Back from My Camino: Musings

[InOrlando]

I want to share some thoughts from my 35 days on the Camino Frances in the Holy Year of 2010 when Spain won the World Cup. Perhaps they will be useful to someone. --When I was tired, I learned to stop and just stand still. Even 30 seconds can make a huge difference in your ability to continue. And in this way, I looked around and saw beauty everywhere. I began to stop even when I wasn't tired, and I decided to lessen my daily walking goal to 15-20 km per day.
--Every single day, the scenery was different—different beauty and variety in the naturally gorgeous walk that is the Camino. Who knew that looking down into a sea of clouds could bring tears of joy to my eyes?
--There are small miracles all the time and everywhere: at the top of a steep hill, I found a woman deep in the woods who gave me a bag of cherries. Along an impossible climb, a young man lived in a roofless, ruined house. He gave away organic cookies, dried fruit, bottled water, tea, and coffee. God bless him and his dog.
--I wish I'd had a mosquito net to drop in front of my hat. Not for the mosquitoes, mind you. But for the flies.
-- Straw hats don't shield the sun. If you can see the sun through your hat brim, it can see you, too.
-- Snoring pilgrims don't bother me as much as I thought they would. I stopped using earplugs after the first week.
-- The boots are stored in a separate room for a reason: When 100 pilgrims keep their boots in the dormitory, then we all sleep with the smell of feet and manure.
-- Skip the cool new boots and go for the Old Stand-Bys with new orthotic insoles. And make sure to lubricate your "little piggies" every morning or suffer blisters. Compeed Anti-Blister Stick is the best.
-- Bed bugs aren't as dangerous as mosquitoes, but their bites are certainly a nuisance.
-- I wish my grandmother had taught me how to clean my clothes by hand. I never did a good job.

--It's better to slow down—and walk a shorter Camino—than to feel the stress and anxiety of your own ambition.
I understand why so many people walk the Camino time and again. It is truly a nurturing experience for the soul.

[Gazza]

InOrlando

Couldn't agree more with your sentiments, it is a truly nurturing experience.
The young man you talk of, his name was David, with a stamp of a heart. His little "place" came to us like a mirage at a time when he was truly needed. Providing fresh fruit/juice/tea/coffee all for donations.

I have tried to explain some of the experience with friends & workmates back in Oz, but unless they have experienced the Camino, then the same sense of love, caring & beauty just doesn't seem to translate.

Gazza

[Covey]

I quickly gave up trying to explain to friends back home the nature of the Camino Spirit. You are absolutely right that unless someone has experienced the Camino even for just a few days, the change from "normal" life to the Camino Spirit seems almost alien. You stop worrying about yourself, and worry about others. You will stop to help a complete stranger who may not even speak your language and the bond within your "Camino Family" is remarkably strong within a very short time.

If you want to get to know who a person really is and what makes them tick, walk with them for two days on the Camino.

[InOrlando]

Gazza and Covey,
Amen to all you've added, and more--thank you for giving me his name, Gazza ("David"). I'm ashamed I forgot it; I'll never forget his generosity.

And it's true, Covey: to explain the Camino's graces to those who haven't done it has been frustrating this past week since my return. I try to tell them that the hardship, aches, and pains combine with the sensory banquet of images, smells, tastes to create a unique unity of mind, body, and spirit. They ask, "Was it fun?" Fun? Fun!? It was exhilarating; it was profound joy; it was humbling.

More than a thousand years ago, the Camino idea was on to something innate about human beings. There was something true that they knew, and that truth is more pressing and vital now than ever before. Human beings *need to walk slowly* through the gifts of the world, and experience each one intimately; move through pain, time, and space with a locomotion that is muscle, bone, and pure desire.

It simply makes no sense to my hyper-digital friends who ask over and over again, "Why didn't you just take the train?"

I am still deeply awed by the entire experience I'll have for the rest of my life. I feel profoundly blessed. Thanks for this forum; otherwise I'd have no one else to tell who could understand.

[Covey]

I work as an IT Consultant and one of my clients is one of the Big Three computer manufacturers in the World.
Three years ago, on a Friday morning in early September, I was half way up the hills to Roncesvalles on the first day of my Camino, when my phone rang. The conversation went like this:

Hi Covey, xxx Bank need you in urgently on Monday morning because they have a problem, and have asked for you. Are you OK for that?
(Self) Well, at the moment I am halfway up a bloody enormous hill in the Pyrenees and am knackered!
Oh, sorry about that, but will you be back in London on Monday. If you have the fax number of the hotel, or the name of the hotel I can fax you the details.
(Self) I am staying in a Monastery tonight and I doubt they have a fax. (a long silent pause!)
Oh, is it one of those Paradores? Everyone says they are fantastic
(Self) Not exactly but at €5 a night is a lot cheaper.
Five hundred a night, bloody hell, you are on holiday and you are not even on expenses!
(Self) No, €5 for a bunk bed and probably a cold shower if I don’t get a move on. (Long silence!)
Well, when are you going to be back?
(Self) About six weeks
What exactly what are you doing?
(Self) I am walking the Camino Frances across Northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela and Finesterre. It’s one of the ancient Catholic Pilgrimage routes to the tomb of St James The Apostle. (Very long silence)
Covey, are you OK? (Overheard to a colleague “We have a problem, Covey’s got religion!)

[InOrlando]

I respect your effort to explain what the hell you were doing on a mountain, and on your way to a cheapie bunk bed where you'd sleep with scores of other stinky, tired, driven, crazy people.

But I also admire the guy's ability to ignore the obvious: Uh, you were BUSY! For whatever reason, he should've just apologized for bothering you with the promise that he'd call you some other time.

Amazing...and getting "religion" is a lot better than, say, bedbugs.

[Covey]

True, but when people think they know you well, it is just too tedious to try and explain that I actually enjoy the Camino more than pitting my wits against the fools who keep screwing up my well ordered IT systems.

It is why when you return home and tell of the good times and the hard times, your friends have difficulty in understanding why it is so worth while. I don't walk the Camino for any religious reasons and anyway am a Methodist. I do it to prove there is life in the Old Dog yet!! And, I have a very large grin on my face whilst I am out there with the snorers, the young and the not so young, the fit and the not so fit, and all those who make the Camino such a unique experience. Computers I can do any day of the week!

[Gazza]

Covey/InOrlando

I have been in the Banking Industry for 30years, an industry that is so regimented/sales orientated & risk adverse....... The Camino is everthing that "my world" is not.

We have a slogan (adv campaign) going at the moment with the punch line "we live in your world".........
well after the Camino, nobody who hasn't done the Camino lives in my world.

Clients & staff have commented how relaxed I am & seemingly contented - The Camino effect
Also how fitter I am looking - The Camino effect

It was a truly beautiful experience, the people, the places, the views, the people (did I mention the people)
Even the few bad experiences now seem miniscule in relation to the whole trip.

Think I will just keep walking

Gazza

[Covey]

In my world of banking IT, everything has a plan, and that plan is necessarily done in great detail, and everyone I deal with is used to having their day planned in great detail.

When I tell them that when I get up in the morning on the trail, I have no idea where I will be sleeping that night, no idea of where I will have lunch, no idea of who I might meet etc etc, my colleagues look very doubtful. When I explain that I take each day as a blank sheet of paper and it does not have to be filled in, the look on their faces says "keep taking the tablets!!"

[InOrlando]

Covey and Gazza:
Amen to all you've said about the "Camino Experience." The daily walking, the sweat, the people, cold water/cold beer...and no discernible plan for the morning. Ever since I returned on July 28th, I still haven't made my pre-Camino "daily list" to organize my day. As a college professor, I am used to a regimented day. Thank God I'm on an academic year-long sabbatical. I still have no plan for the next 8 months or so. Eventually I'm supposed to write a book. I'd rather take a long walk in the Pyrenees.