Moments on The Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain

      In 2004, my friend Wendy and I walked across a part of Northern Spain. There is a trail that is marked with yellow arrows that starts in France and goes all the way across the upper portion of Spain. The route is called Camino de Santiago. Every year hundreds of people take this trek and it is the experience of a lifetime. Your only job everyday is simple. Walk. We got up early in the mornings and ate whatever we could get our hands on and then put on our backpacks and walked. The most beautiful scenery was seen and the most amazing people from all over the world were met. I still talk to some of the people I got the pleasure to know on this trip. Most days we walked a very long distance and some days it was a tough hike, but it was always the best day. At night, we slept in Catholic churches. Sometimes there were beds and sometimes we slept on church floors. Inside this free, beautiful, and inspiring time, I had the chance to write. Here is some random words and experiences along the journey.

-Even if you don't know what you want, buy something- to be a part of the exchanging flow. Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah. It makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.

-We woke up at 6:45am and began walking at 7:15am. This is my 4th day of walking so my muscles are shot. We were suppose to run into a town called Torres along the way to eat. No luck because we somehow passed it. Around 1:30pm we came upon the city, Viana. Thank God! I am starving! We walked right into a big beautiful church and the man at the door pulled us in. What a loving loving man-every step was worth it. They feed us a wonderful meal and then we pulled mats out onto the floor of this beautiful church and fell asleep. I love drinking the hot leche (leche is milk) and I love The Camino. Good night.

-You are everything you are looking for.

-We are walking with our new 'old man' friend from Ireland, John, and he is drunk on booze and hilarious! Today we walked 30 km and I am exhausted and smelly. We finally found our end point and Wendy and I are now crammed into a tiny space with other stinky people. It's 'lights out' at 10pm. I have come to enjoy 10pm because I can make Wendy laugh loudly by just whispering a few words into her ear. Her laughter makes everyone yell, “Shut Up”, which in turn makes me laugh. I am 6 years old.

-I was walking in the hot sun to the next town wondering this thought: Do you think the people that do the most harm to others have to come back in their next life, as a saint, to make it up to them? I have no wild ideas of reincarnation, but that thought could make judging people a different experience altogether.

-I noticed that people get up way to early to walk ahead of us and I have discovered its because my snoring is so loud, that no one wants to sleep at the same place as me. Ha! They race ahead hoping to find a quieter environment to sleep in. Come on. I'm not snoring like a Hippo on purpose.

-My feet hurt today!

-So a couple nights ago we stayed at an old leper hospital from the 1200's. We found it in the middle of a field and they happened to have beds for us to sleep in. Outside the hospital, there is a pool that lepers used for healing themselves that is beautiful and made of stone. The water fills up this pool from a spring and it is the coldest water I have ever felt! We decided we were going to jump in the pool and cool off. I got to the edge and hesitated because I knew it was going to be so shocking. I finally nerved up and jumped in. As my flesh touched the water, I literally bounced out of it and over the other side, as if the water was a trampoline. I flew into the ditch next to the pool, and landed on my arm pretty hard, but that did not stop me from laughing my ass off! I can't even say I was in the freezing cold water for 3 seconds. It was like the coldness threw me out of the pool. Wendy had a great laugh over this event. I didn't know I could move that fast, but at that moment I had super flying powers. Later, we took a nap outside in our sleeping bags and watched a cotton-like seeds fall from trees all around us. This trip has been ten thousand experiences a second. Life is amazing!