An anniversary of sorts

 St. Jean Pied de Port in southern France

I get a bit sentimental at this time of year. Three years ago today, after going down the wormhole of the Camino de Santiago Compostela for several months, I set off from a WV Friends Gathering near Huttonsville in a rental car, dropping it off in Baltimore and catching a ride from a friend to the BWI airport.

Then followed a night flight with a brief stopover in Iceland, a morning landing at Charles DeGaulle airport near Paris and two more flights to Biarritz.  From there, it was an hour or so in a shuttle car to St. Jean Pied de Port in the Pyrenees, where my pilgrimage would begin. It was the beginning of 37 days of walking across northern Spain along the medieval pilgrimage route walked by millions since the 9th century (full disclosure: I took one day off from hiking after 33 straight days in the beach town of Finisterre on the Atlantic). 

Including getting lost and other meanderings, I think it was around 640 miles across mountains and plains to the ocean, through rural Spain, small towns and a few major cities, sleeping at whatever place I could find at the end of the day, usually in unisex dorms called albergues operated by monasteries, churches, cities or individuals. It was a time of just bare living, with walking and seeing the only job at hand, punctuated by conversation, solitude, laundry, rough food, and Spanish wine.

Looking back I am reminded of my reasons for going, which were best expressed by Thoreau in Walden:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had never lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear, nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience ,and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

Well, it was sometimes sublime and sometimes mean. There was a lot of  heat, pain, discomfort and fatigue. And a lot of beauty and wonder. And I must confess I spent an undue amount of time daydreaming about a no-holds-barred fight to the finish with the evil genius that designed the backpack I was carrying. But it did, at least for a little while, front the essential facts of life and drive it into a corner.

Looking back, it seems like a miraculous dream.

Taking a stroll

Santiago, here I come. I hope.

A while back I got bit by the Camino bug and it won't let go. The Camino de Santiago Compostela is a pilgrimage route across northern Spain to a cathedral devoted to St. James the Greater, brother of John and one of the 12 disciples. There are many routes but the one that bit me begins in southern France and crosses the Pyrenees.

(In reality, the one place where one is NOT likely to find relics associated with James is probably northern Spain, but reality should never get in the way of a good pilgrimage.)

Anyhow it's a walk of around 480 miles, mostly through rural areas and I'm hoping to start this coming Tuesday. I'll post some from the road if tech and time permit. I'll be back before election day. Being gone during all that will probably mean dodging a few hundred robo-calls anyhow.

 Meanwhile, here's one of my favorite travel poems, which has shown up here before when road trips beckon. It's a sample from Walt Whitman's Song of the Open Road:

AFOOT and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune—I myself am good fortune;
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Strong and content, I travel the open road.

The earth—that is sufficient;
I do not want the constellations any nearer;
I know they are very well where they are;
I know they suffice for those who belong to them...

I think heroic deeds were all conceiv’d in the open air, and all great poems also; I think I could stop here myself, and do miracles;
(My judgments, thoughts, I henceforth try by the open air, the road;)
I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever beholds me shall like me;
I think whoever I see must be happy.

From this hour, freedom!
From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master, total and absolute,
Listening to others, and considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.

I inhale great draughts of space;
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.

I am larger, better than I thought;
I did not know I held so much goodness...
From "Song of the Open Road," Walt Whitman