Oh my Gawd—pain! I woke up barely able to move. Every muscle in my body hurt. And I was starving. The honeymoon with the Camino was over. I couldn’t believe I had to do this all over again for 33 more days. AAAWWWW!
Once I managed to sit straight up in bed, I eased myself onto my feet and gently walked over to retrieve my hefty first-aid kit. Thank goodness I didn’t have any blisters on my feet, but I was so sore I had no idea how on earth I would be able to walk through the mountains for an entire day all over again.
The first thing I reached for was arnica. Many friends had told me it would help with pain. I had never used it before, so I prayed it worked. I had the extra-strength kind, for which I was grateful, and loaded up on that.
Then I began to rub muscle cream all over my calves and thighs. And my butt. I couldn’t believe my butt hurt as much as it did. And my toes, which were tender to the touch. I had to rally. I had to be out of my room in the next 30 minutes.
Once the muscle cream started to take effect, I was able to move a little more freely. Thinking about yesterday’s wild weather, I chose to put my long underwear on, even though the sun was shining brightly at the moment. I got dressed and then put on my boots. Only once I shoved my foot into my boot, I could barely stand the pressure on my toes. I hadn’t planned on this, and so soon into the walk. So much for my expert boot fitter, I thought sarcastically. My boots don’t fit at all.
I sat back and wondered what to do. I had to keep walking. My solution was to take some Tylenol, shove my boots on my feet, and just get up and go, hoping the pain would ease as I walked. I was used to ignoring pain. In fact, I had actually prided myself on how much pain I was able to withstand without complaining. I’m just like my father, I realized as I shoved on the second boot. Limping toward the dining room downstairs, I was soon distracted by the lovely breakfast spread laid out before me at the buffet.
There were freshly baked croissants and large pieces of bread with jam. There were slices of apple and pear in syrup, and a bowl of small oranges to the side. There were trays of salamis and ham, and others filled with various cheeses. There was also fresh orange juice and yogurt. All the things I loved to eat. Unapologetically loading up my plate with as much food as it would hold, I was met by a waitress who asked if I would like some coffee. Ordering a café con leche, I happily sat down to dig in.
After stuffing myself to the brim, I headed back up to my room to fetch Cheater and bring him down for transport. Before I zipped up, I reached in and grabbed a few PowerBars to eat along the way. I did some quick math. I had brought 75 bars with me, which allowed for just over two a day. I had already eaten ten since I left Chicago and was only two days into the Camino.
I hope they have a market along the way, I thought, or I won’t have enough bars to last the entire way.
I wasn’t too worried about it, however. I knew I would be passing through several towns and even large cities, and could eventually pick up anything I needed. It’s just that I loved my chocolate-mint PowerBars and quite frankly didn’t want to run out.
“Conserve, Sonia,” I said to myself. “That’s the theme for today. Conserve your energy and your PowerBars. Take it easy, and you’ll be okay.” I walked back to the dining room to fill up my water pack that I wore around my waist before I set off. Once it was full, it was surprisingly heavy. I then also filled up my stainless-steel water bottle and clipped it to Pilgrim. I now had plenty of water until the next watering hole.
Checking to see that I had everything I needed for the day’s journey ahead packed away in Pilgrim, including sun hat, warm hat, gloves, sunblock, iPod, camera, rain poncho, neck bandana, and warm windbreaker, I was satisfied. And ready to go.
I sleepily stepped outside the hotel and was promptly slapped in the face with a brisk, stiff wind. Suddenly I was wide awake.
Sunny or not, it was freezing outside. So I stepped back in. I put down Pilgrim, and unzipped her. I then pulled out my neck bandana, the warm windbreaker, and rain poncho and put them all on. I also pulled out my warm gloves and hat and zipped up again. Now I was ready to go.
When I stepped outside this time, it seemed suddenly warmer, until I realized that, duh! It wasn’t warmer. I was dressed warmer. Step-by-ginger-step I started searching for the yellow Camino arrows pointing out the way. After only a few yards, I looked up to see a big road sign that said, “Santiago, 790 km.” Just past that I saw the yellow arrow.
Before taking another step, however, I paused and said a prayer to set my intention for the day:
Holy Mother-Father God,
Please oversee my walk today and help me make it to Zubiri. Guide my attention to the yellow arrows and keep me from getting lost. I also ask for help in keeping my heart and mind open to receiving all Camino blessings throughout this day.
Thank you.
That said, I was ready to go, and starting singing “I’m Off to See the Wizard” just as I had yesterday. I guess it was the “yellow” thing that inspired me. Yellow brick road. Yellow arrows. It worked for me. I even did a sort of scarecrow jig since there was no one looking. It made me laugh.
I didn’t want to think about the 790 more kilometers I had to walk. That felt too daunting for my miserable toes. I decided I would only think about what I had to walk today. That was far more manageable. My destination was a town called Zubiri, 22 kilometers away. After yesterday’s trek, that sounded easy breezy. I was optimistic as I started down the path.
It was beautiful outside and I was taken with all the activity going on both above and below me as I walked. The trees were filled with various birds, while mysterious critters I couldn’t see rustled in the brush underneath my feet and just out of sight.
Soon enough I found myself surrounded by fellow pilgrims flanking me on either side, some walking alone, others in pairs, some in groups, all undertaking this pilgrimage for reasons of their own, in unison with me.
I quietly observed their different energies as we walked. There were athletic men who almost seemed to run rather than walk down the path. There were chattering young people who seemed oblivious of the difficulties the path laid out before them, their nimble bodies cruising along without the least bit of effort. There were a lot of people riding their bikes on the path, as well. I guess you can ride the Camino on your bike as opposed to walking if that is your preference and still receive a pilgrim’s certificate at the end. Given the steep climbs and descents, and the uneven ground beneath my feet, I marveled that bikers would even want to travel the Camino this way. It seemed like a miserable thing to do to me.
Most of the bikers were clearly Tour de France athletic types, as their designer spandex revealed every inch of their ripped bodies. I wondered if the Camino for them was an athletic conquest rather than a spiritual journey. It was still difficult to navigate, in any case, even on a bike.
As I passed several groups of pilgrims, I wondered about their reasons for being here, as well. They joyfully chatted and laughed, and seemed more into each other than the path itself.
Not that I was judging. I was just wondering what the Camino meant to each one.
I had been on the road no more than 30 minutes when the weather abruptly changed and it clouded over and started to rain once again. This created a dense, low fog that shrouded the path, and between the fog and the rain, the route became very slippery and difficult to forge. There were so many wet, uneven stones that unless I kept my head down and watched every single step I took very carefully, I would slip on the rocks and fall down, which I did, several times. Thank God for my hiking poles, as they saved me more than once.
Today was proving to be much more challenging than yesterday. The ground was unstable and shaky, which was the same way I felt inside, too. The expanded and loving state I was in yesterday had completely evaporated, and was nowhere to be found.
I was thrust into survival mode today, and it didn’t leave me in a good mood.
Given the difficulty of the walk, I am not surprised that what surfaced in my mind were all the people I had recently ended relationships with, and how difficult these endings had been for me. One friendship that I ended was with a girlfriend I had known since I was 12 years old. Two had been with people I had worked and traveled with. Another was a girlfriend of the past decade, and of course, the big one was my marriage.
Why were so many significant relationships ending at the same time? Was it them? Or was it me? Given my frame of mind at the time, I had come to the conclusion it was them.
All had shown a self-serving side that I somehow had been blinded to up until recently. It is amazing that I can see other people’s needs and soul energies so clearly when it comes to my work, and yet still “miss the forest for the trees” in my own personal life. Patrick had always marveled at how I was unable or refused to see obvious “BS” energy in some of the people I had invited into my life over the years. I thought he was unkind and unloving. Maybe he was just clear, and I was delusional.
It’s frustrating when you are possessed by a pattern because you can’t really see it until it becomes so obvious that it smacks you in the face. I had a long-standing pattern of choosing friends who were really manipulative and ended up tricking me and letting me down. It all started in second grade when my friends Leslie and Stephanie asked me to help them with their schoolwork, then left it to me to do it while they conspired to dump me behind my back as soon as they turned it in. I was so heartbroken that it took years for me to get over it. I guess I was just sensitive.
The names changed over the years, but my pattern and the end result pretty much stayed the same. I created relationships into which I invested my full heart and soul, only to be let down and left behind, blaming myself for whatever went wrong.
All of my failed adult relationships were with people who had not had much success, and because of that felt that someone owed them something. I volunteered myself to be that someone, over and over again.
Maybe it was my karma to do that, to be the fairy godmother to the people whom I now wanted to get as far away from as possible. Maybe in my past lives I was a real jerk and ripped them off and now owed them one. Maybe they were past lives that had to do with the Camino. As I thought of this, something inside me seemed to say, “Yes, it was, and yes, you were.”
“Well, at least I am here clearing that karma now,” I said out loud to the Universe.
As I walked, I couldn’t seem to get into a rhythm. Every step felt dangerous. I kept turning the same ankle and banging my toes. Ouch!
Today the walk felt funky, similar to the energy of some of the people I had just cut out of my life. The more I walked, the more resentful I became. Why did I keep falling into the same trap?
These negative thoughts that were being shaken out of my bones surprised me. I didn’t want to think such dark thoughts. I didn’t want to think about the friendships I had decided to end. I had already let them go. I guess I could forgive them. I certainly knew in my heart that doing so would be the best thing for my spirit. In many ways I already had and hoped they had forgiven me as well. But I must not have forgiven them enough because right now I still wanted to be angry, and … hmmm, what was it I was feeling? Disappointed. Yes, that’s it. I was so disappointed in them.
I walked with this feeling for a while, slipping and sliding and cursing and catching myself with one of my poles, struggling to keep from plunging down the never-ending descent that was this day’s walk.
Disappointed. What an obnoxious energy that was. It reminded me of the grade-school nuns in the Catholic school where I attended, and how they used to shake their heads at me and say—over the slightest infraction, such as laughing in class or not getting a 100 percent on a paper—“I’m so disappointed in you.” Ugh!
Eventually I began to feel the arrogance of being “disappointed.” After all, who was I to have some standard of behavior that others should adhere to? Who was I to be “disappointed”?
I had never openly discussed my expectations with any of these friends. I just assumed that people were supposed to behave in a certain way (determined by me, of course) and, if they didn’t, they greatly disappointed me.
I began to look at these ended friendships (or “endships,” as my friend Mara in Chicago called them) from a new perspective. While still happy to be freed of relationships with these people, I could see how I had no right to be disappointed in them.
They simply were who they were, and I had no right to think I could, should, or would change them. Suddenly I felt arrogant and self-righteous. How obnoxious I must have seemed to them, I realized. Essentially, my attitude was, “Be my friend and live the way I want you to live so I won’t be disappointed.”
Not that I ever said that or even consciously thought that. I didn’t. And yet the more I walked, the more I realized that I did, at least unconsciously, imply and expect that. No wonder those friendships blew up in my face. They were not connections based on love and acceptance of others for who they were, or vice versa.
We were all just manipulating and maneuvering one another to get each other to take care of our unmet, unspoken needs, the things we weren’t succeeding in addressing ourselves.
I shook my head at this miserable realization when I suddenly flew off my feet and slid straight down the mountain for about ten feet. Sitting in the mud with the wind knocked out of me, I caught my breath.
“I get it. My relationships are like this path today,” I said aloud. “Messy, mucky, slippery, and ungrounded.”
I was relieved I had let these people go from my life. And humbled to realize they probably felt the same way about me.
I also felt sad that we had ended up apart and feeling bad.
I knew in my heart at that moment that no one was the “bad guy.” Or the “good guy.” We were just people navigating the muck of relationships given the hidden patterns we were stuck in.
Standing up, I tried to regain my balance and make sure nothing had suffered too much. Knee was okay. Butt was sore but no more than usual. I was fine. The descent continued, as did the slippery ground. It never eased up. I was particularly frustrated that I kept banging my toes on the fronts of my boots, making it nearly impossible to take a single step without feeling excruciating pain.
As I walked, I thought that this was how it felt to be married to Patrick. As much as I wanted to forgive him—and me, for that matter—all I could think of was how much pain I had been in for so many years being married to him. Like the slippery ground under my feet, I had never felt fully safe with him.
I didn’t trust him to have my back at all.
I wondered if that was fair. How much of that was me being stuck in a pattern of not asking for or allowing help, and how much was about him not having it to give?
Just as I thought about this my foot slid once again, and I landed in a puddle up to the top of my ankle, the mud now sliding into my boot and through my sock.
“That’s an answer for you, Sonia,” I said out loud, between cursing. “You took the step into the muck.”
That wet foot pissed me off. When will this end?
I wanted the pain to end. I wanted the walk to end. I wanted the sliding and muck and mud to end. I wanted to feel solid ground under my feet and trust that I could take my eyes off the path for a second and not get ambushed by unstable, slippery rock and gravel giving way. That’s what I wanted, but as far as I could see, it wasn’t about to end anytime soon.
There was not much I could do but carry on, so that’s what I did. The hours passed and judging by yesterday’s pace, I had to be at least halfway to Zubiri by now. I was hungry. And because I drank all the water from both my water pack and my bottle, I had to pee.
Not seeing any sign of a town or village or lone café on the road, I was about to continue on when I remembered my pee cone.
After checking that the coast was clear, I decided to use it.
I pulled it out of my backpack and eyed it suspiciously. How do I use this thing? I asked myself.
It was somewhat self-explanatory. I simply had to put it over my “privates” as the sales guy had said, and quite literally go for it. Feeling funny doing this so close to the path, I decided to move a little deeper into the woods for privacy. When I felt I had hidden myself well enough, I looked at the pee cone once again.
“Am I really going to use this thing?” I asked myself.
“Yes. Just use it and stop being such a prima donna!” I snapped right back.
Feeling that standing and peeing like a guy was way too much for me, especially given that I was trying to move away from my “inner masculine,” I decided to squat and use the pee cone instead. That way I could ensure that I didn’t splatter all over myself, which has happened in the past.
I put my backpack down and struggled to balance under my poncho. I wasn’t sure I had everything in its proper place, but before I burst, I just trusted and went.
Afterward, I stood up, pleased that no one had passed by, and somewhat impressed that someone had thought to invent a pee cone. Except when I stood up, I felt way too warm underneath my poncho.
I lifted it up only to see that the stupid pee cone had directed the pee to the back of my pants and my long underwear. My pants, my socks, and my entire backside were covered in pee. I might as well have pointed a fire hose at myself.
Embarrassed and wet, I cursed the pee cone and myself for at least a half an hour. Eventually I started laughing. It is so true that most of what happens to us, we create. Most of it? my inner voice challenged.
Walking in my soaking wet pants, I relented. “Okay, all of it.”
Funny how this day was completely the opposite of yesterday. Light to dark.
I no longer wanted to feel angry with anyone or myself. I just peed on myself and was tired of being pissed off. It was time to change the channel. I started singing my favorite songs, making up the words whenever I couldn’t remember them.
I started with The Beatles, “Can’t Buy Me Love,” and ended up with Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know.” I had walked in silence for four hours and had not spoken to anyone on the path over the past two days. In fact, I didn’t want to speak to anyone as I walked. But singing was okay.
Several more hours passed, and I found my resentments toward everyone had vanished, at least for the time being. All except the ones I felt toward Patrick, but I was trying. I didn’t want to carry the weight of those dark feelings toward him, or anyone, including me. But they wouldn’t budge much, no matter what I wanted.
I noticed, even in only two short days of walking, that heavy or negative thoughts made the Camino much more difficult to walk. When I let go of my dark thoughts, I found I could keep on going even when I thought I didn’t have another step in me. That’s why it was annoying that some of my dark thoughts clung so tenaciously to my mind. They wouldn’t let go. The more I tried to make them go away, the more they intensified. I gave up. I let them be.
Finally I stumbled into Zubiri. I looked around to find the town. There wasn’t much of one. Only a few sad, empty establishments next to a highway. It didn’t matter. I was relieved I had arrived. Once again, all I wanted to do was go to sleep.
It wasn’t difficult to find my hostel. It was in a small house directly across from the pilgrims’ albergue in the center of town. I knocked on the door and an extremely thin, elderly woman opened it and smiled. In the foyer, right behind her, stood Cheater, as if welcoming me with open arms. I felt so glad to see him.
She started to show me a room just behind Cheater, then put up her hand and stopped me in my tracks, looking down at my mud-covered boots and peed-on pants. She pointed to them and gestured for me to take them off, which I happily did. Mud cracked off of me, and exploded everywhere. I apologized immediately. She simply smiled as if to say, “No problem,” took them from me, and placed them in a plastic bag. Once I had stripped down, she pointed to a room behind me. That was apparently my room. Thank goodness there were no stairs to climb today. I was truly too wiped out to carry anything anywhere. The room was very simple. It had a single bed with a small hand shower on the wall next to a toilet separated by a thin wall, and no windows. Perfect.
Once I saw the room and approved, she took me upstairs and pointed to a large sink with a scrub brush and some soap. Then she pointed to the bag with my pants and shoes.
Nodding yes, I realized she was showing me where I could get my boots and clothes cleaned up. Standing in my underwear, I immediately set to it. It was no small effort to get the mud and pee smell off, but I managed. She returned after a few minutes and pointed out a rack on the balcony where I could hang them to dry. Given that it was drizzling fairly steadily, I hoped that they could.
Once my clothes were spread out to dry and I had changed into drier duds, she asked for my pilgrim passport so she could stamp it. I had almost forgotten about that. Then I asked about dinner. She showed me a small map and said I had to walk 2 kilometers into town and could get dinner there after 6 P.M. I looked at my watch. It was already five. My feet hurt so much I wasn’t sure I could manage. I was starving, though, and hadn’t yet had dinner since I started out, so I rallied.
The problem was my toes. They were so banged up it was hard to walk. Fortunately, I had the lightweight Merrell shoes. They were soft and didn’t hurt my toes as much.
I showered, got dressed, and set out to find the place for dinner. I was famished.