Bill Arney

Left Nathan 20 km back where he was looking for a bus from Muxía to Santiago. He modeled my running shoes for the last picture of them before they went in the trash.  He put his hands in the shoes and his fingers out what used to be their sides and soles. “They could be nice gloves” … but of the fingerless variety.

An older South African woman saw me toss the shoes and recalled a time when, one night, she carried a bag full of old clothes and a pair of running shoes toward a trash bin but past a poor settlers camp near the edge of a town in India. She said ahe was aware of people rousing and watching her. She dumped the bag and hurried away, she said, because people swarmed the bin “and I didn’t want to see the fight.”

She–I didn’t get her name–has walked a Camino every year since 2004. This year she walked the Francés, the same route she walked her first time, “just to see how it has changed … and it has really changed.” This will be her last, she said without regret; “There are just so many other places to walk in the world!” She’s walked in Tibet, Nepal, the UK, Italy… I said, “Sounds like you are not slowing down,” to which she said with a laugh, “Are you kidding?  I am speeding up!  I have so much to do and I’m going to die someday.” She recalled meeting an 81 year old “small, wiry old guy” who had walked the Camino from Rome, in stages, 10 km a day now, but he’s near The End after all. My models.