Stats: Almost 14 miles on my Fitbit, approx 14 lbs on my back, in near 80 degree heat, 2300+ calories burned.  It’s the farthest I have ever walked in one day. 

Highs: singing John Denver’s 

Song “Country Roads,” with amazing friends while we walked together in nature.  Crossing the bridge built in the 1100s was another high.  Huge smooth stones worn from all of the foot traffic over a millennia.  I marveled at the giant rocks and the engineering of it all, the people who built it.  I was grateful for the people who went before me.  

Lows: heat and hills.  Going up is cryptonite for me, down is bad for my husband’s knees.  Marriage, it’s a beautiful plan.

Note:  “Stats and highs and lows” is all I will send from now on.  I LOVE writing.  It’s how I process life.  But there is not enough time built into this trip to write each day or even every other.  

I am taking notes.  And praying I can make sense of them when I get home.  My hope is to keep writing about the experience when I get back—“unpacking” is what I’m going to call it.  I think it may be the most important part of the trip.

 Feel free to ask me how it’s going if I start to slack off and get sucked back into the non-Camino world.

A teaser “chapter” until then…

“Put your feet in the water,” my friend’s husband said when we got to the other side of the ancient bridge.  There was a flat grassy  place there with a stream running through it.  I was hiding in a small corner or shade while he stepped into the stream.  

No, was my first inclination.  I felt like my feet would explode out of my sneakers if I loosened them.  How would I ever get them back on once my feet were wet?  And then there was the possibility of sand and stones sticking into crevices and torturing me during for the next 8 miles.  No… thank you I thought to myself.  

“It’s freezing cold,” he said as he walked back from the water with bare feet.  Yes!  Yes I will, thank you.  The thought of cold water sounded divine.  I was throbbing with heat.  

Jesus himself might as well have been washing my feet as the ice cold water ran over the pulsing skin and bones of my aching feet.  Yes, Lord, not just my feet but my head and my whole body too.

After another couple of hours of walking I had a new ankle pain that I prayed to God wasn’t the beginning of a stress fracture.  It’s how you think after an osteoporosis diagnosis.   

For almost a month I had been having near clinical anxiety that something would happen to prevent me from my bucket list trip of a lifetime.  With friends along, my dream was tied to theirs.  If I go down I won’t do it alone.

The new ankle pain and relatively new toenail pain was accompanied by a new hitch in my lower back and some old hip pain that I have been getting PT for, and also seeing a DO for adjustments.  

Then there was some very old knee pain from an injury when my husband and I first met.  Some of you old friends know that story.  You get the picture.  There was hardly a part of my body that did not hurt.

My friend’s husband Len is an experienced hiker and helped me make some backpack adjustments he thought might alleviate some of my issues.  It was a brave thing to do, to enter my “stink circle”.    We are all going to be much better friends at the end of this journey.   

I was okay for several miles when the cumulative affect of the day combined with the prior 3 days. 

We didn’t have reservations in the next town and it was rural.  We approached an alburgue in the village where we had planned to spend the night and my whole body was on fire.  

The women sat under a grape arbor that made up a lobby of sorts, while the men went in to see if there were any rooms left.  My girlfriend picked grapes for me while I sat and removed my backpack and shoes.  Buttercup.  

“It doesn’t sound like they have any rooms,” she said as she heard the men approach.  I started wondering if getting a car ride was even an option where we were.  The next alburgue was another mile down the road.  

I half joked that at the next stop I should go in to ask if they had beds.  Even someone heartless would find a spot for us to lay our weary bones once they took a look at me.  It was clear I would not be able to go any farther.

It was time to put the backpack on again… My husband offered to carry my bag and I protested, “just for a little while?” he said… I relented.  

It felt soooo much better without the weight.  The ankle pain was gone.  The other pains became bearable.  I think I can go another mile I told myself.  

Every turn I prayed I could see it.  Like an oasis in a desert I could go on if I could just see a place to stay ahead of me.  It felt like the longest mile of my life.

As we approached the next alburgue the sign outside said “hostel”, meaning, not a municipal alburgue.  Translation:  more money… At this point I would have paid a kings ransom but I didn’t want to force my friends into the same.  

We walked into a reception room and no one was there.   Even if they didn’t have room I was going to take advantage of an opportunity to sit.  Let anyone try to move me somewhere else.  I was sure my body was made of stone.  

Sitting quickly became lying down and when escaping gravity wasn’t enough, I had the need—and yes I mean NEED—to defy it.  I raised my legs straight in the air and felt the blood drain from my throbbing toes, calves and legs.  

I’m sure I looked like 2 day old road kill, so of course my good friend took out her phone and snapped a picture of me.  I didn’t care what I looked like, it felt glorious… If not being in excruciating pain is glorious anyway.  

Rosa walked in.  God bless her, she didn’t even bat an eye at me lying half upside down on her couch.  Crazy Americans.  

“Do you have any rooms?,” my friends asked.  “Twin beds,” she said.  “Four?, I asked from the couch.  Had I yelled it?  

For the love of God and all that is holy please tell me if we can all stay here, I wanted to scream.  The suspense was killing me.  “Two private rooms with double beds for 42 euros,” she said.  More than double what we’ve been paying…  “And twin beds for 15 euro each,””  she added.  “Four of them”,” she offered.  

“How many in each room?,” I asked—as though I might decline.  “Six” she said.  Sold!  

My husband and friends followed Rosa for a tour of the place.  “I have a very important job!,” I said to them as they left, feeling the need to serve a purpose other than slowing everyone down.  “I’m watching the bags!,” I said, laid out on my back with my feet in the air.  

 My husband and friends took care of everything involved in checking in to Camino alburgues and hostels (passport, Camino credentials and stamping, paying.) We all walked to the rooms and I thought I would weep with joy at the sight.  

The twin beds were tucked into closets—like private rooms—with DOORS on them!  Nevermind that the doors and walls didn’t go to the ceiling.  Glory after glory, my fate was turning.  I might survive.  

There were brown tile floors in the hallway in front of the bunk closets and they were very cold to the touch, so of course I lied down again.  

It might have looked like I was doing yoga but I was really trying to numb every part of my body.  If I could have become one with the floor I would have.  I imagine St James body being swallowed by the stone for his sarcophagus as legend says happened when it reached the shores of Spain.  I could lay here for an eternity.  I couldn’t believe our good fortune.  Doors!!!!  

The private (though shared) bathroom was between our bunk bed closet and our friend’s.

You didn’t have to walk sideways around the toilet to get into the shower and there was a big table to lay out all of your shower stuff and change of clothes.  The shower had a fixed shower head instead of wand so you could stay under the stream the whole time you showered.  Do the blessings never end?  

When I turned on the shower I stifled sobs as the warm water washed over me with the perfect pressure, massaging my weary shoulders.  

When I walked out of the shower I felt resurrected.  Truly new.  Miraculously healed.  

A woman waited outside the bathroom door as I stepped out.  It took me a minute to recognize her.  I had met her the first night in Porto at the outdoor dinner.  Three generations of her family were walking together.  Unbelievable. 

 

We chatted about the day and I worked up the courage to ask: “Do you mind me asking how old you are?”  She laughed, “I love telling people,” she said with enthusiasm.  “I’m 82,” she said.  I was gob smacked.  

“And you carried a backpack?!,” I said incredulously.  “Yes”, she said, “my family takes some stuff out of my bag sometimes.  I can keep better pace with them if they do.” 

Thank God she and her family hadn’t seen me in the reception room with my feet in the air.  I might not have recovered from the embarrassment of it.

My husband washed our clothes and hung them to dry and then we laid on a blanket in the grass while Rosa prepared supper.  Confession: “Buttercup,” swung from one of those macrame chairs, while her friends were on a blanket on the ground.  

We shared a bottle of wine until the dinner bell rang. “Outside or in?,” Rosa asked.  We took seats at one long communal table under the stars, with people from all over the world.  

I sat next to an adorable young man from South Africa.  I couldn’t pronounce his name, so he said it was “Iago” in Spanish (as in, Santiago—St James!).  “Or James in English,” he said.  I was feeling very European so I called him Iago.  

He looked to be in his late 20s or early 30s.  He was traveling with his father “the 7th”.  “Do you live in a palace?,” my friend asked.

Iago the 8th was a computer programmer by day, but nights and weekends he turned into a farmer.  Like Clark Kent and Superman I thought to myself.  He’s going to save the world.  

“No one can afford to farm,” I said to him, thinking about the people I know that work day jobs and farm on the side.  It is a true passion.  “I think there is a food reckoning coming,” I said.   “For sure,” he proclaimed like a prophet.

“There are 3 stages,” he announced.   “Hopefully the first one will be gentle, he said, adjusting his hand as he mimicked a downward graph.  

“But I am optimistic,” he explained, as he told me about the people around the world who are paying attention, gathering together and trying to come up with sustainable plans.  They are not the politicians. May God bless him and his young friends.

He was passionate about plants, flowers, gardening and home grown food and he was preaching to the choir.  

After dinner I joked with my friends that we might have all gotten hit by a car and died, and by the grace of God made it to heaven.  We  talked about staying at the hostel and helping Rosa, never to return home.  

A lot can change quickly.  It doesn’t take long for heaven on earth to feel like hell.

—the end

How’s that to get you to keep reading?  Don’t worry, we’re all fine.  But no one slept.  Stay tuned for more…

Homework: Hebrews 13:14-16 and 2 Corinthians 5:1 

 I’ll post the pic of me with my feet in the air when I get back stateside.