I'm Baaack

Lately it occurs to me,

What a long, strange trip it's been.

-The Grateful Dead, Truckin'

Where to start.

That's really a tough question.  The past forty days have been an odyssey indeed.  I have been sharing pretty much only a few pictures and whatever little comment I could feasibly type with my thumbs, but there was so much, so many people, places and things, not to mention the rather peculiar and oftentimes difficult journey of the heart and mind.

I'm going to start with the fact that my clothes fit me a little better right now than when I left.  I know, this is kind of a "well duh" sort of an observation, but it bears mentioning that this journey had a profoundly difficult physical component.  It started to sink in on the bus ride from Pamplona to Saint Jean Pied de Port.  We crossed the Pyrenees, and saw what we were going to be up against, and we knew we were not up for it.  We looked at the elevations, we looked at what our eyes told us, we felt our too heavy packs and our too soft bodies, we were jet-lagged and car sick and we wondered what we had gotten ourselves into.

That seems like a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.  It's difficult to sit here now and recognize the people that were convinced they needed a taxi, but that's after almost 500 miles, several mountain crossings, weeks of walking day in and day out and dropping about 20 pounds of softness.

Coming face to face with your physical limitations is actually a profoundly spiritual exercise, which I suppose is why there is at least a thread of ascetic practice in almost all religions.  Encountering the place where your body just says, "no, I don't think I can do this," and then having your will and your spirit (and undoubtedly the grace of God) go ahead and do it anyway, sort of sets a tone.

Even though we chickened out of the via Napolean and took the via Valcarlos, we didn't really take the easy way, we just took the way that was a little safer if our bodies over-ruled our mind and spirit and decided to be super stubborn by having a heart attack or bad cramps or heat stroke or dehydration or some other corporeal nonsense.  As it turns out we also took the way that didn't involve snow and 80 kph wind, so, you know, good stuff.  We still had to slog our way up some pretty nasty hills, and we still had to confront the daunting truth that this was what we were going to do, all day, every day for over a month.

The first couple of days were particularly troubling for me.  I was perhaps more out of shape than I expected, my pack was a bit heavier than was probably prudent, and most of all, since moving to Maryland, I have become rather less familiar with things called hills, let alone mountains.  The climbs of the early stages were a bit of a struggle.  I would walk about 15 meters or so and have to catch my breath.  People would come by and say, "you need to keep moving!"  in English, Spanish, German and French.  I would say, "my lungs beg to differ." I knew they were right, I knew that every time I stopped I was losing momentum and worse yet, making no forward progress.

I did hope and actually trust that the climbs were going to get easier, or at least less torturous, but I was wondering when, exactly, that was going to take place.  About half way up one of the mountains I stopped and thought to myself if was actually going to be able to do this.

And that's where the spiritual stuff started.  I realized that I have never really done much of anything physically impressive, not really.  Despite being 6' 4" and having a pretty good frame, I never played organized sports.  My "Al Bundy" moment was one time in Seminary I scored six touchdowns during a game of flag football, not exactly climbing K-2.  But here, on the Camino, I had a chance to really push myself, to do something that would sort of make people say, "Wow, 800 km?" that's a long way.  Right about then a little old woman with a small backpack chirped past me and said, "Buen Camino," and I realized that if I didn't carry this pack, if I didn't do the whole thing, there really wasn't much to it.  If I "bailed and mailed," which means shipping extra weight to Santiago via the mail, or if I simply threw stuff away, which a lot of people do, or if I just sort of tried to avoid the struggle of the climbs by taking a bus around the really difficult parts, I really wasn't going to make this the physical challenge I really needed it to be.

See, that's the thing, I think I was trying to impress someone, I don't know who.  The Camino is not an Everest situation, it's not a one of a kind physical accomplishment.  The Appalachian Trail or the Pacific Crest Trail will put you to more of a test, and you will probably not be routinely passed by tour buses full of tourists with little daypacks, but the Camino will test your body, it will test your resolve and it will force you to deal with your own soul.  The heaviness of my pack, and the nagging knowledge of those few things I probably could have done without became a metaphor for those things that you may not exactly need, but that you do need to carry.

So much of the "self-help" spirituality encourages you to try and free yourself of burdens and entanglements and strive for this sort of free and clear existence.  But that is a terrible and impossible idea.  Life is about weight, relationships are messy and tangled, but if you want to be a part of the good, you must sometimes carry the bad.

I am glad that I left some of my excess padding on those hills, but I am equally glad that I came home with all the things, necessary and otherwise, that I took with me.  Not because they were ultimately useful, but because I learned to carry them.