crossing paths with the three wise men

November 6, 2017 / wanderinglightning / 0 Comments

Sometimes, we get lost. I had lots of time to think about this today, as I kept recovering from multiple missteps. The Camino giveth yellow arrows, and the Camino taketh away.

I got lost at the edges of cities, trying to find my path where it crosses those of others, knowing it existed but unclear how to find it. Like what to do with your life: sometimes, you take a wrong turn, or follow a sign that leads you wrong. Vandalism covered or changed some of the arrows I needed – signs twisted, yellow scratched out or brushed over with gray. I sighed as I admitted I had lost my bearings yet again.

The trick was to ask for help. However, this was not my forte. It was not even my baseline – it was my Achilles’ heel. I was a go-it-alone girl in a kick-you-when-you’re-down world. But now I was getting lost in strange cities in a foreign country with minimal language skills. I felt a persistent niggling in the back of my mind to consider what vandalism to my heart had obscured the arrows I needed in life to find my way.

Sucking up the useless pride of the hopelessly lost, I asked for help. And since I seemed to walk alone so much, I asked for directions over. And over. And over. When I felt like I was headed in the wrong direction, I stopped, apologized to some local person living their life, and asked the way. Typically, I was about to miss my turn if I hadn’t asked.

Traveling with others, it was so simple. I exchanged listening to Americans discuss TV shows for the surety of multiple heads finding the way together. So much easier. Except that I don’t watch TV and had no idea what they were talking about. I preferred my solo time. Peregrina sola.

By the time I got to Itziar, I was so tired. And alone. Without thinking, I followed the yellow and white stripes that often replaced the yellow arrows through towns. Unfortunately, these particular stripes marked routes joining the Camino from other mountains. But without arrowheads, you don’t know that. And without asking, you sure don’t know that. So I followed them up the wrong mountain.

That’s right. For a couple of hours, I hiked a steep, rocky path in the completely wrong direction. I heard a vehicle, and turned behind me to see that workmen were hauling building materials to the top of this mountain with a huge ATV truck of some sort. One guy hopped off and asked me where I was headed, where I came from today. When I told him I came from Zarautz and was going to Deba, I gestured up over the mountain.

“Deba? No Deba,” he responded, pointing clearly up my mountain – which I had nearly summited. He pointed back down to the last town, traced his finger completely across the valley, then over the opposite mountain instead. “Deba.”

I heaved a heavy sigh, then smiled wanly. “Gracias. Buenos dias.” What else was there to do?

So I walked back down the long trail, humming, “We’re on the road to nowhere…,” which seemed to be my official theme song now. I got down to the road leading into town. I stopped at the gated house of a family and called out, “Ayuda por favor? Necessito agua, por favor.” Judging by my beet-red face, heavy backpack, and obvious air of exhaustion, the mother took my empty water bottle, wisely left this dusty, desperate peregrina outside the locked gate, and brought back cold, clear water. “Muchas gracias, muchas gracias,” I panted, then turned and gulped sloppily. Lookin’ good, sister, I imagined 17-year-old me saying from beside me. You have this thing totally handled.

Stowing my water, I started walking again, when an older man hailed me from the bus stop, walking across the road to me. “Peregrina?” he called, or his word meaning such, as there were so many languages in this part of Spain. “Is something wrong?” I think he asked. “Where you go?” I figured out.

“Deba.” He looked puzzled. I pointed, exasperated with myself, up the wrong mountain I had just descended. “Camino de Santiago de Deba? NO.” I pointed across the right mountain. “Deba.”

He looked genuinely concerned, and sympathetic to this clearly incompetent pilgrim sweating profusely under her burden of self-sufficiency. “Autobus de Deba,” he told me, as if solving the matter. “Un minuto.”

“No no,” I protested.

“Un minuto.”

“Camino a pié,” I protested again, as if I hadn’t already walked enough kilometers to more than match the distance ahead. I then looked at my watch: it was 5:30pm. “Albergue,” I said in resignation, watching the second hand sweeping away my chance for a bed that night.

Thus did my savior San Juan pay for my bus with his bus card, as his friends San Antonio y San Fernando chimed in, helping me stuff my backpack into a seat. They kept up a cheering, happy banter, and told the bus driver where I needed off, the tourist office. I kissed Juan and Antonio goodbye as Fernando, who kept hoping and asking if I spoke French, walked me to the tourismo.

The guía in Deba was matter-of-fact. “The albergue municipál is full – completo. But you can get a start on tomorrow if you walk to the next albergue.”

“How far?”

Five kilometers away.”

A 5K at the end of a day of mountain hiking. That’s only three miles, only three miles, I kept telling myself. I arrived at my albergue at 8:30pm – where I found a plate of hot food waiting for me.

Asking for help is not a weakness. We need each other, like I had needed the construction man’s pointed advice, the mother’s clear water, and the gift of being transported by the saints. Guidance merely keeps you on the way; it doesn’t walk the walk for you. These were all gifts, of openness, empathy, and compassion. They all brought me clarity.

I felt like I had gotten away with my final act of peregrina obstinada, gotten off easy, and vowed I had learned my lesson about asking for help. If I hadn’t, I would have blown out my Achilles’ heel for real, on an unnecessarily steep and rocky mountain of my own choosing. I could feel 17-year-old me grinning at me as we walked along toward the albergue in the descending twilight, putting a tentative arm around my waist. Such a crazy rebel, she scoffed affectionately, our feet aching.

As I said when I kissed Fernando goodbye: “c’est la vie, no?”

three Basque saints, kind upon their shining thrones
in the plexiglass bus stop
erremos?
peregrina?
he calls to me, San Juan crossing the road
who pays for my burden and my mistakes
and my bus fare to Deba
they are all baptized in vino tinto
Rioja!!
and smell as bad as I do
smell as
saints who’ve lived
San Antonio sits across the bus aisle
he encourages me in my doubtful moments
and gives me a smile
to carry along the Camino
San Fernando offers words and passion
jokes and laughter
safeguarding my passage
through the twists and turns
of this town
this life
walks me to the bridge beyond
and gives me my name as a canto
I offer back a kiss goodbye
each one my humble
gracias
for the gift
of coming to my rescue

go with the flow

November 4, 2017 / wanderinglightning / 0 Comments

center of the shell, an ear to hear
all my longings all my stories
center of the shell, an ear to hear
all my days

center of the shell, must I be
at the mercy of these waters
center of the shell
will you wash away with me

— chorus of “Center of the Shell”

The Camino offers guidance, if you’re willing to follow it. Yellow arrows point the way, formal etched Camino signs direct you with kilometers to the next village, bronze scallop shells are sometimes embedded in sidewalks to escort you through towns, plus you carry a guidebook, and sometimes can even find detailed local maps at albergues or tourist offices.

It hit me as I hiked along: I’d gotten more guidance from the Camino in the couple days I’d been walking than I’d gotten from my mother in a lifetime. Such a jarring revelation, seemingly out of nowhere. She was always ready with judgment, but never guidance for you. For me. Maybe it was easier to say “I told you so” than it was to come up with original words of love and inspiration.

I wasn’t enraged by it any more. With age, and a succession of 50-minute hours with counselors, I had come to understand her hard story growing up. Which had become my hard story growing up. And while I understood the story, I remained convinced that we can choose how we respond to our circumstances. You don’t have to choose harsh judgment and critical condemnation. Yet here I was, walking a Catholic pilgrimage route, images of a crucified Christ, judged and condemned, greeting me from every cathedral and graveyard like a sad uncle in the corner of the family home.

I knew my mother just practiced what was preached to her, just another sinner in the hands of an angry family god. I understood it – but I needed to get beyond it. I had written scathing poetry, sung disappointed songs, given her ultimatums, boundaries, and the silent treatment. Nevertheless, here she was, following me onto the Camino like a stray dog. I was so sick of being sick of her.

Time heals all wounds. What a lie. Time just makes them old wounds. I had tried scourging them away, with anger and fiery words and storming through my stormy younger years. Seventeen-year-old me gave me the wry, then melancholy, smile of a comrade-in-arms. A good job of choosing how we respond to our circumstances, she chided. Hmm…point taken, I thought anew as I trudged up another hill. The self-righteousness of the abused and neglected can become oppressive in its own right. Martyrdom without a higher cause is just another burden of resentment to carry over many years.

Writing every day, I felt my core sense of self strengthening, like working muscles grown soft. The fluidity of time on the Camino was taking me back to my earlier days as a poet, those times of ragged words hoarse in the throats of true believers, shouting our glory across summer nights of crowded coffee house alley cat back fences, egging each other on with vivid portraits of muddy love and tongue-rolling sex and the depths of our hearts we knew nothing about, young word junkies floating strung out and serene after the violence of stabbing performances of imagery and sound. I remembered being 26, 27, 28, getting better with age, reading at invitation-only events, the microphone close and sensual, the spotlight a waterfall washing me away to nothing but my voice.

My identity became fluid. The hospitaleros, the volunteers who ran the albergues, kept questioning my age when I checked in. One finally told me, “Fifty-one? No, you are forty-one, or forty-two at the most.” I was aging down, growing younger on the Camino. I walked past farms and smelled manure and silage and cut hay fields drying in the sun. I’d say out loud, “Remember the farm? Remember?” to my younger self. I imagined her responding with a snort, flipping her hair out of her eyes as she watched her boots scuffing along the trail, Um, did it always smell like fish?

A farm by the sea: a dream I never knew existed. Growing up on 300 acres in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the Midwest, I was a bound child, landlocked to flat plains, no mountains, no oceans. But my adventurous spirit found release in the one great expanse of wilderness available – the sky. That endless sky was the source of our lives on the farm, and walking out past the fence lines, I would simply let go and lose myself in it.

When all you see around you is more open space around you, it feels like time is standing still in a breathless quiet, or stretching long and lean like fast-moving clouds on a high wind, or piling day upon day upon year upon year into thunderheads of a life that appears dark and heavy. I learned to read the sky, to watch for rain, and the eerie gray-green of a tornado about to descend, about to plunge my small world into blackness. I had no experience of the ocean’s power, to give life and to take it. But I knew the vastness of the sky, by sunlight, cloud, or stars. A sea above me, bringing reminders of its waters with every rainfall, beckoning me to find my way, navigate my life with every constellation I learned to name in the pure darkness found in the middle of the middle of nowhere.

this road leads me
out to rocky beaches
this beach leads me
into stormy seas

center of the shell, an ear to hear
all my longings all my stories
center of the shell, an ear to hear
all my days

center of the shell, must I be
at the mercy of these waters
center of the shell
will you wash away with me

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

I was delighted to see the water station set up by a man who built his own rickety table-and-altar affair. He had his own sello that you self-stamped onto your credencial. As I rested and drank, I met a local retiree named Rudolfo, engaging even though he had little English, so we did our best to communicate. He wanted to keep in contact by Facebook, and when I said I had no Facebook, he asked if we had internet in Colorado.

The flow of communication and guidance can be similar. We want to be understood, yet without learning the words for our experience and dreams, without the subtleties of tone to convey our feelings and hopes, we cannot express our thoughts or questions effectively, so we start guessing, making assumptions, or getting frustrated and walking away. When this happened with Rudolfo, it was hilarious. When it happened with others in my life, the distance was immeasurable and aching. I needed guidance, and not just about my Spanish vocabulary.

As if in answer to my contemplation, I came upon a natural spring pouring forth along the Camino. Signs on boulders attested to the water’s purity, and were painted so similarly to the rickety water station that I wondered if the same person watched over us, we thirsting peregrinos. I filled a half-empty water bottle and took a taste off the top. The water was clear and slightly mineral-tasting. I sat and had a snack and read my guidebook under the green trees, birds singing everywhere.

When it began to drizzle a mist of rain, I resumed walking. I was alone. I hiked along slowly, absorbing the pace of the wet forest around me. Everywhere, water dripped from leaves that glistened in the late afternoon light. My feet were beginning to ache after another day of long distances. I stopped, resting, listening. As I was leaning on my walking stick, drinking from my water bottle, a man appeared from behind me on the trail. He smiled, and I smiled back, offering, “Hola.” He continued to smile, and stopped to take a drink from his own water bottle. His black beard was thick, his black curly hair beginning to gray, and his dark eyes – unquestionably kind. He asked me something I did not catch, and as we asked two- and three-word questions, we quickly found that he spoke Portuguese, and I spoke English, plus my handful of Spanish words. I gestured to myself and said, “Barbara.” He touched his heart and answered, “Hernani.”

Yet I understood that he, too, was a peregrino, like me. I could feel his gentle kindness and concern for my slow pace and sore feet, which we both pointed at and spoke about in words the other could not fully understand. But we got the gist of each other’s meaning: compassion, acceptance, friendship. He made sure I had water and could walk the rest of the way, and I gave him my thumbs-up and smile, so he smiled back, waving and saying sweetly, “Buen camino.”

“Buen camino,” I returned. Then he led the way forward, and I followed, long after Hernani disappeared from view. I followed Hernani’s “good way.” I followed his simple kindness. I followed the way he named himself as he touched his chest, as if his name and his essence emanated from his heart. I followed him through a magical forest landscape filled with huge ferns and wild hydrangea, the arched stone of a Roman aquaduct rising from the lush greenery and carrying me across the final hill as if floating its long-ago waters. I was learning to find my way, which in Portuguese is to “encounter my camino.”

My path was starting to show itself to me. And I was learning to navigate by what shines from within, with guidance from those who could shine their light upon my way. My creativity itself was stepping forward, as words began to flow again after years of neglect; instead of dwelling on ancient history, I found poetry and lyrics filling my mind, humming a new tune down the trail.

When I reached the beautiful old building that was the albergue, I found it immaculate. I washed my clothes, hung them on the line, then after Compeed for my blisters, walked carefully down to the beach in my flipflops. Children played in the shallow water as new surfers practiced with their boards in the easy waves. I got a tasty supper of pinxchos and local wine and sat at a table just off the beach, watching the sea for hours. All I saw around me was more open space around me, and time stood still and quiet. I stayed until the sun set, merging sea and sky, the first stars appearing over the water.

what way can I
safely make the journey
what boat can I
build to sail the seas

center of the shell, an ear to hear
all my longings all my stories
center of the shell, an ear to hear
all my days

center of the shell, must I be
at the mercy of these waters
center of the shell
will you wash away with me

— “Center of the Shell”

of bamboo, burros, and butterflies

October 27, 2017 / wanderinglightning / 0 Comments

the butterflies of Spain

delight

to bring us

with them

over fences

into flowers

I did not expect Guadalupe to kick my butt. On the first day of the Camino del Norte route, I left Irun a bit overconfident on the route toward the Santuario de Guadalupe. I thought that since I could run three miles and hiked the Rockies, I was conditioned. Totally wrong. These mountain trails went straight up – one after another. And it was hot – before 8am. And sadly, my delicious coffee was not enough to power me; ditto the two little packaged muffins provided by the albergue.

Usually, I ran on fumes. A handful of trail mix, an apple, or a couple spoonfuls of peanut butter on the way out the door. And of course, coffee. I never drank it until I turned 24. That was the year I became a single parent of three, all preschoolers. I later became a single parent of four. And then a single parent of five. I created a comeback line, to hide my own frustration as well as my sense of being judged: “Well, girl’s gotta have a hobby….” It often got a good laugh, and I could stand taller, as if these broken vows and broken homes for my children were fine by me. In one sense, they actually were fine: I stood for a certain honesty, a rugged, fierce truthfulness, and damn the consequences. Which was the inevitable outcome each time. So my brutal honesty and I lived happily ever after, raising a tribe of brilliant hooligans and wayward angels, my favorite people – Vikings with the souls of artists. This was in fact our heritage, and we were insufferably proud of it, especially me. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Get up early, stay up late to finish what needs to be done. You’re the only one. Down some coffee and pocket a couple muffins for later.

In my career as an addiction counselor and case manager, I’d been taught to nod supportively and then ask my sick, tired, homeless clients, “So – how’s that working for you?”

The good news on the Camino: I was meeting people already. That was working for me. Katrina, who was in grad school in Belgium, studying psychology. Her sweetness was a balm for any day. Kati, from Germany, strong as a bear; her backpack was lost by the airline, so she was collecting replacement gear. Having bought a small pack, she found a few items on the albergue donativo table of freebies. I gave her my pack cover, in case of rain. I had my travel duffle, a sturdy stuff sack for transporting my backpack on the plane so the straps and zippers wouldn’t be damaged en route. I figured I could tuck it upside-down over my own pack. Thankful and delighted, she started out walking with me, together with Katrina and others we’d met, all enthusiastic and eager to go.

The bad news: one by one, everyone waved goodbye to me as they left me in the dust. Because I was so slow. A new embarrassment welled up around my Viking pride, as I considered that my combination of factors – age (51), lax training, low blood pressure in the heat, THE HEAT, the intensity of the trail, all of it piled on top of my heavy pack – could well kill me. Time to ditch more from my pack. Day One, and I’d already emptied things twice into multiple plastic bags I left behind, on the donativo table, on random benches, into the trash. But I was still too heavy. I needed to get rid of more.

Thirty degrees has more than one meaning, and at least two apply, I thought, puffing up the steep route. My tank top clung like the mercury in the thermometer, soaked with perspiration as if I’d been crossing myself against this baptism by fire. As I hiked up a vertical death march to reach the church of Guadalupe, suddenly a bamboo grove sprung from behind the wire fencing along the path. Startled in my sweaty exhaustion, I stopped to wipe my face with my cotton scarf and have a better look. The grove was dense, yet languid as it all moved in the slightest breeze – which felt heavenly.

It called to mind my second son, Daniel, who wanted to plant walls of bamboo instead of fences. He loved the renewability and usefulness of it. He was like this himself, tall, fluid, exotic and surprising, committed to self-renewal and a useful life.

And – on the other side of the dirt path – two burros ate ordinary grass under ordinary apple trees. Daniel also had a great fondness for humble burros. I had imagined that it was their useful sturdiness, their seeming tirelessness under burden. While he appreciated those aspects, he had added with a grin, “And – they’re just so cute!” Daniel often gave gifts of unexpected delight. One of my favorites from his childhood: a small paper box that, upon opening, exploded a rainbow of origami birds into your hands. Now in the late morning heat, I stood resting in Daniel’s joy of the unexpected, in his eclectic energy, rejuvenating my resolve in the shade from bamboo and apple trees beside the little burro buddies. They were cute, and fun to watch, nuzzling each other one minute, headbutting the next.

Finally atop the first hill, I entered the dark cool of Guadalupe’s sanctuary, a carved and gilded altar hidden within. I had not expected this santuario in Spain. I knew of Guadalupe only from her Mexican hilltop story; her familiar shining visage was common where I’d lived in Colorado and New Mexico. The name “Guadalupe” is a place name; in Spain, it was thought to be derived from Arabic words for “river of the wolf.” As I refilled my water bottle at the pilgrim’s fountain outside the church, I felt like I was hiking that riverbed, the dirt of a vertical arroyo, straight up the path of a waterfall run dry, heat exhaustion howling in my ears and blisters biting into my feet.

I remembered how, in grade school, Daniel had done a project on reintroducing wolves to the American West. More than his difficulties with the project, I remembered his conviction that the benefits to the ecosystem outweighed the risks. He had been just a child then, yet he wanted a world that renewed itself naturally, difficult though that might be.

The trail rose again after Guadalupe, ascending straight to the top of a mountain. I hiked along the crest, more mountains on my left, ocean to my right. A herd of ponies emerged from a copse of trees, nodding up the steep slope together, the blue water behind them. I sang Daniel’s “Horse Boy” song I had written when he was four, about my Sagittarius child “whisking the flies with a flick of his mind.” I tried to practice this approach and not faint in the heat, humming and panting down the other side of the mountain into Donibane.

Entering this quaint harbor town, I was relieved to find Kati, and together we found a cafe for lunch. Food and wine, at an outdoor table, with chairs to sit in and chairs for our feet. I complained of my surprise at the steep trail, comparing it to hiking a ski run, and Kati’s wide smile and laughter in response was as refreshing as our meal. I learned that many European trails are equally steep, and Kati was well seasoned to easily walk the Camino. She suggested trekking poles, which I had never used, but I scoffed because I had never needed them before, in the Rockies, of Colorado, as if this trail had been created incorrectly, over the centuries…by the penitent. Santiago the Pilgrim is portrayed in a traveling cloak, a floppy traveler’s hat, scallop shells on the shoulder cape of his cloak and on the front of his hat; and in his hand, always, is a tall walking stick, with a drinking gourd tied to it. As I realized how I sounded, I quickly retracted my words: “Yes – however, I think it’s time for me to find a stick.” I thought maybe I’d buy one in the next city of any size we came to.

I wanted to just stop. In my ignorance, I didn’t realize that I could; I found out later there was a small but clean albergue in Donibane. But I didn’t know, and my guidebook said my stopping point was still a half-day’s hike away. “Over another mountain,” Kati warned.

“I know,” I sighed.

“This part’s supposed to be harder,” Kati added.

“I know,” I sighed deeper. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. But I wasn’t feeling all that tough any more.

We ferried across the harbor to reach the next stage of the trail. “Well…,” Kati began as we reached our signpost.

“Yes, off you go – buen camino!” I smiled at Kati. She took off up the hillside.

I held a hand to my eyes and looked up at the steep steps built into the hill. And that’s when I first noticed them: the butterflies. They had been swirling around me periodically during the morning, but now I took a moment to see that they were fluttering just ahead of me. As I stepped forward, they continued farther up the path, as if beckoning me to follow. I tightened the straps on my backpack and slowly climbed the intense hill out of Donibane.

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

It was climbing the second mountain that I met Saulomon, originally from Mexico and now from Los Angeles. Saulomon was sleek, fit, and charming, with wide-set eyes that crinkled happily when he smiled a perfect, wide smile. We talked about the pace of life in the U.S., and he told me about his previous camino trip, friends who had met and fell in love on that camino, now married and living the slow life on a farm. As he helped me up each loose, rocky step or sandy, steep hillside on the second mountain, Saulomon told me he was thirty-six; he was seeking that sort of love, a deeper love than he knew, and starting to feel age creeping up behind him. He asked my story, so I told him about bringing 17-year-old me along on this trip, and his eyes brightened. “And I am 21! So when we get to Santiago, you will have your 18th birthday!”

“And you will turn 22!”

“We will have such a party,” he mused, reaching his hand down to me from steps above. “Drink wine, good food, and you will dance with me! You will be 18…,” he flirted, winking, which made me laugh.

When we reached the top of the mountain, we found the remains of a castle, and I stopped to rest, thanking him. He asked if I would be all right, and I assured him I would. “See you soon,” he called as he left to go flirt with a young blond woman near the stone walls.

Through the afternoon, I distracted myself by looking for a stick. I finally found one, a dry, slender, dead branch barely clinging to its tree. Having seasoned itself in place beside the camino, this smooth stick caught my attention as it seemed to reach out from the tree, like a friend’s hand from higher on the trail. Grabbing hold with both hands, I snapped it free. Just the right height, it fit my hand. The bottom forked into two spikes, one longer, one shorter. It felt right, one end for me, one for 17-year-old me. Awkwardly, I began walking again, trying to sort out the rhythm of stick and steps. It would do until I bought a proper trekking pole, I thought.

Whenever I’d start to feel overwhelmed in the sun and lose my will to continue, a little orange or white butterfly would appear on the path ahead of me. Always ahead of me, over the center of the path, as if waiting. And so I would say, out loud, “okay, butterfly,” and inevitably smile, and keep going a little longer. At some point, I realized I was going to make it, all the way.

I dubbed myself La Tortuga, The Turtle, slow under my weighty backpack shell. It let me laugh at myself. The butterflies sustained me in my darkest hours of exhaustion on the trail. I finally realized the friendly message they were trying to give me: lightness. So I would continue to lighten my pack; but I would also start lightening my mood in those exhausted times, and lightening my heart.

Daniel’s way taught me that the gift of unexpected delight could lighten the hard times – but I had to look for those moments, choose to take delight. Once I looked, it was all there: bamboo, burros, and butterflies; bountiful lunches of laughter and flirty birthday parties. I could choose to take help when it was offered: advice, a reaching hand, an old walking stick to ease the load. Running on fumes was just running me out of gas, and then it was a heavy push from that point on.

Rest and renewal strengthens us. I understood that the biggest challenges of the Camino would not be its mountains. I had a lot to unload.

the grace of begonias

October 25, 2017 / wanderinglightning / 0 Comments

three graces

to illuminate my mind

to burn my words into a sword

to break our hearts

with the beauty of it all

The cab driver was confused. After shaking his head and trying to dissuade me from hiking the coastal route of the Camino (“montañas”), I gave him 40 euros for a 28 euro ride. “For luck,” I told him: for being kind, and helpful, and forgiving my useless Spanish. For this odyssey upon which I was embarking. He let me shake his hand, offering me, “Buen Camino.” I smiled, not realizing it was the first of a thousand such blessings I would receive, then walked toward the wrong hotel door. He honked and pointed, and once more steered me right.

Up the narrow stairs, at the front desk I was greeted by Begoña; she said most women in Bilbao have this name, which makes it easy to address people on the street – “Try it! You’ll see!” – and we both laughed. My room at the end of the hall looked exactly like the online photos, meaning aging, rundown, and absolutely charming, with a view out the long floor-to-ceiling windows of the Teatro Arriaga across the street. Cool air flowed through the long unscreened windows and gently fluttered the gauzy curtains. I stood my backpack next to the writing table in the corner, and hauled off my hiking boots and socks. Several pots exploding with flowers filled the balcony to the left of my window, including begonias. I could see the river past the plaza de teatro.

I ran a hot bath, knowing I would not have another for months. As I soaked in the steaming water, I thought about the many begonias in Bilbao: the cathedral, the flowers growing around lampposts and on balconies, the women like exuberant flowers gracing the city. I found out the Basilica de Begoña is the cathedral of the patron saint of Bizkaia/Biscay, named Nuestra Senora Begoña. Our Lady of Begoña. I had arrived in the Basque region, fiercely independent people with a long tradition as sailors and navigators. Sailors who were immensely grateful for returning from the fierce Atlantic Ocean into the Cantabrian Sea, known in the west as the Bay of Biscay; they navigated up the Nervión river and offered thanks to Our Lady as soon as they could see the high steeple on the hill. I later learned the begonia flower symbolizes many communications, including this gratitude, giving thanks for a favor or assistance. It can also mean a warning of upcoming misfortunes or challenges, including those dark thoughts that can distract you from your joy.

For now, nothing could distract me from it. I set out into the neighborhood and found a small cafe with an excellent soup: sopa pescada con mar. In the delicious, rich, rusty-brown broth floated scallops and mussels in the shell, and an entire, enormous prawn, the giant shrimp found here. Who knew shrimp legs are delicious? I still couldn’t bring myself to eat the head of another being, however. The waitress, mixing Spanish with a few English words for my benefit, asked if I wanted wine, and I said no, water please. I thought she asked “single, or cold glass,” and was regretting that I’d answered “cold glass,” thinking I had foolishly asked for local tap water. Instead, I received a sweating bottle of sparkling water with my soup – “con gas” means carbonated. It was the perfect drink. I sat at my outdoor table with its white tablecloth in the wide, lively alley behind the hotel, where several restaurants’ late night customers held court over bottles of wine, or laughed softly and intimately, as neighbors walked through on their way home. I could feel the moisture in the breeze, and would have dozed in my chair, looking up at more flowers, geraniums on balconies, soft lamps glowing behind flowing drapes in apartments above, the restaurant lights warm and inviting. In Bilbao, I felt like I’d stepped into a romantic fairytale. Every scene was richly textured. The very air wove itself through the story, as I smelled the sea, faintly, now and then.

I wished Begoña buenos noches and fell asleep in my bed to the sounds of laughter and footsteps, trains and motorbikes, and one lone saxophone playing Spanish melodies somewhere, all below me in the street.

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In the morning, I set off to find coffee and a bus to Irun. As I wandered the streets of last night, here marched Begoña, who called, “Hola!” like a hug and asked what I was looking for. When I said coffee, she took me back to the bar next to the hotel even as I protested that it was closed. Her answer: “Oh, he’s nice, you’ll see,” and she knocked on the door. Raul opened the door to her rapidfire explanation that I was una peregrina searching for the holy café con leche and he let me in, making a lovely thick latte. Lovely as in I am in love with the Spanish idea of a cup of coffee; it is a deep and intense moment of desire, a lingering kiss each morning, and I felt spoiled all day because of it.

I walked across Bilbao afterward to find the bus station. The river curves through the history, the theater district, the churches and government buildings, and I cross over all on cobblestone plazas rising onto bridges and streets leading into the hills. Once, lost in map study on a corner, a very dear older man with musical English explained the route and wished me “good way” offered with his cheery smile. I waved goodbye, and thought about what it would be like to live in Bilbao. The entire city was fitted onto the foothills of mountains, so people walked up or down to get where they were going, and always with a view of the mountains between the buildings, a framed landscape wherever I looked. Bilbao was like no mountain town I had ever known, a mountain city near the coast, gone European and self-confident. The old city by the river was especially energetic, edgy and delicious. Posters offered museums and art exhibits large and small, and always a street musician played with an open case sprinkled with coins.

I waited only 20 minutes at the station for the air-conditioned bus in the July heat.  There I met the Three Musketeers, who were actually the Three Graces in disguise – Charm, Joy, and Beauty, better known as Vicki, Pat, and Bernie, respectively. These three women were all teachers from Britain, two retired, one on summer holiday. “You Australian?” they had asked. Americana. They immediately absorbed me into their group as we tried to figure out why this bus to Irun was in fact not now the bus to Irun…it all worked out, and we found our way to Irun and so to the start of our journey.

I feasted on irony, pinxchos, and beer with the Graces at a pub next to the albergue, the word for pilgrim hostels along the Camino de Santiago. Vicki was annoyed by the bar owner who didn’t seem too anxious to take the order of four women backpackers, and she kept up a steady stream of abuses about his pace and the quality of the service. Bernie offered witty asides and quips and was so helpful with her fluent Spanish they called her The Linguist, and it was easy to agree. Pat was the experienced through-hiker, and a runner, fit and easy to like – and 69 years old. Her pack was small and tight, her step solid and balanced. While Bernie was exploring the possibility of a new love, and Vicki was impatiently waiting for a paycheck to hit her account, Pat was the glue holding the trio together.

As we waited for the albergue to open, we walked a path through a nearby natural area park, and as we imagined walking the Camino, talk came to the subject of past health issues. Pat’s husband had malignant melanoma, but was going on five years “clear,” approaching that mark where he might breathe again after such a long fight.  She talked about going to college again after her children had grown, and not being identified as their mother or Jim’s wife, but just as herself, and she reveled in it. I told her I was following the dream from when I was 17, so I decided to bring that girl along – just me, and me. She nodded approvingly.

What I didn’t elaborate on was my own brush with cancer several years back. More than five. But my cancer could return whenever it wanted: I had a nasty and, in my case, particularly persistent virus that could cause cancer cells to develop at any time. It had already cost me two surgeries and three organs, an ugly tally. I had taken it as a warning shot fired across my bow, that life can end at any time. My life, ready or not.

What I also didn’t share was my supplication to any angel that could hear me, that this trip would heal something more lethal than cancer for me. I was making an entreaty for wholeness. My body was strong enough to make this long hike, at least for now. But I had other issues weighing me down. What I wanted to let go of was my fear of giving up on my life. Of drowning in dissatisfaction before I was finally the poet, writer, singer, artist I had always wanted to be. The “me” I had been, but hadn’t seen through to completion. I needed to go on this pilgrimage and arrive to see a steeple on a high hill, and thank Our Lady for my safe journey, and safe return…to myself.

At the albergue, I received my credencial, and its first sello – the first stamp on my passport for the Camino. I tied a white scallop shell to my backpack, the sign of Santiago, Saint James, and the mark of the spiritual traveler. I had found the starting signpost, been given blessings by strangers, guidance by Santa Begoña, and nourishment by the Three Graces. In the morning, I would set off for Santiago de Compostela, over 800km away. And beyond.

the gift of Portugal

October 24, 2017 / wanderinglightning / 0 Comments

la mar

Mother of Life

la madre

oh Mary where

among the saints

does the sea

have her name

engraved

Having slept on three planes so far, after 20 hours of travel I arrived rumpled and excited in Lisbon at 6:00am local time. The sound of my passport being stamped for the first time echoed in my ears as I exited the airport – and found myself officially in Europe.

I got a real coffee. Thick foam, lovely brown, hearty and satisfying like a crusty loaf of homemade bread. The tiny white cup and delicate silver spoon let me savor my first moment away, relaxing at my cafe table like a movie extra, anonymous behind the story.

I caught the aerobus, which looped from the airport past hotels and restaurants and into the center of the old city. The streets were cobbled, the plazas actually mosaic, as were some of the walkways. I turned in circles occasionally, wondering at the world beneath my feet. Stone steps led from the main square surrounded on three sides by the palatial buildings of the kings of Portugal, down to the harbor – literally, down into the harbor, with iron rings pinned into the stone steps that disappeared into a blue-green bay. Gulls landed nearby, as pigeons hunted for crumbs. Out beyond the last steps, two stone pillars rose from the water. Sitting with my bare feet just touching the lapping water, I realized that this was the original entrance to Lisbon – by boat, of course. What a spectacular front gate. A man played Fado-style guitar as tourists took pictures, summer skirts and sun hats ruffling in a cool summer breeze. People sat reading on the seats built into the low stone balustrade winding away along the harbor shore. With hours before I needed to catch the bus back to the airport, I let myself be lulled by the music, the sun, the breeze through palm trees, couples walking past holding hands, boats in the harbor.

Fado is the richly blended music of Portugal: sad, filled with longing, wistful maybe’s and what if’s and the melancholy regret of a passionate love forever lost. I could feel it deeply, this waiting for a boat that never came back, a voice that never called my name again, a burning heart grown cold for reasons never known. But instead of some other, the lost beloved was me.

I wondered if I was too late. This fear, more than any other, I had carried across the Atlantic like the burden stone in my backpack. The stone I would give up on the Camino; but this burden of fear, of time forever lost, weighed heavy. I listened to the seagulls crying to each other, their voices blending with the Fado guitar, the creaking of a nearby dock accompanying them. I could hear the beginning of a song to it all, and just sat on the steps of Lisbon’s harbor, listening to the aching harmonies that can hardly bear what we ask. Steps that lead down deeper than we know.

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“Your ticket – where is the other part?”

“There was no other part – only this.”

“Where?”

“From the machine. At the airport.”

The aerobus driver shook his head. A passenger with stronger English explained tickets come in two parts. The second missing part had a code I needed. When he understood I had only come from the airport, seen the water, and now returned to the airport, the driver waved me back to a seat.

The passenger told me, “Always get both pieces,” and smiled, and for a moment I imagined that I became a local in Lisbon, using the airport bus to go to the old city, the Praca do Comercio and the beautiful fountains with green figures on four sides, the colorfully painted plaster buildings of yellow, pink, blue, and the tiled buildings at their sides – entire facades covered in intricately designed four-by-four tiles. Color and tiles, and red clay tile roofs, and ornate iron balconies, all gleaming under the midday sun.

The narrow streets of Lisbon flow down and around its hills, intersecting at random, organic, no right angles. It is easy to lose your way. If you fight to find a direct path, you wind up going in circles. So I had finally let go and just wandered, slowly, in gentle arcs. A young mother sat a moment at her open upstairs window, her baby craning his neck to see me, laundry fluttering on the wall between us. The Santa Maria Maior Cathedral rose like a fortress of belief in the midst of wonder. Shopkeepers smiled in their doorways and chatted across the streets to each other. Workers hung colored streamers and set up tables for the next fiesta, called a festa here.

Drifting between being a local and a tourist, I was already remembering as I saw through the bus window the Avenida da Liberdade and the Marques de Pombal, shady promenades under huge trees I’ve never known before, something like a cross of maple and catalpa leaves, with trunks seemingly blown smooth by the winds off the sea. They look like the tallest giraffes, smooth and pale with patches of khaki and brown, grown to trees instead of animals. Utterly foreign to me.

Eucalyptus, I found out. Their shade cooled the sidewalks, and the road, and the bus back to the airport as I returned for the flight to Spain, soothed and welcomed regrets-and-all through the Fado gates into coracao de Lisboa, the heart of Lisbon. Having washed my pilgrim feet by stepping into the ocean to which I would return.

kindled into fire

October 23, 2017 / wanderinglightning / 0 Comments

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times – it was my life, and now I was 50. It took me another year to realize, or more accurately, to make up my mind, that it was time to walk the Camino de Santiago. And I needed to bring someone with me.

“I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

My daughter lassoed me on my 51st birthday. “You need to buy your ticket.” I bought a one-way ticket to Bilbao, on the northern coast, the closest airport to the border with France, where the northern Camino route begins in Irun, Spain. “Did you get your passport?” I’d never had one.

So everything began with me wanting desperately to go, but stalling. And then deciding. And then never looking back. Because the someone I needed to bring with me…was 17-year-old me. The kid who was going to escape all the crazy of my younger life by going to college, getting that journalism degree, writing for National Geographic, traveling the world, meeting the world’s people. Falling in love with all of them, writing their stories. Over and over, year after year, becoming a citizen of the whole, wide world.

When I quit college, and then when I got married at 19, and then when I started having kids at 20, and 22, and 23, and 27 – that kid just had to sit and wait, reading book after book, writing angry poems, listening to the Rolling Stones, especially, “You can’t always get what you want….” That kid just had to watch while I worked like a grown-up every day, typing up reports instead of stories, interviewing homeless alcoholics instead of Amazonian tribal chieftans or Sami herding reindeer in the Far North or the great-great-great-great’s of Genghis Khan.

At first, I tried to half-listen to that kid. I read those angry words into microphones in small, dark theaters filled with smoke and poets. I sang sorrow to open art exhibits and crooned bluesy warnings in front of velvet drapes and mixed drinks. I breathed sultry innuendo into the erotic poetry night. I was good. I was married. It was terrible. I got divorced. I got a job.

That kid didn’t know I was trying to offer a consolation prize. The other kids needed a home, regular meals, a ride to school so they wouldn’t drop their science project, a cheering parent on the sidelines of their games. If I couldn’t go to meet the world’s people, maybe I could have the world’s people come to me – give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me…. And Life did.

Don’t get me wrong – their stories were rich, rich with lost hopes and survival, disillusionment and yet perseverance. But I didn’t write those. I entered their basic demographic information into databases. For all their stories of childhood abuse, foster homes, learning disabilities, drug use, prostitution, jail time, gang crimes, mental illness – I ticked boxes. Type an X. Type an X. Another X. Another.

“Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.”

If you’re looking for it, Life offers real consolation. Not bestowed as a prize, but earned by hard work, like that paycheck. Real connection in those moments when I listened, cared, said so. I learned to be quiet and let people tell their stories themselves. I developed a radar for danger, alert to people’s state of urgency and desperation, aware of my safety while ensuring theirs as well. I was an emergency responder without a badge or a siren, only my voice, and my eyes, which both needed to communicate at the highest levels. And amazingly to me, I rose to that challenge. I became someone who could evaluate a developing situation and set a boundary with a six-foot-four, 250-pound man who was coming unraveled and needed to leave for the day. I became someone who could empathize with the anger and fear but could keep it together. I became someone people could trust.

So that 17-year-old’s life passed again, and we were 34. And then it passed again. And we were 51.

Somewhere between 34 and 51, something shifted for me. Originally, when I met with homeless people and they told me their stories, they’d inevitably thank me. I shrugged this off, reminding them they were the ones who had been brave, who’d opened up, who’d risked. They’d ask, “So, you have a master’s degree or something? Are you a doctor?” To which I would answer, “No, man – I’m just a poet with a sweet day job.” I’d thank them for talking to me.

But somewhere in my 40s, I stopped saying it. I stopped saying I was a poet with a sweet day job. What had been so honest, so true, for so long, became a memory. Became my history. I had quit going to poetry readings long ago. Now I wasn’t even writing, just a thought here, a Christmas card poem there. I hadn’t written a song in years. I started to believe I was a social worker. But I didn’t have the education; social work requires credentials, a trail of letters following your name. I had lots of experience, many skills, but needed a couple of college degrees to work anywhere but in the one job I had. And then I left that job.

Life intervened. This is what I know now. The Universe turned my world upside down. Ownership of the homeless resource center where I worked changed. A private group created their own agency, thought they could run the center through good intentions and quickly ran it into the ground. I tried to work with them, and then I fought them, and then I left them. I did it very intentionally, to attract community attention. It worked. The center was investigated. Ownership changed hands again. The center was saved.

But all of that took over a year. In the meantime, I needed a job. I found work an hour away. I sold my house and found a closer apartment. However, because I didn’t have the degrees, I couldn’t do the work I knew how to do. I could only approach the depth I’d had, but it was out of reach now. I thought about college, but at my age, I didn’t really want to spend the money from selling my house on a social work degree, which would earn me not much more than a non-degree job. I saw burn-out on the horizon, but it didn’t look like anger. It looked like boredom. Leading to apathy.

That’s when I realized I had quit saying I was the poet with the sweet day job. I hadn’t seen it disappear; it had just faded away.

“I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent for ever. I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew….”

I was a fraud in both worlds. I was a social worker with no credentials, and a poet with no poems. I couldn’t do the real social work I knew, and I hadn’t become the journalist I’d originally intended. What to do? I did what has always saved me: I wrote. I wrote what I was experiencing, began searching, exploring the unformed ideas that were rising. For three years, I was more honest than I’d been in a really long time. I had learned how to interview in all those years talking with homeless people. So I interviewed a really fascinating character I had never thought to talk to about all this: 17-year-old me.

Ah, that kid. There she sat in her metaphoric basement bedroom, headphones on, cross-legged on top of her bed, grounded seemingly for eternity. I sat down next to her, and she took off her headphones. And I just listened.

As I was writing, I gave her the respect I hadn’t been able to give her before. She was a wild-child, hair on fire, eyes blazing, heart broken, brilliant, fantastic. Yet she wasn’t only defined by what she’d gone through. She knew who she was, what she wanted, where she wanted to go. We don’t believe teenagers, that they know what they’re talking about, that they could possibly know who they are. But she was solid. She knew. She wanted to go see the world. For herself. With her own eyes.

“‎And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am,       into fire.”

I realized she was right. I knew people would say I’d had a great career, was a good social worker no matter what, had done so much good for my community, helped so many people. That’s true, there’s truth in that. But I knew, and young me knew, that I’d been treading water. I have a talent for making those lemons into lemonade, so I’d made a humongous, industrial vat of lemonade, decades’ worth, and that’s where I was resignedly kicking and swaying my arms, floating confined. And getting tired.

Social work wasn’t my calling – it was my foundation. It was my training ground.

I had to go. Whether the time was right or not, whether anyone understood or not, I had to go. And I had to take 17-year-old me along, before I lost her forever. I couldn’t bear that thought. I – finally – loved that kid. Ferociously.

The Camino de Santiago was an easy choice. Since I was 15 I’ve been an amateur religious studies aficionado, reading on my own about Buddhism and Sufism and mystical traditions in Catholicism, Shinto beliefs that everything has a spirit, Hindu beliefs in keeping multiple virtues in balance with the help of multiple deities. If I couldn’t go on the Muslim hajj, I could hike the great camino across Spain, some of it traipsed by the weary faithful since before the year 800. I was seeking kindred spirits to walk and talk with for a time. I was seeking seekers.

As I got off the plane that had carried me across the wild Atlantic, I turned inside to 17-year-old me, smiled, and said, “You ready? C’mon – let’s go.”

“It was remembered afterwards that when he bent down and touched her face with his lips, he murmured some words. The child, who was nearest to him, told them afterwards, and told her grandchildren when she was a handsome old lady, that she heard him say, ‘A life you love.’”