Starting a Family – Camino Day 1
A professional trumpeter, a Catholic marriage counselor and a physiotherapist start hiking and get lost at the first intersection... It’s not the beginning of a joke; it’s the beginning of our five-week adventure hiking the Camino Francés to Santiago (Spain). Martin Sheen’s movie “The Way” promised us a quick quirky family, each with a burden and a gift that will unfold or unravel over the next 800 kilometers, and it doesn't take long to start meeting some of them.
After we confidently start out from St. Jean Port du Pied in the wrong direction at 7:48 this morning, then turn around and find the actual beginning of the trail, we immediately run across this swirl of lost Louisiana men whom Sarah later describes as having their own ecosystem. Over the first hour of gentle hills we swap stories with Ryan, Ignatius and Loverboy Troy about goat farming, threesomes on haybales, supporting healthy marital relationships, New Orleans Mardi Gras vs. Brazil’s Carnival, the best line to convince an older professor to have your children, and how a bright red plastic trumpet can get you into and out of trouble while travelling.
Up one of the steepest parts of the whole Camino I push a very heavy 4-year-old Gerhard in his stroller, chatting about multiple language acquisition with his relieved German mother Caroline and already-fed-up grandmother Frieda. When they catch up to us later he proudly shows me his muddy shoes and pants, and I sing him an old classic about ducks swimming with their tail feathers in the air with the worst German accent imaginable. (Two days later I’ll sing this again with him, and also his favourite song “Mary Did You Know,” at an old monastery hostel in Pamplona as we play piano and sing together for an hour while his again relieved mother enjoys a break.)
Already at tonight’s hostel by 11am, just before the rains, we hail goodbye to the Louisiana trio and visit with Brazilian Paula, who like us has decided to divide one long day into two short (but still steep and tiring) days. She’s just quit her travel agency job and hopes to discern “a job that truly makes me happy.” I hear this from a few other people before lunch is through, and suspect many more carry the same question on this quest.
At our random communal lunch table we discover that Shelley and Bethlehem (aka Bettel) both studied at University of Washington, that Shelley and our son share the same Urban Planning major, and that Bettle and our son are both Haverford “Fords.” Bettel, like a few other pilgrims here, just graduated and is taking some time off before looking for work, possibly back in her pre-adoption childhood country of Ethiopia. Her Chicago cousin Scott is also gap-yearing it, but has little direction other than a “life-changing” Rotary volunteer gig in Guatemala and a bouncing fear that his flat midwest upbringing would be his altitude-sickness downfall as we cross the Pyrenees mountains tomorrow.
I share these details not because they’re all that special - not any more special than any of our stories, which are special to all of us - but because of how special it is to have dived this deeply with such diverse peoples in multiple languages in such a short time. All we really share is a country road, a desire to explore or breathe or escape, and enough time to answer “How are you” with an answer that’s more like “Who are you?”
While Sarah is chatting in Spanish with some Argentians, I learn that Kelley from Minnesota is battling a foot fracture that had her waiting for a taxi to get past the steepest parts of these first two stages. She cried when her new friends from the hostel last night had to leave without her, but she’s determined to complete the full Camino despite doctor’s orders and regardless of how many taxi rides have to fill in the gaps.
Terry retired from his non-profit 8 years to battle cancer, then hiked the camino as part of his recovery. Now he’s back with daughter Anna to celebrate her Masters graduation and before her upcoming job supporting Vietnamese folx in Seattle. We talk about the cohousing community she grew up in and the Sociocracy governance model they helped develop there (the same model I introduced to O.U.R. Ecovillage ten years ago). Tom across the table tries nobly to find common ground with his experience in the Coast Guard.
At the communal dinner we find ourselves sitting with Charlie, an Aussie geneticist who made some famous y-chromosome discovery and is hiking these next 35 days with just one pair of underwear. Peter and Shelley share how she had to quickly help develop COVID protocol for her Canadian hospital, operating with the same in-the-dark ignorance and creativity that I had to use with my school colleagues as we developed a brand new distance learning program in the space of 2 weeks.
Back in our 8-person dorm room, Lillian uses a google voice translator to communicate with BeJammin’ that she’s willing to move to the top bunk so that he can get up multiple times tonight to go to the bathroom. We all help Jerry brainstorm where she may have lost her toiletries bag, until she finds the bright red back hanging over her bed in plain sight. Her travel mate Leslie’s camelback water bladder leaked, so she’s on her hands and knees trying to dry the cold wet tile with an REI travel towel.
Before lights-out and discovering who the snorers are, there’s fun banter about who will be up to pee (and therefore disturb all of us) the most. Lillian doesn’t understand the English and is worried she’s being told to do or not do something tonight, so I jump in with all of my 2-weeks worth of Italian to translate bathroom humour.
By 10:00 we are all happy to be in bed, reflecting on a first day of intense uphills, beautiful vistas and promising beginnings to friendships. Some of these pilgrims will move on faster or slower, while others will weave in and out of our path over the next 40 days. But every interaction has been real, honest, and nourishing. I don’t know if I have a question to carry along the camino, but genuine heartfelt connection with fellow pilgrims will undoubtedly be central to my enjoyment and learning and growth.
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Currently in...
Philadelphia
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Costa Rica (Monteverde) till Christmas, then Thailand (Chiang Mai), Vietnam (Hoi Ann, Feb-Mar). Please share any sites, people or ideas by email.
I like this:
“So I jump in with all of my 2-weeks worth of Italian to translate bathroom humour.”
Learned while the rest of us were just drinking too much at various bars along the way!
Only once did y’all truly drink “too much”, and that was the most fun night of the trip! I’m still cogitating over some of the Solve The World’s Problems arguments we had that night.
Nicely done! Captures so many of the people we also met on that first day up into the Pyrenees. I can’t believe how many of them I’ve come to know over the past two weeks. Especially on those first few days, we’re all bumbling through numerous mishaps, finding our Camino legs. It was really a pleasure meeting you two that first, rainy day.