Just as hastily as my paella had been assembled it’s plate, I had left it, ten bucks folded neatly and tucked beneath the edge of a chipped porcelain corner. The Euro note was more than sufficient to cover the meal, and I hoped it was sufficient to pay for my waste. The overdone rice and juvenile prawns had failed to hold my attention as thunder had begun to growl beyond the horizon. As I quietly slipped out of the Basque watering-hole, I imagined the insult that the just-barely-kind-enough waitress would suffer. She’d likely snatch the plate from the table, scoffing at the other pilgrims I had left in my wake, and proceed to complain about the incompetence of foreigners to the heavy men at the bar who had been shamelessly staring at me since my arrival. I got around the block as quickly as I could.

Thunderstorms had always been a highlight of summers near the Gulf coast. Energetic cumulonimbus clouds had brought me to press my nose to the window of a car or home. More often than not, I left shelter far behind. Warm, dry safety of the indoors was exchanged for a shivering, windblown exposure.

“What on Earth were you doing out there?” my mother would ask upon my dripping return.

“I wanted to feel the storm!” my reply was always charged with enthusiasm.

Back to the albergue I raced, my eyes wide and turned above the tops of ravena palms that lined Pobeña’s streets. Reaching the stoop, I settled in for a brilliant plasmic display alongside a pair of gypsy-esque women.

The storm moved closer, and one of the gypsies rose, and soon returned with her boots, raincoat, and a covered ukulele.
“‘’Vant to go for a ‘valk?”

“Yes.” Of course I did.

Sockless in my sneakers, bare in my shorts, rain coursing down the back of my neck, I followed the German Gypsy woman up the side of the nearest mountain. Her hair was shaved close to her head on both sides, and wrapped in a blue scarf. Her thin cotton pants, already soaked, swayed with each step and looked similar to trousers in which one might find a clown (I later learned that she had just recently left a circus to come to Spain.)

“I come dis vay to see know nature.” She calls back me, referring to the Northern Camino.

“Well you’re about to see some serious shit.” I say to myself, pushing our pace toward the mountaintop.

Following a hedge of brush to the hillcrest. The not-so-distant beach of La Arena struggled to be seen through the downpour. With each crash of thunder we would both jump, and grin toothily at each other, glad that we had evaded yet another strike.

Julia (or in German: Eulia) had zero reservations in telling me about herself. She had left home at 15, bounced between housing cooperatives and collectives for several years, and still managed to become the German equivalent of a social worker. Eventually, she left for the circus, favoring clownhood and trapeze. Twice Julia married, never for love, instead she said, to “Fuck the system”. She had helped an African man gain citizenship, and had done the same for a woman to whom I assume she is still married.

Having both grown tired of rocking on our heels in soping pasture, we scaled an old, drooping walnut tree whose branches were sufficient for more storytelling.

She had no money, and been several times harassed by the French authorities as she attempted to hitchhike her way into Spain. Things never improved when patrolmen spotted the patch on the back of her ukulele that read the German equivalent of “Fuck the Police Forever”. Her second night on her Way, she had almost been swept away in her tent when she made camp well inside the flood zone of a growing river. Each tale was punctuated with laughter that shook our roost, dislodging plump drops of water from the canopy above.

After maybe two hours, my sneakers had filled with water, and my stomach cursed me for leaving my rice half-eaten in that musky bar. Light fading and lightning striking ever closer, I suggested that we begin our descent. Julia smiled in agreement, and thanked me with a smile that may have been a hug in better weather.

Ramshackle-dinner ended up being a few hasty handfuls of dried fruits and nuts from the fat sack that I lugged in my pack. Anne D. had brought back my leftovers. I tucked the container amongst Julia’s things, remembering she didn’t have money for food the next day.

Even on the very fringe of society, like Juila’s hitchhiking, stick-it-to-the-man lifestyle, there are remarkable and warm people; especially along El Camino.