hiked for 5-7 kilometers through mud--slimy, slick, wet mud. I thought of the nutter comment and felt sympathy with the sentiment. Still, it was exhilerating after finding an alternative path and a bizarre feeling of accomplishment.

I told some of you I would try to post a few notes on this site and now find myself wondering what to say. Walking is an anachronistsic (sp?) way to travel--still, it is an intimate way to travel as well. I see fewer sights but I seem them slowly and close-up. I also have plenty of time, when walking with others, to talk, and when walking alone, to think. That´s another kind of intimacy. So, a record of this trip is an account of thoughts and travel.

I spent a lot of time with Liz from England, and we decided that much of camino time is either blissful or miserable. I hope more bliss than misery, but I am not attached to that balance. Today, for the most part, has been sweet, and a hospitable touch this morning was the fuente de vino--the wine fountatin. A winery we passed has a fountain on the side of the building (really a lovely faucet) that pours red wine. I had a small nip of wine there this morning around 8:00 A.M. I have heard more than one person talk about how alcohol can get one started in the morning, but I´m not sold on that perspective yet. Still, I was pleased at the generostiy the fountain represents.

After the fountain I passd many vineyards. Most of the grape plants have just a few leaves at this time of year, and I still want to walk for a couple of weeks here during the grape harvest. The bases of the grape plants look ancient. I also passed an orchard of olive trees, grain fields, and a few almond trees. The altitude of today´s walk went from 420 - 700 meters above sea level.

It appears that the number of walkers on the camino keeps going up. Last night we arrived five minutes too late to get a bed in the refugio. Liz and I shared a reasonably priced room.

So, the walk continues.

Pamplona

I am here. This is the old gate into Pamplona and it is quite a sight. I walked 22k today and yesterday. It´s a surprise to the system, but I´m doing pretty well. Yesterday was very mistly, sometimes rainy. It was very beautiful but some of the paths were muddy. I walked half the day yesterday with a woman from England and we have had fun together. We are both sitting in a cyber cafe right now. Last night she and I had dinner with a young man from Finland who spoke wonderful English but is full of anti-American attitudes which of course he has no more.

John and Mary gave me the book The Places in Between by Rory Steward, a Scot who did a very long walk in Afghanistan. He makes my little walk seems like a piece of cake. He walked through snow and cold in January. But it was fun to read it on the plane as preparation. I left SB at 8 AM Sunday and spent 29 hours as a parcel but I was reading about being a walker. I asked John if I could tear the pages out of the book after I read them because I don´t want to carry them. I´ve been doing that and it feels very wicked but also nice. "I´m through with that" I say to myself and rip it out.

This Site Now a Travel-Blog

Rebecca Solnit has written a book with the odd subtitle A History of Walking. She says we depend so much on our cars that “In a sense the car has become a prosthetic…” She also says, with so many conveyances available, we often are carried through space like parcels.

Tomorrow, I am going to be carried to Spain like a parcel. Then I will try to balance that extreme passivity by walking everyday. This short quotation from Solnit is the beginning of this site becoming a little space for me to record my travels instead of my reading. Tomorrow I will fly to Madrid. From Madrid I will take a bus to Roncesvalles which is just a few miles from the border of France. Then, mostly, I will walk to Santiago which is just a few miles from the Atlantic Ocean. Today I’m feeling like this was a silly thing today. I assume I will change my mind soon. The path I will follow is the Camino de Santiago.

Just Passing Through

One day I noticed that I wasn't breathing--I was being breathed. Then I also noticed, to my amazement, that I wasn't thinking--that I was actually being thought and that thinking isn't personal...Thoughts just appear. They come out of nothing and go back to nothing, like clouds moving across the empty sky. They come to pass, not to stay...(from Bryon Katie, Loving What Is).

A Matter of Perspective

Lisa gave me a copy of this little reading which apparently was first published in the book Insight Meditation by Joseph Goldstein.

A friend’s son was in the first grade of school, and his teacher asked the class, “What is the color of apples?” Most of the children answered red. A few said green. Kevin, my friend’s son, raised his hand and said white. The teacher tried to explain that apples could be red, green, or sometimes golden, but never white. Kevin was quite insistent and finally said, “Look inside.” Perception without mindfulness keeps us on the surface of things, and we often miss other levels of reality.

For the last couple of years, I’ve been walking to work at least once a week. My perception of downtown has changed. I no longer drive past. I walk inside it. I like South Bend much more from the walker's perspective.

Thinking about Spain

These boots are almost like mine, and I'm getting ready to wear my boots on a hike through Spain. I was happy to find this poem by Billy Collins. He thinks about walking to Spain, I about walking through Spain, and both of us, a little bit, about magic. I just "discovered" Collins a few weeks ago when my yoga teacher read one of his poems during relaxation. You can hear him read others works here.

Walking across the Atlantic
By Billy Collins

I wait for the holiday crowd to clear the beach
before stepping onto the first wave.

Soon I am walking across the Atlantic
thinking about Spain,
checking for whales, waterspouts.
I feel the water holding up my shifting weight.
Tonight I will sleep on its rocking surface.

But for now I try to imagine what
this must look like to the fish below,
the bottoms of my feet appearing, disappearing.

Reality Rules

Counter-intuitive ideas from Byron Katie (author of Loving What Is): For me, reality is God, because it rules….I’m a lover of what is, not because I’m a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality….Thoughts aren’t personal. They just appear, like raindrops. Would you argue with a raindrop?... Why are you upset? You’re believing what you think. Want to get sane? Question what you believe.

The Right Questions

In today’s New York Times, Glenn Branca has a column “The 25 Questions.” Branca’s questions come from the perspective of a musician/composer, and he asks questions such as, “Why does the contemporary musical establishment remain so conservative when all other fields of the arts embrace new ideas?”

“I got the idea for this piece,” he says, “from mathematician David Hilbert’s well-known list of '23 Paris Problems’ (1900) that he hoped to see solved in the new century.” It’s a great reminder that a list can be a profound structure for thinking and writing about an issue. I don't, right off, have my ultimate list topic. However, the idea of listing important questions seems useful. For now, I’ll list the questions I’d like to answer in my life. I’ll revise it from time to time.