Day 33: Gonzar

It’s getting hard to post. There are so many pilgrims they clog the WiFi the way they do the roads, and my data speeds I’m now paying for aren’t always equal to the task. They won’t let me use Messenger at all.

I left Barbadelo late again because I lollygagged around and talked to Fred. He was telling me some theater stuff and I got angry and said, “No!” Some Hispanic ladies startled and I gentled my tone (or tried to.) When Bev came up a few minutes later I said, “You missed the temper tantrum.” The ladies said, “We didn’t. That made us uncomfortable.” So I apologized. Fred tells me I’m scary when I’m mad. But I think it was not only that.

I walked with Bev for awhile but she has an infected blister, so she was slow. I left her in a bar about 5k from the 100k marker. She wanted to experience that with her sister.

Here it is, The 100k marker. A young man from Bordeaux took my picture. That’s where he started, 1000k ago. (Three days before I started 400k later.)

But here is one of the beauties of the Camino. There was no judgment on his part and no envy on mine. We say over and over, “Your Camino is your own.” You do what is right for you. Walk your pace, whether it is fast or slow, carry your pack or don’t, bus or taxi or don’t.

Everyone told me the Camino would be different after Sarria and it is. Not physically, the trails are still gravel or asphalt or rock as they have always been. Here are some pictures to prove it. First marker that’s less than 100.What is different are the people.

There are way more of them, for one thing. I am never alone now, unless I stupidly forget that today is the day I’m going 15.5 miles and I don’t send my pack on and don’t start till 8:30. (Hands behind back, whistling.)

They are a vigorous lot, these pilgrims. They chatter and laugh as they walk, their sticks clattering briskly. Yet I see pale-skinned girls stopped by the roadside putting on more sunscreen, their faces pink with exertion. I saw a young man collapsed by the roadside, his head on his pack, being fanned by the group leaders while the other young people milled aimlessly. These pilgrims throng the bars, sweating and gulping orange juice, while I continue my placid, plodding pace, that nibbles the miles like a snail nibbling a strawberry.

I find part of me resenting these pilgrims. The emotion both surprises and disappoints me. I can’t know their journey, why they started when they did.

Bev told me about a thread on Facebook in a pilgrim group where someone asked if albergues should rank pilgrims according to the distance they’ve travelled. The consensus was no. One woman said, “I have MS. It is as much an achievement for me to walk from Sarria to Santiago as it is for someone else to walk from St. Jean.”

That’s a fair point. We can’t know another’s journey and what challenges they face. So I have thought about it, and I think I know the sources of my resentment.

One, I suspect that for at least some of these pilgrims this is a five day walking holiday with a certificate of achievement at the end. I can only pray, if this is true, that those pilgrims discover the Camino is so much more. The other is, these pilgrims are divided. By language, nationality, the school group they came with. How can they experience the dissolution of barriers, the melding into one culture I have experienced, in five days? I don’t think they can.

I was in a bar and I heard some ladies speaking American English. They were clearly lost and looking for something. True to my culture ( we share language and country of origin and I might know something they don’t) I asked what they are looking for. “Our group,” they reply. “Well I can’t help you with that,” I laugh. “I thought you were looking for a place.” “We’re. looking for that, too,” they said, in the politely dismissive way Americans have.

Because THEIR culture said “I’m not desperate and I don’t know you so I must be independent and refuse help.” I recognized it and understood it, yet it was on a way foreign. And I was sad because I was a pilgrim in a way they were not, in a way I believed they would never be.

So I resent these pilgrims because they remind me I must soon leave this “in between place” and re-enter a divided world. A world where there are standards and expectations, where I am so often found wanting.

Many people dream of opening an albergue on the Camino. Some do it. Others return time after time, year after year. Some come because they feel scattered, and the Camino gives them focus.

But I believe it is also because we long for a place where we are not judged. Where each person’s effort and contribution is honored. If it their genuine effort it is enough, no matter how much or little it is.

Here in this in between place heart speaks to heart and soul to soul, beyond barriers of nationality or even language. (Although as an aside, God really knew what he was doing when he chose language as the tool to divide humanity.)

This is a peaceful world, one that quite literally moves at a walking pace. (Maybe that was part of why those ladies were so uncomfortable. Anger isn’t really something you experience here.)

Here on earth is the connection, the community, the commonality of purpose that we associate with heaven. But because it is on earth it is finite.

I don’t know if it could be achieved anywhere but an “in between place.” I know our souls long for it. We keep having “peace talks” and talking about world peace, because the whole world wants what I right now have. If only it didn’t require so darn much walking.