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."

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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