A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. -Robert A. Heinlein
Always loved that quote. Never knew who wrote it until I googled it today. Grew up on his young adult sci-fi-Starship Trooper; The Rolling Stones; Tunnel in the Sky. But, seriously folks, don' cha think that there is some truth in all that? I mean think about it, yeah? The word 'career' is a nineteenth century invention-check it-albeit the beginning of the nineteenth century. Before the association of the word with a job, a line of work, it referred to horses careening around a track, running hard to get ahead, bouncing off of one another dangerously, somewhat maddened, focused on winning. So, in essence, the word 'career' means to enter what we now call the 'rat race,' to strive and train and to suffer, to outcompete (see social Darwinism) your fellow workers to get the affections and the approval of your boss in order to 'climb the ladder.' Think about it. Why do we work so hard, devote so much of our life energy that could instead be going to raising our children or to establishing and maintaining other human relationships, to make ourselves and someone else money? Does the phrase Ponzi scheme mean anything to you?
No, a career, as in learning to do one thing really well, that is not for me. I figure that if I get only one turn around this track, I want to do it all. Not that this is in any reasonable way possible, but if there are X number of things a person can try or learn, the closer I get to X, the more satisfied and the more excited I am gonna be. I do not just want to read about it, I want to try it.
Well, we left León yesterday morning, walked some twenty five klicks, Teo in his new shoes. We left Menno behind, he stayed in a different place, an albergue, and he slept in. By day's end T and I were the only people staying in our albergue in Villardongos, having gone to get a bite, me writing and drinking and smoking out front. I have been out front in the thirty some degree evening chill, breeze and all for maybe thirty minutes. It is dark and out of the corner of my eye I see a black figure moving towards the albergue, see a large walking stick wave. Fucking Menno! He comes in, the hospitileros having already left, and we stay up late, talking, playing music, as we are the only people in the joint! Build up a fire, buy cans of salts snacks from a vending machine, drink wine that we bought at the bar, trade music. Another good night.
Menno sees the flip flops that I use, and says, "Where did you get those sandals?" I tell him that I picked them up in a donativo where people had left stuff behind, sort of a 'take what you need, leave what you don't' pile.. He says, "Was that the place with the little room upstairs where they did the, uh-" And I fill in, "that oración?" He grins big as I now understand and grin as well. "Those are my flip flops, I accidentally left them there." He bought new ones since. Fucking Menno!
Anyhow, we built up the wood stove, kept warm, slept well. As fall is rapidly becoming winter here, as the temperature is now dropping to below freezing at night, we are working on finishing the last thirty percent of this walk as soon as we can. Our legs and feet are getting stronger, our will even more so. We are quite determined to make the other hundred and eighty miles to Santiago.
The landscape is changing now as we walk; the flat, high altitude plateau of the Meseta is giving way slowly to the forested, rolling hills that mark the end of the province of León and the beginning of the Autonomous Community of Galicia. The flatter fields of crops, of yams produced for sugars, of 'cereales,' trigo (wheat), and hay, giving way to scrub, mountain oak, and dry land scrub plants, valleys, hills, closer in appearance to the beginning of our journey, way back in Navarre and La Rioja. We are climbing.
We passed through a historic little pueblo today called Puente de Órbigo, named for the bridge located at the eastern entrance to the town, one of the best preserved and most magnificent of the old Roman bridges to be found along the Camino Frances. The bridge, with its twenty arches, dates to the thirteenth century, and is particularly well known for its association with the Leonese knight and author Suero de Quiñones.
Quiñones and ten of his companions camped in a field on the west side of the bridge and challenge every knight that wished to cross the Punte de Órbigo to a jousting contest. The band swore to remain there, imposing their will on others, until thy had broken three hundred lances. From the 10th of July until the 9th of August of 1434, Suero remained undefeated in seven hundred contests against sixty-eight other knights. At the end of one month, however, before three hundred lances had been broken, the men were ordered to vacate their encampment by the royal minister Álvaro de Luna. Even today there is a jousting festival held on the jousting field next to the bridge every July.
We move on into one of the last decent sized cities that we will go through, Astorga, with a population of 12,500. Originally settled by Celtic peoples, the town became a Roman stronghold in 14 B.C., and was named by them Asturica Augusta. Situated today at the confluence of the Camino Frances and La Ruta or Via de la Plata, another Camino originating in southern Spain (the Route of Silver), the Romans used this site to guard the trail of precious metals that they brought north. Remarkably well preserved Roman baths and a Roman villa can be seen today in the southern part of Astorga.
We walked without Menno today, he still sleeping when we pulled out around eight thirty. Teo and I had been seeing advertisements for a hotel located in Astorga, the Hotel Aster, for maybe three or more days. Since before León, anyhow. Gorgeous billboards, blue spa waters, massage, and two simple words like this, 'Descansa. Disfruta.' This means, 'Relax. Enjoy.' But it sounds better, more decadent and sumptuous in Spanish, right? After dropping forty Euros per night for two nights in León, we had already made a firm decision not get a hotel for a while, let alone an expensive one, in order to get our daily cost average down.
Upon entering the city we walked towards the central Plaza, sat down at a table in front of a cheap Pizzeria, I ordered a cerveza grande, and we sat down before deciding where to stay or whether we should drop by a tiendita for booze or food for dinner-a bit of a logistical planning that we do most every time we get to the end of our day. Okay, so, guess which establishment was adjacent to the Pizzeria? Yup. You got it. The Hotel Aster. On the sign board out front was posted the menú del día. For nine euros the pilgrim's menu posted looked really good, and being that it was served in a really fancy dining room, we figured that we should maybe give that a try.
Teo to me, "Hey, Boss," a wry grin pasted across his face, eyes alight, "maybe we should just go in to see what it costs to stay here." And so, as in any good movie, the scene now shifts to us throwing our packs onto the really comfy beds in the really nice room on the second floor, what they call the first floor in Europe. A separate hallway with a nice bathroom, complete with a great bathtub that I 'descansad and disfrutad' in three times before we left the following morning! It was sixty euros, but, hey, the good people on the other end of my Visa card happily paid for it for us. A window and balcony overlooking the Plaza, a great dinner, the whole shebang.
We got news from Menno that evening that he had apparently torn a muscle in his abdomen and that he could walk no more than five hundred meters a day. It is a shame, we will miss him. Last we heard from Gary, he was sick and stuck some three or four stages back. The camineros are dropping out. We are continuing and we are determined to make Santiago by or before the thirtieth of this month. That gives us two days of rest to avoid bad weather or to descansa y disfruta if we need it. Snow is in the forecast two days from now and we are going to be hitting the tallest points of our travels at about the same time. The temperatures are getting down to three or four degrees below zero Celsius now each night. We bought gloves as we left Astorga the following morning for twenty-one euros a set. We are steeling our bodies and minds for the final push, twenty-two stages down, eleven stages to go.
Inside I am also determined to go the final stages, get to the destination that I have set for myself. With each of the thirty thousand steps that I take each day I also am slowly but surely moving away from a place of self destroying emotional dependence on a relationship that has really, in the end, given me nothing positive to take away. Well, perhaps that is not true. Perhaps I have grown in one or two important ways. I have learned to hold my center inside myself, to not let another person dictate my happiness or my feelings of self doubt and insecurity. Today I am a much stronger, much healthier person than I was ten years ago. Today I can much better control my reactions to the actions of others, and, in the end, it seems, that is all we can learn to control, just our reactions. I have come to know finally that I can not control the behaviors of others. Not by, as I had for so long believed, convincing another to see things the way that I do. Not by pleading or arguing or proving. Just my own internal, emotional, rational self-that is all that I can and should be able to adjust. And in the end that is the process that I can now use to achieve peace inside.
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