From Burgos

We are about to start walking the most tedious (try the new word, ´trudgerý), the Alteplano. We are in Burgos right now - a city with a gorgeous cathedral and lots of esplanades and such.

The Alteplano is high and flat. We´re talking big skies here, big vistas, a path that is straight as a dime with no variation, no trees, no shade and lots and lots of wind.

I am windburned already from the past six days. It has been a mixture of weather, sun, rain, hard rain, and cold! Today almost demanded putting on fleece gloves.

Feet are holding up though I have twinges of tendonitis in my left foot (always the left foot).

It is hard finding open churches and harder still even to find a mass. I haven´t been to church since I left last week. I spent Pentecost in the rain, and wind up on Spain´s oldest mountain range.

Nonetheless, it has been wonderful to be back on the camino, to meet people from all over, and to have the time to be still in mind and heart, and to begin to listen for God´s small still voice.

Next post from Leon for sure.

Adelante!

Four days and counting

A short entry from a cafe bar on top of a plateau in the midst of rolling hills of wheat, poppies, vineyards and other greens to say that all is well. At the end of this day we will have walked nearly 100 kilometers.

Feet are holding up somewhat -- there are the usual blisters but otherwise all three pilgrims are holding up well.

We have had many interesting conversations with people from all over: France, Spain, Holland, Brazil and surprisingly more people from the United States than on other pilgrimages.

We have stopped in every church that has been open and have left a prayer for all those who have asked for them. It is a bit harder lighting candles because they tend more to be the electric sort and I don´t do that sort of candle.

We have a short day today, 20 kms, after yesterday´s 29 kms. And tonight we will stay in an abbey by a church that has a small cage of chickens on its side.

There is way too much to say in a short time but I just wanted to check in and say that all is well.

Caminante no hay camino
se hace camino al andar.

This is the Day

There's a fog settled over the mountain ridge across the way. It looks like a camino morning, like the morning we set out from Ostabat, the last leg before Saint Jean-Pied-de-Port and the Pyrenee crossing into Spain. I can well anticipate quiet mornings like today. By now we'll be on the road, walking. I am telling my feet to enjoy the next day's rest because it's all over on Tuesday.

This is the day we leave after so long. Again.

The cats know. The only way to leave them is to walk out the door and not look back. It is always very difficult for me to leave them behind even though I know they are in superb hands.

This segment of the camino takes the pilgrim through the barren alteplano where there are no landmarks, only a straight path, now lined apparently with saplings that someday will provide shade for the pilgrim.

It is said that people have visions on the alteplano because they become disoriented. That's better than the more perilous saying that demons will assault the pilgrim's soul.

I figure walking this chunk of the camino will be like crossing the Atlantic Ocean (which I did on the QE2 in 1977). For three days there was only sky and sea. We didn't even see a single bird. It stormed, the sea was rough, and there wasn't much of a vista. But it was vast and awesome. That's how I anticipate seeing the alteplano (or like being in Texas where everything is huge and you get 'big skies').

Regardless, we are off.

Vaya con Dios.

Two days....

In two days we will be en route to Spain to walk the last leg of the Camino.

It's incredible. Something awaited for so long, something that even though, for the fourth time and therefore is more familiar, demands such preparation, and now it is almost here.

By Tuesday, we will once again be looking for yellow shells on a blue background or something to that effect to guide us through towns.

Unlike last year, we will not walk our first day abroad; we'll end up arriving in Pamplona and then have the afternoon to explore the city. The next day we will get on a bus, our last conveyance until 16 days later, and walk 20 kms.

My mind knows what the rhythm of the day is: get up, get into the same clothes that have dried overnight, go have breakfast (in Spain, un cafe doble), come back to the room, fill up the water bottle first (camelback), stuff it into the pack and THEN pack the pack making sure I don't step on the bite valve (it's so easy to do and such a pain to clean up the water puddle that has formed, plus have to empty the pack out again). Go through everyone's prayers (I carry with me handwritten prayers on little slips of paper), so they will float with me for the day, read the daily office readings, and then... start walking.

On the way out of town, if necessary, we stop to get food (bread, cheese, fruit). And, sometimes, yes, we have to hit an ATM.

Usually we stop for a snack (banana and perhaps some form of pastry, in France, it was a croissant, of course) around 10.30 or 11.00, if we've been walking since 8.00. Then we walk until 1.00 or 2.00, sometimes waiting until we can find a place in the shade to sit. We settle down, take off our boots and socks, let our feet get some sun and air. Lunch can be half an hour, and then it's back to walking. The afternoon drags on more than the morning and we take more breaks, albeit short, about 10 minutes. Of course, the schedule can be completely thrown out of whack if there's a church to visit. The last hour always drags on and it seems as though we are never going to get to our destination.

We try to arrive at the next night's lodging by 5.00 or 6.00, though in Spain, dinner is later so it's not quite as much of a crunch as in France where dinner starts at 6.00 or 7.00. Once at the place, it's take off the boots, get out of the day's walking clothes, wash them and whatever other accrued laundry there is (though there isn't much) so that they can have a night to dry on the parachute cord we string in the room. We're not into having our smalls air on the back of our packs as we walk :) (There are some folks whose packs are such a mess you wonder how they stay balanced on the person's back!)

Then there's dinner and then back to our room. I write up the day in my small journal. And then, it's to bed... sometimes with aching limbs that impede a good sleep, sometimes just out like a light.

Then, it's up to start all over again. We'll do this for 16 days straight. I am ready.

Photo: shell in Ciraqui, Spain, 2004

Prayers for Pilgrims

Photo: statue at the top of Alto de Pardon, outside of Pamplona, Spain, April 2004

Prayers for Pilgrims

Pilgrimage is traditionally a journey to a holy place — a place where saints have walked, a place where God has met people and blessed them.

People through the ages have journeyed with God on pilgrimage — to perform a penance, to ask for healing, to pray for places where there is war or national disaster, to pray for friends.

Pilgrimage is an opportunity to travel lightly, to walk free of daily routines, to meet people, to make friends, to enjoy and celebrate God’s creation. An opportunity, too, in the travelling, the conversations and the silences to reflect on the journey of our lives and on our journey homewards to God.

Prayers before setting out on a pilgrimage

God of the guiding star, the bush that blazes
SHOW US YOUR WAY
God of the stormy seas, the bread that nourishes
TEACH US YOUR TRUTH
God of the still, small voice, the wind that blows where it chooses
FILL US WITH LIFE
God of the elements, of our inward and outward journeys
SET OUR FEETS ON YOUR ROAD TODAY.
MAY GOD BLESS US WITH A SAFE JOURNEY
MAY THE ANGELS AND SAINTS TRAVEL WITH US
MAY WE LIVE THIS DAY IN JUSTICE AND JOY. AMEN.

[P]ilgrimage is … a sign of contradiction, and of resistance to our prevailing value system, that of the market. Pilgrimage, after all, has no function other than itself; its means is as important as its end, its process as its product. Its utility value is small, and its benefits cannot be quantified or costed. Its value is intrinsic. It is something that is good to do because it is good to do. It states clearly that the extravagant gesture (because it is extravagant in terms of time and commitment) is an irrepressible part of what it means to be human and to walk on the earth. And whether the context for pilgrimage is solitude or community, we will be drawn deeper into the mystery of God and the care of creation. (Kathy Galloway)

Bless to us, O God,
the earth beneath our feet.
Bless to us, O God,
the path whereon we go.
Bless to us, O God,
the people whom we meet. Amen.

To finish

Pilgrim God,
our shoes are filled with stones,
our feet are blistered and bleeding,
our faces are stained with tears.
As we stumble and fall
may we know your presence
in the bleeding and in the tears
and in the healing and the laughter
of our pilgrimage. (Kate McIhagga)

Pilgrimage

Pray for all pilgrims and seekers
and companions on the way;
for all travellers.
Christ, may I walk together with you,
in solidarity with the poor and
with all of God’s creation.

+

Pilgrimage is feet-on-the-ground spirituality. (Jan Sutch Pickard)

Follow truth wherever you find it.
Even if it takes you outside your preconceived ideas of God or life.
Even if it takes you outside your own country
into the most insignificant alien places
like Bethlehem.
Be courageous. But concentrate on your search.
Truth is one. All roads lead to home. (George MacLeod)

+

The World Peace Prayer
Lead me from death to life,
from falsehood to truth.
Lead me from despair to hope,
from fear to trust.
Lead me from hate to love,
from war to peace.
Let peace fill our hearts,
our world, our universe. Amen.

+

A Creed for Peace
We believe in you, O God,
you who love all humankind
because you are a God of Peace
not of violence nor vengeance.

You created us, women and men,
and your dream is that we discover
community, justice and peace
between all persons
and among all peoples of the earth.

Your holy prophets of old
proclaimed peace,
rejected the powerful of the earth
who tyrannized, creating injustice,
unleashing conflicts,
violence and death.

And so all of us, with faith and hope
proclaim our faith in you,
Confessing that we believe in the God of peace and justice.
We believe in Jesus Christ,
servant and martyr for peace,
who was born among the least
and most peaceful of your people.
In the night of his birth
the angels announced peace
to the shepherds.
Christ came to the world
to bring peace not division.
He rejected sword and violence
and offered instead the special way of non-violence:
the way of truth, goodness, justice and love.
He was condemned to death for proclaiming
the Reign of God and God’s justice,
but God raised Jesus from the dead.
Therefore, together, with faith and hope
we proclaim our faith in you,
Confessing that we believe in you,
Servant of peace.

We believe in the Holy Spirit,
Giver of life.
Peace is the gift of the Holy Spirit of God
and is the fruit of the lives
of those who make peace.
We believe in the church,
The community of those
Who are peacemakers,
In the forgiveness of sins
And in reconciliation.
We believe in the promise of a new heaven and a new earth
Where life, justice and peace
Will triumph.

Therefore together, with faith and hope,
We proclaim our faith in you,
Confessing that we believe
In the Spirit of peace.

[With the exception of the Creed for Peace, everything else comes from This is the Day: Readings and Meditations from the Iona Community, Neil Paynter, ed., Glasgow, UK: Wild Goose Publications, 2002]

The Pilgrims' Progress

This sign is about 1 km from the cathedral in Le Puy, France, from the start of the Via Podensis that leads pilgrims through Aubrac, Conques, Quercy, Moissac, le pays basque, over the Pyrenees to Spain and then to the Via Frances. By the time we finish up on 9 June, we will have walked all those kms.

This go-round we will walk the following distances:
Day 1, 22 May, 21.4 kms
Day 2, 23 May, 28 kms
Day 3, 24 May, 29.5 kms
Day 4, 25 May, 21.3 kms
Day 5, 26 May, 23.5 kms
Day 6, 27 May, 30.6 kms
Day 7, 28 May, 21.2 kms
Day 8, 29 May, 20.5 kms
Day 9, 30 May, 31.4 kms
Day 10, 31 May, 28.2 kms
Day 11, 1 June, 33.1 kms
Day 12, 2 June, 32.1 kms
Day 13, 3 June, 28.2 kms
Day 14, 4 June, 29.9 kms
Day 15, 5 June, 32.1 kms
Day 16, 6 June, 20.6 kms

Oh, my feet!

There are bibles and there are bibles

This little book, Miam-Miam Dodo, French for 'Din-din, beddy-bye,' is indispensable. Revised every year, it contains a wealth of information about lodging, restaurants, which places have laundry facilities, covered sheds for horses or donkeys (one does see such critters on the way), internet (usually not an interest but this year, more important), and which towns have stores for food, pharmacies, banks and so forth. The publishers issue one for the Chemin in France and the Camino in Spain. For the past three years (that is, 2005, 2006, 2007), we have used them. Their maps are fairly vague so we add in other maps from other sources.

So while there is THE Bible, there are other bibles which sometimes (for me at least) give clearer directions.

While walking there are always waymarks that show the way to go. The shell, in particular, is common in Spain. It's like walking on a long treasure hunt, looking for the next yellow arrow or shell on a lamp post, side of a house, in the pavement, wherever, that will indicate a turn.

If one goes along for a while without seeing a sign (unless there's nothing else in creation nearby), one begins to wonder if one missed a turn. We've only done that twice in all the kilometres, both in France and Spain, and we usually were able quickly to figure out where we missed the turn.

Following the camino is not like life where turns are not so clearly marked and where it is far easier to wander inadvertantly (never mind the conscious times) from the path. Often, too, there are not companion pilgrims nearby to yell or whistle to let one know that one missed a turn. (Though one day when we intentionally left the Camino to go to our inn, we had someone insist that we had gotten off the path and needed to return.)

By this time next week, we will be asleep, ready to start walking our first day. Wow!

One week and counting

Somehow, all this stuff needs to get into my pack. Since this is the fourth go-round, the packing happens pretty automatically, and in little time, I have managed to get practically everything into the pack. I haven't weighed it yet, though... partly because that means I have to weigh myself first.


In short order, everything is organised for next Sunday's departure, including my 'evening clothes,' the fleece, shirt and pants I will wear when I am not in my walking clothes. From previous experience, I know that I have to keep the top of my pack detached if it is to be lightweight enough to put in the overhead bins (since we're not checking anything). In the plastic bag, which sadly I will ditch in Spain (contributing to more plastic bag pollution), I have my pouch which attaches to my pack waist band, my sandals, the battery recharger for the camera and some other heavy items.

My cat knows that I am up to something; hence, her sleeping not quite on top of but close enough to my clothes. I will take her fur with me.

The 0.7% button will go on the outside of my pack once we get settled and stop flying, that is, when we finally land in Pamplona next Monday.


Now it's time to start painting the soles and sides of my feet and my pinky toes with the awful-smelling tincture of benzoin. It's the only way to minimise the assault of blisters. It's not readily visible, but I have a lump smack in the middle of the arch of my left foot; the lump is part of the plantars fascia so it got a good swabbing tonight.

When one walks like this, fifteen miles a day with an extra 40 pounds (25 pounds for the pack, water and pouch, and 15 pounds overweight), one's world shrinks to worrying about one's feet and knees, which take the brunt of the walking.

Why this should be such a big deal for me, I don't know, since most of the world spends its days walking with more weight (I think of all the people I see in El Salvador carrying bundles of sticks on their heads or water jars) than I will. They don't have the luxury of smearing a preventative medicine on their feet, nor do they have the nice boots, wool socks and plasters that I will have to protect my feet (which are pretty roughed up because I like to go barefoot).

Walking as I will, as a pilgrim, will be luxurious compared to how my sisters and brothers walk. But, as I have written downstream, I walk because they walk and perhaps in my walking, I can remember them.

I have no idea how the fund raising is going but I hope folks are hitting that 'Donate to ERD' button :)

Hand-outs

In most of the churches in France that the pilgrim visits, one finds a notebook in which the pilgrim can write prayers and read what people beforehand have written. I became the one who would write a small note, a prayer, or a thought, and then sign it with our names and home. Then I would read through the notes the people ahead of me had written. It became as much of a ritual as writing a candle (and a lot less expensive!).

So, for this year, I am printing out business cards that have on one side:

Peregrinas por los Objetivos de desarrollo del Milenio [Pilgrims for the MDGs]

[update: we're adding: Peregrinas Episcopales de los EEUU…]

and on the other side:

Objetivos de desarrollo del Milenio
1. Erradicar la pobreza extrema y el hambre
2. Lograr la enseñanza primaria
3. Promover la igualdad entre los géneros y la autonomía de la mujer
4. Reducir la mortalidad infantile
5. Mejorar la salud maternal
6. Combatir el VIH/SIDA, el paludismo y otras enfermedades
7. Garantizar la sostenibilidad del medio ambiente
8. Fometar una asociación mundial para el desarrollo

Fewer of the churches in Spain, as I recall, have these notebooks but I intend to leave these cards behind so that whoever follows might know why a few people are walking the Camino.

The accompanying photo here is of a little chapel that overlooks the wonderful village of Conques, France. It was a super hot and humid day when we climbed up out of the valley to this chapel and it was so nice and cool that we stopped and rested a little even though we'd only been walking 30 or 45 minutes. Someone had left a breviary on the altar and it was open to the day's readings which, though I don't remember what they were, seemed appropriate for the day.

Will it be like this? Hope not!

This excerpt comes from Kerry Egan's Fumbling: A Journey of Love, Adventure, and Renewal on the Camino de Santiago (NY, NY: Broadway Books, 2006), 89-91. In order to keep the entry PG, I am altering the expletives, though they sort of add to the character of the passage and actually render it comical. You'll figure out what they are.

+++

The days always dawned cool and clear, but by ten the sun would really begin to heat up. By noon we were walking through wheat as far as the eye could see. From the top of any small rise you could spin in a circle and see only blocks of yellow or gold or pale green with faint zigzagging red lines running through them: fields of wheat planted at different times and the red-and-orange poppy flowers that floated above the grain, bobbing in the breeze like paper teacups. In the distance, on hills rising above the fields and with roads climbing out of the wheat to meet them, small towns huddled in on themselves. Always at least one church steeple rose from the town, sometimes high and graceful but usually short and worn down, the edges of the stone buffered to smooth curving shapes. The sky was the color of old blue glass bottles, with only whispy clouds low on the horizon. A giant blue platform for the sun.

The sun was everywhere. Everything seemed to have become sun — the wheat, the road, Alex, myself. I hated the sun. I hated the heat and the I hated the relentless way it just kept beating down on me, regardless of how I felt or what I did. I hated the heat rash it gave me and the headache it caused, I hated how hot it was, but mostly I hated how inescapable it was. There was no shade anywhere, no trees, no buildings, and no clouds to blot it out, even for a few seconds. It burned right through the top of my head, like a skewer that ran down my spine and stuck me to the ground.

I did not want this sun anymore. I was in fear of the sun. I thought about it constantly. I began praying, both as I walked and at night before I fell asleep that there would be clouds the next day to block it, or some trees to throw shadows across the road. Day after day I begged as I walked. "Please please please God let there be some clouds. Or trees. Just five minutes of shade and it would all be okay. Please, God. I'll do anything. Just some shade."

The sun kept shining that afternoon, as it had for the past week. I explained to God why I needed shade, or ever better, a cool rain shower. No response. Anger welled up in my throat. Was it so much to ask for a single cloud? All around the waist-high wheat continued to rustle gently. I hated that wheat which never offered shade. I stormed three feet into the field.

Wheat hurts. It scrapes and burns. This just further enraged me.

"Effing wheat. GD effing wheat."

A steady stream of expletives erupted from me. I don't really curse and it was a surprisingly liberating feeling. I kicked the wheat. It felt so good that I kicked again and again, circling around myself and kicking in every direction. With all my body weight behind me, I shifted onto one leg to let the other fly as hard and fast as I could. The backpack threw me off balance and I almost fell. "GD backpack!" and flung the thing off me. "Stupid sun! Couldn't there be any clouds! Nooooo! Of course not! All I effing ask for is some effing clouds, but never. I pray and pray for a cloud or a tree, but you just ignore me. You probably laugh at me. GD effing prayers are never answered. I am a good person, you know. Do you know that? Do you care? Do you effing listen? All I wanted was a effing tree!" I stood in a wheat field screaming at the clear blue sky and blazing sun. Silence. So I started kicking again and I didn't care that it hurt. It felt good.

"Why are you kicking the wheat?" Alex asked.

"Because it is not a effing tree," I screamed back.

"Really?"

"Yes. And you should, too. Don't you hate it?" I asked, turning on him.

He rubbed the back of his neck and looked at me. "Why should I hate it? It's just wheat. It just stands there."

This enraged me even more. I started howling. I wasn't even using words any more, but just sounds. I was shaking and screaming as loud as I could. I'd lost control of myself and I knew it. I couldn't stop. Was Alex such an idiot? Couldn't he see that the wheat just standing there was exactly the problem? That no matter what I did, I could do nothing to change the wheat into a tree? I was completely powerless. This was a betrayal of all I had ever been taught about hard work and responsibility and justice and fairness. I kept kicking.

I hear a click. Alex has taken a picture of me.

"What are you doing?"

"You'll want to remember this someday," he said, dropping the camera into his backpack.

I picked up my bag, stumbled out to the road, and started walking again. "I feel better," I said. Alex didn't answer.

We walked on in silence.

The agony of the feet

Sixteen days away, I wonder why am I going to spend sixteen days walking about 15 miles a day when it can be so painful?

Granted, I will not have two newly broken toes as I did last year (hence the white tape on the side of my left foot in the accompanying photograph), but the blisters and heat rash from the wool socks are a given. No matter what, it seems that one's feet suffer.

It's time to start coating them with tincture of benzoin, this brown, sticky and smelly stuff that turns your skin into leather and prevents blisters.

Unlike other years, I am going to stop walking from here on so as to save my feet. It's alternative forms of exercise.

Why do we do this?

In part, to use the words that CROP walkers say: 'We walk because they walk.'

So much of the world has to walk to get its water. It doesn't nicely flow from the tap whenever you want. And for multitudes, it doesn't even flow from a tap; it flows from a well down the road.

Think of how much time the population of the world, mostly women, spends going to get water.

And think of how much time school children spend walking to get to school. There are some communities in El Salvador that the Anglican Episcopal Church of El Salvador accompanies that get separated from the main road during the rainy season. It's a 5km walk to and from the main road and the children walk that so they can get to school.

So we walk because they walk.

Three weeks from today...

... we'll be walking from Estella to Los Arcos.

Mientras, three years ago, we were closing in on Santiago de Compostela, having started about the 20th of April from Roncesvalles.

This morning I went to a neat site that generates maps and elevations for the portion of the camino (or chemin) that one walks.

Here are the three maps for the portion of the camino we will be walking. [Click on them for enlargements.]

Map 1


map 2


map 3


The elevation gains aren't too wild — it's not like the spike one sees when one goes from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Roncevaux/Roncesvalles, nor is it the up and down one sees as one approaches Santiago.

The breakdown of stages between El Burgo Ranero and Astorga don't correspond exactly to where we'll be spending the night but they are close enough and one way or another, we will walk the 85 kms between the two places.

This is getting more real! I am beginning to collect all my walking clothes and accessories and dump them on the spare bed. Now, if only I had more energy....