Hills

We’ve been walking a lot of hills on the Camino. Up and down.  Whew . .

Don’t get me wrong.  I know hills. My state is named for its hills, and their color. But our hills have been done sensibly.  We don’t put them everywhere, just in the places that we want to go hiking or skiing.  As we’ve walked through the Basque country we’ve had to go up and down hills constantly. And they are put everywhere, even right next to the sea.

Who needs that?  We don’t put them right next to Lake Champlain.  And from what I’ve seen you can go the whole length of Jersey and never see a hill next to the ocean.  So it’s not like you need them to attract tourists.  Used to be that doing my steps was enough.  Now I have to check steps and elevation.

And switchbacks.  We have them. But we have them on mountains in the ski areas.  Here they put them in the middle of cities.  Bilbao is an otherwise extremely beautiful and very cool city built along the banks of the Nervión river.  Huge hills on  both sides.  And switchbacks right there in the city streets and city parks.  Wild.

If there is a redeeming feature to all of this, the locals seem to do everything they can to help. There are many streets that are walking stairs for pedestrians.  Shelagh tells me they are called paper streets.  When we came into Deba, a coastal town, on our third day there were two elevators to get you up and down the city streets.  I kid you not. San Sebastián had an escalator in one neighborhood that we walked through. Wonder how that deals with heavy storms? And we’ve seen many funiculars to help you ride up hills. The kicker yesterday was coming into the town of Portugaleta and seeing the people movers that were built into the sidewalks.  Some of them even worked.  So no more complaining.

I used to think that the one redeeming feature of a hill was that it had a top where it ended.  That was before I developed what my friend Riley calls toe jam and my feet hurt with every step going down.  And that was before I came across a rope handrail to help me down some very steep slippery two inch rock trails that went on for a hundred yards or so.

Maybe I’m just getting too old for this?

Or too much of a whiner?

j.

Funicular, Barcelona

City switchback, Bilbao

Random forest staircase

People movers, Potulaguete

A Few Pics

Too tired to write!

Lunacy

On the Camino today, a man wearing a pack threw up his hands in frustration when a pigeon wandered in front of him. It made me smile. We are here doing this thing as though speed were a factor. As though anything about this made sense. The other night, while organizing my things, I was overwhelmed by an attack of giggles. There I was, rolling this shirt and that pair of socks just so, as if it mattered. Doing this in a particular manner after walking fourteen miles or so that day, to be ready to start it all again the next morning. Why? For what purpose?

And while we’re at it, why does anyone do this?

(Subtle Segway to Wikipedia info):

El Camino de Santiago or in English the Way of St. James, is a network of pilgrims’ ways or pilgrimages leading to the shrine of the apostle James in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain, where tradition holds that the remains of the apostle are buried.

As Pope Benedict XVI said, “It is a way sown with so many demonstrations of fervour, repentance, hospitality, art and culture which speak to us eloquently of the spiritual roots of the Old Continent.”[2] Many still follow its routes as a form of spiritual path or retreat for their spiritual growth. It is also popular with hikers, cyclists, and organized tour groups.

It may seem that Jerry and I fall into that last category. And sure, we pretty much do. But that’s not to say that this has no larger significance for us. I won’t speak for him. But when you devote a period of time to an undertaking that stretches your abilities, offers large swaths of time for reflection, and brings you together with the person you’ve chosen to spend your life with, something larger than recreation presents itself.

It’s not about religion for me, but nor is religion absent. When we stop into some of the many beautiful very old churches, I sometimes sit and lose myself in the feelings i used to have growing up Catholic. Feelings of the enormity of the church, the length of its history, and a handful of less savory opinions I’ll leave unsaid. In those churches, I might light a candle for my mom or dad, neither of whom is still alive. (Honestly, though, I feel my mother most when I look up at the moon, because when I was young we’d walk at night and marvel at its beauty. And my father, who was a pilot from the age of fifteen on, feels most present when I see a plane flying over.)

Barcelona sky, 14 April, 2024

The best church experience yet was in Barcelona, where the organ was being tuned. Seriously you’ve never heard anything quite as gothic as that.

Basilica de Santa María del Mar, Barcelona

That Wiki article I cribbed above goes on to share that, in the 1980s, only a few hundred pilgrims per year registered in the pilgrim’s office in Santiago. But since 2013, the Camino has attracted more than 200,000 pilgrims each year, with an annual growth rate of more than 10 percent. What? That’s nuts, right? Is it all because Martin Sheen made a somewhat better than mediocre movie and we’re all trying to recreate the Josiah Bartlett who abandoned us to these horrific political nightmares? No idea.

So what can I really say about why I’m doing this? I suppose I’ll figure that out as I go. But packing my bag just so each night before heading out on the road again – folding my shirts or rolling up my socks or stashing a couple squares of chocolate for when we might need them as we make our way west to where a righteous man may or may not be buried – seems suddenly no more frivolous than spending my time with dishes or laundry or any of the thousands of tasks that make up my “normal,” occasionally less intentional, life.

Tomorrow we walk to Castro Urdiales, leaving the Basque Country for Cantabria.

s.

Rainy Day

A rainy day off in Bilbao means clean clothes. Very welcome!

So Far

We’ve walked 82 or so miles in five days. The routine is very reminiscent of the bike trip we took in ‘14. We stay in nice but not luxurious places that offer hot showers in tight stalls, often with smallish towels. They have kind, extraordinarily helpful owners who may or may not have much English. Sometimes there’s dinner included (in the way-out-of-the-way places where we began to worry we’d made a wrong turn right before arriving). They often have just one super long pillow for the two of us to share.

Yesterday we walked to Guernica. It was beautiful, full on a Saturday night of families and friends out for dinner, music, dancing. The children were playing and running around. Everywhere we’ve been so far, the Basque language can be heard from every corner. This week marks 87 years since Franco arranged for his friend Hitler to bomb this city (testing out his WWII strategy of decimating civilian populations while helping Franco weaken his Republican enemies). Picasso’s representation of this horrific act is what many of us know of that place, but I’m happy to report that, seen with a longer lens, Franco failed. The Basque culture is strong and vibrant, even (or perhaps especially) in this city that he tried to destroy.

Today we left Guernica for Larrabetzu, a pretty small place with another vibrant town square, full (this afternoon when we passed through) of people having a beer, a conversation, maybe some olives or pinxos (small tapas).

The walking is not unlike the biking: longish distances for our usual routine, beautiful sights that surprise and delight. The Camino is quite manageable, despite our lack of ramped-up training, but we’re exhausted by the end of most days, ready for a meal and an early night.

What’s not the same is the social aspect. On the bikes, the most social experience is a wave. Or honestly, for most cyclists, not even that. But on the Camino, everyone is at the very least waving, saying hello, wishing each other well. “¡Buen Camino!” we say over and over, encouraging other walkers to have a good experience, and they say the same. Everyone’s going in the same direction, if they’re doing the Camino, and so it feels like this enormous group effort toward a goal that is both enigmatic (spiritual by tradition, personal for each individual) and concrete: we go to a place. In our case, we plan to walk the whole Camino and finish in Santiago de Compostela. (More on that another day).

Sometimes you walk with one or more people for an hour or longer. Today we walked with Fernanda, from Mexico City, and Karen, from the UK by way originally of Australia. We met up with their friends Jane (UK) and Richara (Canada, but lately of Malaga) and enjoyed a beer with them at the end of the day.

The experience is as I remember from six years ago, when I walked about 100k of the Camino with my friends Fiona and Carol. It was such a wonderful time and I was so enthusiastic, I called Jerry from the walk and told him, “This is such an amazing experience! We have to come back and walk it together at some point.” Luckily he takes these sorts of statements seriously.

Tomorrow, a nice short walk to Bilbao and then a day off.

s.

We Are Walking

We walk from San Sebastián to Zaurautz starting on a misty-not-quite-rainy morning that later becomes a full blown rainy morning but, eventually, a lovely day. The first day of any adventure requiring effort is always a test: can we do this? Are we up to the challenge? Will there be hot water for a shower when we arrive tonight and if not, will I survive? Even more important: is this a legit tour company and are the documents on my phone reflective of actual reservations in real hotels? Because a lot of these places are in the back of beyond, truly. And I’m not sure you can even get a taxi back to the closest village with a hotel.

We once went on a bike trip with our friends Howard and Jan. On the train from Paris to the countryside spot where we were to meet our tour guide, Jan casually asked how we’d found this company, anyway. “We got a promotional postcard in the mail,” Jerry answered (also casually). Jaws may have dropped. I thought they were going to jump off the high~speed train. Luckily, it was legit.

In Spain, we pass the first-day test, as does the outfit with which we’ve booked our trip. Another big test for me is, will my Spanish hold up? Can I order a sandwich, a slice of tortilla (egg here, not flour) a glass of wine? Phew, I can. But lurking beneath any new conversation, there’s always the question, Can she form simple sentences like a four-year-old?

I lived in Madrid my junior year at Middlebury, way back in ‘83-‘84. I loved it and learned to speak Spanish pretty fluently. (My favorite memory might be the night a cab driver asked me what part of Spain I was from.) But still, you never know how the intervening years will affect what you learned. These days, my biggest challenge tends to be remembering the foods. For example, lomo is pork. Who remembers that? No one. It’s crazy.

The most annoying I’ve ever been in my life, hands down and regardless of what my sons might say, were my first couple years back from Madrid. I started every second sentence with, “When I lived in Spain…” Sometimes I varied it. “Well, when I lived in Madrid…” You could feel eyes rolling around whatever given room. Sometimes I used Spanish words in non-Spanish-speaking company. Super rude. I no longer do that, but can’t swear that the coming summer won’t be peppered with assertions about, “Well, when Jerry and I walked across Spain…”

I’ll try not to do this, though, because I have matured in the last 40 years. (¡Ojala!)

We are walking.

The Group

This one’s not a refined travel essay, really. Not like Jerry with his feedback for Rick Steves. I shall aim for that in the future, though.

We arrive in Barcelona after a red eye flight on which neither of us has gotten even three minutes of sleep. We can’t check in to our hotel for hours and hours. You’ve been there, right? So it’s all about finding a safe place to stash the luggage and figuring out how to kill six hours when we feel like the insides of our eyelids are made of clay and all we want to do is break all the rules about NOT SLEEPING UNTIL EVENING! Or, you know, we will never catch up. We’ll be walking the Camino with the grim reaper right on our heels. And he has better hiking poles.

The hotel is nice. Not nice, actually (fine, clean, pretty good for the rate, but right over an alley behind Las Ramblas, so we will have front row seats to all the drunken arguments one can enjoy over any given spring weekend in Spain)… but nice to us. They have lockers for the luggage. They’ll try to ready our room by 2. Check back at 2.

We go out and about. We stumble around. We mumble at one another about possible eateries and museums of interest to the improved couple we hope to become with a few hours of sleep. (We are desiccated sponges that can become colorful dinosaur shapes if dunked in a child’s bath water).

Back at the hotel, we collapse on actual fainting couches in the little rear waiting room. Others are also there. They are a Group. British, chummy and jocular, they have been together for some period of time. Maybe they walked the Camino. Maybe they cycled somewhere, tasting wine and olives. I don’t know. My eyelids are clay and all I know is they are annoying.

One woman is their fearless leader. Let’s call her Hattie. She is louder than anyone else. She is looked up to. She is, I think, living her best life. Going on a trip like this re-energizes her. She has unearthed her former popular self. If she says it, they’ll repeat it. If she buys it, they scramble to find whatever it is in another shade. If she laughs, they all laugh. Woe to that introverted gentleman from Luxembourg. He is shunned.

I watch all of this unfold with reluctant fascination. Because I’ve been Hattie. You have, too maybe, right? And she is not admirable, flitting around the fainting and other couches, hugging her fellow travelers goodbye. Hard hugs for the people who impressed her in some way. Less ardent pats on the back or – in the case of our one woebegone Luxembourger – an actual salute. This is middle school. This is sad.

Good news. Our room is ready!!! I’m elated, but also a bit shaken as I walk there, dragging my new BritBags suitcase from TJ Maxx (would you like a credit card with that to save fifteen percent today? no, thank you. are you sure? i am sure. because you’ll get instant savings… no. …and the card is good in all our stores… no! i do not! i do not want a new credit card with this!)

As the elevator doors close behind us in the impossibly tiny lift, I can still hear Hattie snorting derisively at someone. And I make a small note to self: do not be Hattie. What worked in seventh grade is not pretty once your hair goes gray.

s.

P.S. I share this with Jerry before posting. He did not notice the group at all and suggests I may have been hallucinating or he may have been asleep.

Sketches of Barcelona

(feel free to listen to Miles anytime for accompaniment, or maybe just think about him, or maybe just his inimitable voice)

Burlington’s problems are spreading.

I planned to see the Garden of Walter Benjamin, a short distance from our hotel. It’s known for its great murals/graffiti. 

The reviews warned not to go to the garden in the dark. It was definitely daytime, 11 in the morning, but the gates were locked.  Drugs?  Violence? General hooliganism? Not really sure. Then again, I was rather jetlagged. Maybe I had time wrong?  Or maybe it was Sunday and I had the day wrong.  Probably shouldn’t jump to conclusions.  At least I got to see the graffiti class.

What a great city to visit.

Everyone has been telling me that Barcelona is the place to visit.  I’ve never been one to take advice no matter how good it is.  So when Shelagh told me that Barcelona is at least as close to San Sebastián as Madrid is, I questioned her geography.  Fortunately, I’m getting better at being wrong, so reluctantly I agreed to fly to Barcelona instead of Madrid.

Besides I had already gone to Barcelona back in 1977.  How much could it have changed?  I haven’t (much). Apparently 47 years, including the 1992 Olympics, can make for a lot of change.  The seedy port and docks are now miles of new beaches, upscale hotels, and malls. I remembered the Picasso Museum but the contributions from his widow Jacqueline have added so much.

The Mountjüic area (that’s right, we had a whole mountain, not just the usual Quarter) has been transformed with many gardens including the Barcelona Botanical garden and the Olympic stadium.

Needle at Olympic Stadium

Also a funicular to the castle on the top! (Apparently, Shelagh would have preferred that I mention the funicular before we climbed the mountain. Someday I’ll get my timing right.)

And how had I never heard of Gaudí?

Confession

I don’t watch cooking shows or travel shows.  Yes, I know how much I’m missing.

We were loaned a guidebook on Barcelona by our friend Anne. It was the genuine Rick Steves’ guide.  I’ve been told many times that he’s the master, and “how have you not heard of him?” Well – pants on fire.  As anybody knows I travel for three reasons.  To visit gardens, to eat, and to have to go into another church. So when I read in the master’s guidebook that Barcelona suffers from a lack of green space, I was disappointed.  But I repeat.: Pants on fire! The Botanical garden is excellent and there is definitely enough green space to warm my heart.

So go, you won’t regret it.

j.

The First Day

The first day is a month. This is important to understand.

We flew to visit Bennett’s family in Florida – great time there – then drove with them to New Orleans for our nephew Ryan’s wedding to Casey – great wedding! We flew home full of somewhat lazy assumptions about training – walking 5-10 miles a day up Vermont hills, increasing pack weight over time. But our assumptions were nothing compared to the somewhat more pressing plans of Connor and Kelsey as they worked out a move to Arizona, the purchase of a home, management of one job shift and one new job, the question of interim housing for one child, one dog. Enter Nana and Zayde. (In our continued assertion of cultural origins, I am Nana, he is Zayde. It works.)

Connor drove to AZ with Kelsey, then flew back on his own to stay in VT, remote working and caring for Addie with us. Aaron’s band visited for a few days in there, practicing in the basement, hanging out when not practicing. They left, Kelsey flew in. (I can’t imagine how she was standing, having driven to AZ to buy a house and start a job while living in another family’s clearly troubled AirBnb.)

Long story short, we played with a toddler for three weeks. Then Adeline flew away with Kelsey (sadness) and beloved guests arrived for the eclipse.

The eclipse should be another blog post I think. But Jerry’s sister Maggie and her husband Steve visited for that, as well as our good friend Gary. (Great time! Excellent day! Apocalyptic hollowing of blue-to-eerie-dark sky, rapid chilling of air, complete with panicked flocks of birds zip lining the hell out of dodge while coyotes worked themselves into a chaotic frenzy before wandering into our yard…)

All of this was SUPER fun and aptly exhausting, but not a lot of hills or packs.

We have not really trained is what I’m saying. Also, my foot hurts. Just a little.

Whatever. I’m sure it will all be fine…

S.

A Mystery Explained

Here we go again.

Just ten years ago we we took off for Key West to see if our bikes had arrived and figure out if we could bring them back to Vermont the long way.  Keys to the Kingdom we called it.  And it caused so much confusion.  Are your bikes electric?  Is that why you need keys? What Kingdom are you going to?  Why are you doing this?  So we would explain to the non Vermonters that we call the Northeast part of Vermont the Northeast Kingdom.  Yes, as in God’s Kingdom. Apparently (S)he created it as a haven for hunters, snowmobilers, and anyone else who just wanted to get away.

Of course, at this point, the more thoughtful would ask us if we were going to that part of Vermont.  No, we were not.  So why do you call it Keys to the Kingdom? As any teleologist knows, all good answers come in good time.  Today we head for Spain where we have plans (hopes? fantasies? foolish whims?)  to walk the Camino from San Sebastian to Santiago de Campostela.  Santiago de Campostela, the pilgrim’s path to finding His Kingdom (or Hers… I’m comfortable with that, It’s seems a bit too secular).

Maybe that brings up once again the question why?  Good question.  Maybe because Shelagh wants to do it and I’m trying to be a good husband?  Maybe because when John Wayne kept calling everyone Pilgrim, I was hoping that he was talking to me? Or maybe I’ve just found

A New Mystery

j