BY THE TIME I hit the two-week mark, I couldn’t remember whether the Camino was about St. James or Rick James. The pilgrimage was turning me into a superfreak.
I waded into the meseta, the legendary crazy land of the Camino that, based on past accounts, packs an experience equivalent to two hits of LSD. The meseta is a vast, treeless plain. It is here that pilgrims lose their minds—if they haven’t already done so—to a psychosis not unlike Jerusalem syndrome, the psychological disorder that causes normally sane visitors to the Holy Land to trade their clothes for togas, convinced that they are Christ, Mary Magdalene, or disciples of either. They roam the city shouting psalms, Bible verses, hymns, and spirituals. I did all those things save for singing spirituals; I don’t know any spirituals, so I substituted heavy metal.
I know what you’re thinking: hey, wasn’t she going to board a train or a bus for Sarria and pick up the Camino there? Well, yes, I was, and then I changed my mind—at least twelve times.
When I emerged from my morphine haze at the Burgos refugio, almost all the pilgrims had cleared out. The French Couple Who Had Sex had left; the Fat German was cramming the last few belongings into his knapsack while clearing his nasal passages through his throat. His tricornered felt hat sat at the end of my bunk, and I resisted the urge to kick it off.
In the bathroom I bumped into the young Australian girl. She was going into Burgos for breakfast, so I invited myself along. We arrived at a dismal, dirty hole that, in its off hours, must have been a heroin den.
I fell into conversation with some other pilgrims who were mapping out their day: a thirty-something guy from Chicago, an older woman from France, and a lost-looking young woman from Denmark.
Chicago was expounding in his thick Midwestern accent about how Americans were getting the shaft from the rest of the world, given what they had suffered on 9/11.
“How long are you guys going to dine out on 9/11?” I said with irritation. “Why don’t you stop invading other countries and start looking in the mirror?”
A fearlessness rose in me. It felt good to speak my mind. In Europe, I didn’t have to censor myself like I did back in Canada, where the media were behaving like lapdogs in swallowing and regurgitating the propaganda coming out of Washington about poor, misunderstood America for a public that accepted it without question. Contrary opinions could get you shunned from polite society or, worse, earn you passage to Guantanamo Bay. Europe was more tolerant of free speech.
“Hey, at least we do things,” Chicago shot back. “You Canadians just sit on the sidelines and cheer the winning team. I’d rather go in with my guns blazing than sit on my ass when my values and principles are being attacked.”
“How far are you going today?” interjected Denmark, hoping to ward off an international incident. She wanted the Canadian Lady Who Walked Fast to set the pace for the day.
I wanted to reply, “Well, I’m heading to Burgos, taking a bus to Sarria, and walking the last hundred kilometers because I’m lazy and I want to go home.” But I didn’t want to be known as the Canadian Lady Who Bailed in Burgos.
What I did say was, “I’m heading into Burgos for a while. Might stick around for a day. Haven’t decided.”
That was God’s truth. I had no idea what I was going to do. After my stale-bun-and-a-coffee breakfast, I wandered back into the Plaza de Santa Maria, dominated by Burgos’s stunning thirteenth-century cathedral square, to wait for the travel agency to open. It was 9 AM, and the travel agency did not open until 10.
I sat down on the cathedral steps, opened my backpack, and pulled out my maps. I looked at them for a flash of divine guidance, but nothing popped up. I thought about having another coffee, then decided against the idea. I thought of getting a hotel for a night, then dismissed that idea too. I could not make up my mind about anything, and I feared I had lost my decision-making capabilities altogether.
I tried not to look like the bag lady I was becoming. I crossed my ankles in a ladylike manner and looked appreciatively at the decorative latticed features on the spires of Burgos cathedral, but even the dogs sniffing for crumbs steered clear of me. A little boy toddled toward me, smiling innocently, but when I smiled back and said, “Hola!” his grandmother sprang into action and pulled him away as if I were a leper.
I thought of the Three American Boys and their kind gesture of giving me the macaroon. That morning Peter had solicited my advice about his feet and said something that had warmed my heart.
“Since you’re a real mom,” he had said, “can you tell me what to do about these blisters?”
A real mom. Was there a nicer compliment?
I had examined his feet, given him some packets of gauze and a glob of Vaseline, and instructed him to slather it on each morning before setting out. If he stuck with this regimen, his feet would be blister free, I assured him.
Suddenly I jerked to life on those cathedral steps. That’s it! The Three American Boys! They need me! I jumped to my feet and checked the time. It was 9:50. I could not wait ten minutes for the travel agency to open; I had to find the Three American Boys.
I stuffed my maps into my backpack, grabbed my walking stick, and retraced my steps to the refugio. The sun came out. I walked faster. Past the refugio, past the little stone restaurant where I had had dinner the night before, past the college, and finally into an industrial area that was waist-high in grass.
The yellow arrows cheered me on. I walked under an overpass just as a tour bus rumbled across. I wondered whether my group was on it, singing camp songs and having a jolly time.
At the edge of Rabé de las Calzadas, a small, caramel-stuccoed church surrounded by a sparse but brave stand of Cyprus trees stood against a bright blue sky. Beyond it the hypnotic meseta stretched into infinity.
IF YOU WERE praying on May 12, 2004, it is unlikely that God heard you; He was too busy with me. Sorry—I sucked up a lot of God time that day. I’m sure He put His hands over His ears when He heard me calling His name. I wasn’t indulging in blasphemy, there was no “For the love of God, what was I thinking when I decided to do this?” or “God Almighty, when will this day end?” No, this was more along the lines of “Hello? God? I’ve messed up big time. I’m not a pilgrim; I’m playacting at it. The psychic was right about this being too rustic for me. But it’s more than that—this is completely beyond my ability. I’ve failed. I cannot be the pilgrim You want me to be.”
I looked behind me, then ahead. The planet was deserted.
But I did not slow down. Some force pushed me forward, forcing me to walk faster and faster, refusing to let me rest. I wanted to drop to the ground and weep, but I was incapable of stopping, so I just walked and cried.
I thought of my children. I yearned to tell them how much I loved them, to tell them that if they knew the depth of my love it would break their hearts. I was desperate for their touch, for tangible proof that I was connected to them. But I also craved their approval, craved their forgiveness for the years when I was too worried about the household finances to spend time on the floor racing dinky cars through tunnels of sofa cushions and toilet paper rolls, too busy creating a standard of impossible perfection for myself to play Barbie dolls, too busy making a living to join parent-teacher councils or Little League clubs.
I had let those years slip from my grasp while I rushed through projects, through playtimes, through hobbies, through vacations, through relationships, through life. Now I was rushing through a pilgrimage.
“Forgive me!” I bawled to God. “I’m not the pilgrim You want me to be.”
Bible passages, psalms, confessions from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer spilled out: “… We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table, but thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy…”
“To Be a Pilgrim,” an old school hymn that I had loved and memorized in grade eight at St. Clement’s School but that had sat dormant for four decades suddenly sprang up in my throat, and I began to sing it as loud as I could.
He who would valiant be ’gainst all disaster,
Let him in constancy follow the Master
There’s no discouragement shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent to be a pilgrim.
“To be a pilgrim, indeed,” the Critic Within mocked. “You are not a pilgrim. You’re as much a pilgrim as you are a Spice Girl.”
I burst into tears and sang the second verse louder.
The Critic Within snickered, and I screamed at her to leave me alone.
What could I sing that would not make me cry, a song that would distract me from my anguish? I mentally scanned my vast AC/DC repertoire.
Nah. What else? “The Teddy Bear’s Picnic?”
Try as I might, I could not get my mind to fix on anything except my wretchedness. Why hadn’t I waited for the travel agency to open in Burgos? What was ten minutes? I could have been on a bus to Sarria by now. I wanted to go home, but at the same time the notion of telling people I had not completed the Camino was too frightening and too shameful to contemplate.
I tried on a conversation:
“So, how was the Camino?”
“Oh great. Wonderful experience, but really taxing. Hard on the body and the spirit. I could not do it.”
“Really? That’s hard to imagine given that you spoke with a few seventy-five-year-old women who completed it.”
Damn the seventy-five-year-old women! If they could do it, why couldn’t I? What was holding me back?
Loneliness. That was it. I longed for a connection with another human being. And therein lay yet another puzzle. How does one reconcile a love of solitude with a desire for companionship? God! Why was life so complicated?
Three figures silhouetted against the sky floated in and out of view as the landscape undulated. The American Boys? I sped up, frantic to talk to someone other than myself, but as I got closer I realized it wasn’t the American Boys but a trio without backpacks out for a walk. Here? Were they crazy?
The sky darkened in the north. Pewter-colored clouds coalesced into a single mass and moved ominously like the mothership of an alien civilization. Please, God, don’t let it rain.
Eventually I reached the edge of a plateau where the path dropped sharply into a valley. A village appeared in the distance at the far end of the valley floor: Hornillos del Camino, according to my map. A spectacular panorama of cascading hills and mountains wrapped itself protectively around the valley.
I spied a cluster of ant-sized people surging along the ochre dirt path. Could they be pilgrims? I hurried to catch up to them, careful not to stumble and trip on the rocky descent.
Again, my eyes had played tricks on me, for it was not a group of pilgrims but a group of schoolchildren on a class outing. When I reached them, their teachers alerted them to my approach, and the group parted to let me through. They stared at me, then erupted into cheers of “Buen camino!” A little girl stood in awe and called out, “Peregrina!”
No, I am not a pilgrim at all, I wanted to correct her. I am a mother. I had lost count of the number of times on the Camino that I had thanked God for bestowing on me the gift of motherhood. Then again, how do you explain to schoolchildren, to anyone for that matter, why a mother leaves her kids for a month to wander in the wilderness?
On the deserted main road that ran through Hornillos, I spied a bar marked Casa Manolo—the thought scooted through my mind that perhaps Manolo Blahnik secretly owned a café—but it appeared to be closed.
A sign indicated a refugio nearby, so I followed it around the corner.
There a woman greeted me and invited me inside.
“Una cama?” I asked, requesting a bed.
“Sí, sí!”
But something made me stop short of signing in.
“Dónde está el café?” I asked.
She pointed to Casa Manolo.
I wandered back across the road to the café and tried the door. Manolo Blahnik was not inside, but the Three American Boys were, or, rather, two of them were.
“El Camino Jane!” they called out. “You didn’t give up!”
“Where’s your brother?” I asked with concern.
“He’s on the phone over there,” Ian replied, pointing him out just beyond the bar. Brother Ben waved back. “He’s speaking to our mom. We thought she’d like to know we’re OK. So, what happened?”
“I went to the travel agent this morning,” I explained. “But ten minutes before it opened I kind of panicked. I thought of you guys and your encouragement, so I’m continuing on, at least for today. Are you stopping here or are you going farther?”
They were continuing on to Hontanas, about ten kilometers away, they said.
“Do you mind if I walk with you?” I asked. They were delighted.
I celebrated by ordering a huge salad and a beer and set into my meal like a ravenous wolf. The salad had arrived with bread, which I could not eat, so I offered it to the boys, who swooped on it like hawks. The salad proved to be more than I could eat, and the boys dispatched the remains of that quickly, too. They eyed my beer. I drank every last drop.
After lunch we returned to the expansive meseta.
The conversation drifted from college to careers to their part-time jobs. In the summers Ben and Ian worked for their uncle, who had invented a portable swimming pool. Peter sometimes worked there, too. They would return to their jobs after the Camino.
We covered world affairs, American politics. I told them of my fondness for Jimmy Carter’s gentle style of politics (though he has been castigated for it ever since), and showed my age by telling them I was present on the White House lawn when Carter, Anwar Sadat, and Menachem Begin signed the Camp David Accord.
“Wow,” Ben said. “I was born during the Carter administration.”
I might as well have told them I had been in the audience when Lincoln was shot.
We discovered we shared a favorite TV series—24—and we dissected its implausible though riveting plotlines and probed the big questions: How come Jack Bauer always manages to get the president on the phone? Why does presidential aide Mike Novak act like such a sinister weasel? Why are all the wives and girlfriends of elected officials portrayed as ditzy sluts and traitors? Why can’t the U.S. elect a president like David Palmer in real life? How is it possible that all the characters can get through a twenty-four-hour period without visiting an ATM or eating?
The conversation switched to music. When I mentioned that I had recently attended a Tom Jones concert, my cool quotient shot up.
“Wow, was he playing with the Art of Noise?”
“No, with his usual backup band, who were really good.”
“He does that song ‘Sex Bomb,’ doesn’t he?”
“I love that song!”
On a plain in Spain with no rain, three twenty-something American guys and one fifty-year-old Canadian gal shattered the meseta’s ominous grip and broke into song.
In the blink of an eye, we were transformed into a hot Broadway chorus line, grooving in unison, kicking up our heels, thrusting our pelvises, hands behind our heads, shoulders jerking to the rhythm of the song. The Boys hoisted me onto their shoulders, and when I turned my head I saw a sea of pilgrims behind us using their walking sticks as dance barres, strutting and hoofing their way across the meseta, all of us grooving to “Sex Bomb.”
OK, so it didn’t happen exactly like that. My imagination gets a little carried away from time to time. Still, whenever I think back on that moment I dress up the memory in klieg lights and dazzling sequins because it was an epiphany; that’s when I began to understand what it truly takes to survive a pilgrimage—of any type, really: companionship and a guiltless sense of fun.
For a moment we forgot the weight of our packs, our weary legs and muscles, our individual heavy thoughts, and our yearning for home.
Across the field, a church spire rose from the ground as if it had pierced through the underside of the Earth.
Hontanas. It’s a small village that sits in a shallow valley and unfolds like a sunrise as you approach it across the plain.
We arrived at a small but charming stone refugio. The boys spoke Spanish well, and we got our pilgrim passports stamped and were signed in.
The refugio keeper then led us out of the refugio and back into the glare of the sun.
“We have to leave?” I asked.
“The lady says it’s full,” said Ben. “She has other buildings connected to this refugio, and that’s where she’s taking us.”
She beckoned the boys to follow her into what looked like a stone barn and signaled for me to wait.
The Boys turned and waved to me and entered the building. It was the last time I saw them.
I waited on the dusty road for the refugio owner to return, and when she did she led me down the dirt road to a long, modern, one-story building and gestured to me to go inside.
I looked around at the roomful of pilgrims who had already claimed bunks to see if I could recognize any one. One woman, who was Dutch, waved to me with delighted surprise. I remembered her from the beginning of the trek in Roncesvalles, although we had never spoken to one another.
Dinner—served at 6 PM in the main refugio—was one of the most enjoyable on the entire Camino. Chicken, salad, macaroni, wine, and yogurt for seven euros. I sat at a table with five other women, from England, the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Spain. I adored the linguistic plurality of the Camino; despite the language barrier, we managed to make ourselves understood.
The surroundings lent themselves to the convivial atmosphere. The small, domed dining room in the lower level of the building was like a cave; a log crackled in the fireplace. The owners—a young couple with small children—had purchased the building, my tablemates explained, and were slowly renovating it into a home. To help pay for the renovations, the couple took in pilgrims and served them dinner. It was the nicest, most hospitable refugio I had been in.
Back on my bunk bed that night, I pored over the maps yet again. Where was I meant to go? What should I do?
Before the lights were shut off, I resolved to go directly to Villafranca, stay two nights to relax, take a bus to Sarria, and walk the final hundred kilometers of the Camino in order to get the credencial.
By sunrise the next morning, I had had a change of heart.