A Million Steps (11 page)

Day 12

Flowers

I silently slipped out of my sleeping quarters and began walking in the dark. The sunrise displayed a perfect mixture of blue, orange, yellow, and red. Hundreds of windmills rotated on the edge of the endless flat horizon.

After about six kilometers, I ran into Lairs, my dinner mate from the night before. We were both rather hungry and found a nice albergue serving breakfast. When we passed through the gate to the courtyard, I knew immediately that this was a special place. Orange lantanas and blue asters bloomed under large metal sculptures decorating the immaculate grounds.

We walked through the front door, and a smiling man named Eduardo quickly greeted us. His black beanie barely contained his dreadlocked hair. He ushered us into a dining room and commented that he knew exactly what we needed for breakfast. Very quickly, he arrived with a full pot of hot and fresh coffee, mounds of toast, jams, butter, and two large glasses of fresh-squeezed orange juice. Soaking in the heat, nourishing our bodies, and enjoying the moment could not have come with better company.

Lairs had just retired and was using this trip as his bridge to a life without work. He was calm but almost giddy with his enthusiasm about visiting a specific church on this day. He was not religious but had read about a very old and plain church. He felt that because it was not gaudy, most pilgrims would avoid the facility, leaving him time to enjoy an hour or two of quiet time. On the way out, Lairs took a memorable photo of me with our gracious host.

With the exception of the people, the villages began to blur. The four major cities on the Camino had populations exceeding 175,000. Outside of these major cities, village populations ranged between 100 and 3,000 people and were more often on the small side. Most days took me through three to five towns. From afar, they appeared to be identical, with decaying, earth-colored buildings surrounding a huge, central church. Up close, the villages were very quiet. I very rarely saw children. Occasionally, I saw an older person strolling down the empty streets. In many villages, the only business was a bar, which also served as the café. With luck, there might be a little store.

In the afternoons, however, even those businesses would be closed. Siesta is a serious matter with complete shutdowns of bars and stores beginning around one or two in the afternoon and never ending before five.

The silence was often mystical and overwhelming. Beauty resided in every crack and corner of the crumbling buildings that line the Camino. Many were painted in beautiful pastel colors. Brilliantly colored flowers spilled out of pots by doorways and on balconies. Each village became an art gallery, and my camera could not stop taking pictures.

I passed a cemetery but saw no flowers. Weeds grew among the graves.

The wind had picked up and was in howling mode throughout the day. The brim of my hat flapped constantly. In addition to music, I appreciated listening to the wind. It created an interesting melody. At times I could actually lean into the gusts and had to aim my walking stick to avoid tripping over my trusted friend.

The sunflowers were magnificent. If you ever wonder how little bags of black seeds make it to the mini-mart or how jugs of sunflower oil arrive at your local grocer, I have the answer. These spectacular flowers are everywhere on the Camino. I cannot remember a single day without passing many large tracts of these beauties. Many fields were dark, dry, and ready for harvest. Others displayed long, green, leafy stems with vibrant yellow flowers. All of the plants were very stiff with faces pointing toward the ground.

During this blustery day, I passed a field that performed a most enjoyable and entertaining dance for me. Without any rhythm or synchronization, the sunflowers randomly swayed and bobbed in the wind. The exposed faces appeared to be glimpsing up at me before returning their downward focus. I was grateful again for my newfound Camino awareness. With a cluttered mind, I easily could have missed the entire scene.

Raindrops threatened, so I took the precaution of covering my pack with the rain cover. About an hour later, I took a break and needed to get something out of the bag. When I removed the cover, I discovered my scallop shell was no longer hanging from the exterior of my pack. This was a priceless gift from Peter that I did not want to lose. Fortunately, I found it caught up in my rain cover. Had I not added this layer of protection, the shell would surely be lying on the trail. Like so many things in life, it is nice to recover something special that was almost lost.

We all can become complacent and take things and people for granted. I thought of Roberta and hoped that I hadn’t begun to take her for granted in recent years. I didn’t want her to slip into the lost category.

On this twelfth day of walking, I had taken roughly half a million steps and found myself in the gorgeous city of Carrión. With my never-ending Camino luck still in effect, a light rain began to fall just at the edge of the city. With a desire for some sound sleep and privacy, I elected to stay at another hotel on this night. I found a suitable spot at a cost of 35 Euros. When I entered the room, the rain began to drizzle. After unpacking, I opened the door to see a downpour pelting the quaint courtyard.

When the rain eased enough to become tolerable, I took to the streets to shop for a poncho and find a bar with Internet. It did not take long to accomplish all my tasks. Later in the evening I enjoyed a vegetarian pizza at a local restaurant. I made an early exit to take advantage of my peaceful, private sleeping chambers.

Day 13

Chilly

Day 13 began early on a cool morning. One of my first thoughts was about all the friends I had met along the trail and how many times I was forced to say goodbye. These endings were very difficult but became a frequent reality on the Camino. On my path of life, I am hoping to learn from and practice this lesson. All relationships on the Way, as all relationships in our mortal lives, come to a natural or an unnatural end. Although I may feel regret or loss, my new attitude is to view the time together as a cherished moment in my life instead of tormenting myself with the reality of the inevitable ending.

As I mused on these thoughts the night ended, and watching the earth’s colors change with the sunrise brought me immense happiness. The cold morning began to warm. It suddenly dawned on me that there was only one person ahead of me, Eugina, who I knew as a Camino friend.

Veterans tell me the manner in which a pilgrim walks the Camino has a tendency to mirror that person’s life. Reflecting on that observation, I recognized my lifelong habit of pushing ahead early and reaping the rewards at a later time. In college, my final semester courses consisted of golf, horseback riding, and a sociology 101 class on Marriage and Family. I plowed through my business career, always trying to get ahead, and retired at a young age. I tried to justify walking more kilometers than my peers based on the length of my legs, but the real pattern began long before my arrival in Spain. The rewards were a new flock of friends each day. I learned the trip was not about arriving. It was about living.

With the rays of the sun providing some much-needed heat, the deep bass from a live version of Joe Jackson’s
Fools in Love
soon lulled me into a trance. I found myself staring at the rolling clouds. The wind was still blowing hard and the sky was in a constant state of change. It took me a while to recognize the abnormality in this scene. Because the Meseta is so flat, the clouds hovered just above the ground. It was like being in a plane and looking out the window the instant before breaking through the cloud cover. With a good heave of my stick, I actually felt like they could have been penetrated.

After walking about 32 kilometers, I found myself near a tiny town looking at the beautiful Albergue Lagarnes. A lone blond-haired woman sat at a bright red table with her feet resting on a matching chair, enjoying a glass of white wine. Eugina was back in my life.

The facility had a wonderful feel, and I was very tempted to call it a day and spend time with her. Unfortunately, it would have made the next day’s walk unbearably long. We did chat for about an hour, and I resumed my walk toward Sahagún.

Throughout the day, my mind was pretty much on autopilot. Thoughts seemed to exit my head as quickly as they entered. It was pleasant to be able to spend an entire day without any retention. Just a free-flowing thought day––until about one kilometer before reaching the end of the day, when a revelation stopped me in my tracks.

I began to think about my days in college and how many drunken nights I had wasted being wasted. I did a little accounting and figured that those nights lasted for 24 years! I realized that my adult life really began on the day my dad died and I made a commitment to sobriety. I thought about my dad and how he had missed a big opportunity to regain his life on Jan 18, 1964, the day his alcoholic dad died and I was born.

This insight was so important to me that I immediately wanted to share it with Roberta. Upon arrival in Sahagún, I wrote her an e-mail. We had always been open and honest with each other, and this was by far the most personal thought that I had shared from the Camino. Her short response was underwhelming. Maybe I was expecting too much intimacy from across the Atlantic, but I felt exposed and questioned whether I would be as forthcoming in future e-mails or conversations.

As I delved into my past, a mystery of the Camino’s history presented itself within the walls of my night’s lodgings. Large wooden steps led me to the second floor of a rather spectacular albergue. The brick exterior concealed what appeared to be the remains of an earlier structure with large white pillars and gigantic arches. At the base of the gable roof, it looked like someone had “chopped off” the top of the former white building. It turned out that a Romanesque church from the Middle Ages occupied the original site. In the eighteenth century, villagers scavenged the church for its building materials. The building had a new exterior on a partially demolished interior.

This unusual building made me muse on my exterior and interior. Thanks to a decent diet and an obsession with exercise, my adult exterior has not changed dramatically, although it surely will erode as the years take their natural toll. My interior, on the other hand, is unrecognizable from its earlier form. I would dare to bet that not a single Sigma Nu fraternity brother, knowing my desire for wild times and whiskey, would have voted me “most likely to take a spiritual journey” at age 48. Neither would my former Micron Technology colleagues, who witnessed my pursuit of money and power, have imagined me being inspired by the slow pace of walking through nature.

I spent most of my professional work career at Micron, a semiconductor manufacturer based in Boise. For nine years, I traveled the world as a hard-driving, successful sales executive. I became the “Micron Man” who bragged at parties about on-time deliveries and quality statistics—as if anyone cared. After my employment at Micron, I spent the next six years consulting on various projects with an emphasis on sales.

In 2000, at age 36, I thought long and hard about time and money. While I did not have stacks of gold, I also did not have piles of debt. I had worked, saved, and invested. I was ready to make a big leap in life by formally retiring from traditional work. I no longer needed to define my identity with a job.

This decision allowed me the freedom to pursue many different non-traditional paths. Some led to health and fitness, some satisfied my academic interests, some involved volunteer work, and some focused on understanding the spiritual nature of life. No matter the activity, I pursued them all with passion. One of these adventures led me to this ancient path.

During this late afternoon in Spain, I explored Sahagún. In the large town square, I was surprised and pleased to see large groups of children. Because schools are centralized in the bigger cities on the Camino, the familiar sounds of school bells or recess did not exist in most of the villages. The high-pitched noise of kids playing and the thump of a foot kicking a ball were comforting reminders of normalcy. I bought a large chocolate éclair and watched the kids.

Because the mornings had been quite chilly, I embarked on a mission to see if Spain sold gloves. I did not know the Spanish word for glove, so I used the universal gesture of my right hand putting an imaginary glove on my left. After six different stores, I found success and purchased their last pair. They were too small but would certainly meet my needs for the remainder of the trip.

I tallied my material purchases on the Camino and laughed at my luck. In Burgos, I replenished my sunscreen and did not see the sun for six days. In Carrión, I bought a poncho and did not see rain until the end of the journey. I hoped my expenditure on tight gloves would improve the morning temperatures.