These are my friends Susan and Sharon.  In May, these ladies walked the last  one hundred sixty-five kilometers (over one hundred miles) of the Camino from O'Cebreiro to Santiago de Compostela.  These gals are my heroes,  my inspiration, and the very reason I know about the Way of St. James in the first place.  They love the Word of God, are humble servants of the Most High, and are masters of praise and prayer.  I hope the road and the shelters are full of trekkers just like them.  

So, what is my motivation for going on this journey?  Like Jack Hitt, author of Off the Road: A Modern-Day Walk Down the Pilgrim’s Route Into Spain, I think my motivation for walking the Camino likely is just to discover what my motivation is.  I have always been one of those all-or-nothing kinds of people.  Rob pegged it when he said that there is no in-between with me; I have either got to be reading on the bed with all of my muscles atrophying or flying across the globe to walk five hundred miles.  I do not even know if it is possible, after all of these years of being the way that I am, for me to learn how to just mosey and to enjoy some-or-something.  Every day cannot be Christmas; I honestly do know that.  And every discovery does not have to be grandly epiphanizing; I get that too.  Even Anne-with-an-e of Green Gables eventually realized that not all of her rides upon thrilling winds of anticipation were worth the thuds of disappointment she experienced when she fell.  But, truthfully, I have never been very good at just conducting life, of toiling on a narrow road, of helping others through the minutia of another day.

I must have spent too much time reading books like Zorba the Greek, because, at some point, I started to see myself in mythological terms.  (I actually once compared myself to Persephone “who spent part of her year in an inky underworld and the other in a glorious, bursting spring.”)  I have treated every single thing I have ever done as a means toward the end of a hero’s journey— as Browning’s “last of life for which the first was made.”  In so doing, I have missed the joys of “getting there” or, more particularly, of getting others, namely my children, there.  I have experienced life’s details as annoying and tedious, treating them merely as pathways to greater goals.  I have flown by the seat of my anticipation, floating a distance from life rather than walking hand-in-hand with those who are life.  This Camino trip is about coming down to earth and contentedly spending the rest of my years living with and loving people here. 

So, what do I expect to find on the road to Santiago?  Transitory notions of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?  Yes, hopefully some.  Answers to abstruse and recondite mysteries?  Nope, none whatsoever.  I do not need to encounter a brand new ecstatic truth or to dream up another exciting scheme for my future. While I am walking through never-ending wheat fields, over stony creek beds, and in Galician loam on my hardscrabble path, I hope to learn appreciation for small pleasures and normal essentials: cool water, a handful of apricots, cheese, bread, and a pillow on which to rest my head.  I hope to learn how to rejoin community and how to wrangle life’s details.  I hope to hear a person say a funny line, to have a chance encounter, and maybe to produce a few thoughts that will give me the power to see others as they truly are and myself as I really am.  But, most of all, I just want to find dirt and stickers in my SmartWool PhD socks as proof that, for a change, I have walked with my head out of the clouds and my nine toes firmly planted to the ground.   

Ditto June 17 entry minus the wine-tasting.  It was a great lot of fun.  Getting easier, though, admittedly, I did carry a lighter pack than the one I had strapped on my back last weekend.  Rob is such a great companion.  We do not even have to talk.  We just stick our headphones on and happily hike around together and apart--  him, listening to his podcasts; me, listening to The Way soundtrack.  At the end of the day, we relish our rewards of salami sandwiches, potato salad, cherries, grapes, and chips.  I am so grateful for the blessings of loved ones.  And Mediterranean-seasoned kettle chips aren't bad either.   

I must admit I am getting nervous about a number of things.  For starters, I am determined to get around Paris the first day via public transportation, but I am fearful of not understanding connections unless directions are given in ballet terms.  I am scared of stray dogs on the trail, and lightening, and food poisoning.  I am worried that I will get lost, fall off a cliff in the fog, be unable to walk because of my bad foot, and not have enough money.  Mostly, I am just scared I don’t have enough in me to really do this thing.  

I wound up at an Urgent Care due to a worsening allergic reaction to last week's TDaP (Tetanus, Diphtheria, Pertussis) inoculation.  Both legs and feet are rashy, miserably itchy, and a little less than attractive.   I only had the shot, because it was recommended that I have one in advance of the trip.  Thank goodness it is not a drug that one needs often, as I was told the next one might cause a doozy of a reaction.  Now, I am just counting on Prednisone and Triamcinolone Acetoide to work their magic.  That, and I am planning on skipping the measles booster altogether.  

I have been a hermit for a lot of years now.  I feel a need to at least try and rejoin society, but I quite honestly do not know how to go about it.  Having been told long ago by a close friend that the air curdles when I walk into a room, I do not have a lot of confidence.  I already feel clumsy and “obvious” among strangers, how much more will I feel so in the pilgrims’ shelters--struggling to find a place, jostling my big old backpack, trying to create a semblance of comfort by rearranging my sleeping bag, flashlight, and twenty-eight-by-thirty-four-inch ultra-lightweight towel just so?

Let’s say that I do try and forge some basic relationships with peregrinos in Camino society; will there be the typical separation because of culture and class?  Will they trust me and I them?  Am I up for the vetting?  Briggs Meyer says I am Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, and Judging.  I wonder what that will translate as when I need to share a table with a stranger or am told that the bunks are all taken and I have to sleep on the floor.        

As a kid it helped to have stilts and a hula hoop to entice affections.  (I once gave a fourth grader my entire silver dollar collection; he gave me his divorced mother’s wedding ring.)  But now I am short on friend-prizes to give out and would not have space for them in my rucksack if I had them.  All the same, I am hoping to make new friends for the while I am traveling St. James’s Way, and for even longer, should I find myself so blessed.    

Like others on the Way of St. James, I will be traveling in soft, lightweight clothes, which dry quickly, resist wrinkles, do not retain odor, and have UV protection.  Modern attire is quite a departure from the clothes pilgrims wore in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, when any person wearing the official pilgrim’s outfit was exempt from the laws of the country through which he was passing; was judged according to statutes written expressly for pilgrims; and was given free lodging, food, and respect.  In fact, King Philip II issued a decree in 1590 which restricted the pilgrim outfit from being worn in Spain outside of the corridor from the Pyrenees Mountains to Santiago de Compostela.  Recognizable pilgrim apparel then included a full-length black cape that served as a coat and a blanket; strong boots; a broad-brimmed black hat; a small waist crip; and at least one scallop shell fastened to the cape or hat, or hung around the neck.  Instead of trekking with Leki poles and packing stainless steel water bottles, the pilgrim carried a sharpened wooden staff for protection with a gourd tied to it for holding his water.  His backpack was made of the “rawhide of a dead beast” because “the pilgrim ought to torment his own depraved lusting flesh with hunger and thirst, with great abstinence, with cold and destitution, with punishment and hard labor.”

Why the scallop shell symbolism?  It is believed that, some years after Christ’s crucifixion, St. James sailed to Galicia and ministered to the pagan population there.  Having limited success, he returned to Jerusalem where he was beheaded by Herod in 42 A.D.  St. James’s disciples brought his body back to be buried at Finis Terre (Worlds End).  Queen Lupa conspired with the Roman Legate to destroy St. James’s body as well as those of his disciples.  The disciples managed to escape with the bridge over the Tambre River collapsing just after they passed over.  Libredon (now Santiago) was not far away, and it was there that they finally laid St. James’s body to rest.  Moreover, according to a Finisterre legend, when St. James’s disciples carried his remains from their stone boat, they interrupted a wedding and spooked the groom’s horse, which bolted into the sea where the horse and groom both drowned.  St. James’s first European miracle occurred thereafter when the horse and groom rose from the waves, trailing seaweed garlands tangled with scallop shells.

* * * 

In addition to scallop shells adorning every pilgrim, the Camino Frances is way marked with flecha amarillo, yellow arrows which very much look like sideways scallop shells. 

“Stages”
 by Herman Hesse

As every flower fades and as all youth 
Departs, so life at every stage,
So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,
Blooms in its day and may not last forever.
Since life may summon us at every age
Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor,
Be ready bravely and without remorse
To find new light that old ties cannot give.
In all beginnings dwells a magic force
For guarding us and helping us to live.
Serenely let us move to distant places
And let no sentiments of home detain us.
The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us
But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.
If we accept a home of our own making,
Familiar habit makes for indolence.
We must prepare for parting and leave-taking
Or else remain the slaves of permanence.
Even the hour of our death may send
Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces,
And life may summon us to newer races.
So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.