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Belarado to Burgos (Monday, June 7th)

Today was a lovely day to walk. Stella left Belarado early than I did. At my alburgue, we were asked when we checked in to not get up before 6 am as ´pilgrims need their rest.´ I slept well from about 10 pm until 2 am, then heard the church bells every hour from 2 until 6. I don´t know whether I slept in between or not, but if so, it wasn´t much. At least I was by the only window in the room and could feel a bit of a breeze. Part of my not sleeping, I think, on some nights at least, is the fear of rolling off of the top bunk of these narrow bunk beds! It would not be hard for someone who moves a lot, when you are already wrapped up in the cocoon of a sleeping bag - one wrong move and thud, splat!

Anyway, morning came, and with very little room to move and not much light to see by (we always resist turning on the light for those who wish to stay in longer), it is difficult to do the ritual of unstuffing/stuffing the pack in just the right order. Taking care of the feet and putting on the boots has to wait until going downstairs. Most alburgues have you keep your boots in a certain area near the front door to minimize dirt throughout the place. At least I had a day without doing laundry yesterday because it was too damp for it to dry on the line, so I just pack up the few things that are dirty and will have more to do later today. A quick breakfast of bread and jam and tee con leche and I´m off.

As I walk out the door, I look up at the facade of the Iglesia de Santa Maria next door. What I hadn´t noticed yesterday was the stork highrise complex on top. There are at least four nests on the part that sticks up with the bells, with birds and fledglings in each. The penthouse is obvious as the largest and sloppiest, twigs and branches spilling down more than the others. I also hadn't really noticed the caves and dwelling built into the rocky hillside behind the church yesterday. Apparently someone actually lives there or it is used for something.

The walk this morning begins with clouds and gray skies, and nice cool temperatures. There are several small villages as we cross through farmlands. I am reminded of home in many ways. There are some things that are like south Georgia - some of the roads look like tabby except instead of oyster shells, it is simply white rock. The large rectangular bales of hay (instead of our big rolls) are tied with big orange ropes, just a bigger version of our pine straw bales. I walk through clouds of gnats and do my best south Georgia pfff through my lower extended lip. It's just about as effective (or not) as it is there. But then, there are also things that remind me of Northern Virginia and south central Pennsylvania with which I am also familiar. Just outside of Belarado, I cross the Rio Tiron, which is much prettier than Tyrone, PA ever thought about being, but the name connection is there. Later, the rolling hills are exactly like the hills I drive through near Winchester, VA and up through Frederick, MD and into Adams and York County, PA. If the buildings weren´t visible, I could think I was thousands of miles away.

The path goes through several little communities. I stop at a church in Espinosa de Camino, the town before Villafranca, to take a short break. The church is not along the Camino, but over in a corner of the village. It is not open, but there's a bench outside and no one around, so I take off my pack and just rest for about 15 minutes, and I try to do a little centering prayer for a change. Not so easy to do over here as I had hoped. It´s hard to find a place where there are not people and distractions. It is a good time in a quiet place in the sun. While I am sitting there, I know that I am affirmed in my sense of call to come on this pilgrimage and in my following through on that call. In what I tend to refer to that 'voice without a voice,' or some would say that 'still, small voice,' I know that I hear God say to me, "I have brought you here." And in my usual way (perhaps too casual, but we have a pretty down-to-earth relationship), I simply reply inside, "Yes, I know." I wait for more to come, but that is really it. Which is actually quite enough and all anyone ever really needs. But, being me, I can't resist asking, after several more minutes, "Why?" But there isn't any further response. Other than the Camino beckoning me onward. Several days from now, and I'm not sure which day, the answer will come as I'm walking. "To rest." I spontaneously laugh out loud (I'm alone) when the answer comes. "You want me to walk 500 miles so that I can REST??" But in my heart, and my body and mind, I know that's exactly what I'm here to do and what I'm actually doing. Resting in God. It is not an oxymoron to be physically active but still to be resting in God. In fact, sometimes thats exactly what the picture in Webster's Dictionary would look like.

Back on the trail, feeling refreshed not only from the break but from the affirmation, and nearing Villafranca, I pass a funny little ruin. The name painted on the trail marker says it is the Monastery of St. Felix the Goose! Honk if you love God!
A couple more kilometers and I am in Villafranca. It takes a couple of questions to find the bus stop and meet up with Stella. First, I go up the hill, where it seems likely to be, but that turns out only to be a splashy little hotel. I have no idea why it would be in this little town. As I come back down the hill, I cut through a church parking lot. There is a group of three or four little old ladies, bent over a wheelbarrow outside the church. The wheelbarrow is laden with a folded up oriental rug on the bottom and then stacked with a tall stack of white linens. The ladies have carried all the linens into the church before I suddenly realize that I am observing the Altar Guild of St. Somebody's in progress! This is how they haul everything back and forth to the church!


At last, I find the bus station and Stella and we decipher the schedule, though we don't actually trust it. We sit in the little glass booth, and fortunately for us, the bus comes sooner than the posted time. We make sure it is really going into center-city Burgos before we board. We have decided to take the bus because the next 15 km from here are through very scrubby vegetation with no facilities or towns, and it is very hilly. Then there are a few kilometers of towns, followed by another 10 km of just industry. The Brierly guidebook puts it this way in regard to the industrial section: "Steel yourself for the long hike through the industrial and residential suburbs to the cathedral and albergue in the city center along one of the busy access roads...try working with the energy of the traffic rather than fighting against it...Due to the insatiable demands of a modern economy, many of the original paths into the city have been obliterated by the bulldozer. We can usefully take this time to reflect on areas of our own lives where we have allowed these materialistic forces to bulldoze our own inner pathways out of seeming existence. Burgos is perhaps a perfect reflection of our ´developed´ world. It is easy to blame the faceless government and developer, but they only build to feed our desire for a more convenient lifestyle...Are we ready to embrace a life of voluntary simplicity, not because we have to but because we want to?" Pretty good food for thought. Neither of us feel the need to walk these 25+ kilometers (15 miles) through all of this, however. It doesn´t change the pilgrimage for us. Neither of us has a martyr complex or sees the need to walk through parts that would not be particularly soul enriching and only draining. Most of the bus trip is very close to the Camino, and as I watch it, I keep thinking, I´m so glad we made this choice...(I think the other perigrinos on the bus are thinking similar thoughts!)

So we are at an alburgue run by Jesuits and beginning to explore this lovely city. And guess what? Remember that program on Performance Today with music from Los Huelgas and I didn´t know where it was? It´s just off the Camino on the way out of Burgos, so you will get to know more about that, too!

To continue...(a couple of days later)

Well, Stella and I felt like princesses in our very own palace in Burgos, Emmaus! We were the only two peregrinos staying at the alburgue. We had a little trouble locating it because it wasn´t exactly where it was supposed to be according to the guidebook, but as always, people around us noticed the puzzled look on our faces, knew exactly what the question was and showed us where we needed to go. It turned out to be this 1800s building that had been renovated extensively (we saw the album!) into the best alburgue we have stayed in hands down. It is attached to a large Roman parish church, chapel and offices and a nice looking priest showed us where we could leave our bags until we could come back at 2 to check in. When we did come back later, Marie Noelle, the lady that runs the place, showed us around. She is a Carmelite nun - apparently they do not live in community or ever wear habits. They have vocations out in the world. Hers, in addition to running this alburgue, is to teach. After leaving our boots downstairs, she led us up the three-part grand marble staircase to our room. They were bunk beds you could actually sit on without hitting your head! And only four beds in our room. Great french doors opened to a balcony overlooking the street. The bathrooms were lovely, especially for a hostel. The common spaces resembled something of Frank Lloyd Wright, but much more comfortable.
We shared a simple meal with Marie Noelle of salad, pasta, great bread, wonderful French cheese (she´s originally French), wine, cookies, and some other delicacies she pulled together for us. In between preparing the dinner and serving it, we went to a short mass in the chapel downstairs. We didn´t understand 95% of it, but we know the padre talked about us peregrinos in the homily. On the kitchen door in the alburgue, there is a folder with a pocket. In the pocket, there are slips of paper with little sayings on them. Marie Noelle invites us each to take one and keep it for our journey - and not necessarily just the one to Santiago. Mine reads, "It is better to be befriended than to be rich or blooming." Seems to fit well with the Beatitude that is significant for me.

Burgos is a lovely city. There is a small river that runs through the middle of the old part, with several bridges across it. Park areas surround it. Most Spanish towns and cities have lots of public spaces, mostly green, where the people gather. One main reason for this is that the places people live are so much smaller (and often darker) than what we Americans enjoy, and so they get out to enjoy the freedom and the sunlight. Consequently, they also enjoy much more community. People are together everywhere and families are seen together everywhere. As kids get older, they hang together, just as American kids do, but it is so nice to have these gathering places in every single village and city and it is so lacking in our country.

It has become obvious to me that if you are handicapped in Spain, you almost have to live in a big city. Almost none of the villages and towns we have been through would be remotely accessible to someone in a wheelchair, although the restroom in the bar/cafe I used in Tosantos yesterday was. In Burgos, handicap accessibility is almost a given. Stella and I stop at a bar/cafe as soon as we got to town to get some coffee and tea and get our bearings. I went to use the loo and realized it was down stairs. There was a lift going down the stairs and the restroom was one of the most accessible I´ve seen! Smoking is another thing still different over here. Many more Europeans still smoke. Some bar/cafes post whether or not it is a smoking or non-smoking place, but most are smoking. I am so thankful Georgia is ahead of the curve on that!

The jewel in Burgos´ crown is the cathedral.
Stella and I visit it in the afternoon and it takes a good hour and a half to go through it. I love the various ceiling designs.
There is a mechanized clock, like many that I have seen in Germany. In one area, there appears to be an empty marble slab that doesn't have any famous persons' remains, so Stella and I take turns being 'famous,' hoping no guards or anyone else minds.
There is a whole display on the way out about what it takes to preserve the building. This cathedral was built between 1221 and 1240, which is pretty amazing in cathedral building terms, only 19 years. I cannot imagine how the designers/builders envisioned everything and made it happen so quickly. The altarpieces, the art work, the architecture are all so spectacular. We thoroughly enjoy the walk through the cathedral and back and forth along the park. Spain also has lots of public art, not all of which is immediately understandable, but perhaps that is part of the art. We both love Burgos.

Feasting

Santo Domingo to Belorado (Sunday, June 6th Feast of Corpus Christi)

I can´t wait to post pictures for today when I get a chance! This was a great day for a walk, though my feet are tired. Stella and I rose early, about 5:30, from our beds at the Cistercian alburgue in Santo Domingo. It was already raining lightly and there were a few ominous rumbles of thunder which, fortunately turned out to be nothing. Half of our bunkroom mates decided to sleep past the normal 6 am waking, probably because of the nice steady drip of rain outside the window, and even though we could have turned on the lights, we were trying to be nice. It certainly makes packing harder. One of the many things I´m grateful for and think of daily - is my dresser at home that I don´t have to pack and unpack everytime I turn around.

(These are a wayside chapel and the bridge as we leave Santo Domingo.) Anyway, we step out onto the street in our ponchos. Fortunately, it is just a mist that will continue most of the time we walk today.

We are going 23 km to Belorado, through about 4 smaller towns and mostly rural areas. The low-hanging clouds cover the tops of the local hills.

We are back into prettier countryside than we have been for the last couple of days. It is all agricultural, mostly wheat, some sheep. The varying shades of green in the mist are lovely. The wheat is still green here, but sort of a soft gray green. I love the way poppies grow so abundantly around the edges of the field but are mixed in everywhere.

In one of the small towns, they have even decorated the sewer covers in a scallop shell pattern!









We stop at a couple of local churches that are open. It is amazing how much beauty and stunning art work was created, even for these tiny villages, several hundred years ago. I take some pictures in one of them and then walk out only to see the ¨No fotographica!¨sign and feel very bad, but can´t take them back. There was a window in the church with the scallop shell.

I started the day walking with Stella, but then walked by myself for awhile before walking with a man at least 15 or 20 years my senior named Vincent from Turino (Turin) Italy. He walked at a fast, steady pace, with no breaks and my feet are tired! I should have taken some breaks; I do better when I do.

When I was talking about animals before, perhaps I mentioned how much Spaniards love their dogs. But they do not seem to love their cats. There are the most pathetic looking cats I have ever seen on the streets of these towns and cities. And then there are the snails, everywhere on these open country roads. Before I started walking with Vincent, outside one of the small towns today, because it was so damp, there was a man picking up the snails in big brown shells. He already had buckets full, so I suppose he was planning on taking them into town to sell them. I asked him if it was for escargot (I think the Spanish call it something similar). He responded with something I didn´t understand but I think included some form of "escargot." So I simply reiterated, "Comida? (Food?)" I speak Spanish on an extremely gifted level! He nodded yes. I have tried escargot and was not impressed. It's a texture thing, I suppose. Personally, I find garlic and butter just as gratifying, actually, much more so, on bread, or spaghetti. Or any number of other things. Especially now after having seen so many of these little guys crawling across my path. And I have pictures of them for you too, eventually.

So I arrive in Belorado. There are signs for a number of alburgues and I know nothing about any of them and just pick one to head towards. My first indication that something is either different or special about this town today is that I run into these two little boys dressed as they are. The Feast of Corpus Christi is not on the Episcopal calendar, and so I didn't remember why it should be such a special day. I briefly thought about my 'men in tights' with the cuckoo clock idea, but these two are clearly not large enough to be pushing a cuckoo clock all across Spain! So I am alert for more going on as I proceed towards the alburgue I've picked, and I begin to see others in medieval costume as well. It looks promising! I also begin to hear music from somewhere. I check in to the parish alburgue which is a strictly no frills alburgue. There´s barely space next to my bunk to set my backpack upright. I'm here early enough to have my choice of bunks, so I choose the one by the window so I can get some air. As a "young" person (it's all relative, isn't it? :)), I have been asked to climb up to a top bunk! Stella, who was behind me a few km, and doesn't know where I've checked in, ends up picking a better place, just around the corner.

We meet up on Plaza Mayor where the festival for the Feast of Corpus Christi is in full fling. I am having a few tapas (one is croquettes of something like ham salad and the other is fried thin buttered toast with crab salad on top) with a glass of the local white wine when I see Stella. I have just met a lovely couple from France. She is making her fourth Camino. She did her first on her 60th birthday in 2007. Her husband has done 7 and he is 73. She said, ¨He is like a steam engine to follow!¨ They reminded me of some couple I know, I think in the diocese. They were going on yet, another 6 km to Tosantos, where there is supposed to be a really nice alburgue - I guess when you do this a number of times, you really get to know where the good places are!

Stella and I explore all the wonderful booths. The whole Plaza is decorated with banners and such and many of the locals are dressed as if they were in medieval times. There is an especially festive service at the church next to where I am staying that starts with a small band procession. One little girl must be having first communion because she is dressed almost as a tiny bride in a long white dress with a wreath of white flowers in her hair.

Back in the town square, there are games for the kids, like walking on stilts, and big hay bales that they love jumping and playing in. There are also many booths vending the local wares of goat cheese, salamis and other cured meats, wines, olives, white asparagus, peppers, fresh vegetables, pastries and breads. Some have samples - yumm! I buy some lavendar soap to ward off any potential bed bug problems in my sleeping bag. There are 3 men in costume working as blacksmiths shooing a horse. There are also handmade jewelry and leathergoods, beeswax and pottery. Altogether a wonderful surprise to come upon this day.

Now back to the alburgue to put my feet up and meet Stella for dinner in a little while! We end up having dinner at Stella's alburgue and it is wonderful. They have a back dining room and there are several other guests that join us. Nothing fancy, just hearty fare with the local red wine. Good bread. Who could ask for more on the Feast of Corpus Christi than bread, wine and companions on the journey as we give thanks for the hands which have prepared it?

Resting

Ventanos to Santo Domingo (Saturday, June 5th)
We leave Ventanos after a breakfast in the dining area of our alburgue - crusty bread and jam again, with tee con leche. Carmel, Alex and I walk as far as the next city, Najera, together and then they catch a bus and on to other links, for they are meeting up with some friends in Barcelona (I think) for a holiday. They say goodbye to the Camino for the time being.

Najera is an interesting little city. The center of the city is gathered on either side of a pretty little river flowing through the middle of it. There are little cafes with outside tables along its banks. I explore the center of town a little bit - behind the initial facade of cafes and other businesses, there is an interesting little backstreet, almost an alley, with a whole other set of businesses. This is where the locals shop - the butchers and grocers are here, the more utilitarian and less picturesque shops. I go back out by the river and the bridge and watch the pilgrims coming by. One of the cafes advertises wifi, and I decide to sit down there for my mid-morning break and catch up on some of my blogging while I enjoy a pastry and some tea.

I am very mindful of one of the "Beatitudes of the Camino" that Carmel came across the other day: "Blessed are you pilgrim, if what concerns you most is not to arrive, as to arrive with others." I am concious that I have come with others, Stella and Mary, and in a sense, Lexi and Josh. I also know that I have a deadline because Stella and I have a specific day for flying home, and I really want to be able to finish the Camino and arrive in Santiago. I cannot walk at the pace that Mary, Lexi and Josh are keeping, and if I do, I don't think I will be able to reach our goal on time. But at the same time, it is so important in my heart, that I "arrive with others," my friends, and not just arrive. It is about celebrating, not just some random goal and checking it off the list. We're in this together. I'm not sure how far behind me Stella is; I think she stayed in the town behind me, Navarette, last night, so she will be at least an hour later than me arriving in Najera. I know that she will have to come over this bridge, right by where I am sitting, so if I just stay here and pay attention, I can't miss her!

Sure enough, after a while and several cups of tea, Stella comes over the bridge, listening to her iPod and taking in the beauty of the city. I'm glad to see her for a number of reasons, not the least of which is because of the tea, I need a bathroom break, but I was afraid to go inside in case I missed her! She's ready for a break, so we stay a bit longer in Najera, and talk about walking the rest of the way to Santiago together, though not necessarily in lock-step. We both need our space, but we are fine with also walking together physically when the mood strikes. Our paces are similar enough except sometimes, Stella just wants to walk listening to the music that her daughter, Jennifer, has loaded onto her iPod. Jennifer has performed some of it herself and she has such a lovely voice! On many occasions, Stella will take her earphones off and hand them to me, or she just places them on my head, and says, "Oh, you've got to listen to this!" As we continue on our pilgrimage, it is comforting knowing that we are usually within a kilometer or two of each other. We begin to get to know each other even better as we share more and more of our life stories as we walk. Stella is an amazing, and an amazingly loving, person.

We leave Najera and head towards Santo Domingo de la Calzado. We are still in the La Rioja region of Spain. When we walk through fields, they are still filled with wheat and vineyards, or with occasional olive and almond groves. But today also has a lot of rocky, arid areas that look so much like our desert southwest. In some places, we climb in and out of rocky gulches.

Santo Domingo is an interesting city as well, and one connected with a funny little legend. As we come into the city, shop windows are filled with the images of chickens, which have to do with the legend. But first, about Santo Domingo, who was a real person. As a boy named Domingo, he lived during the 11th century. Spaniards claim him as their own, but traditions also say he could be Italian, he might also be from the French Basque region, take your pick. Anyway, he felt called to become a monk, but the monks at any number of monasteries found him to be too slow of mind for the rigors of monastic life and study. So, Domingo built himself a little house along the pilgrimage route which was springing up and becoming popular at this same time. From his home, he served the pilgrims, though always remaining unseen, for he felt he, being slow, was too unworthy to be seen by the 'great ones,' those worthy of going on pilgrimage. When the pilgrimage route got bad, he would pave them - and is today the patron saint of all who work on roads! When the rivers rose high, he built bridges, some of which still stand. Where food was bad or scarce, Domingo provided kitchens, and where sick pilgrims congregated, he created refuges for them. Finally, towards the end of his life, one of the monasteries which had early refused to accept him, readily and proudly admitted him to the order.

At the same time as Domingo was serving the pilgrims, about 1080, there arose a story in Toulouse, France, invoking the miraculous intercession of St. James. It became known as the Golden Legend and news of it traveled like lightening across Europe and, of course, across the pilgrimage route. Three centuries later, the people of Santo Domingo's community 'borrowed' the details of the story and made it their own, transforming it into the miracle of Santo Domingo. Today, the story goes like this:
A mother and her handsome young son, who were from Cologne, were traveling on the pilgrimage route and stopped enroute in one of the shelters that Santo Domingo had built. The innkeeper's daughter found the young man quite attractive and sought his attention, but he resisted her advances. The next morning, the mother and son resumed their journey. Now, though, the young girl's 'love' had turned to scorn, so she denounced the son for having stolen a silver cup which she had surreptitiously hidden in his knapsack. Constables were sent out to stop the son and search his pack, and, of course, they found the planted cup. Dragging the boy back to town, with his mother following, crying and pleading his innocence, the constables hanged the young man. But Santo Domingo (his spirit), aware of the boy's innoncence and purity, placed his hands under the boy's feet and prevented him from strangling. When the mother saw that her son was not hanged, but still alive, she ran to the judge to ask for justice, and to ask that he be cut down and set free. The judge, who at that moment had just set himself down before a banquet of two roasted chickens, one a cock and the other a hen, replied, "Your son is no more alive than these chickens!" whereupon both of them sprang to life, re-grew their feathers immediately and flew off - free as a bird! Absolutely flabbergasted, when he could speak again, the judge immediately ordered the young man cut down and restored to his mother's care. None the worse for his experience, the two of them continued on to Santiago.

To this day, there are chicken coops on one of the pillars of the church, and chickens are allowed to roam freely within the church. This story, too, is seen to epitomize the spirit of the St. James and the Camino.

We get rooms in the old monastery hostel. The room where we have to take off our boots has a rock floor that is very difficult and sharp to walk on in stocking feet! Ouch, ooch, ouch! Then up a very narrow, old flight of wooden steps. The newer showers downstairs are not segregated by gender and are full and everyone is remarking about just how cold the water is. Fortunately, we find out about a single bathroom near where our bunks are. Much better - AND warm water!

After getting settled in, we go out and explore. Lots of chickens everywhere. We're surprisingly not very hungry. Or we can't decide what we're hungry for. Not chicken. We stop in a combination bakery and candy store where lots of children are getting penny candy of various sorts. Still no Santiago cakes. Eventually, we end up at an umbrella table at a little cafe in a little back street plaza. I get a salad. Again. Just can't face all that fried food. As we sit there, someone rushes through with a small child that has been injured. There's a hospital just around the corner. We pray that the child will be okay. All around us, street life goes on - extended families out for the evening gather around a table, lots of baby carriages, couples stroll by doing couple things, teens in small groups act like teens at home. Cell phones are as ubiquitous here as the States. A lot of folks here smoke, and it's hard to sit away from it at meals. People here are not as obese as Americans, because they do more walking and less driving, but they are beginning to catch up. There's much more sense of community, because there are public spaces. People live in smaller places and so they come to parks and cafes and meet up with others. There's a brief rain shower, but we stay sort of dry under the umbrella. Others on the street dash for cover. When the shower's over, the street life resumes. And it is time to turn in for the evening.

Listening

Logrono to Ventanos (Friday, June 4th)
I leave Logrono with Carmel and Alex and walk all day with them. I enjoy their company and we walk comfortably together. It is a day that we, Carmel and I, get to know a lot about each other, spending time listening to one another´s stories, asking questions sometimes. Alex, who at 18 is both very mature and yet probably the youngest person on our section of the Camino right now, drops back sometimes. When I´m not around, he´s good company for his mother, but he leaves space for us. He also is a good conversationalist when he wants to be, but he´s just as happy to let us talk sometimes. He is the one of them who wanted to come as a result of a story that his mother, Carmel, told him a number of years ago. A few years ago, he decided that this is how he wanted to celebrate graduating from high school, and he knew he wanted to go with his mother. They get along well and are a neat team.

Leaving Logrono, we walk along a beautiful park-like setting, which is a far cry from the industrial area we walked through for a little ways coming in. That was both stark and hot, and it smelled like we were being sprayed with paint, or dipped in vats of chemicals, for several kilometers. But this morning is lovely. Lots of people are out exercising. The walkway is wide and extends for several kilometers out into the countryside, with trees on at least one side, and sometimes both. The path arrives at a lake where there are fish of some sort (bass would be my SWAG) that are huge. We cross over a little wooden bridge where the fish are swarming. Each fish would feed a family of six with no problem. They look to be at least 16¨long and 10¨or more in circumfrence, and there are dozens of them. I suspect they are hanging around the bridge where the ducks are because they know that there are people with fishing poles elsewhere! I tried to take a picture of them, but not sure it will show the fish.

At one point, soon after the park outside of Logrono, we are walking on a hillside up above and along a multilane highway. There is a chainlink fence separating us from the traffic and all along the chainlink fence, pilgrims have fashioned and attached all sorts of crosses. Some are made of wild flowers that have since dried, others of twigs, others of pine needles, some of things that pilgrims had with them and have left. It is a walkway of hundreds, perhaps thousands of crosses.

We come to the town of Navarette first and then it is 8 more kilometers to Ventanos. Once again, it is Mystic Seaport. I swear that the village of Ventanos is like a child´s pull toy, on wheels and somewhere, someone is pulling the string, moving it ever so slowly just out of our reach, because we can see the church on the hill for some time and it never ever gets any smaller.

While we are walking, we notice a large, dark, ominous cloud suddenly appear on the horizon behind us. We will not find out until we reach Santo Domingo the next day that an explosion has occured at a factory in Logrono that has killed one person. The cloud goes up, eerily similar to a mushroom cloud in shape, dark, dark gray in the center and fluffy white on top, rising very high into the sky. We can see it miles away, even over the hills.

Even once we reach the turnoff for Ventanos, it takes forever to reach the village, but we finally do. And despite the seeming length of time it has taken to reach it, we are a half hour early for the albergue to open. We noticed that other pilgrims ahead of us in reaching Ventanos decided to keep on going to the next village. This is enough for us this day, so we drink our fill from the fountain next to the door, take off our packs and collapse in the shade across the street, knowing it will be hard to stand back up again. Finally, the door opens and (remember Frau Blucher from Young Frankenstein?) a German woman opens the door and asks ¨Do you want to come in or would you rather stay outside?¨ Not a tough question! It is a nice, neat place, with a lovely courtyard out back, and a little supply store in the front hall. Once again, all walking sticks and boots (bota) are left by the front door. Wonderful tiled bathrooms (separate men and women which not all the alburgues have had). There are only 8 beds in the room where we end up - Carmella, Alex, Tamlyn me and four German and Austrian women. NO SNORERS! And they have wifi!

We get settled, do laundry and then go explore Ventanos. It is a village built on a hillside, rather sleepy and not much to it. We wander around the local church (which has a great view - remember how far away we could see it!) , cross through the 'busy' little village square, and find more beautiful roses. After that, we're hot and ready for a cold beer at the only little bar/cafe on the hill. Later, we go to dinner at the only restaurant and have paella marina (sp?) which is paella with mussels and clams, squid (calamari) and shrimp or something that more resembles crawfish. It has a really good flavor. Better than what I had earlier in the trip with the not quite identifiable meat object in it. A nice evening in a nice place. Only, despite the cleanliness, I think this is where I get the only bedbug bite I will get on this trip!

Beatitudes

My new Camino friend, Carmel, picked this up at a church between Zubiri and Pamplona, St. Stephen's. [I didn't correct their grammar.]

EL CAMINO


The journey makes you a pilgrim. Because the way to Santiago is not only a track to be walking in order to get somewhere, nor it is a test to reach any reward. El Camino de Santiago is a parable and a reality at once because it is done both within and outside in the specific time that it takes to walk each stage, and along the entire life if only you allow the Camino to get into you, to transform you and to make you a pilgrim.

The Camino makes you simpler, because the lighter the backpack, the less strain to your back and the more you will experience how little you need to be alive.

The Camino makes you brother/sister. Whatever you have, you must be ready to share because even if you started on your own, you will meet companions. The Camino breeds community: community that greets the other, that takes interest in how the walk is going for the other, that talks and shares with the other.

The Camino makes demands on you. You must get up even before the sun in spite of tiredness or blisters, you must walk in the darkness of night while dawn is growing, you must just get the rest that will keep you going.

The Camino calls you to contemplate, to be amazed, to welcome, to interiorize, to stop, to be quiet, to listen, to admire, to bless. Nature, our companions on the journey, our own selves, God.

THE BEATITUDES OF THE PILGRIM
1. Blessed are you pilgrim if you discover that the Camino opens your eyes to what is not seen.
2. Blessed are you pilgrim, if what concerns you most is not to arrive, as to arrive with others.
3. Blessed are you pilgrim, when you contemplate the Camino and you discover it is full of names and dawns.
4. Blessed are you pilgrim, because you have discovered that the authentic Camino begins when it is completed.
5. Blessed are you pilgrim, if your knapsack is emptying of things and your heart does not know where to hang up so many feeling and emotions.
6. Blessed are you pilgrim, if you discover that the step back to help another is more valuable than a hundred forward without seeing what is at your side.
7. Blessed are you pilgrim, when you don't have words to give thanks for everything that surprises you at every twist and turn of the way.
8. Blessed are you pilgrim, if you search for the truth and make of the Camino a life and of your life a "Way" in search of the One who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
9. Blessed are you pilgrim, if on the way you meet yourself and gift yourself with time without rushing so as not to disregard the image in your heart.
10. Blessed are you pilgrim, if you discover that the Camino holds a lot of silence, and the silence of prayer, and the prayer of meeting with the Father who is waiting for you.

Communion

Los Arcos to Logrono (Thursday, June 3rd) For once, I thought I'd write about the day I'd just experienced. As we left the city of Los Arcos, we walked through fields of ripening wheat and vineyards, bread and wine, communion country. Which seems very appropriate for what this Camino is all about. As Kurt from Vienna, one of my early traveling companions for the day, said, part of the purpose of the Camino is to get to know yourself, and part is to get to know your companions, to be in communion with them.

Today, we walked about 17 miles or more than 28 km which took us to a total of about 100 miles since our beginning point at St. Jean! That makes us feel as if we are actually making some progress. It was a long day, but not too difficult in terms of climbs, just endurance.

I began the first few km near others, but was essentially by myself for awhile, enjoying the coolness of the morning air and the clear, Carolina blue skies that stayed with us all day. It was a lovely day on the Camino, though it did get a bit warm by this afternoon. Temperatures are all given in Centigrade or Celsius over here, of course, so I have to do my old grade school conversion formula to figure out what it really is by our standards. (26 is 79!) Anyway, a few miles down the road, Kurt, whom I met last night as one of the 12 tenants of my room at Casa de Austria in Los Arcos, caught up with me on his bike. Unlike most of the cyclists, he prefers to take the camino slowly, not racing through. Turns out he's a judge who has taken a year off, unpaid, to travel the world while he is still physically capable. He rode very slowly for a long ways, while I walked next to him. Again, his English was much better than my German, though I've had a lot of opportunity to polish that, too. So we chatted a lot as the miles klicked by. We stopped in one small village bar for a mid-morning break, which is where I heard the temperatures and weather forecast on the tv, and then kept on going.

One of the things we passed is the cairn 'village' pictured here. All along the Camino, people have created cairns, or stacks of stones, some larger than others, some in shapes. Sometimes they draw attention to places to turn. Sometimes they are just creative. Sometimes they are by the many crosses along the path. Sometimes they are a place to unload burdens (putting down a pebble or a rock as symbolic of letting go of something from the sack of rocks we all carry). Sometimes they are just for fun or just for the heck of it. The whimsical part of me sees them in a Seuss-like way, like Whoville, where I expect little creatures of some sort to inhabit these fantastical cairn 'villages' that seem like some sort of merging of Stone Age and Space Age in appearance. I've always associated them with Celtic cultures before, but I know that they are also used as trail markings in other cultures. And what better use for all the rocks in this country?

Kurt and I go through the village of Torres del Rio, where there is this tiny little octagonal church thought to have been constructed by the Knights Templar, whose ministry it was to protect pilgrims along the way. Apparently the octagon shape is something typically Templar. We decided to pay the euro admission fee mostly to help with the cost of keeping up the building, and, like most of the small churches in the little villages, it, too, held wonderful art treasures for it's everyday interior splendor.

Eventually, we caught up with a young woman from Australia, Tamlyn, who had heard of me from Carmel and Alex from Canada. She´s a great young woman who has been a police officer, but who doesn´t enjoy it and is considering a career change with the Camino´s help of time and distance in discernment. Tamlyn is effervescent and energetic. Tamlyn and I get to talking some about our faith. She asks if I have always been a Christian. Her parents are Pentecostal, which is what she was raised. Her fiance (they got engaged two weeks before she left) is Lutheran and his family has been for generations. That´s been an issue for them. She finds the Lutheran church staid (I don´t think that was her word, but that´s the gist of it), after having been brought up her way. But her way was too much for him, and his family is too steeped in their tradition. It isn´t that big a deal for her. So we talk about it awhile. I´m not sure if the topic or finding out that I am a priest is the cause for Kurt to decide he needs to ride faster suddenly. Later he will reappear and ride with Tamlyn. Oh, the power of the collar. :(

Tamlyn and I catch up with Carmel and Alex in the main square of Viana, as they are having their lunch break and we decide to do the same. (Tamlyn & Carmel...) (...and Alex) Viana seems to be a popular stop for lunch for many pilgrims this day - they are at lots of the sidewalk cafes and all over the benches along the Calle Mayor and the plaza. Once again, it is good to get off the feet for just a bit!

Tamlyn decides to take a longer break, but Carmel and Alex and I continue on and enter Logrono together. The way into Logrono is through a long industrial area that is one of the least pleasant parts of the whole Camino. It is very hot and barren in a concrete, industrial kind of way. And it smells like we are walking through a paint booth. I fear for what we are inhaling as we walk. There are a few underpasses and we pause there to stay in the shade for a few moments before tackling the next stretch. This part of the walk continues for several kilometers. Finally, we are through with industry and we begin to enter what looks like the historic part of the city. It is perhaps the first town or city we have entered going DOWNhill. It has gotten to be a joke that everything is invariably uphill on a gravel path. The first few buildings are some seemingly down on their luck hovels with trinkets for sale. Stella will later tell me this story that I miss: there is an older lady sitting outside one of the houses. She calls out to us. We don´t really understand what she is saying and we assume that she is just trying to sell us something, so we decline. The real story is this. Years before, the local priest asked this woman´s mother to offer water to the thirsty pilgrims as they went by and to count the pilgrims. The woman didn´t know how to count. So for every pilgrim who went by, she would drop a pebble in a bowl and then, when her daughter (the woman we saw) came home from work, she would count the pebbles for her mother, and the woman could tell the priest how many pilgrims had come by and had received water. The woman eventually died and her daughter retired and took over the job of offering the water. She offers ¨water, a prayer and love¨. I wish that I had known that as I so glibly passed her by.

We passed through a lovely little park, stopped in a pilgrim information center and crossed into Logrono, a city more than 1000 years old, via a beautiful bridge. Our packs had been shipped to the Albergue La Rioja. Does anyone reading this have connections to Interpol? (Yes, I´m serious.) I am planning on reporting the man and his daughter who run the place. They took not only our pilgrim credentials, but also our passports (the number is in the credentials) and said ¨Come back in half an hour¨. They did this to everyone and wouldn´t give a bed to anyone if you didn´t. They were also a most unpleasant team to deal with in other areas. I was trying to ship my backpack ahead again, or find out how, and they wanted the money directly rather than the usual procedure of leaving it in the envelope for the company, which was odd. And when my lack of Spanish couldn´t convey that I didn´t yet know where we were going the next day because I hadn´t talked to my friends at another alburgue, they both got mad. Very different than anyone else we´ve had to deal with. None of us trusted them. In the middle of the night, as once again I couldn´t get to sleep, I could only think of black market uses for keeping our passports for so long.

After getting settled in, doing laundry, and getting my credentials back (!), I decided to sit out in the courtyard for a little bit to wait on Stella and the others. Stella arrived first, but too late to get a bed here. The other three were behind her by 20 minutes or more. They all end up at a church run (and much nicer) alburgue down the street. Down near their alburgue is this game done in inlay in the sidewalk. The game is called La Oca (The Goose) and it is about the pilgrimage to Santiago. I don't seem to have any way of contacting them since my phone can't seem to call Stella's, so I just decide to strike out on my own. The city itself is lovely. I walked up to the Calle Mayor to find a farmacia (pharmacy) for some help with blisters, have a glass of the local La Rioja (the region we´re in) wine, and try some tapas, and I accomplished all three! I had the glass of wine by myself, and just enjoyed people watching, but then got up and walked down the pedestrian mall of the main shopping area. I ran back into Carmel, Alex and Tamlyn who were enjoying Sangria, and we had a nice time continuing to people watch and enjoying the food. This bar, like a number of others here in Logrono, had great tapas. The tapas were a tortilla (totally different than Mexican tortillas) of potato and eggs, about 2 to 3 inches high and an eggplant and cheese layered dish that had been broiled, both very good. Laura, still no Santiago cake. Describe it again, please- perhaps they call it something else here.

There was major archaeological work going on next to the alburgue and children up until all hours of the night, well past midnight. Then there were those pilgrims who felt the need to get started about 4 in the morning so they could enjoy the cool of the morning... so not much sleep in Logrono, and anger at the unpleasant people who run this place...the combination doesn't make for a good way to start the day. Especially the harbored anger.

There are a lot of us who travel in sort of a clump, moving approximately the same speed during the day, and generally ending up in the same cities and alburgues at night, so we are getting to know one another a little. Communion involves a lot of give and take. Twice, at least, probably more, when I have been really frustrated with specific people for keeping me awake at night with snoring or tossing and turning, I´ve ended up getting to know them better by walking or talking with them and that changes how I see them. And that is what communion is about, isn´t it, changing how we understand people and seeing them with our heart, through God's eyes and not our own.


This is a church steeple at night from the window by my bunk in the alburgue