The First Two Days

Were awful.  That's just the blatant truth.  Day one: the climb up the Pyrenees.  The pain, the fog and sometime rain, the relentless stony uphill.  Several times, I wondered what could have possibly led me to think this pilgrimage was a sane idea.  We encountered moping cows, horses with bells (ringing bells seemed to pervade the mist, even when there were no horses in sight), and a man named Dan who had arrived from Korea, where he'd spent a year teaching English, and would be leaving for an accounting job in Seattle after the Camino.  The eleven of us split into three groups, and mine, the middle, took eleven hours to arrive in Roncevalles.  The albergue (another term for pilgrim hostel) had soft beds and hot showers.  In a word: paradise.

The second day, supposedly easier because it went downhill, was not much better!  It poured most of the day, making for muddy trails (shoutout to my nana, who predicted this before I left) and inexplicable slate pathways sloping steeply downward that became slick and terrifying.  We were in three groups again, and mine stopped at a tiny bar for lunch, where we ate bocadillos (a yummy kind of sandwich) and were accosted by stray cats.  We continued walking, and a sign assuring us we were 3 km from the town of Zubiri proved wildly false.  (A much more motivating sign we passed is attached!)  We met up with the last group in Zubiri, got ice cream, and though we did not think our feet would walk another inch, went on to the last town, Larassoana, because the others were there.

Instead of taking the Camino the last few km, we walked alongside the highway, which was flatter.  In a town we passed through, where pilgrims don't normally go, little kids were running around, and one pointed to her mother and asked who we were. "Son peregrinos," the mother said.  Immediately I became confused -- I didn't see anyone in dirty medieval clothes, barefoot, wearing a cross.  What pilgrims?  And then I realized she was talking about us, about me.  And suddenly, I didn't feel sweaty and sore and severely out of shape and physically and emotionally broken down.  For the first time, I felt the flush of pride at being part of something special, outside of time, celebrated.  I felt like a pilgrim.