Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Day 12
Queridos Amigos,
This morning, shortly after departing the parador, I reached an ambiguous crossroads, as did a woman from Hamburg and another man. We decided to follow a yellow arrow, set in steel. Ultimately it led us straight into an empty shed, with no way or road visible beyond it. Wrong way.
We finally found the right way. As I pulled away, I noticed the woman’s pack did not have the belt fastened. I thought about trying to explain the proper way to mount a backpack, but then realized she was probably too stout to accomplish this. Which means all the weight will be supported by her shoulders, and before her day is done she will be suffering the torments of hell.
My heart goes out to pilgrims who are laboring under extra challenges. As I left Logroño, I passed a tall man with a full pack, listing about 12-15 degrees to the starboard. This must have put awful strains on his back, hips, knees.
When I see so many people overcoming their limitations, I think most of us are stronger and more capable than we realize. And not just for trekking.
Henry Miller lucidly expressed one way we limit ourselves:
“Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heart-ache when we read those lines, written by the hand of a master, and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty.”
Just so.
The town I left this morning was named after an interesting fellow, Santo Domingo de la Calzada. He came from a poor family in the area and was turned away from the local monastery because he was illiterate. So instead, he built a mighty hospital for pilgrims and did other great works. He became a saint.
This morning I took note and pictures of the hotel lobby, massive pillars, Romanesque arches. I asked the clerk if this had originally been a monastery. No, he said, it was a pilgrim’s hospital, built in the 12th century. Then the light came on; I was staying in Santo Domingo´s hospital.
The Lobby of the Parador
Paradors have great breakfast buffets and today was no exception. Among the offerings are two beautiful Spanish tortillas. I surreptitiously touch them both. One is piping hot and I cut a generous slice. After a moment’s thought, I cut another.
How to describe today’s scenery? Majestic? Awe inspiring? Indescribable?
It looked as though a Master Architect had laid out a particularly challenging golf course for giants. Lots of hills, and some good-sized sand traps. But the roughs are few, and the greens and fairways well manicured.
A Golf Course Landscape on the Road to Belorado
Susan and her disease are ever with me. Among the reasons I gave to the New Age South Africans to explain why I have chosen hotels over albergues is that next month I’ll turn 68. The psychologist wants to know the exact day. I tell her, and she exults, “We´re all Cancerians!” I’m a cancerian in more ways than one, I think.
Please permit me a digression.
In a small room of the Prado, there are collected the pinturas negras of Goya. These are exceptionally strong images. The fiercest is Saturn Devouring His Children: a fiendish monster about to bite the head off a child.
I have been in the home of a college professor when a two-year-old child was placed in a high chair and placed four feet from a television set while The Wizard of Oz ran. Then the family retired to another room to enjoy a little peace and quiet. That’s just one of the ways we bite the heads off our children today.
Another painting shows two coarse men, up to their waists in muck. Their heads are bleeding as they continue to batter each other with heavy clubs. I know of no other single image that so perfectly captures the essence of the First World War.
There is another image, of an enormous giant rising out of the earth looking very menacing. This bears a certain formal resemblance to the image I now have of Susan. She rises from the road ahead of me, huge, wearing the long dresses she favored for traveling, the red nylon travel purse she used abroad across her shoulder. She’s smiling. The image resembles a half fade in a movie.
At these times, several times a day, I talk to her, crying and sobbing as I do. Wonderfully freeing; no one can hear. This may seem too personal and too maudlin to report, but it is the heart of my Camino so I report it.
As I pass through the hamlet of Grañon, I enter the church of St. John the Baptist. Construction began in the late 14th century. I leave a lock of hers and mine in a recessed niche of a bas relief.
Among the people I pass are a couple from London. They have stopped before a large map of the region and the Camino. I ask if they would like me to take their picture, and they say yes, in front of the map. This is a good idea as it marks the exact spot they have reached.
I ask them to take my picture, but not thinking it through, ask for the open road I’m about to travel as a background.
Their camera is like most of the new ones: you focus on the screen. In the noonday sun, the screen is black, but I shoot anyway and they say it turned out okay.
I hand my old camera to the wife, explaining how to use the optical viewfinder. She says, ‘I just love these.’
I’ve read that the only way to correctly compose a shot is through an optical viewfinder. And they are certainly easier to use in bright daylight, but for some reason they are out of favor.
Farther down the road a vigorous man catches up with me and offers me a small blue plastic bottle. It’s spring water from the last town, he says. Try it.
I decline, saying I drank a lot of my own water at the last town, which is true. He hails from Zurich. He says he has never been to Texas, although his brother, following us some 80 yards back, has. He has been in New York and Newport, but only for a few days on banking business. He says today’s heat probably isn’t much compared to the heat in Texas. I assure him it is not, and he pulls ahead.
Albergues are pilgrim hostels. Some are fairly nice, most are Spartan. They are very cheap and very much in demand. You sleep in a room, usually with bunk beds, with other pilgrims of both sexes.
It is my intention to avoid albergues at all costs, but still have this dread that there is a top bunk with my name on it somewhere down the road. There will be heavy snorers on either side of me. On the bottom bunk will be a big guy with a mean streak. I’ll have to step on him several times during the night when I get up. Lord, spare me!
I had a close call today. My next stop, San Juan de Ortega, population 20, has only a casa rural, which is a bed and breakfast, and an albergue. I called the casa rural and was told there were no vacancies for tomorrow night. I took a deep breath and called the albergue. No answer. I called again, still no answer.
I check my guidebook and in the town of Villafranca Montes de Oca, population 200, some 12 kilometers closer to me, there is a three star hotel. I call and get a reservation.
Things can go wrong. When I showed up at the parador yesterday, there was no record of my reservation. I told the clerk I have a witness, the clerk in the hotel at Navarette. I explained how I tried to tell the woman I spoke with I wanted the reserva two days hence. She kept saying Tuesday and I kept repeating, in English and Spanish, no, no, Wednesday. She asked for my credit card number and I gave it to her.
The clerk is worried I’ll be charged for a no show. But there is nothing from the day before. He checks the other, newer parador in town; no record of me. He calls a few other hotels; no record. The only way to tell is to check my account online. But the hotel computer warns that this is not a secure connection and so I pass. I might be able to use the computer in the Hotel Jacobeo in Belorado where I’m staying tonight.
And that’s the report for today.
Abrazos para todos,
John
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