Estella to Torre del Rio-31 kilometers walked today

Your daily life is your temple and your religion-Khalil Gibran

I am learning that the above statement is true. What do they say in AA? If you have one foot in the past and one foot in the present you're pissing all over the present. Yup. That's me. Not the enlightened part, but the being stuck part. Locked into my past, locked up, stuck. God am I stuck. Trying to shake some seriously ugly stuff. Unable. Frozen. Hoping, fucking hoping and praying to move forward. Ouch. Don't trust my crafty, ever justifying, fortune cookie sort of apply any reason to anything to make it seem like a good thing sort of waste of my own personal resources, energy, happiness.

But today, today was a good day. Despite the train wreck that is happening in my love life, I feel some forward motion, some movement, anyhow. Movement that the body seems to be acclimating to. Interestingly enough, every day on this quite physical trek, a different part of my lower extremities have pain. It rotates from my surgically repaired ankle to my left knee, a new one for me, to my shins, to the tendons in my crotch, to, today, the tendons connecting my shin muscles to my feet. Like mice running around inside your walls as you open a hole over here to look for them, moving to a different place, one step ahead of the exterminator. Thank God for ibuprofen, yeah?

Teo and I awoke at 7:30, having spent the night in a pensione so that we could have our own double room, not down with the horrible snoring and icky feeling of the groups of late night partying fifty something's hitting on the twenty something's down below us until the umpteenth hour of the night. Quite civilized, actually, our pensione overlooking the Plaza Santiago in Estella, a town of about fifteen thousand-the largest of places we have stayed other than Pamplona. Washed our laundry in the tub and hung up before going to the Spar Todotodo Super Mercado to buy about fifteen Euros worth of booze (my bad), baguette, mustard, pâté, cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, bananas, and orange juice. This amount paid for our dinner last night and today's breakfast, an extremely pleasant bread, pâté, onion, cheese, and onion mid morning repast, and two terrific sandwiches for a four o'clock late lunch.

We got on the path (of St. James) by 9:30 and did our longest day so far, partly to try to get seven klicks ahead of the possibly ex-con French seedy guys, now that our bodies are adjusting to walking up and down hills with a twenty five pound pack at five klicks an hour, not counting breaks. A really terrific day it has been. Aside from the emotional hangover from the (didn't I already do this last year?) fricking freak show of my love life, it truly was a good day. I spend my days now walking and doing my best to divert my brain from the pain of grieving, from the curdled milk stench of the disappointment that ensues from such a telegraphed, so easy to see coming, and now finally here, end of what I had fooled myself into thinking was a might change marriage that I've prayed would change.

Teo and I are getting along even better than I expected. I am so crazy proud of this guy. It tickles me endlessly to watch him, twenty hears old and yet so much older. Travel buddies, like a Bob Hope Bing Crosby in Spain show full of bonding, talking, sharing, laughing, merging. Poignant. Reinvigorating. Hope producing.

Before we walked four klicks we come upon the Fuente del Vino. That's right, do the obvious translation. The fountain of wine. Yup. A tap that you turn and red wine, tinto in these parts, pours gloriously, and completely free, not even a soul in sight, into your nalgene. I downed about eight ounces, had two smokes, laughing most of the time due to our incredible fortune. It is on the side of a winery building just west of Estella. Funny enough, a French couple comes upon us, I point out the wine tap, and the guy looks at me, drinking and smoking at ten in the morning, incredulously, a semi-vacant, child like smile pasted on his face. Hey, what can I say, carpe diem, baby, they don't know how I roll. But please be warned, dear reader, we are trained professionals-do not try this at home. I am an alcoholic but I do not play one on TV.

Funny enough the thought I had, copying, albeit slightly altering, a bumper sticker I've seen, was, 'Fuck youth, we have plenty of youth, what we need is a fountain of wine!"

Then we strolled on, changing tactics recently, not shooting out of the gates each morning only to burn out, hobbling into the day's end after twenty to twenty three klicks. We pace ourselves purposely over the first two hours, covering maybe four klicks per, nourishing our bodies and psyches, looking at the long haul, protecting our resource, our ability to keep walking. At about eleven we stopped at a strange, squarish building with no discernible purpose, to fill water bottles and eat bread, pâté, onions, cheese, tomato, and mustard. A snack for two that cost maybe $1.35 Euros total. Then we started to climb.

We walked up today's largest hill, skirting around the edge of Castillo de San Esteban, a roughly fourteenth century defensive fortification situated on the top of a tall, forested hill shaped like a young woman's breast, an impressive stone edifice that was visible for almost all of today's nearly nineteen mile march.

 Along the side of the hill, near the small town, complete, like all towns hereabouts, with it's own tall steeples, centuries old church, we came across the 12th century Fuente de Los Moros. This is, essentially a small, rectangular, three sided building, built over a natural spring or dug well, complete with moorish arches, two of them, forming the empty, fourth side. Stairs, made of stone, maybe eight steps, lead down into the water like some ancient Roman bath house.

Of course my thoughts when I see these old buildings, given that a really old building where I come from is ninety years old, reel quickly to, 'where is my girl, she'd love this!,'is to think of my best friend of these so many shining years, and it's so damned hard to shake that. But what I can relate to you that may aide you in understanding what my boy, excuse me, my man and I are doing is that we take about one step every half second, meaning 120 per minute, or 7200 per hour. We walk about five hours or so a day, meaning we take about 35,000 steps each day. And will for 32 days. Yup, about one million steps between five days ago and twenty seven days from now. We will cover the total of the northern part of the Iberian Peninsula! We also cram in fifty pushups  and fifty sit ups each lunch stop. We call it Boot Camp Camino!

On this, our last day in the (former Kingdom of) Navarra, we came upon a cemetery just east of the small ciudad of Los Arcos. Carved in stone from 1849, over the portal to the graves, is an inscription that reads, translated, of course, "you are what I once was, and will be what I am now." a spiritual journey it is. A spiritual journey I am trying to make it. A spiritual journey is what I need it to be. My mortal soul hanging in the balance and all....

Upon reaching our day's destination, Torres del Rio (that's Towers on the river for those of you still working on your Español), we parked ourselves at an Albergue charging us $7.00 Euros per head per night to sleep in a bunk bed in a room of about ten. We spent $10.00 more Euros per person for a two course meal with wine. I had a good garbanzo bean, chorizo sopa followed by bistek (steak) with patatas, French fries, and custard for dessert. We met a really sweet, great English speaking Dutch man of twenty four, named Menno De Neef, who we hung out with through dinner and until eleven o'clock, talking all sorts of things from the hard edged, anti-immigrant coming up politics of the Netherlands, to the anime cartoon One Piece.


Menno, who fucked his right knee up on his way to Torres del Rio and has been laid up here for the last three days, shared a funny too precious not to share with you. I had told him that as an American it sometimes occurred to me to sew a Canadian flag on my backpack due to my embarrassment at my country's foreign policies. He said something or other about the jokes that we all know about Canadians. T and I said, no we don't know. He said, oh, you know, like Canadian graffiti is, 'I'm sorry to write on your wall.' We busted a hard gut on that one.

He, Teo and I sat on a bench outside the albergue drinking, smoking cigarettes, self disclosing about our families, our friends, war, drugs (I did say he was Dutch!), laughing, revelling in the priceless position we all find ourselves in here on this trek in this beautiful land on the 1200th anniversary of the Camino.

Yet all day long each step had been, for me, like a shovel scoop aiming to fill the big hole inside me that the wind blows through. The hole made large over the last fifteen years by the end of one marriage, the separation from the home that my children were raised in, the beginning and end of my second marriage, the graduation of my last child from high school, the change in careers for me, and now the imminent prospect of leaving my home country this next spring to move to, most likely, the United Arab Republic to teach English. Shoveling with each step, just walking, the easiest, most natural thing we do without even thinking, trying tasty me step ahead of the train of demons charging relentlessly behind, ready dot overtake me at any given,omens, trying tone chiller,eye to be a good father, trying to not cry, trying to see the positive in what is transpiring in my life. Trying to hold my shit together,assuring myself that each little step metaphorically speaks of course,mileage my soul.

Learning, the hard way, that this place, here, in this moment is who I am. Not there, not some time in the future. My daily life is my temple and my religion and the rest is okay, it is perfectly fine. It is not me. Right now, writing this, this is me.n

And at the end the day,the French couple who seemed somewhat alarmed at the 48 year old American who was drinking wine at ten in the mañana, ran out of gas about eight kilometers shy of Torres del Rio.