when in doubt, do calculus
the window
bed is mine
I see the old stone
church beyond the fields
the trees and breezes
here I rest
my hat a bowl
to hold my coins
My mind was moving slower, my body faster. I took time to consider my next stopping places, knowing that yesterday’s mileage was much less than I could easily walk in a day now. Looking at alternative albergues, different towns, but also trying to go at least 25 km each day – it was tricky to find the balance. I wanted to push closer to 30 km daily, for the simple reason of strength.
Only a week or so, and I would be on the Primitivo. I studied the route, looking for clues around which to plan, but the Old One wasn’t giving anything away. Well, actually, it was Alex who wasn’t giving anything away in the guidebook…except mileage.
I had hiked 327 km so far; that’s over 200 miles. The Norte was supposed to be 817 km total.
That meant 490 km left to Santiago. I was under the 500 km mark, if I stayed on the Norte. But since I would fork onto the Primitivo – well, well, the book said it was 40 km shorter. Instant Mileage Rewards.
Except I’d learned, numbers don’t mean anything. Tomorrow I would leave Cantabria and enter Asturias; this would be more rugged country, higher hills, less frequent views of the coast and more contact with the Picos de Europa. “It’s not what, it’s how”; now it was “not how many, it’s how hard.”
How hard…would it be, I kept wondering, my boots crunching the miles in the sun.
How hard.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The first time I got lost, I was alone, with no one to ask the way.
This second time I got lost, I was alone. Sensing a theme. But I could have asked the people who left as I was making my oatmeal: “Hey, do you know the way?” I could have asked the person who passed me on the steps as I was tying my boots, a simple, “Which way?” But I didn’t.
They were in a hurry to be on their way, it seemed, and I didn’t want to slow them down. I didn’t want to be a bother. Plus, there were the language issues – French, German, Italian, Swedish, not all with English, me with my fabulous Spanish – and, on top of that, we were all trying to be quiet in the early morning.
And also, I just didn’t bother. I was hardwired not to ask for help. Even though I knew the reality of strength in numbers; I had just experienced it. I had. Just. Experienced. It. The first step is acknowledging you have a problem.
So there I was with Aaaa-lex, the lame guidebook guide, reading the words, “Fork right at the church and keep straight on for 3 km.” That was all. It was like the time he said to leave town “by a minor road.” This was when I started suspecting Smart Alex of not hiking the entire route. A minor road? In these villages, they were ALL minor roads. Fork right at the church; how forking right do I fork? Because multiple little roads passed to the right of the church and took you out of town.
Smart Alex had written a calculus homework assignment instead of a guidebook, and 17-year-old me had had it with this guy. Because, unless he sprung from the pages of the book, pointing you on your way, you had to just try one, eeny meany miney let’s go, walk a solid kilometer, and see if it was leading to the next point. If probability was against you, could you see the correct route from where you were? Even if so, could you actually get to it from where you were? The answers to both of those Camino math problem checks tended to be “NO,” leading to the far-too-often-true calculus answer: backtrack.
It’s a filthy, foul swear-word when you’ve gotten up early, eaten and rinsed your dish, packed your pack and laced up your boots and started off in perfect, cool weather. This wrong road only took me over a wrong hill, not a wrong mountain, and I was sort of comforted by that knowledge, in the way you’re comforted by the fact that your hour of calculus work looked like an elegant solution…it just…wasn’t right.
You had to check your work. Life was a complicated story problem involving many variables. Camino Calculus ran like this:
Beautiful start, pet the movie-set white horse in Spanish pasture, check, pass fairytale farmhouse with obligatory red tile roof and low, warm barn, check, cross over the highway, check, wait, wasn’t that go under the highway?, slow down walking, pass a billy goat on a rope tether and then a ram on a rope, check?, sort of like guard livestock at a less fairytale, kind of dirty, rundown farm, chhh-eck…, cross over the railroad tracks wait, wait this looks way too familiar – where am I headed? Compass check. I’m supposed to be going west. I’m going northeast. Backwards. Heave a heavy, cartoon anvil sigh. Defy your mistake. “I could just keep going, see where it -” You know where it leads: BACK TO THE LAST TOWN. You can see that town from here. Chhhheckk. Open guidebook, read, “Fork right at the church” again and begin to really really dislike ALEX A LOT. CHECK. Summon all your strength to FINE turn around go back past the guard ram and the guard goat who really do not like you now, check-a-checka, climb the pretty sure four-wheel-drive road you just carefully carefully walked down, really?, check, do not baby your knees going back up because you’re storming a mountain until you burn off your frustration at Alex and, then choose to decide this was an excellent early morning training hike for the Primitivo. Whew, check.
Oh, elegant solution, my friend. Seventeen-year-old me was staring at me in disbelief.
Arrive back at the albergue exactly one hour after you left. You have gone nowhere. Elegant?
But, you have strengthened your feet, and ankles, and calves, and knees and quads and okay, you worked your legs. You petted a beautiful horse, saw a gorgeous sunrise – and learned yet another valuable lesson about getting lost: when in doubt, go back to your last waymark.
Go back to the last place you were sure. Go back to the church, and take a different fork to the right.
And guess what – immediately find a yellow arrow.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I hated going back to the scene of my last navigational crime. Plus, I had so many. The first one was easier to identify: dropping out of college.
I did graduate high school, even while working at a pizza place, even while living in a house with adult roommates. My grades prior to my senior year had been stellar, the north star that would guide me on, and into the university. While music had become painful, writing had not, winning me awards already, and I set my sights on journalism, writing for National Geographic, traveling, exploring the world, meeting the world’s people face to face. Telling their stories.
But the price of my ticket out was steep. Neither of my parents had gone to college, and had no idea of the process. My guidance counselor in high school was a football coach who spoke with incorrect grammar. I was on my own. And the internal volcano I was holding at bay kept rumbling, threatening to erupt at any moment, as burning clouds of black ash swirled around me everywhere I went.
I knew college was my one shot, and I had no money to pay for it. So I applied for every scholarship I could find, and I waited. And I waited. For months.
The pressure was intense. Exhausted, overworking, a lonely teenager raging at my fear, I hit the house parties hard. Entering strange houses roaring AC/DC and Led Zeppelin, I drank anything anyone handed me, trying to drown the voice inside that always wanted to scream. I slept with whoever. I didn’t care. I was picking a fight with the universe, even as I knew I was losing that fight. But I was still defiant, throwing chest thumps into the infinite, ready to die like a lonely, lonely warrior.
By summer, I found out I had patched together enough scholarships and grants to go, a full-ride in the fall, free and clear.
But it was too late. The volcano was erupting. I was on the highway to hell.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
As I hiked back up that four-wheel-drive-road, I realized I didn’t like Smart Alex the way I didn’t like calculus the way I didn’t like my non-existent writing career the way I didn’t like how I left college – floundering, without guidance.
When we travel these roads in life with others, we bounce our ideas back and forth, catching each other’s mistakes, sharing experience. When we go it completely alone, we will quit college without talking to any counselor; we will write a library of poetry and songs and stories and observations and have no idea how to get them published; we will keep working an endless series of calculus problems, chasing down a path to a wrong road, down a wrong hill, over a wrong mountain. It will take all our strength to stop, turn, and go back, past eyes that seem impatient with us or critical of us, through places that are not picturesque or inspiring, back up long, exhausting hills just to get back to the starting point again.
A restarting point.
Sometimes we go to Plan B; sometimes, Back to Square One. Back to the waymark at the church has many names.
It’s about going back to the last place you were sure you were on the right road. The last place you were sure.
Backtracking, unfortunately, is your friend. Maybe try making a few others along the way, so it’s not your only friend. The calculus required is pretty hard on your own, otherwise.
