watch for falling rocks
What you seek is seeking you.
— Rumi
The bootprint trail markers leading out of Santiago were huge. Quite the shoes to fill, I thought, measuring myself against the road to Finisterre. I had read that the route to Finisterre followed a pre-Christian, Celtic road named the Via Lactea – none other than the Milky Way. The Celts followed the trail of stars above, to the sea, and now I followed the tracks they left.
It was immediately hotter here, as I approached the coast, so I was dragging a bit. Also, I carried food, plus gifts, in my pack now, so it was heavier. I initially thought, Well, I got such light gifts, it will be fun to say, “Yes, these all came from Santiago – but also traveled all the way to Finisterre.” They soon became a metaphor for how heavy the responsibility of the family had been all those years – not onerous, just heavy, each one not much to carry at all, but the combined burden was noticeable. Then the image became carrying the gifts of each child, and I recognized that I had done this, too, believing in them until they saw they could believe in themselves. Again, a good thing, but again, significant, and intense, especially over a length of time, or over difficulties,
uphill struggles.
Life is a balance between holding on and letting go.
— Rumi
The other weight I carried was all the maps and images and stories of my own life, all my versions of The Truth I wrapped myself in, fabrications as much as the Camino fairy tales in my bound black book – heavy, precisely because they were bound, because they had been created to last, to hold up to the scrutiny of others…and of myself. The ties that bind create a web, a net – in some aspects a safety net, but in other ways a trap disguised as your surroundings, your life, your defined reality which ends up defining you.
When you let go of who you are, you become who you might be.
— Rumi
It entertained me to create these metaphors as I sweated through Ames, the corn belt of Galicia.
I had grown up in the rolling farmland outside Ames, Iowa, on a corn farm in the corn belt of the Corn State of the Grain Belt of the United States. So much corn. So much sweat. So much family.
Midwesterners aren’t impressed if you don’t stand by your family. My grandfather had learned that lesson the hard way. So I hiked on without complaint, carrying my metaphors, taking photos of the cornfields beneath the signs announcing “Ames,” knowing my sister would find them amusing, these images of home away from home.
I wasn’t good at letting go of responsibility. It made me uneasy. I hadn’t found anyone else that I could rely on to ever shoulder even part of the burden with me, let alone for me.
However, I was not a Midwesterner any more – a fact emphasized by the unfamiliarity of humidity when I arrived in Spain, and again here on the moisture-laden Via Lactea. I was from the Rockies now, high peaks that beckoned with adventure, soil so thin you could brush it from the surface of the rocks beneath, where corn withered in the dry air while lodgepole and Ponderosa pines shot like volleys of arrows into the clear sky.
Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.
— Rumi
And my children had become those tall pines on the mountainsides. They were grown people now…all except the youngest, and he was not far behind. These were trustworthy, responsible men and women who were perfectly capable of carrying their own backpacks full of gifts and misgivings. They had relieved me of guard duty. My new duty was to live my life.
Shine like the universe is yours.
— Rumi
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The trek between Finisterre and Muxia had been described as “rugged Galician countryside.” I walked unperturbed by this portent. After two days in the city, I was ready for a real hike again.
I kept seeing the trail to Muxia laid out first, followed by Finisterre. I had planned to do just the opposite: go “to the End of the World, and beyond,” ending my Camino at Muxia while giving myself a clever punchline for stories at the same time.
But I didn’t feel like pushing against the grain, against the arrows so smoothly directing me toward Muxia first. And I didn’t want to just follow Christoph, every day walking toward Christoph in Finisterre. That felt loaded and awkward, like my backpack full of good intentions, another lovely thought that weighed on me in reality. I wanted to follow the arrows. I trusted them.
Seek the wisdom that will untie your knot. Seek the path that demands
your whole being.— Rumi
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Oalf was a fierce hiker I met in an albergue kitchen. He talked about people being nomadic, living a life in motion, until other people built churches of stone to centralize power. As he spoke, I saw the image of Santa Barbara in my mind, depicted with her stone tower where she was imprisoned. I remembered my horoscope reading in the newspaper, one particular entry with a line about when the circle is broken, you will slip down from a high tower, down to a comfortable place, a funky place as I recalled.
This fit with the conversation Christoph and I had. I had survived my life by not pursuing my life, that life in motion. I had built my own tower by staying at arm’s length from people and writing and music. I had been Rapunzel, letting men climb my hair and profess love, only to see them fall and become blind to who I was outside their “damsel in distress” image, poor single mom barely making ends meet. Hence the drastic haircut.
Why do you stay in prison, when the door is so wide open?
— Rumi
It was a relief to let those images and behaviors go. Just let them go. I would grow my hair again; it was the tower I would leave. It was the men so easily blinded I would avoid or simply walk past. But not all men. I had met so many good men, as many as the good women I met here on the Camino. This was the “Hole In The Road” story. You leave that broken road – but you don’t quit walking, quit living your life. Quit loving. You take a new road.
It’s your road, and yours alone. Others may walk it with you,
but no one can walk it for you.— Rumi
When driving into the Rocky Mountains, the canyons carried signs warning, “Watch For Falling Rocks.” Even the mountains were not as solid as they appeared; time wore on them, wind and water opened cracks in their stony facades, and they, too, crumbled. No wall was impenetrable.
How much sooner and easier those constructs of our making could come undone – roads with holes, towers of stone, barriers to love.
Heavy gifts that needed a correos. I’d keep an eye out in each town for a post office. Santa Barbara was a great image for me to learn from at this point. I just didn’t understand why she lugged that tower around when she was free of it now. Maybe she was bringing it as a gift, for me, to show me how the walls come tumbling down.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Somewhere past Ames, I stopped hoping to become that world citizen I always wanted to be.
Instead, I decided. I chose. I let go the fear that I could not do this. I just let it go.
Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love.
It will not lead you astray.— Rumi
I will be that person who lives in the world. And I can be beautiful. I will write and sing – because I love to write and sing. I can love people. I can love whoever I want, artists and aristocrats, married men and soul sisters, the homeless, the untouchables, the unwanted, like I was, smudged images of who they actually are, and who they can be. All of them. To love is not to take, to steal or imprison. It is a gift of freedom.
Love is the bridge between you and everything.
— Rumi
Oh, my children: what you taught me. This hole of “Mother” had been deep and wide, a crater, but instead of crying, I had toughened up. Instead of asking for what I wanted, I had done without. Part of what I wanted might be selfish or childish, but I now thought much of it might be what I needed, what I had always needed, to be me. I had tried so hard to learn to be selfless that I was now nearly without a self.
Except that I wasn’t; I had hidden the last of it in plain sight. Each of my kids carried an aspect of me that they shone back at me like a beacon, across that bridge. It was up to me to put the pieces back together. It was up to me to live my life. To continue to live my life. They had helped to make me the person I had become.
Christoph was right: there is a YOU. A you that must be nourished…a soul. I saw that mine had been. This self of mine, when it was whole, connected, with others, with creativity, it generated electricity. And I was not burned; no, this was exactly what I was made for. I glowed.
You’ve seen my descent. Now watch my rising.
— Rumi
Here under the Milky Way, I was shining, with sweat and possibility, writing a song.
we used to travel on
in search of something more
this human caravan
followed the ones before
we used to travel on
because the world is roundthen the stones came down down down
we used to make our way
back to our fathers’ shores
back to our mothers’ caves
where we had all been born
we used to make our way
where no path is foundthen the stones came down down down
then the stones came down
to make the road
then the stones came down
to set the law
then the stones came down
and built a tower
then the stones came down
and imprisoned godwe used to find our gods
out under thundering skies
or on midsummer’s night
with moonlight in our eyes
we used to find our gods
because they kept us freethen the stones came down down down
what is carved in stone
was done by hand
what is built of bone
is just a man
if we liberate
both gods and menthen the stones come down down down
oh come and walk with me
by my side
and we will climb the mountains
and swim the tide
I’ll see the god in you
you’ll see the god in methen the stones come down down down
then the stones come down
that made the road
then the stones come down
that set the law
then the stones come down
that built the tower
then the stones come down
that imprisoned god— “Stones Come Down”