Halfway to Santiago

Here are a few more pictures:
Top, we have to move off the path for sheep
Hontanas, we walk miles across the meseta and then to our delight find our destination hidden in a coulee below us.
Faces from a fountain in a small town.

We are now halfway and I can´t believe I´ve doing this!

Top to bottom: Fountain at Burgos Catedral
Two pilgrim hostal dormitories
New friends from Burgos
Jacquelina from Serbia and Charlotte

June 30 Carrion de los Condes (407 kilometers to go) to Terradillos de los Templarios

Today´s walk of 27 kilometers was dreaded by many pilgrims as the first 18 or so were without villages or services. It is a mental and physical challenge to do this walking. The way was straight, little variation in the trail condition, almost no climbing... but I find that once I am moving in my own rhythm, my mind does so as well. I´m not sure that all my thoughts are trackable but I know they ebb and flow from the appreciation of every last iota of breeze to figuring out how I will deal with the soon-to-be move of my friends, the Marshalls, to appreciating the red, purple, yellow, blue, magenta wildflowers that snag my attention when I´m weary, to the wondering how I can best use the patience, endurance, and strength evidenced by this pilgrimmage.

There is pain. After about two weeks of walking, even people that were certain they would not have foot issues have succumbed. The body just doesn´t know how it will react to carrying 20 pounds for 13 to 15 or 18 miles a day every day until it tries it out. Our one friend, Tony, from the Canary Islands was in our same refugio the other night, and he treated his blisters as they had described in my pre-trip reading. I could hardly stand it. First he took a needle and thread, and then he pulled the thread through the blister and let it hang out the end.
Yesterday I looked up on my path and saw a shepherd coming with a large herd of sheep.
Everyone always asks why do you pilgrims walk the Camino? We´ve heard many reasons. A common one is resolving grief of some kind, looking for what matters, some are concentrating on the churches or art---it really is a progressive art museum...here is something I found in the current book I am reading.

We demand pauses and breathers along the arc of our lives. Without them, life would be a blur, a shapeless, endless stream of time and energy. (this pilgrimmage) proveds the lulls, the repose, the time out, if you will, to consider where we´re going and why; and where we´ve come from and why,; and what the rhythm of life is and why. As the hurdy-gurdy of life accelerates in our ever more modern age, it´s a relief to be thrown back--at least momentarily on the steadier rock where time slows down to a sweet, lovely crawl, and we are most palpably certain that we are not alone, that countless generations before us have said the same prayers and been blessed in the same way, as will countless generations after us. The brilliance of this is how well it connects us to an almost infinite DNA of time and space. The Camino is our antennae, outward, inward, and God-ward.

The above quote is adapted from Opening the Doors of Wonder: Reflections on Religious Rites of Passage by Arthur Magida

Becoming one with the wheat,
Carla

la meseta

June 21 We have left the foothills to the Pyrenees and are now in the rolling wheatfields. Mostly green now with poppies everywhere. Today we went into a 12th century church that had the usual golden statues and paintings and also a rooster that was in a special cage crowing. Apparently a pilgrim had committed a sin on the way to Santiago, and the priest was at dinner when he was asked whether or not to pardon the man from hanging. not wanting to stop and think about it, he replied if the rooster crowed before he got hanged, then he was pardoned.

And so, I guess that St. James intervened, the rooster crowed, pardon was granted, and a rooster has lived in the church ever since as a symbol of God´s pardoning grace.

The days now have a rhythm. Wake at 6:30 by music, breakfast and walk by sevenish.
after walking about 24 kilometers, we stop at a refugio and get a bed, have a shower, wash the clothes we wore that day and hang them on the line to dry. we go into town to find something for breakfast and lunch for the next day if there won´t be towns to stop in. We get a discounted homecooked meal for pereginos




Carla

First 200Km

Despite good intentions, this is my first chance to post. I was hoping Carla and I could write together but I lost her somewhere at the last village, Granon. We have plans to stay only another 12 km down the Camino at VillaMayor. I´m hoping she will show up.

This is the middle of the day, lay low time for the Spanish. We are at last to the plains of Spain where the weather is beginning to heat up. Coming over the foothills of the Pyrenees and through Navarre, we had wet, cold days. My plan is to mostly post pictures but my Internet cord is at the bottom of my pack and the thought of digging is tiresome. Already packing and unpacking and sorting are major endeavors when we are tired which we are constantly. My mochila only weighs 9 kilo and my purse one more but it still takes its toll at 20 to 30 km a day.

The two everyday highlights are the other pilgrims (peregrinos) and the countryside. We have talked with pilgrims from twenty two other countries so far, most of whom are here for religious or spiritual reasons and very determined: this morning at breakfast (bread and cafe) four French men sang us a medieval song of the peregrinos. The word Ultreyea was repeated numerous times with great passion.

The countryside: wheat, vinyards, sunflowers, bright red poppies everywhere, villages of tiny streets and red tile roofs, rolling hills, 16th cen. churches with a super abundance of ornate gilt decoration and bleeding Christs, church bells, etc.

Love to you all, Charlotte