Gifts for El Catorce

In anticipation of your homecomings, a few words of gratitude for my lovely traveling companions.

Adrian (Downward Dog): Well done, good sir! You've mastered the Code of Chivalry and passed the Wisdom-with-Women Proficiency Test, so your next lesson is on historical examples of true gentlemen. (And if you haven't tried the book yet, required reading!)

Andrea (Black Bear): "And now whatever way our stories end, I know you have rewritten mine by being my friend..." -- "For Good" from Wicked
<3 <3

Ariana (Time Bomb): You are my hero.  (But actually.) Also, in honor of your love for The Hunger Games, here is my favorite movie when I was 12, featuring Baby Peeta!

C.C. (Cherry Legs): Breathe. You got this, whatever this may be. Remember that you deserve the world, Cecilia Hamilton Weyland.

Emily (Protein -- though I think Blonde Blazes works too): Words of wisdom from one of my favorite singers to another:
"You've got to get up every morning with a smile on your face
and show the world all the love in heart...
You're gonna find, yes you will, that
You're beautiful as you feel" -- by Carole King
How beautiful you already are, my dear.


Erica (The Amazon Godmother): I am continually astounded by your ability to meet people where they are, to make them feel taken seriously and understood and supported.  So, here's a list of my school's peer counseling groups, because I think you need to start one at Santa Cruz so that more people can benefit from your gift for empathy! (Also, completely unrelated and just for fun: :D )

Gabriela (Lil' Momma): Battlestar Galactica. And a story I just emailed you from this week's New Yorker, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Love your guts.

Jemima (Brie): I must confess (a la Rousseau) that I have never read his The Reveries of the Solitary Walker, but I saw the title and thought most fondly of you!  P.S. Everyone who read my blog loves your name and your gumption, as do I. :)

Julia (Hellcat): Well this has gotten very meta.  Hello self.  I give you the inexplicable collection of little lights in the Los Angeles harbor, maybe docks or moored boats, set against the heavy darkness of sky/land/sea, looking for all the world from the tiny plane window like a field of stars, your compostela come home.

Kevin (Virgil): I most highly recommend Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows: "And you, you will come too, young brother; for the days pass, and never return, and the South still waits for you. Take the Adventure, heed the call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes! Tis but a banging of the door behind you, a blithesome step forward, and you are out of the old life and into the new! Then some day, some day long hence, jog home here if you will, when the cup has been drained and the play has been played, and sit down by your quiet river with a store of goodly memories for company."

Mariela (Lucy A.K.A. Thor in the Sky with Diamonds): Hey Buddy-For-Life!  Can't wait for our Doctor Who screening!  In the meantime, your very own personal favorite quote come to life. (It's a little glitchy, apologies!)

Marina (Beatrice): An addendum to my tales of Vietnam (yes, that is an elephant trunk).  Thanks for being the best surrogate Mama Duck ever!

Tim (YouTube): Thank you again for the pulpo -- it literally changed my life!  Also, inspiration for your next global adventure: a very cool documentary miniseries (which we watched in OCHSA's geography class, actually) called The Long Way Round about two guys who motorbike around the world. 

Tristan (The Bald Eagle/Elf): I Facebook-connected you to my Brony friend from Harvard, so go debate the physics of Ponyville 'til Twilight Sparkle turns orange.  You're welcome.

Things We Lost on the Camino

- 1 boot, 3 pilgrim's credentials, 1 passport (each later recovered)
- 1 pair of XL men's flip flops
- 1 sports bra
- all sense of shame
- 1 comb
- 5 towels
- taking for granted showers and beds and full-size napkins and machine-washed clothes and toilet paper
- 1 bottle of lotion
- 3 bottles of shampoo
- 4 bottles of conditioner
- 5 bars of soap
- good hygienic practices
- 1 pilgrim's shell (stolen)
- 2 pairs underwear
- privacy
- 1 glasses lens
- 1 bottle of sunscreen
- 2 hats
- 4 hiking poles
- any apathy toward the amazing capacity of our bodies
- 2 bandanas (both mine)
- if only by a single pebble, the stony imperviousness of the walls barricading our hearts

All That Is Gold Does Not Glitter

And so it ends: the steady march westward, through dappled forest light and unyielding wheatfields, over rocky mountains and under graffitied highways, all the way to a crumbling cathedral and the sea. 

I'm leaving the rest of the group in Paris, where they will have heaps of exciting adventures and eat an unabashed number of quiches, crepes, and chocolate croissants.  Live long and prosper, my friends.

As for me, I'm off to the home front, where my mother is on track for a full recovery from brain surgery and my father is martyring himself to get everything done and my little sister is as snarky and way cooler than I am as ever.  (Hi family!!!!!!!) I'll be updating this blog over the next week with more Let's Go posts, so please keep checking back for more tidbits of insight into my trip.

I want to thank you, kindly readers, for your comments and your messages, but also for the incredible gift of your attention in a harried world. I hope I have shared with you not only moments of exhiliration, but also what one pilgrim described as the "
"reservoir of calm" that emerges on this journey, the unexpected yet inevitable understanding that regardless of where you are in time or place or belief, there exists within you a space of breath and awareness, of gratitude, a patient blue sea at the edge of the world just waiting for you to loosen your toes' grip on the rocks and lean forward and let yourself go.

Buen camino.

Safely Arrived in Paris!

We are here!

Postscript: How We While Away 6 Hours in an Airport

Hasta Que Nos Vemos Otra Vez

Our last night in Santiago we watched the light show on the cathedral. My favorite was the psychadelic dancing sea monster.

This morning we gathered up everything and rushed a picture of our sock tans and walked in golden light on the old streets and caught our bus to Porto.

Look for the next post from the City of Lights.

Of Pine Trees and The Sea

We took the bus to Finesterre yesterday, Andrea and Tristan and I, winding through the hills until we reached the coast.

Seeing that first flash of blue through the grimy plastic windows washed over me like a homecoming -- the sea.  But we were only an hour into what we thought was a three-hour bus ride, which on the map was about the location of the large lake.  And the water was so still -- we decided this must be a lake, and our hearts quieted with disappointment.

Then the lake kept going and going and going.

And suddenly we were in Fisterra, the town just outside Finesterre.  We rejoiced at the shorter bus ride and renewed permission to get excited by the ocean and then there out the window were Jemima and Mattias!  A most longed-for reunion!

Eventually they got on the bus we'd just left, and the Three Musketeers set off for the end of the world.  We got boccadillos to go, bought snacks at the grocery store, went on a fruitless search for the Jemima-recommended German bakery (but found a panaderia with fresh-baked cake, so all good!), and headed up the hill toward the lighthouse.

Walking along the edge of the highway, in the brush and thorny raspberry bushes, cars zooming by, we saw the gregarious woman from León and her silent friend from Martinique whom we'd passed on the trail weeks before; and there walking down on the other side of the highway were the British boys who'd gotten in a Call Me Maybe battle with Adam and Emmy at Albergue de Jesus.  We had said goodbye to so many people on the Camino expecting never to meet again, and yet we felt no sadness in parting, as if we had always known that we would find them on the side of a mountain by deep green pines flanking the still blue water.

We reached the Faro de Finesterre drenched in sweat and walked past the cheap trinket stands and public art mosaics and lighthouse itself until we came to the rocky point, and all around us was sea.

I climbed down to where lizards darted and the rocks were charred from the pilgrim's tradition of burning something at journey's end.  Mixed with the silence were mournful gulls, the wind that whipped up and tussled my hair, boistrous German tourists.  I threw a coin as far as I could.

We tossed our expensive but cheaply made bocadillos to the gulls and ate cake and oreos for lunch, sitting on the rocks.  Before catching our bus back, there was ice cream, and the hike back down, and we collected sea glass and put our hands in the Atlantic, and I realized that this whole time walking across Spain I had really been bringing my pilgrim's shell back home.