No one day on the Camino can be compared to another.
Yesterday I walked 22.something kilometers in bright sunlight, on a smooth white road, through waving green fields under a blue-blue sky, up and over rolling hill after rolling hill.
Today I trudged 22.something kilometers through a cold and cloudy (sometimes rainy) day, mostly on a gravel road next to the N-120 highway.
Yesterday there was a song in my heart. The walk passed almost too quickly.
I could feel myself heal with every step.
Today my feet hurt, and the last 6km felt at least twice as long.
Yesterday I could feel how I’m walking out from under my past.
Today I kept looking back in time, placing markers down as a way to frame my experience.
(Three weeks since I left Cape Town.
Two weeks since I arrived in Barcelona.
One week since I fell ill)
I’m finally starting to feel like myself again.
In some ways it feels as if the last seven days have all melted into each other, and that makes me feel a little sad.
Each of the villages I have walked through has their own special something, and it would be almost sacrilegious to conflate them all under a generic heading of “Spanish town”.
I’m scared that I’ll forget how exactly the light fell on the ruins of the church of San Pedro in Viana.
Or all the plane tree fluff floating like snowflakes in Logroño, making it almost impossible to breathe.
How all the children in Navarette played an active part during Sunday mass, and how warm the priest was there. That magnificent altarpiece. And a triangle
I’m scared I’ll forget the red cliffs of Nájera, or the earthy-nurturing feeling of the cathedral in Santo Domingo de la Calzada, or the first sweet peas opening their eyes on the way to Belorado.
The friendly young man in the photo shop in Berceo street, who dropped everything to help me find the entrance to my Pencion.
The old man who ran after me to tell me I’m going the wrong way and am no longer on the Camino.
The street art in the subways. The olive groves.
The doorways in Castildelgado.
The many different Camino markers next to the side of the road.
Grañón.
The red and purple and white and yellow flowers all together, magnificently, at the side of the road, minding their own business.
The @lapinchoneta juice cart up on top of the hill at Sotés, on the way to Ventosa.
Singing along to Violent Femmes while drinking a café con leche in a bar somewhere.
The red squirrels with their tufted ears, up at Río Somero.
All the metta and well-wishes and birthday love that came my way, mixed in with everything else
I’m finally starting to feel like myself again. But now I’m also a little scared that I will forget again, too.
Daily Braveries 