Near Olatz, Spain
May 13th 2022
Day 3
We are up in the clouds.
It smells sweet like vanilla.
I stopped in Olatz with Saimon because we heard music tinkling through a beaded doorway, and when music tinkles through a beaded doorway, you stop. It felt like the beginning of a dream.
We’re walking again. Up and up and up.
We’re along the ridge-line now, further inland.
There’s so much earth beneath us, mountains-full.
The forests below are blotted with darker trees we think are cloud shadow until we realize it is just their color. We gulp the views with our eyes and sigh often, trying to paint the landscape behind our eyelids.
The wind moves, a peaceful whirring. The cloud fluff glides around us.
Silence between us. We listen.
There is a faint whistling through the canopy and with it, a strong feeling that we are both a piece and a witness of something ancient, something pulsing and profound.
We continue silently until we reach a rock face open to the sun and we lie on it, backs leaned against our packs.
My voice pierces the quiet: “Sometimes when I practice yoga, I go somewhere, and it feels like this place.”
Saimon is quiet, then:
“I have this gift in me, actually.” His Lithuanian twang curls over his words.
“Flexibility?”
"No,” He watches the horizon, “People used to tell me I’m slow and then I realized it’s actually peace and it’s always in me."
Silence, I jot down notes as we talk.
"When people don’t move at the same pace, I just go into my own world.”
“Does it ever get lonely?”
“No,” he watches, “But you have some peace, too. How did you get it?”
I don’t know how to answer. The question hovering in the air seems to glare down at me. I say some words, but fumble over most of them.
“I think one day you won’t have to come back anymore. It will just be you, always.” He says confidently, slowly.
The trees wave.
“It’s like they’re breathing.”
The wind blows.
Pobeña, Spain
May 16th 2022
Day 6
Nicolas points out the country you are in accepts you in accordance with your purpose there. I am here to find something still inside the movement.
A pilgrim walks for God.
---
We walk alongside rows of pear trees. Baby pears peak through the foliage and little white flowers speckle below. We leave the forest and Saimon picks up a bamboo stick as a staff. A woman comes out of her stone home to offer us water. We say thank you, but show her our full bottles, and she offers again. “Agroturismo” she repeats. More pear trees line the path. Huge roses that smell of soap. A perfect, tinkling creek. The skies are blue and wide, the sun shines fully.
Nicolas doesn’t trust it. He says it is all too sparkly and dreamy. We pass another home, this one brick with wooden support poles and brass designs. Decorative bikes hang from the sides with “STOP 5G!” signs that run plenty alongside the running creek.
We keep going and I wonder why we didn’t stop.
—
Where is the center?
I watch and I listen.
Noja, Spain
May 22nd 2022
Day 12
What am I running from?
Santillana Del Mar, Spain
May 23rd 2022
Day 13
It has been two weeks of walking now, 287 kilometers travelled. I bought a tent in Bilbao and have been sleeping in campgrounds that line the beaches along the Cantabria region. While I have been happy to leave the symphonies of snoring behind and to start my day at the hour I choose, I am eager to shower and sleep indoors for a couple of days. I have decided to stop at a convent in Santillana del Mar, a town known to tourists, with shiny cobble streets and magnets sold alongside beer at the corner shops.
I check-in and find my assigned room that I am sharing with just one roommate, a girl from Germany who shares her peppers and hummus and tells me which boys she has crushes on. I listen until we both leave to shower, and then I wander downstairs to the sitting area. I fall into a plush chair facing the garden where palm trees wave beyond the window. There are children playing and laughing outside. They have been for hours. I watch and listen with my head leaned back.
Saimon comes out to where I am sitting. Though not walking together, we have been ending up at the same albergues recently.
“What are you doing? Staring at people?”
“Something like that. Staring into space where people happen to be.”
Then we both stare for a while. He sits on the arm of my chair.
He stands, and says he is going to rest. I go a few moments after him. I climb up the stairs and see he is at the end of the hall with a towel over his shoulder. He notices me on the other end, smiles, turns away. I glance somewhere else, then look back, but he is already gone.
Someone is playing a flute outside. The children are still laughing.
Santillana Del Mar, Spain
May 24th 2022
Day 14
Something is wrong with my eye. It is pink and inflamed.
I need more time here to rest, so I say goodbye to Nicolas and Saimon. I don’t know if I will see them again. My roommate has left too with none other arriving. I have the room to myself.
—
I am in the corner of the convent’s garden, hidden by a low hanging tree and a few freely scattered bushes. I can’t stop crying and I don’t know why. My body feels hot and weak.
There are rows of lavender in the center, and on the other side, there are six fig trees lining the middle path. At the end, there is an old sink in a stone basin and a small dusty mirror at head’s height. I try not to look.
I am so tired. My eye is so inflamed.
I go back to room number 4 with the light pink wall trimming and the tag that reads ’13 Corinthians — LOVE’ and I weep some more and I fall asleep.
I awake to the darkness and feel restless. The wind brushes gently outside my open window and I feel cooler than earlier today. I rise, leave my room, and wander down the hall to a chamber Nicolas mentioned before he left, with an altar, candles, and Christian art. I enter and light the few candles I can find. The light flickers beneath artwork of Jesus being cared for, his feet being washed, being warmed. I look over to a stained glass window, his arms around two followers. I think of Saimon who disappeared into the woods last week for something missing. When I met him here, I asked if he had found it, and he said yes, though not there beneath the trees, but here, beneath the roof of this convent, when a girl picked up the guitar sitting in the kitchen and she plucked the peace he needed from its strings.
