Viana to Navarette

My final walking day of Camino Stage 1 was a mix of desperation, creepiness, and hope.

To begin, I struggled out of the albergue at Viana and, as already detailed, made my way well behind other pilgrims, past street cleaners hosing down the pavement following the Running of the Bulls. I passed a young girl flirting with a young man working inside a bakery. The bakery was closed, but the young man held up some yummy goods to the window to tease the girl. Young love looks the same everywhere. Beautiful.

A peregrino wished me a Buen Camino. He said we made turtles look like hares, then he passed me too.

I leaned heavily on my metal-tipped walking stick, and tick, tick, ticked through and out of Viana. I can’t tell you how far down the Camino I got before reading various signs in various languages about a man whose house had been taken by the bank. After the police physically removed him and his wife from their home, he began offering tea, coffee, and biscuits for a “donativo” from the back of his van. He was articulate, a “friend of the English-speaking peregrino” and kind. He pulled up a folding chair and insisted I sit and talk. Many pilgrims tossed some Euro coins into his dish and either did or did not enjoy his Camino treats.

Many more peregrinos looked away and continued their conversations on the long road to Santiago.

Then the creepy….Maybe Zoe should stop reading. I can’t bear the “I told you so.”

After I left the man in the van, I continued up and over a pedestrian bridge that ferried pilgrims safely over a busy road. In the distance and down in a valley was parked a white van. I thought it was odd. I couldn’t see any farm work or construction work or ANY work for that matter. I continued to step, grimace, step, wince my way along a quiet dirt path next to a sparse forest when a young Korean girl I recognized ran up to me sputtering something about a “so bad man.” She kept looking over her shoulder towards the pedestrian bridge I had just crossed and in the direction of the homeless Spanish man.

“He’s not a bad man,” I said. “He has no home and wants you to buy a tea or cookie.”

“No,” she insisted.”A so bad man in the trees. He so bad man.”

I looked into the forest I’d just passed through and saw a man dressed in jeans and a blue shirt hanging out in the trees. He watched us, but didn’t move. The Korean girl finally rushed ahead, leaving me to wonder what I could have done on a gimpy leg. I couldn’t save myself or anyone else in that moment. I never knew why the Korean girl thought the man was so bad. I never saw her again. And, thankfully, I never again saw the blue man in the forest. (Did he own the isolated white van in the valley?)

And then the hope.

I dragged my left leg past a huge community garden as I prepared to walk into Logrono. People were enjoying their produce and each other’s company. The book Seedfolks came to mind, and I started to miss my classroom. Although, I suspect I liked that damn book more than my students. I also passed an old woman selling leather bracelets, necklaces, and pins. She offered sellos for free. I found myself frequently explaining that my “rodilla” hurt. “I can see that,” she said. Her place was a rundown hippie establishment with a good vibe. I bought a leather bracelet with the iconic shell, and hoped Logrono was an easy city to make my way through.

(Re)Enter Italian grandmother Angela. Angela kept popping up along the Way and in some of the albergues I slept in. I’d pull her raincover over her backpack, she’d offer me cream for my knee. Her English was as wide as my Italian. We could both swear in the other’s language. 🙂 If Angela hadn’t asked to walk slowly with me through Logrono to Navarette, I would have ended my Camino long before I did.

Angela was likely suffering tendonitis in her ankle. She kept pace with me and offered encouragement. We slogged through Logrono, past the long fence adorned with crosses woven through it by passing peregrinos, until Navarette came into view. (I tried to weave a cross through the chain link, but couldn’t stand long enough flamingo style with my walking stick in hand to get the twigs to stay put. I’d like to think they didn’t blow away after I turned my back.)

Spanish towns/cities present difficulties for pilgrims. They appear like an oasis in the desert. But it takes so damn long to reach them. Then you have to climb, climb, climb another Spanish hill to reach the city. Then you have to find the freakin’ albergue you reserved before they give your top bunk away to another peregrino.

Somehow that gutsy gramma and I made it to Navarette and upstairs to our twin beds in a room for three in a wonderful modern albergue. I didn’t know then that my Camino was over. Peregrinos went out to buy me supper. Again. Getting to the toilet involved sliding along walls and lowering myself by using my death grip on the sink.

When morning came, Angela hugged me goodbye. A Korean girl I’d been pissed at the night before for rustling plastic bags after “lights out” offered me her shoulder and humped me to a bottom bunk in a new room. Often albergues will not let you stay more than one night. I managed two after Celestino and his wife Alicia saw that walking was not in my immediate future.

Uli, a German transplanted to the United States, loved Navarette enough to stay one additional day. She also stayed to care for me, tell me stories and discuss life.
Celestino and Alicia made Uli’s extra day possible, as well. I spent most of the next day and the second night putting bags of frozen peas and frozen shrimp on my swollen knee.

I believe my Camino may have started in earnest from my bunk bed in Navarette. Uli’s Camino is about human connections. I’d never considered that. I wanted to walk, think, meditate, pray, consider my studies and figure out who the heck I was as a retired teacher without a classroom identity. I didn’t have to travel to Spain to work this out. And I didn’t have to travel to Spain to remember that I have caring, kind, funny, compassionate friends at home. And I cannot begin to wrap up Uli’s wisdom, or Angela’s spirit, or Celestino and Alicia’s generosity and understanding. But while stuck and scared and alone in a foreign country, I realized we must be there for each other through our unique offerings. It’s not just the way of the Camino or the pilgrim. It’s life and it’s love.

Ultreia!