St. Jean Pied de Port, France.  Monday.  A charming village marks the beginning of the

Camino Frances, the French Camino that is the most popular of the routes to Santiago de Compostela.  We’re still in Basque Country, but the Spanish has been replaced by French and the jamon by jambon.  The streets are cobbled.  English remains a luxury.  Painted shutters and flowers enliven the winding pedestrian streets.  A river runs through it, and a citadel presides over it all.  St. Jean sits in a valley surrounded by rolling hills and small mountains.

Mom is excited to be started.  During a carb-loading dinner of spaghetti (which she

normally forbids herself, pasta being pure sugar-in-waiting), she explained to Julio and Marie Anne her diagnoses, what little she knows of her prognosis, and the diet that she’ll live with for the rest of her life.

There are 16 people in our dormitory.  An older Frenchman who has done the Camino eight times is here, and another man who could be his grandson; Julio has engaged the older man in conversation.  A couple, the woman from Peru, who live in San Francisco.  Four Koreans, all in black glasses and three already asleep.  Our group of six.  Two others, one of whom either does not know he snores or doesn’t care, for he sleeps on his back and saws away.  Carrie and Marie Anne giggle.  I’m relieved it wasn’t Mom, who is still reading.  I pass around a container of earplugs, but no one accepts.  Lights are out at ten, a little over half an hour away.  Today’s early morning wake-up and my melatonin pill are getting me ready for sleep.

 

I have some concern about tomorrow.  The road to Roncesvalles is almost entirely uphill, and it’s either 28 or 25 kilometers, depending on your source, or about 18 miles – farther than I have ever walked in a day, I think, and certainly farther than I’ve ever gone with a pack of 25-30 pounds.  But while I may feel some species of misery during the trek, I’m more worried about four other people in our group, which has grown to six with the addition of a New Yorker named Eileen, who joined our group this morning.  Mom has been training for almost two months, and at high altitude – but she is 67, and for a decade her health has prevented her from getting any vigorous exercise.  Less than two years ago she had plantar fasciitis and could barely walk at all for seven months. As if that weren’t enough, a few weeks ago she had surgery to remove one of her tumors.  The other women are not in visibly better condition, and they lack her mental attitude.

We have all been lightening our packs.

 

We were underway at about 7:30.  No one had slept past six, and many of us hadn’t slept

much before that either.  It turns out the fellow from last night is a champion snorer, the Rafael Nadal of nasal chainsawyers.  Does anyone build earplugs that actually work?  I’m amazed that stores keep selling the same little pinchable plugs that you can feel growing their way out of your ear canal as soon as you have pushed them down.  Is the point that you have to make contact with the brain in order for them to stick?  No matter.  Our champion could have gotten around them.

“A most interesting concert,” Julio said to me, from the bottom bunk.  Julio has stayed in many hostels, and he’s aware that with the low cost come trade-offs, such as privacy and quiet.  You don’t sleep with 15 other people and expect that no one will snore.

The newest member of our party, Eileen, was not feeling so charitable.  “Are you married?” she asked the man, who sat bleary-eyed on the top bunk near the door.  He must have said he was not.  “Well, there’s a surprise,” she said, laughing.  She had the attention of the whole room now.  “Do you have any idea how badly you snore?”  I was watching the man to see how he was taking it all, and he was grinning.  “Where are you sleeping tonight?” she asked him.  “Where will you be?”  This went on for some time.

“No understand,” the man said.

Marie Anne asked him if he understood English.  He answered in Spanish and she translated his response, which I didn’t hear.

“I’m serious,” said Eileen.  “’Cause I want you to let me know.  If you see me coming, just tell me to turn around and go the other direction.”

“He says he has a date tonight,” Marie Anne said.

“A date?” Eileen asked.  “Seriously.  Are you –“

“That’s enough,” I said.

 

Julio was talking to the older Frenchman who had done the Camino eight times.  “It’s the first stage,” he said solemnly, “that breaks people.”

Breakfast was bread with butter and jam.  We were given bowls for our tea or coffee.  In only a few hours, I would be running on spaghetti bolognaise fumes.

We set out before first light in high spirits.  Julio sang various French and Spanish show tunes and, for all I knew, burlesque.  I sang “We’re off to See the Wizard,” or at least the refrain.

Our first few kilometers were given over to adjustments.  Within about two kilometers I was sweltering beneath two layers of wool.  Mom’s tinkling jangling tin cup, swinging from the back of her pack, threatened to turn me into Norman Bates.  I put it in her pack and then found that her scallop shell swung just as much, banging into a carabiner.  “I’ll walk behind you,” she said, seeing my face.  She was breathing heavily, but walking gamely.  The way was steep, and it continued that way for miles.  I felt my torn calf muscle tugging at me, nagging for my attention.  I decided to ignore it.

I stayed with Mom for a while, but at one point had an urge to go hard.  I began to take long strides and plant my poles and reel in the pilgrims who’d begun ahead.  I caught up to Julio and we were soon way ahead of the others in our group.  My calf, warmed up, stopped hurting.  This may have been misleading.  I thought about putting on my trail-running shoes to see if they exercised the calf less than the FiveFingers, but didn’t do anything about it.

We gained altitude and walked through the mud and shite-grimed stones, and yet everywhere saw the half-foot-tall spoor of apparently rather athletic cows.  We stopped for lunch at a place that had flattened out and watched the sun burn off the fog in the valley, which was dotted with trees and the signature white houses with dark-orange roofs of much of Europe.  A bird of prey wheeled through the sky above off-white cows.

Most of the pilgrims seemed to be carrying smaller packs, and likely without the density of electronics I was schlepping around.  A few had backpacks of the sort to which you see preschoolers harnessed.  Some of them were using a car service to transport their things.  Carrie had been carrying about 10 kilos, she said – this was less than my pack’s weight, but at her size, it was like carrying a small furniture store on her back.  Her art teacher had given her assignments that required oils and paintbrushes, all of which she had with her.

“Are you also carrying canvases and frames?” I asked.  She laughed.  By the first break she would leave her Spanish-English dictionary with an albergue’s book collection.  Mom tried to convince her that it would be okay to get rid of her painting gear as well.  She can paint later, after the walking is over.

Julio and I stopped at a false summit with beautiful views and ate sandwiches.  I pulled out the

laptop and sat on a rock.  I took pictures of the valley and mountains and a large hawk circling for carrion below.  About an hour later, Mom hove into view, puffing hard.  I walked down toward her and turned on the video camera.  She was doing great for someone who could still feel the incisions.  “I can feel them, pish, pish, pish,” she said, making a motion with her fingers from her skin outward.  “And I’ve got a bloody hemorrhoid too.”

“On camera, Mom,” I sang.

“Oh!” she said.

As I passed people in my Five Fingers, they smiled, but not in a friendly way.  “Buen

camino,” said one man, a few years younger than me, the way you might shake your head and chortle “good luck” to an aspiring pilgrim who happened to be wearing a straitjacket.  Some French stopped to take pictures of my feet.  I heard the word pied, “feet”, over and over.  Pilgrims tittered and pointed when I passed, as school children will when one of their fellows who has been born hunchback walks by.

During the breaks the French insisted on speaking their insane patois, though they must have known, or at least sensed, the presence of Americans in the immediate vicinity.  At one overlook we could all see for miles and miles.  “Look!” I said, pointing, and then a bit too loudly, “The Maginot Line!”

“Yu argh ponting to ze norse!” one of them cried, and they all laughed some more.

 

I probably shouldn’t have, but I really felt like getting in a workout.  I told Mom I’d see her later and began to step long and pole hard.  In flagrant violation of all that is sacred, at least to others, I turned on my iPod to my skiing/driving mix.  And I grew wings.  Up above treeline I hiked, through grasses and gorse, stepping lightly over the tight black grenades of sheep dung, reeling in one Frenchman after another, but there seemed to be an infinite supply of them.  I hadn’t sustained such a high heart rate, for such a long time, in a very long time.  I came upon the Koreans from the albergue, kerchiefs wrapped around their faces, wearing hats and gloves and long sleeves like mountaineers.  “Buen Camino,” I said, four times.

Up ahead, a German.  I knew him for a German by the short-shorts dangling precariously over his muscled alabaster legs.  He was poling hard himself.  Here was a worthy competitor.  He saw me and kicked it up a notch.  I drew abreast.  He began to lean into the hill, stabbing his poles harder and harder.  I turned on my iPod to “Shoot to Thrill”.

Shoot to thrill, way to kill

Too many Germans and too many hills

Against AC/DC there is no known defense, and though he pulled on his own earphones and threw down some Def Leppard, and then, with increasing desperation, “99 Luftballoons,” soon the German was behind me as well.

I knew this would be my only day in the hills, and I ran it hard even as my calf began to protest.

There would be plenty of time to slow down tomorrow.

 

Actually, I did slow down eventually.  I passed a fork in the road and initially took the wrong path, a metaphor I choose not to dwell on.  I was concerned that Mom and Carrie might do the same, so I set up shop on a nearby boulder and wrote most of this post.  For a while, I continued to listen to my skiing and driving mix on the iPod.  I did some stretching.  I relieved myself and from the color decided I wasn’t drinking enough water.  Then I turned off the music and just sat, cross-legged, and stared at the grass, as well as some brown eggshells that some pilgrim had left behind.  I heard the bells of cows, or perhaps some of the belled horses I had seen, from far away.  Birds cheeping.  I tried to imagine sitting and watching the grass during the madness of summer, and even eggshells, and failed.  I couldn’t have done it.  Had there even been birds in Bend, this summer?

After about an hour, Mom, Carrie, and Marie Anne came into view.  I watched them confer at the junction, and then they took the right path.  “Is that my son?” Mom asked Carrie.  They walked some more.  “Hello, handsome!”

She was dragging, but still in good spirits.  She and Carrie had both changed their boots for flip-flops, which were, so far, working well.  (Before long, Marie Anne would also change to different shoes).  But we had no idea what was still in store for us.  The climb continued.  Soon our group was taking up the rear, and we would only fall farther behind the rest of the pilgrims.

We seemed to be above treeline, judging from the total absence of trees, but I couldn’t figure out why – the highest point of the day was under 1100 meters, or just over 3300 feet.  We walked now among belled sheep and horses – the cows had long since given up – and sometimes over grass.  We were a little more than halfway when Carrie, a few hundred meters back from Julio and me, began to cry.  I watched from a distance as the women tried to cheer her up.  I could hear Eileen telling her to ask for what she needed; I would later understand that she was telling her to ask the universe for whatever energy she needed.  “But if you don’t ask, nothing will happen.”

Then the terrain changed and we were on sharp white rocks in the midst of beech trees.  We stopped at the Fountain of Roland, derived from another of the legends of the area, with about the same factual basis as St. James’ remains making it from Israel to Santiago de Compostela, in a wooden boat, and in seven days.  Another hundred meters and we had crossed the border into Spain.  A sign said it was 18 kilometers to St. Jean Pied de Port, and 8 to Roncesvalles.  Just over two-thirds of the way there.  Some of the way was flat, but the climbing continued.

“This is the last top,” Marie Anne kept saying to Mom, and Mom would repeat, “You said that the last time!  When is it downhill?”

“That sounds just like my divorce,” I said.  I was limping now.  My calf had gone on strike, and would stay on strike for the rest of the day and night.  I limped for the last four or so miles, wondering how I’d be able to walk the next day.

There were more last tops than I care to count.  I could now feel my hips groaning under the hours of carrying the pack uphill.  Eventually we reached the saddle between two modest hilltops and saw below us something unprecedented for the day:  a valley.  A thing with no way but down.  But this was not actually good news.  In the first example of poor route design of the Camino so far, the first downhill section went straight downhill, at a steep grade, with no switchbacks.  When your thighs are already spent, going downhill is tortuous.  Going downhill without switchbacks – well, it took its toll.  And several of our group suffered from bad knees.

Julio and I got ahead, as usual, and we just kept going.  Throughout the long day, our group would stretch out and then those in the lead would stop and wait for the others.  Near the end my limping got so pronounced that at times I could no longer keep up with Julio.  The 3.6 promised kilometers seemed erroneous to both of us.  (Julio has gone hiking at least once a week for 35 years, and knows from kilometers).  We agreed we had done at least five kilometers, all without switchbacks, until we reached the monastery.  Julio and I arrived at about 6:30p.m., or around 11 hours after we began.  The monastery was a most welcome sight.

Julio had recently done the same stage in 9 hours, and he estimated that he and I could do it in 6.5 if we didn’t have to wait.  Mom arrived at 7:10, just shy of 12 hours, and collapsed into a chair at the hostel restaurant where I was sitting.  Carrie was with her.  Marie Anne had arrived a little earlier.

“I almost cried all the way down, Mom said.  But I was too tired.  I have never worked so hard for so long, except when I saved my life that time in the mountains.”  This was in 2000, after she got lost in the wilderness of Colorado.  “A few times I just wanted to sit down and sleep right there.  I had to make myself like a robot, not thinking, just to keep moving.”  She said she wanted to take the bus tomorrow and have a day of relaxation.  I had thought she might want to do this, and each time she asked if I thought it was a good idea, I assured her it was.  It wasn’t just tomorrow I was thinking about.  I knew my calf problem wasn’t so temporary.

We waited for Eileen for a few minutes, and then Julio, the most functional of us, went to look for her.  He didn’t find her.  We decided to wait a bit longer.

We had our own adventure, turned away from the first hostel restaurant we tried because it was full, and put on the patio in the cold.  We went to the second restaurant and found Eileen nearly an hour later, sitting in the lobby of the restaurant with tears in her eyes.  “I can’t move my body,” she said.

“We went looking for you!” Mom said.  “Where were you?”  We learned that she had come to the junction that said .5 miles to the monastery, and had somehow taken the route that said 3.2 to the same monastery.

“I just want to go to bed,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes.  She was a pitiful sight.

“You should come to dinner with us, Eileen,” I said.  “Come on.  You’ll need the calories tomorrow.”  Mom insisted as well, but Eileen refused.  She was inconsolable.  She had arranged for a taxi driver to take her closer to the hostel, though as far as I could tell he could only get her a block closer and she’d have to walk the equivalent of two or three blocks on the monastery grounds to get to the registration desk.

We had to wait about forty-five minutes for the second restaurant to clear out.

Just as we were about to be let in, a mobile and energetic Eileen came into the lobby and walked up to us.

“I just want you to know I’m very disappointed in you.”  I could already sense there would be no placating her.  “I know you don’t owe me anything but you didn’t make a reservation for me and now I’m staying in the old hostel across the street and I don’t even know where I’m having breakfast tomorrow.”

“We don’t either,” Mom said.

“Yes you do.  And you didn’t reserve me a place.”

I remembered Julio dismissing Mom’s question about there being enough room, saying, “Are you kidding?  There are 500 beds there.  Not to worry.”  I also remembered him repeating what I’d read, which was that you needed your credentials in order to prove you were a walker entitled to hostel privileges.

I said, “We weren’t able to make a reservation for you, Eileen –“

“Yes you were.  Three people told me you could have.  And all your names were on the list, and mine wasn’t.”

“I’m sorry, Eileen,” I said.  “I wasn’t aware of that.”

“I came all the way over here out of courtesy to let you know where I am staying, if you care.”  She turned and walked out.

 

We were dead-tired, but dinner was nice.  In addition to Mom, Carrie, and I, Marie Anne joined us, as did a Spanish engineer who worked for Westinghouse and had spent time in Pittsburgh, but said he didn’t remember much English; two young Spanish women who were shy about their English; a Basque man; a German couple, of whom the woman spoke good Spanish; and a young Frenchman who insisted he didn’t speak much German but spoke good English.  The conversation was pleasant and took place in four languages.

Lights were out at 10, but I kept typing until nearly 10:30.  There is one light snorer here so far, and a Darth Vader heavy breather.  Mom has the sleeping bag so I am wearing lots of wool.  There are no sheets or blankets here, and I left my sleeping bag in Bilbao.  Tomorrow we will take the bus for 20 minutes to the next town, Zubiri, and Julio and Marie Anne will likely arrive by foot in six hours’ time.  Mom simply can’t walk any more, and because the pack is hurting her kidneys, she has decided to hire a service to carry her pack from town to town.

But I am very proud of her, and very impressed with her fortitude.  That hike kicked my butt.  I can’t even imagine what she went through to finish it.  “I compare it to childbirth,” she said.  “Something you do once and then say, ‘Never again!’”

“For what you did today,” Julio said, in that energetic way of speaking he has, “you are my heroine.”

Hours after falling asleep, I woke up to what appeared to be my own self-immolation.  My eyes cried, my nose ran, my mouth produced saliva by the bucket, and my chest was on fire.  It was the worst heartburn I have ever had.  In fact, it should have been donated to science for further study.  I thought it was the chorizo sausage, but Mom, who had tried last night’s red wine before rejecting it on the basis of her stomach’s veto, said it was probably the wine. I swallowed and swallowed and turned to and fro, hoping to dislodge the burning embers.  I burned for an hour and finally got back to sleep.

Thus will the Camino be branded upon my heart forever.

• Tweet
• Pin It