Some hours later the crippled man in the wheelchair whizzed by me in some sort of cosmic travel trance of his own. Whenever he arrived at refugios, people generally accommodated him because he seemed to operate with an unswerving sense of divine trust. He never had any money and was incapable of taking care of himself. It didn’t matter. God was his copilot.
On the way to Sahagún a man on a bicycle stopped me. He had regards from Javier, who said he would meet me somewhere on the Camino. I blinked, remembering what John the Scot had told me.
He also said the singer from Brazil had very bloody feet and was two days behind me. He said her husband was two days ahead. I never even knew she had a husband. Maybe the husband didn’t know it either.
It was customary for pilgrims to leave each other messages in the refugio’s guest book. I had a message from the Irish girls. “Be careful of Javier. He is a sex maniac and tries to crawl into every woman’s bunk!!” So much for him.
It was now June 21, the longest day of the year and the day of the summer solstice.
As I walked I began to see different colors of purple and lavender embedded in the colors of trees and grass. I squinted my eyes and opened them wide again. I couldn’t compute the colors I was seeing. Then I remembered that the spiritual masters said that you begin to see the divine shades of lavender and violet (the colors of the crown chakra) when you become attuned to the fourth dimension of reality. The third dimension was the physical dimension of reality as we know it. The fourth is the dimension of perception beyond the physical. They said that violet and lavender become more discernible when a human being realizes that the spiritual dimension resides in everything that is alive. The spiritual dimension, they said, was the true reality. They went on to instruct that we had been programmed to create problems for ourselves—psychological, physical, and even spiritual problems. Therefore, we were not prepared for peace. We didn’t even really desire it because it wasn’t a familiar emotion. In fact, they said, most people would find bliss and peace boring. But we didn’t need to learn about awareness through pain and turmoil and conflict anymore. It was time for a new understanding that our fundamental identities were spiritual and peacefully balanced. We had just lost sight of that. Again, they said we were essentially spiritual beings living in the physical. Our identities were correctly defined as soul beings, not physical beings. We somehow had it the other way around. I wondered how that had happened. In a few days I would find out.
When I reached Sahagún, I called Kathleen again. She said she had mustered the energy and had gone to Paris one last time. She knew she would never see it again. She said she saw new colors in the flowers, the people, the markets, and even the air.
“Everything seems so beautiful to me now. Why didn’t I see this beauty before I knew I was going to die?”
“But you’re not going to die,” I said. “You’re just going to pass on.”
“To what?” she asked.
“To your next experience, I guess,” I said. “And I think you’ll find it beautiful there too. You’re already seeing glimpses of another dimension, aren’t you?”
She hesitated. “Yes, I am. Is this what you’ve been talking about all these years?”
“Yep.”
“Did you tell me your father had seen incredible beauty when he was dying?”
“Yes,” I said. “And he used to tell me about seeing his long gone relatives during his dream state. He said he knew they’d be there waiting for him.”
There was a long silence.
“Oh, God,” said Kathleen. “When I see Ken again, will he drag me down to the bottom again?”
“I don’t see how there would be a bottom in heaven. When you’re there, you’re there.”
“Do you think we lost paradise on earth?” she asked.
“Yes. But I don’t know how it happened.”
“Will you know by the end of your pilgrimage?”
I didn’t know what to say. I decided to tell her some of my experiences with Ariel and with John the Scot talking to me and what I was learning. Then I told her that I hesitated to tell anyone else because they would think I was making it up or I was crazy. They would also think I was a colossal masochist.
At the end of my explaining all this, which I thought would be very disturbing to her, she said, “When you decide to tell anyone else, do it on your terms. It is your truth. Everyone has his own reality anyway. My reality has always been so intellectual. It takes my dying to find there is another one.”
She talked on for a while longer. Then she said, “Don’t worry, I’ll be here when you get back. I want to hear more, and I’m sure there will be more.”
Soon after that a man walked up to me. He was with his dog and said he had been walking for seven years!
In every village I was awed by the opulent richness of the churches, while the poor people who attended them gave every last penny they had to the collection plate. One priest sold holy candles to the peasants, which they lit, placed on the altar, and prayed over. When they left, the priest put them up for sale again. They had paid for the privilege of praying.
I sank to my knees in a grove of trees and lay down. I had left a pair of panties and socks drying on a windowsill somewhere. I thought about how I missed them and how necessary they were. I punctured a blister on my right heel and sewed the skin together so it wouldn’t rub. I put my hat over my face and fell asleep, hearing the trees sway over me. Then I saw flashbulbs in my head and heard someone asking me questions. I opened my eyes and saw a band of journalists over me. Then two paramilitary men got off of a motorcycle, walked toward me, and shoved their cameras in my face. I made a decision. I simply turned over and went back to sleep. When I woke up, everyone was gone. Passive resistance worked.
I continued on to El Burgo Raneros. The village looked like something out of an old John Ford movie. It was “Western” with windswept adobe buildings like those in Arizona and New Mexico. It even had a Western-style bar that made me think any minute I would see John Wayne come striding through the door. I found a machine with orange sodas and entered the bar.
A woman came over to me and offered to wash my clothes. She invited me to her quarters above the bar, where I sat in front of a TV set and watched a bullfight. I browsed El Pronto magazine as she fixed me minestra with potatoes and onions.
She offered to take my backpack to the next town, Mansilla de las Mulas, the next day. Yes, it would be a miracle to walk without weight.
I thanked her and retired to the refugio across the windswept Western street.
The next morning there were members of the press sitting in the refugio. They were interviewing the other pilgrims about me.
I dressed inside my sleeping bag and left by the back room with my backpack, which seemed heavier than ever. I couldn’t wait for the lady of the bar to take it for me.
I was moving in a surrealistic dream now, through some of the most ancient and beautiful cities in Spain. I had lost Carlos and Ali. The Germans, when I saw them, were always drunk; the Belgian man who was my brother in another life moved ahead with his baseball bat, determined to beat all records, and the Irish girls were long gone.
León was the most impressive of the ancient capitals of Christian Spain in the tenth and eleventh centuries. It had been invaded and conquered by the Moors in the eighth century, and its medieval history was one of continuing battles between Christians and Moors. The city was essentially a fort ringed by walls as it stood surrounded by plains. It was the city of kings. I felt I had been there. At the Hostal de San Marcos, a refuge and monastery dating from the Middle Ages, the monks gave me a ration of food—bread and cheese and wine. I sat in the church trying to tap into the familiarity I was feeling. I stood up and, as though guided, began to explore the ancient streets of the old city. I looked in shop windows as though I was searching for something.
Then I saw it. There was a jewelry store that sold antique artifacts. Slowly I walked toward the display window. There, at the side of the display, was a small golden cross. I went inside and inquired about it.
“It is Moorish,” said the salesman. “It has been handed down through the centuries. Interesting and quite rare, because it could be Christian as well as Moorish. It could also have been designed from the ancient Egyptian symbol for good luck.”
“Do you know who it belonged to?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” he said. “Probably many people. Legends spring up about these ancient pieces. But we do know it came from the time of Charlemagne. I’ve never seen one like this one.”
Tears sprang to my eyes. I was back on the Camino in ancient days. John the Scot placed it around my neck as I came out of the water he had pushed me into. I remembered fingering its thin gold and wondering why it meant so much to Christians. I remembered that the Giant Moor had given it to John to give to me. Now, twelve hundred years later, had I found it again?
“Could I buy it, please?”
“Certainly,” he said. “Would you like a gold chain to drape it on?”
“No, thank you,” I said. “I’ll just put it in my money belt.”
I don’t remember what it cost. I paid with a credit card.
Was it the very same cross? Or could it be one just like it? No, I didn’t feel that. I felt I was holding the very cross that John the Scot had baptized me with, the very same cross that still reminds me each time I look at it of this experience through time and space.
I walked through the streets of León in a state of truth-shock. How would anyone believe this? Then I thought, So what? I had seen what I had seen, and now I was holding a third-dimensional, earth-plane proof of something I had experienced one thousand two hundred years ago. I held the cross in my hand and walked on.
The Camino outside of León crossed a bridge over the river Bernesga. I passed scrap heaps and rubbish dumps and warehouses. I walked faster. I crossed streams, where I dunked my head into the cold water. I chanted “I am cool and I am peaceful” to myself in rhythm to my steps. I saw pilgrims pass me in taxicabs and buses. Anna had said I would be able to walk forty-five kilometers (about twenty-eight miles) a day by the end. I saw one Spanish girl walking with no shoes. I saw some prisoners doing the pilgrimage who would be released on good behavior if they completed it. I stopped at every stream and took the time to soak my bare feet in the cold water before I Vaselined them again. I sat gazing at the cross. I wanted to talk to John the Scot, but he had deserted me. I was lonely for him.
I passed the Roman ruins and Christian cathedrals of Astorga. I was now an awe-inspired tourist of my own past as I attempted to remember the places while not taking too much time.
On through the cities and villages I walked, with my cross as my protector.
My nights consisted of sleeping on floors in my sleeping bag or dream-walking through a new friendship with people who felt exactly as I did. We all felt we had been here before. We wondered whom we had been to each other. Then we separated and moved on, wondering if we were ever to have some fateful appointment with each other, each pilgrim buried in his or her own prison of stamina, exhaustion, confusion, and pain, longing for the revelation and enlightenment that would make it all worth it. We spoke of the Knights Templar in the ancient days and their fierce protection of the pilgrims, who were simply searching for the God within themselves and did not deserve to be robbed and terrified by bandits. We were grateful that the Spanish government protected pilgrims.
I told no one about my cross. I might have known these pilgrim-strangers in the past, but I didn’t know them now. I would protect my cross at all costs. Was this being a Christian missionary?
Everywhere I walked there were monuments to Saint James—Santiago—the patron saint who was said to have protected the Christians from the Moors. Which one was I now?
I passed the Hospital de San Francisco where it was claimed that Saint Francis of Assisi had convalesced on his pilgrimage. So he had had physical problems too?
Roman thoroughfares led in and out of cities and to the moorlands on all sides, and as I walked the countryside and through villages and towns, some of the pictures in my dream-visions flashed before me again. I knew these places; I knew the terrain and the Camino before it had been built up through the ages.
Many churches along the pilgrim’s way had been built by the Knights Templar. One in Rabanel was dedicated to Santa María and included the remains of its original twelfth-century Romanesque structure. Here in Rabanel, medieval legend has it, one of Charlemagne’s knights married the daughter of the Moorish sultan. I saw the wedding in my mind’s eye. I knew her, but I didn’t know why. Charlemagne and his army took the pilgrimage on orders “from above.” I saw him again with me by his side discussing God and the stars and what the Christian pope desired for him to do in the name of Christianity. I remembered that the Camino amplified all human emotions and confusions in an attempt at clarification. The conflict among humans was always about the interpretation of God. What was God? What did he desire for us? To whom did he authentically speak? Were Moslems heathens and were Christians infidels?
Then before I realized it, I was in the refugio outside of Foncebadón, the abandoned village of the wild dogs. And the Camino went straight through it.
I knew none of the pilgrims in the refugio. It was as though a new set of players had entered my drama. I realized the necessity of friends.
I sat by myself, feeling more alone than I had since Anna had left me in Pamplona. I had come more than halfway across Northern Spain; had realizations that major psychics would marvel at; survived hills, streams, deserts, and the press; and now I found myself afraid of a pack of dogs. I tried to calm myself. I was afraid of the pack mentality. It was terrifying to me. I remembered the huge black dog Anna had prayed in front of. I remembered hearing about bloody encounters others had faced. Had they just been being dramatic for storytelling purposes?
The strange pilgrims around me seemed oblivious of the danger in the village ahead of them. Perhaps they didn’t know. Perhaps it was better to be uninformed—an ignorance-is-bliss sort of thing.
I turned my cross over in my hand. Then I heard familiar voices outside.
I ran to the entrance. Carlos and Ali stepped off a bus. So did one drunk German walker. I hugged them all.
My friends had come to walk with me through fear.
Ali and Carlos seemed like an old married couple. The German had a bottle of beer he chugalugged.
We talked of how we thought we wouldn’t see each other again, and yet here we were. Was this our appointment in Samarra? Was Foncebadón going to be our bridge of San Luis Rey? I said nothing like that to them.
But I did bring up the dogs in the village ahead. All three dismissed the danger.
Oh? Okay.
Ali sat down, creamed her face, and put her hair in curlers. Carlos attended to his camera, and the German drank beer.
Was I the only person here who felt fear?
I tossed and turned in my sleeping bag (which wasn’t easy), and when I woke, I felt a kind of protective presence. It was accompanied by the smell of vanilla. I looked around to see if someone was applying perfume. No. This was not the place. People were dressing and sleepily muttering among themselves.
The sweet vanilla scent grew stronger. It was Ariel!
I took some yogurt from my backpack and ate it. Ali combed out her curls. She looked quite lovely. Carlos tossed her a few good-natured jokes about her spoiled vanity. She coyly waved him away.
And I, observing this reality surrounding me, felt myself somehow outside of it. Ariel was still with me.
We began the trek at seven A.M. The others in the refugio were gone. It was good to see Carlos and his purple knapsack and Bermuda shorts and red socks. And Ali was using a staff to help herself. A new acquisition, I thought. I wondered if she had made friends with her staff. We walked for a few hours, talking quietly among ourselves. Then a sort of sixth sense overtook us.
We saw the village of Foncebadón looming eerily in the morning mist, mocking every Hollywood special effect I had ever been a party to. I felt a pang of fear as I clutched my cross. Then Ariel said, “Stay calm. Don’t attract chaos.” I relaxed a little. I turned on my tape recorder and then was afraid to talk into it. I walked silently. So did the others. We reached the crest of a hill and looked down. There it was. A curl of smoke rose from a hut. An old witch was supposed to live there, surrounded by no one but dogs.
We approached the village step by step, and suddenly we were in it. It was completely silent. Broken-down abandoned buildings and the remains of demolished structures stood like beacons from the past in the morning light. What had happened here? I heard cowbells in the distance and had to maneuver my way through cow droppings on the cracked cobblestoned streets.
I looked around at our group. Carlos and Ali had separated. Carlos was up ahead with the German man, who had not yet had a drink.
I was in the middle, and Ali brought up the rear. Then I heard a dog bark. It sounded small and insignificant, like a harmless dog on a neighborhood street. My heart began to pound. “Calm,” said Ariel. I kept walking, clutching my staff in one hand and my cross in the other. I had almost canceled the pilgrimage because of this place, this moment in time. Then I remembered the Hopi remedy to calm dogs. I formed a beautiful red heart in my mind’s eye. I filled it with as much love as I could summon and sent out my visualization. I felt the heart go out to dogs that I as yet couldn’t see. Then another dog barked. I reinforced the heart to the dog I couldn’t see. In fact, I saw nothing moving anywhere except for Carlos and the German and the smoke curling from a hovel up ahead. That was where the witch lived?
“Continue walking,” said Ariel. I obeyed. Then I heard Ali sneeze. I turned around. Ali smiled. Carlos and the German were still in front of me, walking undisturbed. I could now see cows dotting the surrounding hillsides.
“Continue walking,” Ariel repeated. “You fear nothing but fear. You create the fear. Fear itself does not exist. You know that. You know that.”
Yes, I knew that. I walked, sending out the heart image, as alert as I had ever been…. Then I heard no dogs at all. And I realized I was through the abandoned village. This was it? This was what I was afraid of? Still sending out the heart image, I continued up the hillside.
Suddenly, I heard Ali scream. My heart froze. I turned around and looked at her. “My stick,” she yelled. “I’ve lost my stick. And there are too many flies and insects.”
Flies? Insects? Amazed, I realized that I hadn’t been bothered by them. I never even saw any.
She called again. “I can’t walk without my stick. I’m out of breath, and I can’t walk.” She was leaning up against an abandoned building, surrounded by cow dung.
“Keep walking, Ali,” I shouted. “Step over the cow shit and just keep going.”
“I can’t,” she yelled. “Someone help me. You know I can’t abide this!”
Suddenly I felt disgusted with her. She yelled for Carlos. He turned around, saw her, and kept walking.
“German,” she shouted, “come back here and help me.” The German man obeyed.
I was then between some cows and Ali and Carlos. All at once, the dogs began barking again. They became louder. I was alarmed. What would happen now? I thought of moving on, but on the hillside I couldn’t find the yellow arrow.
I shouted again to Ali. “Just move ahead, damnit,” I yelled. She looked up at me on the hillside.
“Move!”
She slowly stepped over the cow dung. The German was on his way toward her.
“But I must have my stick,” she shouted to him.
“Yes,” he answered. “I will retrieve it. Where did you drop it?” He was running toward her.
“Back there somewhere,” she said.
More dogs began to bark in chorus. The cows on the hillside started toward the village. Then I saw a pack of dogs skirt around the cows and head for the village.
Ali trudged toward Carlos. He yelled at her, “When will you learn how to think?”
The dogs were now a monstrous pack. I lost sight of the German. I sent out the largest love-imbued heart image I could muster.
Ali reached Carlos, and they had a shouting match as they began to run.
I couldn’t spot the German. The dogs entered the village. I propelled another, stronger heart image. Then I saw the German. He was standing on a hill above the village with Ali’s stick over his head, ready for combat. He was safe. The dogs turned and headed for Carlos and Ali, who were completely oblivious of the growing pack because they were arguing so intensely. My heart image followed the dogs. They suddenly became confused and looked up at the hillside toward me. Then they looked back at Ali and Carlos. Ali and Carlos had reached the main road above the town. They were safe and the German was safe. I scurried up the hillside to catch the main road.
En masse, the dogs turned and headed back into the village. I couldn’t see whether they would test the fear of another pilgrim or whether they returned to herding the cows. I heard the ferocious barking fade in the distance as I walked on, wondering if someone else was having a lesson in his or her own fear. Out of breath, I stopped. I let the heart image go, and I thanked Ariel. But the angel was gone. I put my cross in my pocket. What I had feared most was over. And I had conquered the fear by being proactive with love imagery.
Ali and Carlos continued to argue. I encountered other vicious dogs on the trail after that, but I just kept walking, sending out the image. They barked and snarled their heads off, defending their territory, but now my territory was my path and I had claimed it.
I walked the Camino now with a calmness, and I walked faster because of it, sometimes doing forty-five kilometers per day,just as Anna had said.