go with the flow
center of the shell, an ear to hear
all my longings all my stories
center of the shell, an ear to hear
all my dayscenter 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 seascenter of the shell, an ear to hear
all my longings all my stories
center of the shell, an ear to hear
all my dayscenter 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 seascenter of the shell, an ear to hear
all my longings all my stories
center of the shell, an ear to hear
all my dayscenter 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”