Day 14: Grañon to Belorado
Wake up, get up, walk in the heat, walk uphill, be grateful. Repeat. Watch Andrew apply sun screen at a roadside. Walk in the heat, walk uphill, wait for Andrew as he backtracks a kilometre to collect sunglasses left in the grasses at the roadside when applying sunscreen. Walk in heat, uphill, to (patient?) wife, be grateful. Yup! Sunglasses found! Soooo worth that extra two kilometres in 38°C heat.
After a long, hot walk under a cloudless blue sky (I’m starting to feel ungrateful about cloudless blue skies), Andrew and I arrived in Belorado. Then I began to feel grateful. Iain and Agnes called to us from a café that sold glorious pastries. I indulged in chocolate whipped cream deliciousness and a Coke. Okay, it might have been a beer, but I was high on pastry. We discussed possible albergues, and settled on one closest to the pastry café. It also had a pool!
I lazed around in the water dressed in Andrew’s track shorts and t-shirt, and watched as Andrew spread his Euros over the grass to air dry. He waded into the pool with his money belt around his waist. Our Canadian friend, Iain, waded into those same waters with his iphone 6. The good news…Euros dry. Poor Iain. He carried that baby wrapped in rice in his backpack for days before declaring it dead. R.I.P. Iain’s iphone 6. Team Canada Camino was having a bad day.
The rest of the evening was magical, though. Andrew and Katy California prepared an incredible Madrid-style pasta dinner with bread, veggies, and wine. They fed eight of us around a makeshift harvest table in the garden, on the other side of a barnyard with rabbits, pheasants, peacocks, pigeons, roosters, hens, guinea fowl, Mother Goose and a dog. Unbelievable. Only in Spain? We laughed, toasted, celebrated, and were truly grateful. The heat exhaustion and wounds of the day were cleared away with the dishes.
Similar to Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter tables that bring family and friends together, so we enjoyed the love of our Camino family. Unlike the Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter gatherings, we were relaxed and in the moment. We didn’t worry about over or underdone turkeys, and ill-timed potatoes. We mixed what we had with what we could pick up in the Supermercado, pulled the meal together in the spirit of togetherness and c’est la vie, and enjoyed each other. Even washing dishes for the entire albergue was a team effort, and we had fun. (I don’t cook, but I know how to wash dishes!) 
I want to remember the simplicity and ease of this harvest meal when Thanksgiving arrives. I like experiencing gratitude, instead of the intellectual experience of gratitude. You know that kind? After going through some kind of huge modern inconvenience, and then reminding yourself to feel gratitude because things could be worse…and, indeed are worse, for others. It is gratitude, but forced somehow. Like being backed into a thankfulness corner. 
Tonight I am living, breathing, and eating gratitude. My heart knows it. My face shows it. And I am blessed to have so many friends, both here and at home, to be grateful with and grateful for. Always.
¡Ulteia!
~Penny