Harry's Journal

Walking into Santiago with Colin and Fern was my favorite day. It was with two people I barley talked to in class to being great friends and for one of them more. Colin had already walked to Santiago a couple days before but decided to walk the last 60 kilometers with me again, which I really appreciated him doing that. It was the first time since Burgos that I got to walk with him and I truly missed it. Having him here walking again was great. As we walked into the cathedral square we immediately greeted not by any of our friends but some strange homeless man that did not care for boundaries. But after he was singing so closely to our face we saw our friends Leoni and Miriam. We had been walking with them for 2 weeks straight and had gotten ever so close to them. As we thought we saw everyone we needed, out come good old Bill Arney. We were surprisingly excited to see Bill, we had made it. He congratulated us all with hugs and to me it felt right that this was the way come into Santiago. As we all settled down, Bill asked us for some coffee so we graciously took him upon his offer. I sat down for another great American style breakfast with my Camino family, Josef, Leoni, Miriam, Fredricka, Colin, good old Bill, and of course Fern. This is what makes me happy and I couldn’t have ask for a better group of people to eat breakfast with.

As we got into Ribedeo we started to make new Camino friends these two German ladies Fredricka and Miriam both sweet and nice people. Fern and I started to walk out from our albergue and realized that we had just entered Galicia and out of Asturias. We started out slow but not because of any injury but by the beauty that was this part of Spain. Especially me not seeing this much green since the first week on the Camino. It was a nice walk smelling the freshly cut invasive ucaliptus trees, the occasionally friendly horses that would come up and say hello. The weather it’s self was not sunny but gloomy, not to say it was bad. I quiet liked this weather to walk In it reminded me of Washington and walking on the evergreen trails to the beach it was refreshing to feel this sense of home so far away. As we got to our final stretch of walking and could see town I realized how lucky I am to be walking here with people I like away from the ones I don’t. I began to see the beauty of nature on the Camino, that before I couldn’t really notice as much. I’d I would have to give credit to Fern for pointing out all these flowers and plants that I would just glance at out of boredom but now I feel more appreciation of nature which had helped me look at walking differently.

Out of Hospital Luca and I started to walk slowly and gingerly. We decided to get coffee in the next town 5 kilometers and talked about how we run into the same people but never really speak to them and why we do that. It was something that we noticed on the Camino and didn’t understand why we felt that way. We found that it was always a bad thing not to talk to people if you don’t want to, that it shouldn’t be forced. We got to the town and stopped for coffee and a cigarette, talked about soccer and politics. As we drank coffee we saw 4 dogs run out to greet us, but it turned out it they were here to greet the food that fell down due to our messy eating. It was nice to be greeted by the town dogs. After we started to walk and we talked about how bad snores and how I am one them, which I had no idea that I snored so bad until the Camino. When we arrived at our albergue that night we meet an unlikely friend that was German who told us about his time in the German army and that he was doing this Camino to lose weight for his wife.

The day after walking out of Leon was the first time in the whole Camino that I walked by myself it felt strange not having someone to talk to. I was in my albergue and I didn’t talk to anyone or try for that matter. I tried to do this to see if I could be independent and not need someone else to be there with me. I did that for two days and it was awful and not something I want to do again. But I found things about myself that I needed to figure out and one of them is that I am not a person that can be by myself for copious amounts of time I need human contact, and that’s fine I’m just not that type of person of being solitary. So I stopped being alone and met this Spanish guy that was the same age as me and started to walk with him and talked about why I wanted to take a class that was so different than the political classes that I am used to take. That I needed a break from Evergreen and the hostility of having different points of views. He talked to me about why he wanted to walk and to was because he did enjoy the field he was doing anymore and how he was lost. That he wanted to see if the Camino could help him make decisions. His name was Luca he was born in Madrid to a Dutch mother and Italian father. Luca really helped me out of the rut I was in and I’m glad I had met a good friend.

As I walked into Leon or more like ran into Leon expecting not have any space for Fern in I in a albergue, due to the talk of other pilgrims saying they couldn’t get a place to stay as well. As we got into the city it was beautiful to see the great city of Leon and the cathedral in the middle of the city. As we got to the monastery we saw so many familiar faces that we haven’t seen in a while. One of those faces was Alex the English man who worked on cleaning Nuclear waste. He ran into us and invited us to a beer and dinner for a going away party for a mutual friend Jen who is a German lady who is a extremely nice person that we would love to go to this going away party. I thought to myself for a while about these people that invite me to spend time with them and why they invite me to these places. It made me feel good that they would include me into dinner we such intimacy. It was time to go to dinner and as we walked to the bar the city was coming to life it was not just young people coming out but kids, families, geezers, and pilgrims. We got to the bar and saw Alex and Jen and about 4 other pilgrims that we also knew. As we sat there talking about the crazy different experiences that we have had on the Camino so far a slew of old French ladies came by to see of Jen talked to us that they had walked 750K in France and walk 200K a year on the Frances. One of the lady’s was around 80 years old and had told us when she was young she had been on the French nation team for parachute jumps and had done more than 500 jumps in her life. It was beautiful to meet such unique and amazing people on the Camino and am I excited to meet more.

Walking out of Burgos my pack felt heavier and strange from not walking for for days but I was excited to leave. Fern and I started walking when we ran into our tall friend Alex which joined us for our adventure out of Burgos. On our way out we stopped by an old hospital for pilgrims which was amazing to see the history aspect of this pilgrimage. Me and Alex started to walk ahead of Fern and started to talk about our obsession of the great and powerful band which is the eagles. How his first song out of his sound system his mom had gave him for his birthday was the Eagles best hits, were this first song played was a legendary song called “take it easy”. It was nice to have someone who had a place for the Eagles in there heart like I did. It was crazy that he listen to the same album my dad would play for me and my brother as kids on repeat. As I told him this he asked if I had any Eagles on my phone I could play and of course I had all Eagles. And for 30 min we sang, Take it easy, Desperado, and of course most the most important Hotel California. We did this at the top of our lungs not missing a single lyric. When we finished our concert for other pilgrims we asked each other the classic question, “why are you walking and are you doing this for religious reasons?” He told me he was religious but he believed not in God but in the human spirit. That stuck with me on how he believed in something that to me was harder to believe in that God.

I stayed in Hontanas last night and it was the first time that I hadn’t completed a stage, but to be completely honest I didn’t really feel bad about it till the next day. As Fern and I walked we talked about her friends from England and how one of them had been meditating for 30 years, and the other one was on a English dating show that would air in a couple days. As we talked a huge plateau came into distance. I remember thinking, “it doesn’t look to bad” but I was wrong. As everyone knows I like to talk a lot, which I enjoy doing but as I was walking up that monster of a hill a group of flys decided to jump into my throat. I just kept feeling hot and I swear i sweated about one liter. But as we got to the top, I laid my eyes one of the most beautiful views I’ve seen In my life. I could see for miles the flat dull hot Camino we have been walking turn into a beautiful landscape that I could stare at for hours. As we decided that we had enough rest we scaled down the the plateau and continued on the flat hot Camino we listen to some Grateful Dead curtesy of Fern. We came to a nice rest stop after about 5 K a nice man from Finland stopped and was about to drink still water before we told him it wasn’t a good idea. He was so thirsty I had to offer him some of my water, which he graciously took and said “you saved my life thank you so much” which I really didn’t think much of I was just doing what I would want someone to do to me if I was extremely thirsty. We walked on where we came upon a small building with two men smoking a cigarette and on the building it red “Hospital for Pilgrims” so we didn’t think much of it. But it turned out to be an albergue dontativo were they would wash your feet, make dinner, breakfast and sing to you. We just walked by it. But it make me realize that sometime you just need to stop and talk to people and forget about your destination.

As we got into Roncevalles from Saint Jean I was dead I threw up around three times, for what Fern says because I wasn’t taking care of myself. I guess she could be right sometimes. But that walk through those mountains made me feel I was walking through clouds and that I was finally conquering the Camino. When I entered Spain I felt a sense of security that I did not have in France. I don’t speak French, I speak English and Spanish; that’s what I’m comfortable with and I was excited to be comfortable again. As we entered Roncevalles we stayed at this huge dormitory with around 250 people. This was the day were we saw Bill the man the myth the Legend. We told him about all the things we had happened to us. But classic Bill he already knew about all we were going to tell him. Not because he’s psychic but because Aidan, Caroline, and I didn’t read his blog post. We blew our cover we had to start paying attention to where am I post and reading blogs. As we finished speaking to Bill we decided to go to sleep and get the rest my body needed. In the morning we were ready to destroy miles of this Camino. It was a beautiful morning the sun was just rising over the Pyrenees mountains we previous climbed. The sky was a beautiful tint of pink, yellow, and orange. Those are perfect walking conditions. As we walked I decided I wanted to walk a head a bit and just get away from people. I needed that. That walk to Zubiri was I would say the easiest walk so far of the Camino, so me Fern, Aidan, Caroline, and Colin said “fuck it. Pamplona or die” so that’s what we did we started to walk 45K around 28 miles and 12 hours straight of walking. As we started the walk from Zubiri to Pamplona I noticed my energy had gone up, I was ready for this stupid endeavor. As we got to Pamplona half alive we entered the first albergue we saw, and that was the best decision I’ve made because I got to spend it with my 45k buddies.

I arrived in the 27th Lourdes and took to a Taxi to meet Aidan and Caroline at Listell Bethlehem in the south of France. It was beautiful to get there not because a river ran by it with emerald green tint but to see my friends with their heads poking out of a church refuge. With the help from two fisherman I found them. As we walked to the next town called Arudy i didn’t know what to expect. But what happened was a 22 mile walk that kicked my ass. As we got to Arudy we stayed in the is ex French teacher turned priest that was obsessed with Joan Biaz, he had seen her 4 times in concert and proceeded to get more excited when I told him that Joan Biaz went to my high school. As he continued to sing along to words he did not understand, but only the beauty of her voice two people walked in. They were from Holland, and their names were Anita and Frank. They were glad to see people that spoke English and right away we sparked a friendship. We continued to see them in Oloron-Ste-Marie were we talked for a bit but everyone was tired so we just fell asleep. In the morning we had breakfast with Anita and Frank were we had to way to many expresso shots but we talked. We told them our plans for after the Camino, how me and Aidan were planning to go to Holland after. They told us that when we were there we have an open invitation to stay with them and we are taking them on there offer.  They were the most gracious and thoughtful people I have met on this Camino and I’m glad that I get a second chance to see them again later. Later all of us decided that we would spend a rest day in Oloron-Ste-Marie because it was one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen and we also had a bar that we were already locals at.  As we stayed that night be began to drink and drink. It was getting late and we spent a good amount of money on our beverages so we were almost about to leave when the owner came out and told us what we wanted, but we could afford to buy anymore drinks. He told us “it’s on me you are locals now how big do you want your beers” we said the biggest you got. It was a great night. Than we slept 4 hours and continued to walk. It was worth it.