Flora and Fauna on El Camino

Oak leaf the morning after Christmas.

First, a caveat—it’s winter here in Europe, of course. So it’s not the best time to observe flora and fauna. Regardless, and even while trying to cultivate a philosophy that nature can be found everywhere—even in the tiniest crack of a sidewalk or under our fingernails, I have been underwhelmed with the natural world I’ve been observing along the camino. The time has come for me to explore my observations and speculations about humanity’s relationship with other species, one of my deepest concerns in life. But here, as usual, my primary angle will be on the spiritual aspects of this relationship, or lack thereof.

The Rio Lima on Christmas morning.

One of the best days we’ve had walking so far was Christmas day. We woke up in the picturesque Portuguese village of Ponte de Lima to find a clear and crisp morning awaiting us. It was a relatively short day of hiking—11 miles—so we took our time having coffee at a café before setting off. (Yes, there were plenty of cafes opens on Christmas morning. The one we chose happened to have lots of single old men smoking cigarettes. A Christmas tradition?) Then we took our time walking out of town to begin our climb up cobblestoned country lanes and dirt paths through vineyards, past red-roofed stone houses and churches, to the highest mountain pass on our route. 

The Rio Lima and another medieval bridge
leading to a chapel--Capela de San Antonio
dos Capuchos and our pilgrim hostel for the night

Gradually the houses dropped away and we entered solid forest. At least the European version of forest. Nothing but some sort of pine. Lots of it, of different-aged stands. Our trail criss-crossed over eroded gravel tracks. This was clearly a forest plantation on a regular harvest cycle. The view from the pass back over the river valley we had just climbed out of was vast and lovely, if one ignored the regular harvest patterns and lack of diversity in the forests, and the broken glass littering the exposed rock at the viewpoint. We were in our comfort zone—walking through the woods and mountains—and yet I couldn’t help but feel a bit smug about these Portuguese forests. These are the kinds of pine plantations that made our eyes glaze over when we had to walk through them on the Continental Divide Trail in the Rocky Mountains of Montana to get to the “real” wilderness areas where diverse forest ecosystems are allowed to flourish on their own. Generally speaking, there’s just not that kind of wilderness in Europe. You don’t visit Europe to get close to nature. It’s easy to write off Europe as having devastated its natural environment centuries ago.

Traditional Portuguese village.

View from the high mountain pass at
Alto da Portela Grande (410 m)

So this may seem like an odd place to speculate on humanity’s spiritual relationship with other species. I came on the camino because I was curious about whether such a pilgrimage might allow me to explore some of my spiritual beliefs. I’ve referred to Quakerism, Catholicism, Hinduism, and Taoism in my various blogs. But I have quickly run into one of my most profound problems with all of these isms—a lack of an in-depth theology of interspecies relationships. Of course, I don’t know as much about Eastern philosophies as I do about Christian theology, so there could be much there to explore. But my frame of reference continues to be the Euro-American world, try as I might to break out of it. Speaking of the same world, Mary Evelyn Tucker and Brian Swimme write,

“Many Americans do not relate to the environmental tragedy

personally because we have been living within a modern political and

economic story which values personal freedom and individual

competition, and a religious story that values personal salvation and

relationship to a Creator outside of the world. The larger community

of life is left behind in these worldviews where particular human

interests dominate, especially economic growth and progress. The well

being of land, air, water, and species are not seen as fundamental to

many Americans – politically, economically, or religiously. Thus they

are in denial or oblivious to the fact that we are causing a mass

extinction of species, toxifying the water and land, radically altering the

climate, and contributing to the causes of poverty around the world.

...Many environmentalists are trying to address this issue by

following Aldo Leopold’s directive to extend our sense of value and

moral responsibility to the biotic community. How do we do this?

...A traditional Biblical cosmology, then, is no longer adequate for

our times and the recognition of this is what is causing Jewish,

Christian, and Muslim theologians to reexamine the Genesis story.

Many of them are involved in redefining the role of the human in

relation to the growing environmental crisis. The reconstruction of

the meaning of stewardship versus dominion is at the heart of these

discussions.”

(Tucker and Swimme, 2009, “The Universe Story as a Basis for Multicultural Planetary Civilization, from The Coming Transformation: Values to Sustain Human and Natural Communities, eds. Kellert and Speth)

One of the many stone crosses along the Camino de Santiago,
piled with "offerings" of rocks from pilgrims.

Who is guiding whom?

The world religions seem to me to focus on giving us guidance on how to live well with our selves and each other in order to become closer to the divine. While we can all use such guidance, what about how to live well with other species? I’m talking spiritual theology here, not the rational approach  of ethics or ecology. Where are the spiritual guides who can tell us how to walk well among our non-human neighbors on the Earth? There are more and more scholars trying to answer questions like these, but I want to see someone developing theology for this purpose that includes specific rituals, such as pilgrimages, to help us develop our spiritual understandings of our place on the planet. There are models, of course, such as traditional and indigenous knowledge systems and pedagogies, or even self-proclaimed pagan “religions” like Wicca. (Those wacky Wiccans. Who takes them seriously? No one I know.) Tucker and Swimme are leaders in this arena of Christian theology, developing Thomas Berry’s idea of a “Universe story” that unites scientific and religious understandings of human life on the planet.

Hiking through hard frost on the morning after Christmas,
our last day in Portugal.

As with all my blog posts on this camino, I’m just barely scratching the surface of everything that could be and needs to be said here. I’m just trying to use the journey and the writing as a way to probe what it is I want to explore more deeply. This post has returned to my guiding environmental interests in life, somewhat in reaction to the frustration I frequently feel with too much “navel-gazing” and to the guilt that I feel that I generally don’t pay enough attention to my spiritual health, at least through traditional religious practices. I’m giving it an honest attempt!

Crossing the Rio Mino from Portugal to Spain, with
the beautiful town and cathedral of Tui on the Spanish side.

In the meantime, we’ve left Portugal behind and crossed into Spain, and the small patches of forests have actually changed a bit, gotten more diverse. I believe this has more to do with change in the land and climate (we’re actually closer to the coast now) than in the political boundary, but there are noticeable differences in the human-built environments as well, so who knows? In any case, I have stopped trying to dampen my habitual process of trying to make sense of the environment around me in case it’s actually counterproductive to bringing me closer to enlightenment. I don’t really have any intention of changing my belief that we all need to know as much about the natural world as possible in order to behave better as members of the global environment. So, if that means I won’t ever experience enlightenment because I can’t let go of my attachments to wanting to see a healthy environment around me, so be it.

Bom Natal from Ponte de Lima

Merry Christmas! Or as they say in Portuguese, Bom Natal!

We have spent the last three days meandering through the Portuguese countryside between Porto and the northern border with Spain. Since we left Vilarinho on the second day, our walking has gotten much more pleasant, with much of the route on back roads or country lanes. Vineyards abound, though the vines are bare for the winter. But other vegetation is lush, covering the landscape with verdant green fields or fruiting citrus trees to complement the red tile roofs of the houses. It is the rainy season, after all, though we’ve been blessed with cool, dry days for walking. Very cool, in fact. There was a hard frost yesterday morning.

Our guidebook referred to this as a "medieval" bridge, the
first of many like it along the route.

The few forests interspersed between fields and villages are predominantly eucalyptus, with some pines and oaks scattered among them. As usual, I find myself wanting to know more about the trees. There’s no doubt that they’re not original forest, as there’s very little of that anywhere in Europe. But the eucalyptus—is it a native species, or has it been introduced as a useful resource to harvest? There’s clearly lots of harvesting going on. I could find out more about this as I sit at a hostel with an internet connection and Google and Wikipedia at my fingertips, but I’ll leave it a mystery for now. This is part of the challenge for me, to take this opportunity to turn off the rational brain that always wants explanations. I may look down on cities as hotbeds of attachment to desires, but I have my own attachments in the “natural” world as well, such as need to know more about my surroundings. Is it possible that I set myself up for suffering by always wanting to know more?

Crossing one of the many stone footbridges along the camino.

A calla lily growing in a roadside ditch.

We’ve picked up a few Portuguese phrases, but I confess that our attempt has been rather half-hearted, since we’ll be in Portugal only a couple more days before crossing into Spain. It has been an interesting experience for me to feel so helpless with the language. I’ve never traveled in a country where either I didn’t speak at least a bit of the language or wasn’t with someone who spoke it for me. Old Bay has done it a few times, and he gets by just fine, but I am extremely uncomfortable trying to communicate with a  waiter or a check-out clerk with a blend of basic English, Spanish, and hand signals. It makes me very self-conscious, as I really dislike appearing incompetent. It’s a humbling experience, to be sure. It’s also rather isolating, which I suppose could be considered a useful phenomenon on this pilgrimage. It makes me feel oddly detached from the people and the places I’m meeting, emphasizing the sort of solitary journey that we’re on.

These little Santas are all over the place.

As I began writing this post, it was 7 AM on Christmas morning here in Ponte de Lima, Portugal. I considered attending mass at this very hour this morning, but decided against it. We stayed at a proper “Albergue Peregrino” (Pilgrim Hostel) last night. It seems that the closer we get to Santiago de Compostela, the more infrastructure exists for pilgrims. This hostel is very pleasant, with multiple floors and rooms, including a sort of sitting room where I am now, watching the sky lighten outside. There are three other pilgrims here with us, one of them being our “holy” friend whom we saw dressed in “monk’s garb” on our first day. I was very happy to see her so I could ask her more about her beliefs, especially about Catholicism.

One of the parish churches broadcasting Christmas music
into the surrounding countryside. Notice interesting sarcophagi
in the cemetery and the denuded hillsides behind. 

This pilgrimage is a Catholic tradition, after all, and we pass a parish church or chapel or cathedral in every village and town. Yesterday, many of them were broadcasting Christmas music from speakers in their steeples. With all of these Christian reminders of the Christmas season, it dawned on me that perhaps the best spiritual text for us to be reading now would be the Gospel of St. James. (Of course I did consider the Bible, but it’s a rather hefty book to bring on such a journey. Our nun friend is carrying a beautiful one, but added to the weight of this netbook, it would be a burden!) But what I should have done was bring at least the Book of James. Why St. James? Well, because the Camino de Santiago is in honor of him, after all, since he is supposedly entombed at the Cathedral in Compostela. In fact, the Portuguese route to Santiago is supposedly the route he followed when he journeyed through Europe preaching the gospel of Christ all those generations ago.

Also, it’s Christmas, for Pete’s sake! What better time to consider the message of Christ? Indeed, it also struck me that Mary and Joseph were on their own sort of pilgrimage at this time of year, to Bethlehem to register for the census, which is how they wound up in a cattle stall giving birth. I’ve always been especially interested in the Catholic fascination with Mary. It’s easy for a confused soul like me to think of her as a sort of goddess in her own right. I was set straight on that last night. Catholics do not consider her a goddess; they consider her a model to follow in their quest to bring Jesus into their hearts.

And yet I couldn’t bring myself to go to mass this morning. The early hour was certainly a deterrent, but I just can’t seem to get over the distaste I have for liturgy and symbolism that just isn’t accessible for me. It makes me feel more distant from the divine than closer to it. Plus, my spiritual beliefs have become very attached to the Earth, which may of course be an illusion, but that’s a discussion for another time.

Contemporary gargoyles? There are dogs at most houses,
and many of them serve guard duty on rooftops or
behind stone walls.

In any case, we cooked and shared a wonderful Christmas meal together with our three other pilgrim friends last night. Besides the “wandering monk” (which is what she calls herself), we were joined by a young couple from Germany, although the man is from California and has been going to school in Germany for three years. We talked about spirituality a bit over dinner. The German couple spent six months in India this year, so they had lots to say about Hinduism. But we mostly talked about that favorite subject of a mixed crowd of young international travelers—American politics. It all started with “Is Sarah Palin for real? Do Americans realize what a joke she is to the rest of the world?”

From the Virgin Mary to Sarah Palin. What a strange route we are traveling. 

El Primero Dia en El Camino: Porto a Vilharino, 25.2 kilometers, or 15.6 miles

The tao that can be told

is not the eternal Tao.

The name that can be named

is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.

Naming is the origin

of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.

Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations

arise from the same source.

This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.

The gateway to all understanding.

--Tao te Ching, translated by Stephen Mitchell, 1998

So begins the classic text written by Lao Tzu in China centuries before the birth of Christ. The nature of spiritual pursuit is that it has to be experiential. It’s one thing to read these words and think, “Okay, yeah, that makes sense, and it even kind of sounds like ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was Light.’” It’s another thing entirely to embody the understanding and wisdom of the word or the way or the tao. A pilgrimage is a quest to experience understanding that goes deeper than the word. Can we have that experience as we walk for ten days on the Camino de Santiago? Only God knows.

The view of Porto from a monk's watchtower.

John Brierley, the British author of the guidebook that we’re using for our pilgrimage, includes excellent directions for following the route and details about places to stay and eat along the way, but he also suggests ways to enhance the spiritual experience of the pilgrimage. In his intro, he writes,

"Take time to prepare a purpose for this pilgrimage. Start from the basis that you are essentially a spiritual being on a human journey, not a human being on a spiritual one. We came here to learn some lesson and this may be your opportunity to find out what it is. While life may be the classroom, pilgrimage is one way to master the curriculum. It will never be mastered by walking the physical path on its own."

At the beginning of his instructions for each stage of the guide, Brierley includes additional reflections. Introducing the section on Porto to Vilarinho, he writes,

"Everything you see with the physical eye is a distraction that will lead you away from the mystical path. We have become intoxicated with the things of this world and fallen into a deep stupor. We search for relics housed in stone buildings that mask the true home of the spirit."

*********************************

Bridges over the Rio Douro in Porto. This is the region
where port wine was born.

As I mentioned in my first post, I have not been entirely certain that I know my intention for this journey. I have some ideas, of course. Some of them are quite personal, so I have to come clean now; even if I figure out my intentions, I may not blog about them. What I intend to write about is the experiences and sights along the Camino that prompt some particular insight or reflection, helped with the visuals of Old Bay’s photos.

One of the many azulejos, or painted tile mosaics, on the
sides of buildings and churches all over Portugal.

So how has today’s journey, our first 15 miles, enhanced my understanding of the passages above? Well, first, the most obvious connection I made was with how happy I was to leave the tourist beat through the major cities and strike off on foot through the suburbs of Porto, putting some distance between us and the “physical distractions” and “manifestations of desire.” Cities exist to fulfill desires, it seems. I’m not a particular fan of cities. Big shock there. 

The view of the side of Igreja do Carmo from our bedroom
window in Porto, with the ubiquitous Christmas lights.

We were kept awake much of the night in Porto again last night, listening to the loud voices of young people partying in street-side cafes. How ironic that the guesthouse we chose was right on the pilgrimage route through the city, which starts at the main Porto Cathedral on a bluff above the Rio Douro (Gold River) and passes another tile-covered church—the Igreja do Carmo—which happened to be right across the street from our window. So we could simultaneously look at the gorgeous blue and white side of the church and listen to the revelers across the plaza at the café.

The Cathedral of Porto, where this section of the
Camino de Santiago begins.

Old Bay standing at the corner across from
Igreja do Carmo. Notice the yellow arrow
marking the route of the camino.

One benefit of the time we’ve spent in European cities is that it has allowed us to take the pulse of this constant juxtaposition of the traditional with the modern, the spiritual with the banal. It certainly hasn’t been any different on our first day of our walk. The traffic has been more than a little distracting. The route we’re following is supposedly “traditional,” but what may have been a quiet country lane even 40 years ago is now a ridiculously narrow artery through the countryside with cars and trucks flying by inches away from us as we try not to fall into the ditch between the road and the ancient stone wall between us and the field on the other side. Of course, it’s tempting to think that there was some spiritual golden era that existed everywhere and anywhere in the world, but it’s never been easy to choose a different path and challenge the status quo. Look what happened to Jesus. So I have had to remind myself that the speeding traffic is just a contemporary form of persecution of modern-day pilgrims.

Corvid standing in the Cathedral doorway
looking out at the start of the camino.

Speaking of which, we met our first pilgrim other than ourselves today, and as Old Bay put it, she appeared more holy than we feel. We were sitting in a café having sandwiches when she walked by. She was dressed in drab nun-like garb, carrying a rosary in her hands and a Gregory pack on her back. (Do I need to point out this particular juxtaposition?) We passed her a couple of hours later as she sat at a bus stop taking a break. Taking us by surprise, since we both thought she appeared older, she was about our age, and described herself as a “permanent pilgrim.” She spoke excellent English, although she is from Finland. She said she was carrying all of her worldly possessions on her back and had no money. She seemed sane, just dedicated to exploring an alternative route through life. I could have sat and talked with her for hours, but we moved on after a few short minutes. I hoped that we would see her at our pilgrim hostel tonight, but we’ve been here in Vilarinho for a couple of hours and haven’t seen her yet. She’s probably passed us by, which means we’ll likely see her again. This particular hostel doesn’t appear to be advertised anywhere other than in our guidebook, and I don’t think our pseudo-nun was carrying a guidebook, just following the yellow arrows painted on streetlamp poles and curbsides and walls to mark the way to Santiago.

Following the traditional camino route
along a modern highway.

Our first night in a pilgrimage hostel. Ah, for a wood stove...

Incidentally, our hostel is kind of scary. It will be an experience in denial of desire. It’s free of charge, first of all, so that should indicate something. It’s an unheated concrete room at the back of a school. It has two metal bunk beds with bare, moldy mattresses. There is a sink and a stove, with a bathroom in another room down the row, but we’re not planning on cooking, or bathing, if cold water is the only option. Our room in Porto for two nights was pretty spare too—basically an attic room with a bed and a sink under a sloped ceiling—but it was luxurious and charming compared with this. We’ll see if the sleepless night last night and the bottle of wine that we’ve just finished at the local café will lead us to slumber nevertheless.

Christmas is almost upon us, and I'm falling behind on our posts.

Boa noite,

Corvid

Fado in Lisbon and Castelos in Sintra

This post will be slightly different, focusing on Old Bay's photos more than Corvid's writing, as she's not feeling very inspired to contemplate spiritual insight while we continue to visit main tourist areas. We plan to start the camino in Oporto tomorrow, but in the meantime, we're in Starbucks in Lisbon watching the terrible weather outside. It's snowing everywhere else in Europe but raining here near the coast, which is part of the reason we chose this route--milder climate and fewer mountains. In the meantime....

Welcome to Lisboa! This is the main plaza on the riverfront of the Rio Tejo. This used to be the old port where everyone arrived,with the Arco da Victoria to greet them, but we arrived via train a little out of town then took a bus here. 

Main street of Lisbon, the pedestrian-only Rua Augusta, with the Arco do Victoria at the end. Perhaps it won't be surprising to those who have studied romance languages that it's not very difficult to read Portuguese, but the pronunciation is unintelligible, at least to Corvid.

Rua Augusta at night. This was a much quieter city than Madrid, and more “blue collar.” The folks on the street weren’t afraid to wear bright colors instead of the uniform blacks and grays we saw in Madrid. Corvid felt much more comfortable in Lisbon in her hiking clothing.

Corvid on the balcony of our room in a small "pensao", not exactly a hotel or a hostel, but a guest house with private rooms. Ours had a shower stall, a sink, and what appeared to be a urinal all in the room just a couple feet from the end of the bed.

View from the same balcony at night. Clearly the Europeans know how to decorate for Christmas. Notice the mosaic tile cobblestone streets for which Lisbon is famous.

More cobblestoned streets as we wandered around cozy neighborhoods, stopping for a glass of wine or to get out of the way of a tram speeding by.

We returned to the same neighborhood in the evening to attend a fado performance in a local restaurant. Fado is a famous and distinctive form of Portuguese music, and lots of Lisboetas grow up singing or playing it. It was the highlight of our visit to Lisbon.

When we purchased a fado CD from one of the performers, they insisted that we take our picture with them. The gentleman to the left had one of the best "amateur" voices we've ever heard.

One last photo of Lisbon at night before we continue our exploration of the Lisbon area. When Corvid visited Europe during the summer after her first year of college, she and her companions were on a constant quest for the best city fountains. There were many contenders (e.g. the Mannikin Pis in Italy), but we settled on the "mother of all fountains" in Vienna. Madrid and Lisbon have offered their own gems on this trip.

And now for a complete change of pace as we leave Lisbon the next morning to visit the picturesque village of Sintra to the west, closer to the Atlantic coast.

A view of Sintra from one of the hillsides above the village.  The Atlantic is visible in the distance. 

The Moorish Castle on the hill overlooking Sintra. Remember that the Moors ruled this part of Europe after Rome collapsed and before Christians kicked them out. Sadly, we learned that St. James (for whom the Camino de Santiago exists) was the patron saint for the early Christians who fought against the Moors. 

One of the many gifts left by Moorish culture is the ceramic art common all over Portugal now. This tile mosaic was on the side of a wall in the town of Sintra, depicting the Palacio de Pena, another impressive structure overlooking the town.




And one more locale before we leave you for the time being...

We decided to take short bus ride to visit the western-most point of Europe, Cabo da Roca.

(Corvid took this photo, which is why it's dark and not as nice as the above, but we want to have some photos of Old Bay, after all. Also, she wouldn't let him buy the certificate that proved he was there, so he got this instead.) 

Finally, for those other nature-lovers out there, we leave you with this bright image of the very interesting succulent vegetation at Cabo da Roca, which clearly doesn't mind the windy, rainy weather one bit.
Next stop, Oporto and El Camino de Santiago.

Madrid: The Hedonistic Capital of Spain

We chose an unlikely place to start our journey. We flew to Madrid rather than to somewhere in Portugal, mostly because we decided it made the most sense to fly into and out of this major international airport rather than piece together an itinerary to and from lesser airports. So our plan has been to spend a day or two in Madrid, then take a train to Lisbon to visit that city as well before catching a bus north to Porto (or Oporto in Portuguese), which will be the start of our actual pilgrimage.



Our first photo of Madrid, at our first bus stop, at the
Plaza de Cibeles with the Palacio de Comunicaciones



We arrived in Madrid midday yesterday, with plenty of time to figure out public transportation to the city center, where the youth hostels and major historic sites are located. Spain greeted us with crisp weather, and it felt wonderful to do a bit of walking with our packs on our backs to work out the airplane kinks. We wound up at the International Youth Hostel Posadas de las Huertas, on one of the main arteries to the city center, El Calle de las Huertas, and booked a room. The generous host gave us a four-person bunk room all to ourselves for the rate of two. Our room was on the third floor with a balcony opening to the main street below, a narrow cobblestoned affair that was already deep in shadow by mid-afternoon.

After a quick nap, we wandered around for the evening, taking in the medieval architecture and the hubbub of the city and having a filling meal of the popular tapas style to be found all over the city. We returned to the hostel and crashed fairly early in the evening, since we hadn’t gotten much sleep on the airplane, foregoing the free sangria offered by the hostel kitchen to kick off an evening of bar-hopping by the younger guests. We also decided to skip a flamenco show, since the ones we found at local bars all started at 10 PM or later.



A market where we had some lunch



At two in the morning, we were both awoken by what sounded like a riot in the street with simultaneous loud voices out in the hallway. I quickly figured out that the guests in the hallway were just chatting, and I tried not to be irritated that I had forgotten my earplugs. However, the noise in the street was more baffling. After a few minutes of no change in the volume or timbre of the noise, I got out of bed and went to the balcony door, opening it and peering out below. I was utterly astounded at the hordes of revelers meandering up and down the street, their raised voices bouncing and echoing along the narrow street, up the sides of the stone buildings and into the windows of every resident living above the bars and clubs at street level, the ones that were all closed up earlier or that looked like peaceful places to have a glass of wine at the end of a workday. This noise I chalked up to part of the experience and my lack of ability to sleep as due to jetlag, and I climbed back into bed refusing to get bent out of shape.

Pablo Picasso's Guernica at Centro de Arte Reina Sofia

Three wakeful hours later, I finally decided to pull out my iPod, which I am so glad I decided to bring. Before I succumbed to that, I tried reading our guidebooks, since it didn’t seem like the right time for the Tao de Ching or the Bhagavad-Gita. (When is the right time for those books, anyway? So far, not on a plane, and not in a hostel in Madrid at 3 AM. Hopefully on the camino.) I finally read the section of our Lonely Planet guide to Spain a bit more closely. Over and over again the authors mention of the night life of Madrid, describing the constant party scene that gives the place its hedonistic reputation. They write, “Being in Madrid can be a bit like watching a party through a plate glass window, not feeling entirely sure what all the fun is about.” They couldn’t have described better my feeling as I stood watching my breath condense on the inside of our balcony window, feeling sure that to get the most out of this trip, I should really get dressed and join the party on the street below. Maybe if I had something to wear other than my hiking clothes…

Plaza Provincia at dusk

A Pooka? Street performer at Plaza Mayor

Instead, I put in my earbuds and queued up the audiobook that I started about six weeks ago and sort of stalled out on –Don Quixote. When weighing whether to bring the iPod, I factored in the hope that perhaps my interest in the book might be revived by actually being in Spain. Well, it effectively put me to sleep at 5 AM, after which I slept fitfully for a few hours. I bought earplugs the next day. (Try figuring out how to say that in Spanish.)

As for the rest of our visit in Madrid, it has been full and rewarding, from seeing original Picassos and Dalis at the Museo de Arte Reina Sofia to strolling around El Parque de Buen Retiro (like Madrid’s Central Park) to being entertained by street performers and Christmas lights at the Plaza Mayor. Old Bay’s photos do these treasures justice more than my words can. But we’re glad to be on our way to Portugal now via an overnight train. We’re eager to start our walk and offset our city excitement with some small town strolls. But first, to Lisbon, where I’ll be bamboozled with the shift from Spanish to Portuguese. My one month of Portuguese classes in high school can’t hold a candle to the years of studying Spanish and four months spent in Costa Rica.

Plaza Mayor at night

The Tao of Packing

I hate packing, so I procrastinate. After years of traveling together on backpacking trips or international vacations or long flights from Alaska to visit our families on the East Coast, we’ve perfected the art of packing light. Sort of. It’s not easy. Old Bay is better at it than I. On a trip like this, our inclination to pack light has its rewards; the less we pack, the less we have to carry on our walk. So what are we bringing, anyway?

First of all, there’s the question of the books. I decided on the Tao de Ching, since I already own a lightweight copy. At the last minute, I grabbed the Bhagavad-Gita off the shelf next to it. I’ve had it for years. Never read it. Maybe now is the time. It’s only a couple of ounces. But it has dawned on me that on this very Christian pilgrimage route that maybe it’s a good time to consult with the early Christian mystics. Too bad I don’t have time to do any research on that, so maybe we’ll come across something appropriate en route. In any case, now that I’m sitting at the airport, I realize that I haven’t brought any light reading. I don’t relish the idea of reading the Gita on the flight over the Atlantic. So I’m thinking of picking up a copy of Jonathon Franzen’s new novel, Freedom, which seems to be all the rage. But that’s a large hardcover book, so maybe not.

What I am bringing instead of heavy books is my netbook. I experienced some angst over this, especially since I already have two other pieces of electronic crap—an iPod and my digital camera. All of these things come with power cords, which need a special adaptor for the electrical outlets in Europe. But the netbook made the cut because I imagine being able to make blog posts with it. I’m making the choice for you, our readers. By doing this blog in the first place, I figure we’re already compromising the spiritual purity of our pilgrimage, or at least adapting it to our modern world, so I’m going whole hog.

And frankly, we don’t have a lot else to bring with us. Since we’ll be staying in pilgrim hostels and walking through towns that have lots of food options, we don’t need to carry a tent or cooking gear. It’s not like real backpacking. We have silk travel sheets, but the hostels will probably provide bedding too.

The biggest challenge has been the clothing, since we’re not entirely sure what kind of weather to expect. We have a minimal amount of clothing, most of which can be layered. I did insist that we stop at REI for a new softshell jacket for me to bring along, and soon after felt very spoiled as we passed a woman begging at a major intersection of a major US city. This whole trip may be a pilgrimage, but it’s an indulgence, no question about that. We’re not early Christians making our one expected lifetime pilgrimage in which we put everything on the line for our religious duty.

However, we did leave some important things at home, including our dogs. They’re with Old Bay’s parents. You can check us all our in our “holiday” photo, which we managed to take the morning before we left but did not manage to actually send to family and friends in traditional Christmas-card style. So, for those of you reading, here ya go!

If we're not growing, what are we doing here anyway?

On December 15, Old Bay and I will fly to Spain then take the train to Portugal to begin a 10-day (or so) walk to the Cathedral of St. James in Santiago, Spain. We're using one of the many route options for the Camino de Santiago. This early Christian pilgrimage has burgeoned in popularity over the last decade or so, serving as inspiration for popular books such as Paulo Coehlo's The Pilgrimage. Our route will begin in Portugal and end in Spain, at Santiago, Insha'Allah.

There are multiple purposes for this blog. It will serve as a conventional travelogue for our friends--real and virtual--to share Corvid's writing and Old Bay's photos. It will give us experience with blogging, as this will be our first full-fledged attempt. It will also provide a scaffold for us to share our personal reflections on the spiritual pilgrimage that is the purpose of the Camino.  

I cast about briefly for a name for our blog that would capture these multiple purposes, but eventually settled on the rather bland title you see above. We've used these trail names on previous long-distance walks in the US and it seems fitting to carry them to Europe with us, although we don't anticipate hiding our identities from the real people that we meet on the Camino, just from our anonymous online followers, if such a thing is possible.

However, a few days ago, one of my spiritually-minded friends asked a rhetorical question that almost became the title of our blog. I was attempting to describe the spiritual purpose of this journey, which is a bit of a stretch given that Old Bay and I don't necessarily share a similar world view on this matter, and I'd firmly place myself in Liz Gilbert's peer group (Eat, Pray, Love). I commented that we had some sort of intention but that I wasn't entirely sure what it was. In her supportive response, she ended her musing with, "If we're not growing, what are we doing here anyway?" That sounds like a good intention to me.

In preparation for this trip, I've been asking for recommendations for books or readings to bring that can serve as daily mediations on our walk. I've shared a few of them and some of my own ideas below; I'd love to hear some feedback from our friends on these, including additional recommendations. Remember that we don't want to carry a lot of weight.

The Way is Made by Walking: A Pilgrimage along Camino de Santiago, by Arthur Paul Boers. I actually ordered this one and have it already. I'm not sure we'll carry it with us, but I wanted to include it on the list for those readers who may be interested.

Tao te Ching, by Lao Tzu. This is a classic, of course, but I haven't made a committed attempt at digesting it since college, so it seems this might be a good time.

Practice the Presence of God, by Brother Lawrence. This and many of the following recommendations came from my Quaker Friends.

Reflections from the North Country, by Sigurd Olson. One person thought this one might be appropriate because its outdoor nature writing might appeal to Old Bay.

For All my Walking, by Santoka Taneda. Another Quaker recommended this one; I had never heard of it before.

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki. The same person as above recommended this one, which I have heard of.

Indian Tales (California Legacy), by Jamie De Angula. Another recommendation with which I'm not familiar.

Simple Abundance, by Sarah Ban Breathnach. Another recommendation from someone whose mother reads this every day. It's geared towards women, so it might not appeal to Old Bay. Then again, maybe it will.

The Ringing Cedars series, by Vladimir Megre, about a Russian woman named Anastasia and her spiritual insights.

And finally, there are two authors who were recommended without specific books: Elizabeth Gray Vining (a Quaker about whom Amazon doesn't appear to know much) and Mary Oliver (a very well-known poet).

Salud,

Corvid