Camino de Santiago Day 15: Castrojeriz to Fromísta
The road continues through the Meseta, where I begin to find there's plenty of time on the Camino to learn some lessons about yourself, but plenty more time too to practice doing things differently
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I’ve been saying I want to go Beyond for two weeks now. The only way I can think of doing it is to walk 30km. And then I invariably do less the next day. And pretty much end up back where I started. But, I mean, at the end of the day, no matter where you stop, you’re still on the Camino. As I found in Castrojeriz – a beautiful little town, though a little town on the Camino nonetheless – the same as all the others in that sense – anything can happen in any town, little or big. As I’ve always said about Irish pubs – the best thing about them is that you could potentially find the best one in the country in any single town or village or city on any night of the week. It all depends on luck, who you meet and maybe most importantly – what you bring to the table.
Instead of going beyond in mileage to an arbitrary spot on the map, I went beyond by meeting friends new and old, visiting a new church, spending time in a meditation centre, calling my mother, trying a new drink, having good conversations, randomly meeting friends at my albergue (again), going to watch the sun set from the castle on the hill, practicing some French and Spanish, eating a home-cooked Italian meal, and reminding myself that I don’t need to go beyond the guidebook, or anywhere else for that matter. I even had time for a nap.
These towns are all what you make of them.
Someone told me yesterday we’ve still another 20-something days or so to get to Fisterra – the town on the ocean a few days past Santiago. At this stage I’ve decided that I will indeed do the extra few miles to go to the infamous End of the World at Cape Finisterre (the former spelling is Galician; the latter is Spanish), meaning Santiago won’t my final walking destination. To me a swim in the ocean after spending over five weeks walking from France across a landlocked region of Spain will be a much more fitting and personally rewarding (and of course physically revitalising) way of ending my walk. Everyone does their own Camino, and everyone can choose their own personal goals.
In any case, we’ve only 14 days done. That kind of puts it in perspective. When you’ve three days completed, it feels like a lot. Although you can be consciously aware of the next 30, you can’t really put that in perspective – your mind has no reference point for it. But now that you’ve done 14 days – you know what that feels like. And so the more you achieve, the more distance you cover, the more you can understand and appreciate the scale of what you still have to cover. It actually grows rather than shrinks, the more you do.
Like a physical Dunning Krueger effect – or as I like to think of it, uncovering the fog of war in your mind by uncovering it in the physical world.
We’re not even halfway there – put it into perspective with all that has happened so far. And more of that again to come? No – more like same again, to the power of two or more – experience has a compounding effect. Every day nothing happens, and everything happens. Each day on the road its own lifetime, with a birth, some growth and a death at the end. Each day its own journey that you carry it with you, an entire story to be told with a setting, individual characters, a beginning, middle and end. Put all these stories together and you’ve got quite the epic, each one a continuation of the last rather than a distinct world of its own.
In this way the Camino is a mapping of your life at large into a condensed and intensive period of time.
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I decide today I’ll go Beyond by not stopping at the first two cafes I see. I want to consciously break the habit of automatic consumption I’ve gotten into. It’s easy to tell yourself “it’s a long day, I better take a break. And treat myself to some food or a drink”. There’s plenty of time to form habits on the road, though there’s also plenty of time to break them - if you ever find yourself in a rut it’s good to remember you can change things at any time.
I walk 20km before I stop, and when I do I’m pretty wrecked. Of course I get a sandwich and a coffee – same as usual, just later.
My body has been teaching me to ‘slow down’ the last two weeks by manifesting injuries and symptoms that make me walk in a slightly slower, more mindful fashion, and prevent me from rushing my way through the Camino in order to reach the destination in some arbitrary lenght of time.
Aches and pains convey messages in physical form like:
“What’s the rush?”
“Slow down and enjoy the walk (and life)”
It would be a recurring theme I’d find among so many men of all ages on the road.
But right now I think I’ve slowed down too much. I think I need to practice pushing myself a bit more again. I’ve gotten too comfortable stopping at every café and pasteleria in town. And sticking to the book.
I’m confusing myself at this stage: am I trying to slow down and enjoy the Camino, or speed up and push myself? Maybe I want to do both. I’d planned to come for four weeks and I’m already slowing down to make it closer to five – in that sense I’m already listening to my body and heart and not trying to ruin myself by going too hard for the sake of making the artificial four-week deadline I’ve created for myself.
I feel like I’ve gotten too comfortable. I also don’t care for the busy-bodies who love to tell you just how slowly they’re doing the Camino. Always with that air of moral and spiritual superiority that their way is the right way. Sometimes I think “fuck ‘em” and walk as fast as I can just to spite them, just because I can. And then my tendons flair up and I get dehydrated and I have to sit down and stop walking for the day. And the cycle repeats.
To go beyond or be content in the moment?
To go or to stop.
To experience or to record.
To walk alone or with others.
Always the same old questions, just presented in different manners.
Just outside Boadilla I pass a group - a couple of groups - of pilgrims who’ve stopped chatting to a man at the side of the road. Wearing green overalls, a smooth head and fine white beard, he offers around a container of wine - one of those old pouches made of some animal hide. He has a little patch of vegetables which he offers in abundance to the other groups. I decide not to stop as it seems like there’s already a queue for his time, though he insists on calling me back, as well as making me drink a second squirt of wine. He has a little patch of vegetables and makes his own wine, which he offers to passing pilgrims with enthusiasm. His name is Pepe.
At a café I see two older French men again: one is blind and his friend is guiding him. I later learn they’re doing the whole Camino together. Talk about going above and beyond – both of them. Another remind that all my deadlines, worries and constraints are self-imposed. Would it be easier to be blind, just to put some limits on the possibilities your mind is forever jumping between?
I get to Fromísta and crash. I try to book a place in the next village, 10km ahead – but the one accommodation there is all booked out. Plus, it’s 3pm and getting really hot out. I find an albergue and bump into the Italians again. I’m happy enough where I am.
So it goes.
Maybe tomorrow.
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