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.
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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.
