Ordinary Gente

April 16, 2022 ~ We get out of bed early and are not interested in breakfast at Casa do Samoza. Our interests lie more in walking and enjoying the day. It’s cool, but very comfortable. The Camino is gentle with a few paths that feel like we are walking in a tunnel of tree branches and a few that are in long wide trenches with moss growing up the sides of these deeply worn grooves in the earth. For a while we walk along a highway, but its early morning “traffic” is light and distant enough to not bother me.

There are gentle inclines and before we know it there a little river crossed by a perfect Roman bridge at Furelos. We stop at the bar for a cup of coffee and a croissant to go. The calm river, the sun hitting the bridge just right…well, we have to stop and enjoy the breakfast while taking in the view.

It feels to me like stopping is just as important as walking. We take in the past Camino kilometers when we stop. We plan for the upcoming stretch. We check in with each other. We take stock of the road and sometimes, of the roads that we’ve traveled together over the past 40 years. We talk in a shorthand that we enjoy from a shared life. Yet, we have to go on or we’ll never make our 12 miles for the day. Luis feels anxious to me. It could be his leg that threatens to tighten up when we stop for long. Or it could be that I’m lagging with an inner thigh that is pulled. Either way, sometimes we walk side by side, sometimes one of us takes the lead with the other closely following, sometimes, he pulls ahead and then pauses for me.

The day is heating up and I peel off jackets slowly as the sun warms and the heat I generate accumulates inside my goose down jacket. We are getting warm and the hills are feeling steeper. The descents can be just as challenging as the ascents.

The town of Melide comes up and it seems like a big city. It has a real signal light and we take care to cross the streets. We are looking for a pharmacy. We’ve been waiting to get to Melide to buy some foot care items. The famed Compeed is needed for the pads of several of Luis’s toes. He developed two blood blisters before we left home and now these are tender. I have a sensation of heat on my big toe and I don’t want it develop any further. After our purchase of Compeed, I ask the cashier if I can use the small stool in the tiny pharmacy to apply the strips to my feet. She says yes. I whip off my shoes and both pairs of socks. I put on the Compeed. And I know, instantly, I’m not the first peregrino to do this quick operation in the same spot.

No need to linger longer. We quickly find the yellow arrows and are heading out of town on the Camino in a few minutes. We are making good time now that I am not favoring the foot. The thigh pull will have to be tended to by stretching and with ibuprofen.

Pleasant is the word I’d use for the day. Pleasant weather. Pleasant conversation. The other peregrinos are pleasant as they pass us or we overtake them.

Then a sobering encounter. A peregrina is facing us, while walking in the same direction we’re traveling. She is going slowly, using her trekking poles more than others on this stretch. We are clearly gaining on her. Though she isn’t grimacing, I ask if she’s okay. We are, afterall, way out of town in the countryside, on the Camino far from any services at this point. She shares with us that she had broken her big toe. She can’t use it to pull up a hill or to break her downward descent. We ask what can we do to help and she is confident that she can make it on her own. Our pace grinds down as we accompany her for a while. And this is okay.

She tells of of her life, her teen-aged son on his cycling adventure. We tell her a bit about our sons, Lorenzo and Miguel. But it is clear that letting her do the talking distracts her from her pain. She’s from Spain and though she lives and works in Santiago, she had never made the pilgrimage. So this year, she had her parents drop her off 100 kilometers away from home so she can make the journey as a pilgrim to her home town. She she tells us of her one time in the United States and her favorable impressions of San Francisco and of the unfortunate timing of going to Las Vegas when a gunman opened fire on concert-goers. She relates the traumatizing experience of being taken into the kitchen of one of the big hotels as soon as it was evident there was gunfire, of hiding for hours, of being escorted out through service tunnels. And of wanting to get home.

Now she’s just trying to get home and she faces another challenge. We approach a bar along the Camino and she stops. We never will see her again, but I pray for her recovery and safe return to home and to the Camino when she can complete the journey.