Camino de Santiago Camino de Santiago 
I have no idea what to write just now. I'm like, dead on my feet even though I'm fully lying down in the albergue.
So we did it, we completed the dreaded first day that I was really worried about and it was somehow Not That Bad™, and I haven't had a horrific panic attack out of overexertion like I did when Grandpa and I hiked up San Juan de Gaztelugatxe. I think the key was making sure I actually ate food when I needed to, and stopping for lots of breaks/sitting down when needed as well. Somewhere along the way I felt like there was some deeper lesson here, a sense of trust in myself and the process.
Gary, the Canadian hospitalero who gave us our first stamp at the pilgrim office in SJPDP encouraged us to send our packs to the albergue ahead of us, to make "hard things easier". I felt like there was something to that - helping myself make hard things easier, as opposed to just going for the easy thing and missing the view and sense of accomplishment (we were fully going to take the Valcarlos route before Gary insisted that we would regret not taking the Napoleon).
Here are a few highlights from the walk today:
A gorgeous sunrise this morning, all pink and orange and misty over the mountains
The feeling of accomplishment as we got higher and higher and higher up in the hills and saw deeper and deeper valleys forming below.
The cloaking of grey mist that covered almost the entirety of our walk from the border with Spain onwards, the kind that feels both beautiful and refreshing but also closely lethal. Being made aware of the proximity of danger is a gift.
The deep woodlands we walked through, which when we saw them from above looked like miles and miles of uninterrupted trees.
Everything feeling a bit enchanted, especially in the woodland areas which really made you want to believe in fairies and the basajaún
Lovely, loving conversations with my partner. A sense of support for each other, as well as our snack and lunch stops and getting to share food and enjoy each other's company.
The collector's glee of adding stampts from the refuge d'Orisson and the Roncesvalles Albergue.
The feeling of being warm, dry, and clean after a long day of hiking.
Finishing something I didn't think I could do.
The wingspan of vultures
The bird that sang back to my partner when he whistled a tune
The cat who followed us along for some of the most difficult/steepest parts of the trail.
The group of cows napping in the sun (and the tiny calf sleeping amidst them)
Not so nice things:
Mean hospitaleros (but honestly who could handle 400 people rocking up all at once? I certainly couldn't)
Worrying about my vision and losing my mind and throwing up or having a brain tumour and dying young (dying at all, really)
Internet forms that don't work
Transnational admin and constant reminders that academic work never takes a vacation.
I'm not going to lie when I say that today was hard as all hell. Harder than yesterday probably because the first day adrenaline was gone and our bodies were still tired from the crazy ascent of the Pyrenees.
Basically, the minute I put on my pack, it was all over. I developed blisters between my toes and it took me a solid 6km even just to get into the rhythm of walking without internally fighting the process.
Sometimes you need to have patience with something before you can realistically enter a flow state. Everything requires activation energy (I wish it didn't), and some things and days need longer than others.
The vegetation was beautiful, though. It felt so nice to be surrounded by trees on all sides. Now that I think about it, it's been so long since I've just been in the woods. There was a moment where the trees had a bent, and shafts of sunlight fell through them in such a way that it almost felt like a forest greeting. A questioning "hello", neither welcoming nor shunning. Just "hi, stranger. Who are you?"
The animals we're seeing really offer a lot of cheer en route. We saw a cow fully sticking its tongue out drinking rainwater pouring from the gutter, then coughing and spluttering (poor thing). There was a baby foal running around a field. A pink-bellied chaffinch or bullfinch hopped around a fallen log. A sparrow jumped over to us and stayed a while as we split an oatmeal raisin cookie.
But I haven't gotten to the RAIN. Oh my god, it was a downpour. At points I was genuinely afraid, mainly because the thunder reminded me of all those kid's adventure guides I used to read as a kid, the ones that telll you never to be out on top of a hill in a storm. And oops, that's exactly where we were. I was afraid of lightning, I was afraid of falling and slipping and someone getting badly hurt when the slope became a fast running muddy river, and all we could do was trudge along the banks and plant our poles in for dear life.
By the time we got to the albergue we were soaked through. I am genuinely worried the boots won't dry by morning (edit: they didn't, see Santo Domingo de la Calzada (day 9) for a rundown of that mess). I'm scared a lot, now that I think about it.
Now that we're lying at the albergue, I think we're both exhausted and low-key a bit demoralized because all this gear cost a lot of money, and the albergue and meals are costing more money than we thought, too. I just asked my partner what would make that kind of expense worth it for him. I'm afraid sometimes I force him to tag along to things he doesn't want to do/spend money he doesn't have on something he doesn't really care about (the Camino was always my thing).
Some other noteworthy things:
Saw a massive hawk stabilizing itself in the air
Lots of trees growing all gnarly and twisted, some also growing together (they are canonically in love)
Bizcocho at breakfast this morning was awesome dipped in milk.
My body seems to be slowly leaning toward rhythm and adaptation (I haven't struggled to get up at 6AM)
My partner being here with me.
Some things I wish weren't the case (but are):
I don't feel like talking or being social, which may make me miss out on the full Camino experience, but I'm hopeful if I follow my instinct and keep getting used to it some more, things will shift if they need to.
Today was a lot easier than yesterday. The sun was shining and we got lots of flat roads and passed through lots of pretty towns (which meant more Cola Cao for me)
That being said, my feet hurt even more than yesterday (maybe there's a degree to which my body caps difficult at a certain threshold. Anything beyond 20km is painful no matter what) I am hopeful I'll get used to it as the days go on because we've got some longer days awaiting us.
There was something really rewarding about getting to the town of Arre and really sitting down to enjoy lunch outside. It felt like the general mood was gleeful and placid. At the cafe in Zuriain there were two guitarists playing music while we all sat around in the sun drinking coffee. When we got to Arre there was a big open-air festival that was playing acoustic-ish versions of classic songs (Tequila was one of them).
We saw lots of cats and dogs roaming around. Most of them ignored us completely except the old sausage dog in Zuriain who left me pat his very soft head.
There were also lots of swallows dipping and diving between rooftops and we saw two butterflies dancing in the sun together. All in all, it felt like the world re-emerging and stretching out from yesterday's storm.
I think the most memorable natural element was the sheer volume of pink and yellow and purple meadow flowers. Also, the banks of the Arga river were SO HIGH. The water was flowing so fast.
At a certain point, we picked up quite a pace and it felt like we were flying. Oddly enough though, it felt like for such a placid day overall, today I really stopped to notice the least. I think I was just looking down at my feet a lot, just trying to put one foot in front of the other and move along quickly, so I didn't really stop to look around all that much. I don't want to forget anything I've seen. I want to keep it all in and near.
Tomorrow I'll resolve to be more present, and hopefully pack my bag more effectively now that we keep accruing more things we need. It's sad because the thing taking up the most room is our sleeping bags, but I'm beginning to suspect we might not need them at all.
Another thing I think is interesting is the idea that every difficulty has runoff periods. Even though it wasn't raining today, yesterday's storm was so brutal that many of the downslopes we hiked were still basically rivers of muddy water flowing downwards. There were still puddles and patches of wet soil, soft as brown spots on an apple. Basically, things don't just go away, things dissipate more slowly than that, and always leave a mark. Similarly, it feels like my body is still feeling the after-effects of not taking care of myself properly ahead of the Camino (I had to write two 40-page papers in the span of two weeks and I basically stopped sleeping and eating properly). I'm only just getting my period, two days behind schedule. I'm only just beginning to digest food properly. ?
So yeah. Let things have afterlives. Everything does. The afterlife of a good day is a high baseline satisfaction, and more resilience and comfort. The afterlife of a bad one is also important. A reminder that sleep and food and self-care are non-negotiable, a trickle of muddy water flowing down a slope.
It's nice to write this while being cuddled up in bed with my partner, even if the bed is a single mattress with disposable sheets that remind me of hospitals.
If I had to rank my tiredness at the end of each day, I'm noticing that how I feel doesn't at all map onto what al the guidebooks and websites say I'm supposed to feel, and I find it really hard to walk without knowing what's next. It would be interesting to do a walking day without studying up ahead of time and anticipating all the checkpoints and instead by guided by when I naturally need to stop/not stop.
I'm hoping it gets easier or at least you get used to it a bit because each day is wearing on me more and more and it feels like I get less and less of the rest I need every night. I kind of want to cry a little bit. I know this is all part of the process but right now my feet hurt and I'm cranky and really intimidated by the number of days left to go.
Today, I think some of the highlights were the cats we saw, including the one we affectionately named Crickets. He was so hungry and I basically gave him all of the meat out of my sandwich which he devoured without blinking. I hope that wasn't bad for him, but he was so bony :(
I also really liked the look of all the walled medieval cities we passed by. It's really nice to see how much my partner and I support each other even when we don't feel good which is always really uplifting.
I'm not sure what else to say right now to be honest, I'm feeling really tired so I might stop here for now.
What's the lesson, though? (future self edit: there doesn't always need to be a lesson) Stop studying up? Actually rest rather than freaking out and trust that the albergue we need will materialize? Am I somehow still over-planning on a trip where nothing should be planned? Can I let it flow without feeling like I'm about to die?
We also saw some really lovely butterflies and flowers along the route, including some poppies that are incredibly vibrant, like their saturation is turned up a few notches higher than the rest of the landscape.
I really like how I gradually get to see the landscape of Spain changing a litte each day as we walk. Rocky/misty mountains gave way to lush forests which have now switched to open farmland and vineyards in red soil - walking is an interesting way to intimately know a place. Maybe I feel more connected to Spain in a material rather than conceptual way?
I have to admit I was absolutely dreading today. Super scared that I wasn't going to make it or be able to handle the 28km that we ended up doing, but we did it!
There was definitely a moment of freak out at Los Arcos where I felt so tired and shaky, but I lay on a bench for a while (partner pictured doing the same) and everything was a bit better from there.
We also checked our finances which prompted another kind of freak out as we realized everything is much more expensive than we anticipated.
Lesson for today? I'm not really sure. Something about digging deep, and at some point I realized that the toughest thing about this Camino so far has been my fear. I'm coming face to face with it all the time/every day. Maybe this is what I've come here to deal with to some extent. What is it, exactly, that I'm so afraid of? Being alive to the full extent it requires?
I'm writing something super short again today because we kind of need to go to bed if we want to make the municipal albergue in Najera in time to hopefully get 2 beds. Fingers crossed.
I have two (or more, let's be real) thoughts today. One is that time is warped and distorted on the Camino. This has been the longest week of my life, but at the same time it has kind of flown by. I'm so desperate to feel better mentally that I'm considering actually praying in a church at some point, maybe I'll try it and see.
Another thing is that physically I feel both better and worse at the same time. I can go farther and climb higher without feeling the impact of it; but my feet start hurting and it's this deep, bruisey bone pain that hits from 20km onwards no matter what I do.
Also today my partner suggested I maybe implement some of the Camino rhythm into my working life. Turns out, you NEED good rest in order to function properly. Who knew?
Today has involved seeing simultaneously the best and worst in people. From sharing some chocolate with hospitaleros and other pilgrims, to loving and being loved by my partner on a LONG day where his chi was low and mine was only slightly higher, to Gary (same Gary as Day 1!) giving us a secret stamp in our credencial and selflessly offering us a poetry book that was dedicated to him, and all of my partner's expert advice on navigating this Camino as a lesson in listening to my body's cues.
Dissociation = Exhaustion, I have hit my limit. Foot/bone pain = exhaustion, I have hit my limit. And honoring those cues is important to create a system where I trust myself to take care of myself.
Also, trying to see this Camino for what it is - the magic is in the moment, I guess!
Conversely, I have also seen some of the worst stuff. Getting our beds at the albergue was a GROSS, cutthroat, competitive atmosphere. I'm somewhat ashamed of myself for even participating in it. Tiredness brings out the worst in people, and I think my partner and I have decided that we'd rather pay a tiny bit more each night to make sure we have a guaranteed bed.
For the first time since the Camino started, my partner and I have found ourselves feeling homesick, a feeling I wasn't expecting at all. I think it was only compounded by the mean lady at the bar who fully ripped an ice cream out of my partner's hands because he was taking "too long to choose", and then told me off because I responded by refusing to give her our business and going elsewhere.
It's not nice not to feel welcome, and it sucks to see how the Camino has almost become an invasive force in these towns where clearly our presence is a nuisance and the infrastructure just isn't there to accomodate so many pilgrims.
Hi! This is back-from-the-Camino Midnight with an update. I didn't write at all on these two days for various reasons. One is that my partner got a NASTY foot infection from the wet boots and rainstorm on day 2. I ended up having to take him to the hospital, where I also proceeded to have a panic attack (I really hate hospitals). They prescribed him an all-in-one ULTRA CREAM and it did the trick. He's all better now :), but we were told to take at least 48 hours off of walking, so we took the bus to Burgos and chilled there for a bit.
These two days were also probably the worst for my mental health. The depersonalization/derealization was severe for me and I ended up lying on the albergue bed in tears because I couldn't even finish making our sandwiches for the next day's lunch without freaking out. The rest in Burgos helped settle me though, and my mental health was a bit better for the rest of trip.
I am calling this a reset, a new way of approaching the Camino, hopefully with less overwhelming horror and overstimulation. 240km in, my partner and I took a full stop along the way. The day we decided this, I had to take him to the hospital in Santo Domingo de la Calzada because an infected blister on his foot was so filled with fluid that when he moved, he could feel the fluid shifting, which made him feel like his feet had turned to jelly. On trying to go to the pharmacy to get an antifungal because I was convinced what he had was ringworm, the pharmacist took a look and redirected us to the hospital.
The only problem is as soon as we set foot in the hospital I started freaking out, just another fruiting mushroom in the fungal network beneath the surface - what I mean by this is that I have been anxious to the point of calling myself unwell again since about April, and all the walking has made it come to a head in such a way that I have to force myself to gaze lightly on the world, because if I look at anything with eyes too open or for too long it's like I suddnly become too aware that I'm experiencing life itself and then there is no way to turn it off. The whole world is simultaneously in overly strong relief, and completely unreal, and everything is an alien planet - which is one of the loneliest and most hopeless feelings in the world. How can you look forward to anything ever again, how can you connect with any sensory objective reality, if it doesn't *feel* real?
My body responds with fear at random, or whenever I remember to check if I'm afraid in the first place. Life itself triggers my brain to release the flurry of chemicals begging me to run. So that's how I ended up sobbing in the albergue because my vision was simultaneously blurry and too sharp, and I felt like I was dying, but what is dying if nothing even feels like it was ever here in the first place? (For those of you who find this worrying, I have lived with on and off bouts of severe anxiety since I was 5, and its special friend DP/DR since 2019, so this is now new for me and I am just about still functional ATM.
So, in response to this and my partner's foot, we decided to take a break in Burgos. I do think it's the best thing we could have done. We saw the cathedral. I was able to lock into a different gear and take care of my partner. This morning I even went and did several chores without freaking out. (taking clothes to the laundromat, buying groceries, going to the pharmacy for painkillers, and scoping out the bucket hat offerings because our next two weeks of walking are on sunny flatlands and neither one of us brought head protection...)
My hope is that from here on out I'll be abke to stop and see things around me and remember them and feel them, rather than abstractly understanding that they are beautiful from behind that pane of glass I seem to have hid myself behind in an effort to keep myself from harm.
I am here. I am here. I am here.
Today was a day full of storks and nesting birds. I have decided that one of my favorite sights on the Camino so far has been seeing a massive stork flying through a cloudless sky with a branch in its beak. We saw some baby storks practicing their flapping, and I couldn't help but relate a bit (delicate and squinting against the blinding light).
My partner also noticed that storks seem to build their nests in sacred places. Old church bell towers, spires, statues of the virgin which now look as though she was wearing a massive hat.
We both figured, reasonably, that they just don't want to be bothered by people, and largely unopened churches are some of the best places not to be disturbed. A part of us wanted to believe that they have an internal radar for sacred things, for safe rest in the embrace of divinity. Something like what I might have felt when the Sister at the Monasterio Hermitage put her hand on my chest and told me to listen to what's in here.
I don't exactly know what to say about today other than it's hard to be surrounded by such extreme and overt natural and architechtural beauty and all I can feel is awful. The biggest moment of peace I had, I'd say, was taking a short nap at the albergue with my partner, and being able to rest my head on his legs and feel a bit cozy and fall asleep.
I also really enjoyed our break outside in Hontanas, and the endless flowers and church ruins were gorgeous.
I feel like I'm almost insulting the Universe. I've been given 33 days of unparalleled natural beauty, literally the world in flower, the world putting on its best clothes, and all I can do is freak out, and turn inward in a thought spiral that, at base, makes absolutely no sense.
I am eating delicious food but all I can do is wish for different food. I am offered (relatively) cheap accomodation and all I can do is wish it were cheaper still because I actually can't afford it - it's almost like I'm acting like I can't afford the world or life itself, but it's staring right at me! It's being given to me on a jewelled, dewy platter. And I'm just blinking and bleary-eyed and fixated on the strange fact of the resonance of my own voice in my skull. Like I'm scratching my ass in a temple.
I know that I also need to be patient with the weird vagaries of my anxiety, but can't I try to enjoy this process and open my heart to it?
It feels like my heart is locked tight and not letting any light in at all, but I want to stop insulting the world with this callous disregard for what is, truly, a gift.
Today started with the longest, steepest ascent since SJPDP and the struggle never actually *ended* per se. At no point did I really feel like I really locked in other than when my partner and I started talking about joy and memory and patterns of happiness and dissatisfaction with life. At some point I realized that I am often miserable in the moment and only happy in retrospect. We concluded with something like "negative emotions are so sticky in the present and so fleeting in the past". I want to change that so badly.
We passed through long, endless stretches of farmland. There was so much fluffy wheat all around that it looked like a giant, green rippling lake. I reached over to feel it and it was supple yet scratchy, like a horse's mane.
On a brighter note, I have been like 15% more able to survive thanks to taking beta-blockers which also seem to be helping me dissociate a bit less.
It's funny, I just asked my partner what he experiences in what i'm calling "death kilometres", the final stint of each walking day when the sun is beating down and you kind of get into this trance where all you can do is endlessly repeat the name of your destination in your head.
He says, for him, everything becomes more metallic and resonant, with a mythic clanging at every step. Everything, all colours, also become desaturated. It is all both too full and hollow at once. He can see beauty all around him but he doesn't have the energy to take it in.
For me, aside from endlessly repeating the name of the town we're going to, everything becomes too colorful and saturated and painted with the logic of martyrdom. I can almost see myself in third person with the facial expression of one of those suffering statues in a church.
I didn't actually write anything on this day in the moment because it was full-on but REALLY AMAZING, so I'll write something in here soon.
I don't really know what to say about today other than it feels like something finally broke within me - I cried on the trail. I finally felt able to tell my partner the full extent of how I've been feeling all this time and express the fear that has been following me effectively since the Camino started. A fear like a stalking wolf, biting at my heels and breathing down my neck.
Two twin fears, actually, that are deeply connected: the fear of dying, and the fear of utterly and completely and irreversibly losing my mind.
I feel like I finally released something I had been holding onto.
Today was also a big learning opportunity on lots of levels. For one, it's the single stretch we've done without seeing a town (17km).
One of the biggest realizations I have drawn from this whole process is that the Camino is not what it used to be at all (this is also constantly being explicitly verbalized by hospitaleros and other pilgrims alike). It has become much more systematized, and the volume of people arriving at once has also created a situation where albergue reservations become necessary. I am for sure part of the problem (don't complain about traffic if you are traffic)
At the same time, despite the sanitization of this whole thing, I am getting brief glimpses of what I imagine it used to be. Yesterday's chance to translate at the pligrim meeting and share stories from Pedro, the community dinner where everyone chipped in and the cheese was delicious and we finally ate some vegetables and blessed the table and sang songs and hoped that we all got to live to 100, and a 92 year old woman danced with maracas in the kitchen. It was beautiful
There are also brief moments of the "real Camino" in the Open Whole. A stork flying overhead as I cried on the trail and the moment of silence it afforded. The small miracle that I now recognize the shrill call of corn buntings everywhere. Goldfinches. Sparrows. The guy who ran the Sansol albergue and gave us apples and made the best paella ever. There have been small moments, and big ones. Lots of them, actually. I feel like I need to keep coming back to each day so I don't forget.