Villaviciosa > Bodenaya 84 kilometers

Hola buenas, I haven’t written, I didn’t need to write. I’ve been happy, I work all day and I’m one with my work, I walk and I talk. Only when I notice how happy I am does it recede slightly, like a humming appliance you notice only when it’s switched off.

My needs are changing, I’m in flux. I’m reluctant even to pinpoint the changes in opinions, like that will stop me changing. Like a pinned butterfly.

It’s not un camino de rosas, I meet drunks and beggars. The drunks are mean. I learn you can be in relationship, or you can be right. I fall behind the group and a sheepdog bites my heels.

Except sometimes, it really is the path of roses, everybody talks of revolution like it’s a personal milestone, the revolution of the circular economy and the compost toilet: I’m in flux, maybe it is. I learn folk songs about the Goddess to bring home.

I don’t know how to tell you about this Camino. A vein in the udder of a Heifer cow: as I watch it pulses, huge, once. My open palm pressed against a wet fig leaf. Red poppies hiding under the new green wheat, secret and yours like catching someone’s smile in a crowded room. That’s all there is. Buenas noches.

La Vega > Villaviciosa 30 km

Today was feasts, our best weapon against violent heat. We ate everywhere. We ate avocados on the ground in a park outside the supermarket. We ate chocolate sitting on the highway. We ate on the terrace of a roadside bar, which is where I learned you can order tomatoes as a meal, tomato y aceite, and it comes salted, with raw cebolla, and it slaps.

We argued politics, and behind us the sea was thinking too, whitecaps whipped from blue cream. I bought a pair of crocs from an ice cream shop that also sold fishing bait- you know beach towns- and my quality of life has greatly improved.

Tomorrow, the route splits in two. There’s the Primitivo, which cuts inland southward to Santiago, or pilgrims can continue along the Northern Route, hugging the coast of the Cantabrian sea. The Primitivo is harder, prettier, and slower.

All three of my companions are taking the hard route. I need rest before I go hard. According to my own, somewhat approximate calculations, I’ve walked 271 kilometers in the past 12 days, 168 miles, just to clear my head. It’s weird how content I’ve been on the Camino. But I hurt, people. Maybe these crocs of mine take me to a bus stop. Buenas noches.

Cuerres > Vega 17 km

Today delivered the friendship rendezvous. Before we were three, now we are four. This makes me happy, as a square is more stable than a triangle.

Feeling overconfident in our network, we went to the beach. Somebody cut open a grapefruit with their credit card. We shared, then got ready to swim.

All was going well. We all went out together, we became floating heads to each other, with limp hair. I floated on my back, then flipped over and realized I could see something shiny on the bottom. On a hot day, I felt strong, pleased with stabilizing kick of my legs, treading water near the others. All was going well, until the strongest swimmer among us said, careful, don’t go out any further. The current gets really strong.

Immediately after that comment, terror set in. People tried to swim back to shore just to see how it was and found they couldn’t make it any closer. If anything, we were getting swept further out. I realized belatedly I had already been exhausted when we waded into the ocean.

It would be really embarrassing if I’d drowned within sight of the beach.

(Spoiler) We all made it. But it was a struggle. The kind of wild, serious thrashing that makes you think- sharks?

But after seeing my people try and shout something, swallow salt water, go under, and then you try and swim closer to them, and you go under too- after all that- I can’t help but trust these people more, better. Even though I never would have gone that far out into the ocean alone. None of us would have, alone.

I was so exhausted afterward that I had a pleasant sober hallucination while looking down on the village. The red roofs grew and shrank with my breathing. Even now in bed I’ve got that feeling that something inside me is still rocking, swimming. Goodnight.

Llanes > Cuerres 20 km

I’m staying in an anti-phone eco-lodge, so sadly don’t have much time to write tonight. I don’t want to paint it in a bad light though, if I couldn’t stay here, I would have had to sleep in an abandoned church. Instead, I’m happy, warm, in good company.

But, they are very worried about bedbugs here, so they gave everyone fresh clean clothes to wear. On the bright side, it’s been ten days since I slept in anything besides my jeans.

Unquera > Llanes 29 km

Today was mashed bananas and pineapple juiceboxes. On Wednesday night I have an ironclad rendevous with friends, which relaxes me.

Today was easier than yesterday, after I popped a blister on each heel. I was sucking on a piña zuma, a pineapple juicebox, and admiring a well-collared terrier, when I ran across a correo that was open. Finally, it’s Monday! Seeing there was no queue, I dashed inside without finishing my juice.

Sidebar: it took me way too long to connect correo electrónico, email, with correo, old-fashioned post office. Finally, I could mail my deadweight computer to myself in Santiago.

While I was filling out the forms, a long queue formed, and I became nervous. Then, the post office worker and I reached a great accord, and completed the task of answering some basic questions about my intentions with this package, where I wanted to pick it up, and so on, and I in great excitement, picked up my backpack by the straps without putting it on, and grabbed the juice without thinking, which sprayed pineapple juice all over the floor.

But optimism is mandatory. That mf computer was 3 kilograms.

Tomorrow is my tenth day on the camino. After a few days in the mountain pueblos, even Llanes feels big. There’s more than one pub here. It felt like every time I really dug into a conversation tonight, some kind of noise machine rolled through the city, like there’s some kind of cap on silence.

Tonight I sleep in a two hundred year old albuergue/mansion, built in the indiano style, aka it was built by a Spanish man who went to South America to make a fortune, succeeded, and returned, so it has both colonial porches, and Art Deco arches. The home is built to impress. Arquitectura que ida y vuelta.

The walls of the communal bedroom are green, and under the bare bulb they look like uncooked zuccini. Sometimes writing late at night, the room is filled with snores, and I feel like I’m writing to an aching god.

Cóbreces > Unquera 37 km !

Today was inexplicably good, because I walked for thirteen hours, it was rainy, and then I didn’t finish a book. I feel like I should put a disclaimer here about the dangers of self-absorbed monologues, but this is, after all, nothing less than a personal blog, that you’re reading.

Yesterday, after about four hours of emotionally trying solitude, I was sat outside the bar in Cóbreces reading and Hermann the German * ( * not his real name) surprised me with an exuberant entrance and six new already exasperated European friends. We had parted just that morning, me taking a train and him walking, and by happy accident we both ended up in Cóbreces. I intrepret this a good omen. He admitted to me he had a cry about our group parting, which made me like him a lot. Although, to be fair, he phrased it as, I had no one to share my lunch with.

We arranged to start the walk today at 7:45 am. Cóbreces is so misty and solemn that it had at first escaped my notice that what I thought was faraway sky was in fact very close sea. The clouds were already hustling like they had some better land to shade. And orange-bottomed slugs fat as my arm were out in droves. Maybe looking for the next slug party to attend, where everybody would wear little slug party hats.

Throughout the day the weather remained serious. It was too windy for hats and the horses were nervous. On the road, we encountered a gifted shepherd. Seven animals followed him, three donkeys, two dogs and a goat, in perfect unison like they were afraid if they let his shadow get away he’d ascend from this world and leave them without dinner. The seventh, another goat, followed farther behind, but without stress. But goats! Following somebody! Into the road! Cars braked for the shepherd. It was a very unusual party. The shepherd didn’t respond to our greetings, just dipped his head to acknowledge and dismiss us. He’s probably very tired of talking to idiots like us.

Then In San Vicente I attempted to purchase un abrigo por llorar del cielo with a straight face, and didn’t realize until afterward that I’d asked for A coat for when the sky weeps.

We pressed on, planning to sleep in Serdio. That was stupid. If we’d have checked, we would have known all the albuergues were closed. However, we didn’t arrive in Serdio until 6pm. The next three towns didn’t have albuergues, either.

My adrenaline started to pump. We had already gone 30km (18 miles.) The storm was close. Already the soft drizzle of rain settling among the hairs on my arm. We were in the mountains, it would get dark soon. But our best option was to make for Unquera before the storm hit or it got too dark to navigate. We would have to go through slippery forests in near darkness. Even cows are spooky in the dark.

Luckily we had heaps of ibuprofen, a large pilgrim style meal (on a bench) and plenty of water. So we started to walk. I felt high, skittish, like I had taken just a bit too much of a drug, like Here goes nothing. At first I was unreasonable with nervousness. Then as we walked I realized I felt really really good. Liberated. It’s a bit cheesy to recycle this wisdom, but my long-ago cross country coach would say, there comes a point when you drop the hammer.

If I could have thrown off my pack and sprinted the remaining 7 km, I would have. Fuck me up for saying this, but when we arrived in Uquera at half-past eight I thought, Oh. It’s not even dark yet. Then immediate, tranquilising relief. Every once in a while, it’s nice to give it your all, and completely empty the tank. Even if what you’re giving it all to is – walking.

Boo (pronounced BEAU) de Piélagos > Cóbreces. En route, about 28 km, but I took a bus to avoid a narrow train bridge (trains are bad at sharing bridges) and only walked about 12 km.

Here I am and now, in Cóbreces. Today was ringing bells, barking dogs, and accidents. Ringing bells fade away, but dogs have endless bark stimulation. They love the life.

This was my first day walking the Camino del Norte by myself. Outside a supermarket an elderly Canadian couple demanded to know my age. They looked cheated when I told them the truth. I thought maybe they would ask for my passport, too.

Before I left my friends, we went to see La Iglesia de la Virgin Grande, literially the Church of the Big Virgin, or more likely the Very Big Church of the Virgin. It was surprisingly Modernist, and empty. Then I left my friends with my pack full. I had a liter and a half of water, salted peanuts, a Snickers bar, and a loaf of day-old bread sticking out of my pack like a mast. In many ways, walking alone is harder than it is with a group, although I’m grateful for the chance to slow down the pace. I’m a loiterer by nature.

I spent twenty minutes or so feeding some donkeys by the side of the road. Behind an electric fence, they could see, but not eat, the juiciest weeds. So we spent some time, me feeding weeds, them eating weeds. It was almost like eating lunch among baby humans. Until the leader of the two got impatient (maybe I got lazy) and he bit my finger instead of the weeds! I had a moment of real panic that he would bite my finger off like a carrot.

Ok, he didn’t. But he did break the skin! That was accident number one.

Accident number two involved coffee, coffee, fresh orange juice, cerveza sin alcohol, and a liter of water, and no bathrooms, and an unforseen patch of stinging nettles. Maybe the government of Cantabria did this on purpose, or maybe someone very important and educated once muttered, Fuck my ass, I forgot to build some bathrooms on the Camino!

I thought that as I walked, my thoughts would coalesce around some great plot, but they didn’t. They lazed around and some grew appendages like tadpoles. I thought about phrasal verbs and the tower of Babel.

Phrasal verbs are idiomatic and difficult to define, but in English they’re ususally defining an abstract movement. The formula is verb + adverb and/or preposition. Such as “turn down [the offer.]”

Like how in Spanish, you “take” a coffee (not “have” a coffee). In English you take pictures, in Spanish you sacar fotos. Which is interesting because you also sacar la basura, to take out the trash. In German you use the verb machem, to make. “Make photos.”

To take photos is to extract them from a photogenic environment. To take out/get photos is to carry your photos away, to seperate them from the photogenic environment. And to make photos is to use the camera to make something that previously didn’t exist. At least for my English brain, each of these word games has a different connotation.

If I looked out from the tower of Babel, I would see each language as the living embodiment of a way of being. I would see that I came to Spain not just to learn Spanish, but to learn Spain. When do I say genial, and when do I say de muerte?

Of course that’s an idealistic outlook, because I’m not in a tower, I’m on the ground. Languages are barriers to connection as much as they are ways of being… But to travel in another language seperates you from your home barriers, you start to think differently about how you think, and I think that’s a good thing.

My head is in the clouds, but after all I’m traveling through the mountains. When it comes down to it, for my interview in August, to determine if I am conversational enough in Spanish, it won’t matter where or I learned to speak, but only if I can smoothly answer the question, Cual es tu mayor debilidad? What’s your biggest weakness?

I would say, I have no weaknesses, I’ve done the Camino. Or if they pushed me, I would say Mis pies, my feet.

I’m traveling alone on foot in a foreign country. It’s hard but I’m free. Freedom hurts. Tomorrow I get closer to Santiago de Compostela, and to my goal. How else can I shape my changes?

Laredo > Güemes > Santander > Boo de Piélagos = 75 km

Today we walked the coastline of the Cantabrian sea westward from Santander to Boo. Alien rocks suffered the cold triumph of water. It’s a rocky coastline, prouder and higher than the sea. We ate lunch out of cans under a shelter of sticks. It might have been lonely without my friends.

Our trio: we are going seperate ways tomorrow, so that’s on my mind. We flourished like mayflies. No time to chill. Now on the morning of the seventh day everybody seeks their own adventure. I know why I’m here now. On the camino I am patient enough to learn patience.

It’s still thirty days from here to Santiago de Compostela. After ten days, you feel like a real pilgrim, so it is said, your body says give me pain, I need it. In Santander our albuergue host had done the camino twenty times. (!)

He told me, Si no te veo en la mañana, te veo en la próxima vida, If I don’t see you tomorrow, I’ll see you in the next life. And he clapped me on the shoulder and walked away, an old busy man. Even thinking of it now makes me emotional. A farmer gave me a bag of sweet peas for free. I told someone I’m learning Spanish and they responded, Muchias gracias, thank you. That last one left me a bit confused, but okay. Like if someone secretly folded your laundry, or something.

The German man I’ve been travelling with had his own kind of advice. You need to know that in German, the verb for “to give advice” is transitive, and it literially means “to slap the [receiver of advice] across the face [with your advice].” So he’s fond of saying “take your own shit.”

I’m on the camino, because I promised myself I would do it. But why did I promise? I promised, in order to keep a promise. Circles within circles.

I promised, because a lot of my psychic energy is tied up in old broken promises that I made without thinking. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’m not so good at keeping promises. When the oven gets hot, I flake like a good pastry. So to make a promise and to keep it will free up a lot of psychic energy for me. To commit to something with my whole heart. To prove it. To practice doing it. Promises. Persistence. It’s like a rebirth, if rebirth gave you really painful foot blisters.

I haven’t even gotten into how the host of the albuergue in Güemes was a radical priest who was jailed for starting a strike. He was cool, but I can’t say more.

I must do the harder thing. And sleep.

Islares > Laredo – 25 kilometers

Buenas,

Today was clean smells. We learned that Eucalyptus grows well in Cantabria. It’s not native, but well suited to the mountain soil. When we got tired, we plucked the Eucalyptus leaves and rubbed them under our noses, and drank Gazpacho out of a carton. (Best Gazpacho I’ve ever had. Here’s the recipe: 96% tomato, pepper, pepper the spice, and onion. Then, olive oil, and apple vinegar from a special Secret Farm. Salt, and garlic.) We also walked past a towering, sweet-smelling hedge, which turned out to be a hedge of bay leaves. After this feast of smells, lunch, which is our daily bread + plus various bread decorations, entra bien (literially, enters well or goes down easy.)

I also learned that “swimming naked” means you’re still supposed to wear bottoms on the beach. Of course, I only found this out after the fact. I shouldn’t have bent over to investigate those tide pools… Buenas noches.