Mountains, rivers, churches, forests, and hot earth. Dust clouds roil, trees whisper with bending shade, mountains edged like teeth of a saw paint my present. I’m lost, but the path knows the way.
The land is always changing on the Camino. The Camino, its expression, its voice, carried by wind and weather; it’s soul strummed over ridged cliff faces and grassy fields.
Time really flies by in Spain. The days are never the same. I never know what to expect while I’m walking. The only thing I can expect is that I’m going to walk, I’m experiencing true freedom. Since my days don’t have any structure, I’ve begun to lose my expectation. Which is such a freeing thing.
Everything is still kind of a dream for me here. It’s funny how that whole realizing where you are thing works. Every once in a while I get what feels like an electric shock as I realize, I’m in Spain!
As I sit here in Villafranca, I have no distraction, things that normally bother me are no longer present. The evening sky that’s packed with crinkle paper clouds. The sunset that is a pastel orange red that hangs over the green mountain as a dark rain that pours forth. It changes color to a deep purple orange that settles as snow on a distant church. As this was happening, I realized how things are a whole lot simpler than once imagined. How close minded I’ve been about interpreting the world around me. I just need to let go and have things be as they are, I can’t really explain it more than that, but I feel like like I’ve been truly enlightened. Haha, whatever, I know, but it is what it is.
A couple of days ago I walked a route called the dragonte route. It’s a lightly tread path and very difficult. The route winds through the hill ridden countryside of Spain. I traveled past derelict villages deep in the mountains. There where times when traveling up streams (barefoot) was the only option. It was one of the toughest hikes I’ve ever done. All this supplemented with the fact that only gummies and cookies were brought to eat, for the whole day. It was amazing though, one of the best days of my life so far. The incredibly illusive perfect day, found.
Yesterday, I climbed up the tallest point on the Camino. I enjoyed some incredible views of clouds and quaint villages. The way down was steep and tough on my knees, but I’m doing great now. One really memorable thing for me during my walk yesterday was all the farmers spraying poop all over their fields. It was not a great smell, especially when you’re huffing and puffing up a giant hill.:) One farmer even pulled up with his poop tender next to the cafe I was resting at for like an hour, the smell was inescapable!
I’m getting close to Santiago. I can’t believe my time here has gone by so quickly! Love and miss everyone 🙂
Evan