Reflections of a Poser in Paris

After spending 5 weeks posing as a pilgrim, I thought I was getting pretty good at blending in with the crowd. If I kept the hardcore heathen under wraps and smiled a lot, I could mingle with the masses without sticking out. I think it had a lot to do with my outfit.  I had a common bond with my fellow pilgrims - dirty clothes, smelly shoes, weird hair.  Well, now I am in Paris, and I'm not doing so well with the fashion camouflage. I put the kids on a plane this morning, and I thought I'd spend the day posing as a Parisian instead of a pilgrim. How hard could it be, right? I speak French. I can eat pain au chocolat faster than anyone I know. I LOVE Paris.  I was sure I would just fit right in with the natives.

Apparently pilgrim garb is a dead giveaway in these parts that you are not native to the fashion capital of the world.  I'm going to blame my footwear for the lack of respect I engendered today (although I suppose it could have been any part of my outfit that screamed "I need to do laundry!"). Given the choice between completely spent hiking shoes and soap-scum coated shower thongs, I opted for the hiking shoes, so I could do some serious walking and honor my pilgrim spirit. 

Nobody in Paris cares about my pilgrim spirit.  I'm pretty sure people were scowling at me from high atop stilettos as I cruised past them on the cobblestones.  I imagined that one of them might even be the pilgrim I scorned on the trail for her high-heels and pack mule. Fortunately I have experience with this fashion inferiority complex. Manhattan doesn't have much tolerance for Patagonia-clad Vermonters (even if it is in modest shades of black), and I have been scorned there too. 

Feeling a little feisty as I strolled through Galeries Lafayette, I decided to slowly and intently examine every diamond in the De Beers collection (most of which were worth more than my house), just daring them to shoo me away.  To their credit, no one asked me to leave (although no one rushed over to help me either). Since I wasn't fooling anyone, I figured I'd stop posing as a Parisian and go back to being a tourist. I pulled out my camera and proceeded to take pictures of the store. 

It only seemed fitting that I ended my visit to Paris' landmark department store with a trip to the basement which was completely filled with shoes in every shape, size and color. The women I saw down there were giddy with excitement.  The very few men I spotted looked like they had been sentenced to husband hell. I smiled, realizing I couldn't even afford a shoelace in that place, and skedaddled before someone could judge me for my shoes.

Now, three days removed from the Camino with some dear friends and Portuguese sunshine behind us, I have some time to reflect on the serious (I'm reluctant to say "spiritual") side of our adventure. 

Our final day on the trail was a whirlwind.  We had opted to sleep 20km outside of Santiago, which meant that we had a lot of early hiking to do in order to make sure we made it to the cathedral and got a seat before the start of the Pilgrims' Mass at noon.  My alarm went off at 4:00 a.m. - the earliest wake up call of our entire trek.  Somehow we managed to bumble our way out of bed and out the door into the darkness without any complete meltdowns. I think we were all running on adrenalin at that point - knowing the end (and a soft bed) were in sight.  The trail quickly turned off the well-lit street and into a forest where we found ourselves guided by the spotlights of our headlamps in what were very creepy surroundings.  There were no other pilgrims on the trail at this point, which was unusual, so we kept questioning whether we had lost the trail in the dark.  Eventually, after about 30 minutes, a small group of pilgrims joined us coming from another direction. We were delighted to have another dim light to follow in the dark.

After two hours of spooky walking in and out of wooded forests, the sun peeked over the horizon, and we started to see more pilgrims joining the route from tent sites along the way. That's when I started to get sad. I realized that this whole adventure was coming to an end.  I was used to the routine of getting up and walking. I liked the exercise, the fresh air, the conversations with my kids, and even the monotony - the endless thinking time that walking the Camino provides. 

To be able to completely disconnect from the "real world" for an entire month is a gift. To rely on your own two feet to travel across a country feels like an accomplishment. The kids and I had talked about the fact that we had not been in a moving vehicle of any kind for thirty days. We were completely dependent on our ability to walk somewhere for anything we wanted or needed.  At times (like when I didn't plan ahead well enough for bank stops) it was challenging and impacted our choices. We didn't always have multiple food options and had to make do with the alternatives available in the towns where we found ourselves at mealtimes. We couldn't choose our lodging based on entertainment options. We couldn't count on finding warm showers (or even a bed) at the end of each day.  Every morning represented a fresh start and a new adventure.  We left behind the security of our hostel and moved forward into the next stage not knowing where we would end up at nightfall or where we would be sleeping.  It could have been unsettling, but, instead, I always felt like the Camino would take care of us at the end of the day.  As we climbed the final hill before we would catch our first glimpse of the city of Santiago down below, I felt wistful and immensely grateful for this experience. 

We headed down our last steep hill and walked the final 5 km into Santiago. We walked together. Foster slowed down; Brianna and Nolan sped up. The countryside changed to suburbs. We posed with the Santiago city sign, and we set our sights on the cathedral.  Once we entered the medieval portion of the city, we could sense that the finish line was near, and I think we all wondered what it would feel like to finally get there. The kids had been asking me for days if I would cry. I had said, "probably," because I'm just like that.  We didn't even make it to the cathedral before the tears started flowing. As we rounded a corner in the city, we walked right into our favorite group of Croatian pilgrims with whom we had crossed paths multiple times throughout the month. We had assumed that we had seen the last of them, because they were trying to make it Santiago in time for the festival of St. James. We took some photos and said some tearful hellos and goodbyes, and then we headed around the corner for our first glimpse of the cathedral.

From there it was a whirlwind. We checked in at the Pilgrim Office and received our official certificates of completion. We checked into a cushy apartment and left our bags so we could head to the cathedral. We ate churros and drank thick hot chocolate to celebrate our arrival, and, at last, we made it to the cathedral in time to watch the amazing botafumeiro,filled with smoking incense, fly through the rafters at the end of the 10:00 mass.  Then, we quickly moved into the pews as the seats were vacated to ensure that we had a place to sit for the Pilgrims' mass at noon. Nolan promptly fell asleep on my lap.  Brianna and Foster waited out the hour as all true pilgrims should - playing on their iPods. At noon, the Pilgrims' mass began in Spanish.  Nolan continued to sleep as I pushed him aside to alternately stand and sit as required.  I joked with Foster and Brianna about how all of these people had just finished walking 500 miles and couldn't they just let us remain seated for the full hour.  Before we knew it, the incense burner was swinging again, and our long-awaited appointment with the cathedral was over.  There was nothing left to do but reflect and celebrate.

We ate lunch. We ate ice cream.  We shopped for souvenirs. We showered. We did laundry. The city of Santiago is a happy place.  Day after day it welcomes thousands of pilgrims who are just completing the trek of a lifetime.  The party never stops.  Music, entertainment, and celebrations were everywhere. It was exciting to just watch the scene from above through our apartment window as groups of pilgrims streamed into the plaza catching their first glimpse of the cathedral.  Brianna's pure joy upon exiting the shower and drying her hair with a fluffy, white towel was contagious.  "This towel is literally squeaking in my hair!  It's so clean!" And, with that, we transitioned back to the real world.

We headed for Portugal for two days of blissful rest and relaxation with friends we hadn't seen in a decade. It was just what we needed at the end of a long, hot, dirty journey to bring us out of our pilgrim shells.  As we drove south into Portugal, rolling along at 100 km per hour, we calculated how long it would have taken us to walk the distance we had just covered.  The 160 km we covered in less than two hours would have taken us five days on foot. It was an abrupt end to our month of self-reliance. 

In the end, it is both "self-reliance" and "interdependence" that defined the Camino for me. Despite whatever I may have come to the Camino anticipating that I might achieve, I realized, in the end, that the experience was not about achievement at all.  Santiago de Compostela was the destination, but the real lessons were in the journey. At one time, I thought this journey along a flat path across northern Spain would bring closure to the unpredictable roller-coaster of life events that have defined my existence for the past few years. However, it did not take too long for me to figure out that the Camino is not flat. It climbs and descends - sometimes gradually and sometimes abruptly - like life.  I quickly realized that closure was just the beginning, and that this walk of self-reflection was really more about moving forward  and walking with intention through both the ups and the downs. It was about continuing to live my dreams and pursuing my passion for travel.  It was about showing my children that they are capable of achieving anything that they set their minds to - no matter how insurmountable the challenge may appear. In these somewhat predictable ways, the Camino taught us all lessons of self-reliance.

However, it was the path's unanticipated lessons about interdependence that sweetly slipped in to our daily journeys that pleased the mother in me the most. I spent an entire month just walking with my children. It was, indeed, a gift. Sometimes we walked separately, and sometimes we walked together.  Sometimes we had easy conversations, and sometimes we annoyed each other. For me, the most satisfying parts of each day were when I witnessed my kids taking care of each other - dropping back to chat, holding a pack while someone shed a layer, sharing an ear bud, adjusting a rain cover, or pulling out a water bottle.  As much as I sought, through this journey, to reassure my children of my own strength, I was privileged to witness their perseverance and their connections to each other.  Nothing is more satisfying to me than the assurance that they will take care of each other on life's journey long after I no longer walk the path with them.

"After weeks on the road, listening to a language you don't understand, using a currency whose value you don't comprehend, walking down streets you've never walked down before, you discover that your old 'I,' along with everything you ever learned, is absolutely no use at all in the face of those new challenges, and you begin to realize that, buried deep in your unconscious mind, there is someone much more interesting and adventurous and more open to the world and to new experiences."

-Paolo Coelho

Travel on my children. Buen Camino!

Santiago

No words. Just smiles today.

4:45 start in the dark

Headlamp walking through the creepy woods

Still dark, but a floodlit church seemed like a good spot for a photo.

At last!

Croatian surprise in the plaza! So happy to meet up with this group again!

 

First glimpse of the cathedral!

 

Yup. Scaffolding.

Camino friend, Nadine

Making it official

Celebrating with churros y chocolate

Pilgrims' Mass - camping out for seats

Church selfies of Camino casualties

Church nap for Nolan

Watching the famous incense burner, botafumeiro, fly. So cool, we watched it twice! 

Outside the cathedral as we left

Celebrating!

Happiness is clean sheets and towels :)

Ahhhh. Indeed it was a Buen Camino.

The Darker Side of the Camino

Dear friends, if you are seeking happiness or wholesomeness or a window into my mystical path, you may want to skip today's entry and wait for tomorrow's grand finale in Santiago where I hope to find all of the above. Today it is a darker side of the Camino that begs to be revealed.

On this day of great anticipation, less than 24 hours before we finally arrive in Santiago de Compostela, I feel that I need to cleanse my soul in hopes that I will engender only good karma on my path to enlightenment tomorrow.

It was one of those days on the trail.  We've been at this for 28 days now - four weeks.  That's 24/7 with each other all of the time.  It was about halfway into today's hike that we had our Disney moment.  I don't mean that magical moment where the whole family is smiling with eyes wide open and matching outfits in the classic picture with Mickey and Minnie.  No, I mean that Disney moment where you are in the "happiest place on earth," and you are having a massive family meltdown. After spending 30 minutes at an outdoor cafe stop watching my boys antagonize each other incessantly, one poked the other in the eye with a piece of straw.  Tears ensued. I told both boys that I did not want to walk with either of them.  I needed them to go in front of me or behind me, but that I was sick of them and needed a break.  It was a very special Camino family moment.  Foster responded by attaching himself to my side and claiming that I couldn't "make him not walk with me." I told him he was ruining "my" Camino on the second to last day.  It is all about me, after all. He insinuated that I was being a drama queen. Whatever.  I decided the only reasonable tactic was to put in my music and to turbo charge my walking pace and leave the offending offspring in the dust. I can only imagine that as I sped by pilgrims left and right, muttering under my breath, they were all wondering what had happened to that "nice Vermont family." A few kilometers later, we regrouped.  There was no mention of the drama, but I think we had all decided to move on and not ruin "my" Camino.

Obviously I need some enlightenment. I am hoping today was the day for purging the negativity, so that tomorrow can be a glorious new beginning.  So, in that vain, it is also time to purge my sarcastic, snarky, shallow pilgrim attitude. For the record, I have worked very hard to preach tolerance, kindness and gratitude for the last four weeks.  I have kept my sarcasm at bay and have tried to walk the talk. However, in the name of a good soul cleansing, it was necessary to compile a list of the darker elements of our Camino adventure.  If I record them here, perhaps I will be freed of their bonds and more open to tomorrow's good karma.  If not, then let them simply serve as a record of the reality. Lest you who know me best think I am drinking the "Camino Koolaid," enjoy the real Jennifer before her transformation.

Lessons Learned on the Camino (and hostile hostel thoughts)

1. If you sound like you are going to hack up a lung, take one for the team and stay in a private hotel room.

2. If you carry a purse on the Camino - expect to be ridiculed - even if it's one of those cute little backpack purses.  You're not fooling anyone.

3. If you have a hairdryer on the Camino, you are not a pilgrim (But I would like to borrow it if you are willing to share. I would also sacrifice a limb for a dollop of your hair conditioner).

4. If you have rented a mule and a man-servant to carry your things while you walk the Camino, do not wear high-heels. You will be judged by hundreds who are suffering from intense blisters and who would give anything for a different pair of practical shoes.

5. If you have intense blisters, do not display them to fellow pilgrims at a restaurant. Although we sympathize with your pain, we do not want to see its source in all of its disgusting detail. Your feet are repulsive.  Every pilgrim's feet are repulsive.  Please do not share.

6. Large groups on the Camino can be annoying to those seeking solitude.  Large groups of teenagers in a hostel can be annoying to those seeking sleep.  However, large groups of teenage boys overdosing on the European equivalent of Axe body spray can be lethal.  I will take trail stench any day over teenage stench. 

7. No matter how good your booty looks, we don't want to see booty shorts on the trail.  Although my teenage son may disagree, we are not all teenage boys.  Thank God (see #6).

8. Similarly, ladies, at 5:00 in the morning, when the sun has yet to rise, I do not want to be greeted by the sight of you standing in the bathroom in your thong.  I don't care how thong-worthy you think you are. I do not want to see that before I've had my coffee.

9. And, men, just because you stealthily slip into your sleeping bag after the lights are out, don't think that the rest of us want to see your junk on display at 1:00 a.m when you are thrashing about. Pajamas were invented for a reason.  Use them. 

10. I outgrew communal showers in middle school.  Cold, communal showers on the Camino should be outlawed.  Given the choice between privacy and personal hygiene, I may just choose privacy.  If most pilgrims share my view, that makes for a very smelly 130 bed hostal. I will pass and repass most of these pilgrims an average of 77 times during this trek.  Each time I will be required to meet their eyes and wish them a "Buen Camino." If I have been permanently scarred by the vision of them bending over to retrieve a bar of soap in the shower, forcing me to relive that moment over and over again each time I meet them on the trail is cruel and unusual punishment. Charge me an extra Euro, invest in shower curtains, and save me the psychological damage. 

Pray for my soul. Buen Camino.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Roughing it in Ribadiso

With two more days behind us and just two more left to go, I find myself having one last true Camino pilgrim experience - staying in one of the oldest remaining pilgrim hostels still in existence. The stone dormitories, stone outbuildings with cool showers, and the massive stone fireplace in the common room, all compliment the medieval stone bridge that leads to its door.  It's idyllic and rustic.  We've been seeking peace from the large groups that are traveling this last bit of the Camino, and we have found it here in Ribadiso.  The lack of wifi and hot water pretty much guarantees an absence of teenage groups.  At this point on the journey, many people (like us) are craving creature comforts that have been hard to come by on the trail.  I'm having my own fantasies about sheets, food, and sweet smelling towels.

As I took a cool shower in the stone outbuilding under a pathetic trickle of water (for which I had to push a button every 8 seconds in order to keep it flowing), I tried to remember to be grateful for this experience.  Then, when I got out of the shower and discovered that a swallow in the rafters had pooped on my towel, I decided that grateful is overrated.  It's bad enough that I have been using the same postage stamp-sized, rancid-smelling chamois to dry off with for the last 30 days.  It did not need to be accessorized with bird poo. This pilgrim needs to get to Santiago stat.

The good news is that we've had a couple of relatively easy days on the trail.  Yesterday's walk from Portomarin to Palas de Rei was completely unremarkable except for the "Pizzeria" road sign that greeted us upon our arrival in Palas de Rei.  It was a very official looking municipal-type sign, which we took to mean that they were serious about their pizza in this town.  We were pretty serious about finding that pizza, so, as soon as we had checked into a hostel, we set off to find it.  Apparently the owner of the bar serving toaster-oven frozen pizzas must be related to the mayor of Palas de Rei. Lesson learned. When in Spain, do not expect gourmet pizza. Stick to the paella.

Today's walk from Palas de Rei to Ribadiso was more scenic and more removed from the road.  We walked on forest paths and through small villages along the way. The trail is still a constant stream of pilgrims as we get closer to Santiago.  Today, July 25th, is St. James Day, so there is a large celebration at the cathedral in Santiago.  As we ate lunch in a bar, we watched the royals arriving at the cathedral on TV, and we anticipated our own arrival in a couple of days.  We scanned the crowds on the  television in search of people we had met along the way who were aiming for today's festivities in Santiago.  The glimpses of the cathedral and its surrounding square were a useful reality check.  It turns out that the cathedral is presently completely covered by scaffolding and looks more like an angular Chinese temple than the cathedral that we had anticipated. The kids and I had a good laugh, because this seems to be a theme for us when we visit famous sites.  A few years ago, we sat for hours in the dark and cold waiting for the sun to rise over Angkor Wat.  When it finally peeked over the horizon, and we got our first glimpse of this wonder, it was covered in scaffolding and green netting. We just shook our heads and reminded ourselves that the Eiffel Tower had been scaffolding-free just a month ago when we visited, so we had probably already used up our monument luck for this trip.

So, tonight we find ourselves in this medieval hostel with time to relax, reflect, and play in the frigid water of the river.  In a flashback to a mid-Camino moment, we are down to our last 38 Euros with no bank to be found in this ancient outpost.  There is one restaurant (the one attached to the hostel) with a pilgrim menu for 9.50. Four meals for exactly 38.00.  I think it was meant to be.  Tomorrow we will carry on to what will be our final night on the trail before reaching Santiago. Tonight I'll be trying hard to soak up the last bits of the Camino experience while praying hard that there is no evil swallow above my bunk.

100 Kilometers to Go!

It has been a two day rat race toward the finish line, and I find that I have to force myself to slow down and walk at a reasonable pace when I find myself getting caught up in the rush.  We left Triacastela yesterday morning at a ridiculously late hour.  We knew we had the shortest walk of our entire trip ahead of us, so we took our time getting on the road and didn't begin walking until 8:30.  Since most people were on the road well before we rolled out of the hostel, the pilgrim traffic was light for the first few hours. We walked along some gorgeous natural track that took us back up above the clouds for a while, and we enjoyed our time in the sunshine in the heavens - feeling like we were flying above it all and wondering whether the people in the valleys even knew that the sun was shining.  We were surrounded by green countryside, farms, stone walls, and farm animals of every shape and size as well as their herding dogs and shepherds.

  

We eventually descended through the mist and discovered that the sun wasn't shining down below.  It was a creepy, damp cloud forest that greeted us. By the time we stopped for breakfast at a tiny trail side barn/cafe the sun was trying hard to shine through the clouds, creating a humid warmish/coolish wet roadside break.  

From breakfast, we had a quick two hour downhill trot into the city of Sarria.  The trail followed the road for the last few miles, and the sun shone hard.  I walked for a while with a marathon runner from Slovakia who had spent a total of ten days planning his trip to walk a portion of the Camino -  he just hopped on a plane and showed up.  I thought about our two year dream and just laughed. There are so many different stories on the Way. 

Once we made it to the old quarter of Sarria, we were greeted by the usual 10,000 step climb up to the main street which seemed to climb back into the clouds.  We were fortunate to find a bed quickly in an inexpensive hostel despite our late start.  We went to a local restaurant for a meal of macaroni, eggs, and cabbage soup (Foster!) and then managed to find a "real" supermarket, so we could supplement our diet with junk food, and all Vermont pilgrims were quite content to settle in for the afternoon. 

This morning began a bit earlier.  The hostel was noisy, so it was easy to get up and out before 7:00 and get the first hill climbs under our belts before we even realized that we were walking.  The descent from Sarria was steep and cruel, and then we started climbing again.  The scenery was everything that I imagine Ireland would be - small hamlets with farms, stone walls, and many more animals than people.

It was beautiful, and I'm pretty sure the Pied Piper was leading the way.  All of the the obedient pilgrims just followed one another up and over hills and through the countryside.  I'm not sure that I had to look for a trail marker all day.  We paused for a breakfast break a couple of hours into our morning with dozens of other walkers.  When we took off again, it felt like the beginning of a marathon - bobbing and weaving until we found a group moving at just the right pace.  Eventually we settled in again and soon passed the coveted 100 km post - marking 100 km to the Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela.  We paused for a photo and then quickly rejoined the race so as not to lose our place in line.  It's hard to even remember the solitude of the earlier stages of the Camino.

Our goal for the day was to reach the town of Portomarin and the Belesar Reservoir that it overlooks.  As soon as we saw the reservoir, we got excited.  It has been nearly a month since we have glimpsed anything resembling a lake.  The closest we got was a dammed river a week ago.  Most rivers have been nothing more than a dry trickle.  Lakes have been non-existent.  So, it felt a little odd to cross a huge bridge overlooking kayaks and sailboats as we entered town.  We climbed the requisite steps to give ourselves one last cardiovascular workout before settling on an expensive, but clean-looking hostel.  It feels like a hospital ward with 130 beds in one room, partitioned into groups of 40 with curtains in between. I am guessing we will have snoring stories to tell tomorrow.

Once we got settled, a dip in the reservoir was a necessity.  Brianna and Nolan were game. It was cool and refreshing without being bone-chilling.  A large group of Italian girls swam and squealed nearby.  We splashed and floated, oblivious to anything being amiss, until Brianna spotted the water snake.  Apparently the Italian squealing was about the snakes (a drawback of not speaking enough languages).  We did our own squealing, and Brianna and I decided we'd had enough swimming.  Nolan?  Well, he's Nolan.  Whatever.  Why waste a perfectly good reservoir just because there are slimy serpents sharing it with you?  He continued to jump off the rocks and swim around until we forced him to leave. 

That will probably be the last of the cooling dips we find on the way to Santiago.  With four days to go, we have our eyes on the prize - a Sunday finish in Santiago with clean beds, warm food, and good friends waiting.