Got up at 7:30 today, took a brief shower, had my instant coffee, two smokes, edited, added photos to, and posted my latest blog. Finally figuring a way, by downloading an app for $2.99, to put pictures of my adventure into the entries. Packed up and left by 8:30. We had a small breakfast of a banana each and maybe three inches of our last baguette with jam, or patè, cheese or butter, drank down water, and hit the trail by 9:00. All in all we both agreed that our legs, joints, feet, felt better than any day yet. I remember well the words of a friend, Erin Bishop, who walked the Camino two years ago after the passing of her father, Mike; their family, including wife, Ann, and son, Eric, next door neighbors of my family growing up in the Ellensburg, Washington, area. My brothers and I used to ride the big, yellow school bus, number twenty seven, with them each morning from about seven miles out of town. Erin said, upon finishing her pilgrimage, 'The first ten days are about your feet, the second about your companions, and the third is about you and your relationship with God.' That being said, I have been very eagerly awaiting the termination of the first ten days! And, frankly, a bit apprehensive about what may lay in store for me during the final ten. I have learned some things about La Rioja and Los Riojanos that inhabit the picturesque Communidad. First off, it is one of the smallest of Spain's 17 Communidades Autonimos. Secondly, it is divided into La Rioja Alta and La Rioja Baja, the best half of the best wine region in Spain being the more Northern, or mas alta, part. Viñedos, vineyards, cover much of the landscape. The rows of grapes border the Camino much of the way, their multi-colored, arrow straight rows a sublime combination of geometry and wilderness, absolutely straight in their unkempt, fractal tendrils of leaf, vine, and cluster. Sandwiched between the mountainous region of Navarra and the fertile plains of the Meseta (think mesa, like 'table' in Spanish, or the flat topped mesas of the American Southwest) of Castille y Aragon to the West, La Rioja is a friendly, historically significant Communidad of its own, a province where the famous battle of Clavijo, a turning point in the Christian armies blunting of the Moorish armies march North, occurred. A good day. My mind more free of the vestiges of emotional rancor that ties me down. Less fettered by the small, Lilliputian lines tying me to the ground; memories, lost hopes, fragments of dreams somehow more obscured by the mists of my progress, less clear anymore, a distant, pre-historic remembrance of the manner in which I used to view myself. Yet with all of these baby steps towards that which I can not yet see, there are accompanying fears, anxieties, of that which is yet to be. And as I walk these thirty thousand steps each day a veil is slowly but certainly being lifted, a fog burned off by the blinding light of the sun, the ball of fire hanging in the sky above as well as the growing fire within, burning away the inversion of clouds that has for too many years disallowed the horizon to even be seen. And so we walked today, the first day after our Day of Rest. Our bodies and minds more in sync, our two mentalities more entwined and more aligned. As we pass the one quarter mark of our epic trek, we begin more to come to understand and to properly fathom the enormity of that which we attempt. While simultaneously, and in many ways incongruously, we haven't so much achieved an understanding of what this sojourn means as we simply are learning to do it. Perhaps in the framing of our goal as such it becomes easier to be, easier to do, easier to let go of what has been preconceived, and it is, in the end, just the walking that is left when all of the intellectualizing, all of the planning, all of the trying to know beforehand, is taken away. We walked strong, our bodies firming, our minds fortifying. The land, one twenty kilometer valley at a time opening before us, to be crossed, and, like the others before them, left behind. By the time that we two reached Nájera, a largish community compared to many others, approximately 7,000 souls, we had walked fifteen kilometers, two thirds or more of our goal for the day, we readied for a rest. Deciding before reaching this city that we would break, upon the recommendation of our host from Madrid's friend, Ignacio's, suggestion, that we should not pass this place without sampling its famous cuisine. And so we bought a few items from a grocery store in Nájera in order to continue our practice of carrying enough simple foods to bypass the cost of prepared foods, then settled in to find a spot to grab some local fare.
We found a small Snack Bar/Bar downtown and took a seat at the bar. While we choose this place because there were three gentlemen of about sixty-five or seventy seated outside at a table, men who appeared local and, resting on the implied endorsement, walked on in. Yet tapas and raciònes Is what we found on the menu, and not, as we had hoped, entrees. Pues, bien, vale, as they say around here, it's okay, continue. The barmaid, a dark haired woman of forty or so, recommended the morcillo asado and the tortilla, and so those items are that we asked for, along with a beer for me to wash the food down. Before continuing I need to clear up a common misconception, one under which I had existed until this trip to Spain. As the son of a woman from Mexico, and as an American to boot, my life long understanding of what a tortilla is is a flat, circular, flour or corn based carbohydrate, the bread, let's say, of the Mexican people. Given this pre-understanding, I superimposed it over my understanding, reasonable enough you may say, of what the same word would mean in Spain. Au contraire, mon ami. Here a tortilla is a flattish, maybe one inch tall, circular, egg dish. Somewhat akin to quiche, without any crust, it is a delightfully light, egg based dish often contains small pieces of potatoes and cheese, served by itself as a tapa or a raciòn, depending on whether it is ordered as a small accompaniment to a beer, or a larger amount served as a meal in itself. Imagine my surprise. While we are on the topic, dear reader, hot sauces such as Tobasco, Cholula, Tapatío, etc., are nowhere to be found in this cultural ancestor to what we know today as Mexican, or Tex-Mexican cuisine. Not a one. No jalapeños, no pickled carrots or onions, no salsa,nothing at all but beer or wine. We supped, a two o'clock supping, as it turned out, on the two dishes, and man were we happy we did! She did not steer us wrong. Morcilla, pronounced 'morthilla' in the continental tradition of turning Cs into the lispy, 'th' sound that we in the US often associate with the speech impaired (which cruel person, by the way put the 's' in the word lisp?) or the flamboyantly gay, is made from blood, rice, spices, and is packed into a sausage casing about one and a half inches in diameter. Awful as it sounds, morcillo is an amazing fare, flavorful, tender, rich. The city of Nájera is, besides being a culinary stopping point on the world food map, the former, 11th and 12th century, Capitol of the Kingdom of Navarra, and the beginning of stage V of the Codex Calixtinus, the Roman name for The Way of St. James.
Within about forty-five minutes we jetted on down the road, six klicks to go to make our hoped for destination of Azofra, some twenty-three kilometers from Navarette, our staring point for the day. Along the way I found clusters of grapes apparently dropped from some form of tractor that modern day Spaniards use to grow, tend to, and ultimately to harvest their crop. Picking one up, I popped one of the deep, blackish purple globes into my mouth and, as someone whose folks grew small amounts of different varieties of the fruit at our familial farm, was surprised as hell at the ultra sweet taste, the over abundance of sugars found in the pleasantly succulent burst of liquid that erupted upon my biting into it. La Rioja wines are known for being particularly sweet and flavorful, and it became immediately apparent why that is! Teo and I talked about many things today. My son talked of his various, and as yet undecided, plans for the coming year. Where he may live upon his return from Ireland, where he will go to WOOF (Working on a Farm, an internet based organization that one signs into to connect with persons in various parts of the world for the purpose of trading six to eight hours of work per day for three squares and a place to sleep) from early December to mid-January. Will he live with his mother, where all of his possessions currently lie, or back at one of my houses where he was living with a good friend, Dominic, before he came to Europe, three weeks before my arrival a week and a half ago. I was delighted to speak with him about his immediate future. As the father of a twenty year old it is now, I well realize, a privilege and not a right, to be included in his thoughts, a process, probably, that, as a son at this delicate age, is wrought with risk and pressure and the potential of disapproval from his father. The sun shone on us both and on our relationship as we strode harmoniously through the vineyards of La Rioja on this bright, late October afternoon. Thank you, Teo. My boy's, excuse me, my man's guide book has an adage pasted into it for today's stage which seems apt enough, given the above paragraph's topic, that, as his dad, is of importance to me to relay. It goes thus, 'We are speeding up our lives and working harder, in a futile attempt to slow down and enjoy it.' This reminds me of the story of the third world farmer who is taking his siesta under the shade of a tree when a Western educated, economist minded businessman stops by and wakes him. 'Excuse me, but don't you know that if you work through your siesta you could earn enough money to save up and buy a tractor? The local says back, 'Why would I want to do that?' And the Westerner, full of his own surety, replies, 'Well, then you could more effectively farm your land and, perhaps with enough work over a couple of years, purchase more land and farm that too.' The man, still sleepy eyed, asks, 'And why would I want to do that?' 'Well,' the foreigner says, 'because then you could earn more money, save it, and someday be able to do less work and relax.' And to this the farmer replies, 'You mean like I am doing now?' It has become increasingly more and more of interest to me over the passing of the last five years, to impress this philosophy upon my children. They view me, as I can only suppose that many of my family and friends do, as a man smart enough to justify his own lack of doing, of producing, of 'contributing' to the economic society around us. It's a hard place to defend, the place I find myself in today. I mean, look around, folks, what type of society do we proudly live in, do we so adamantly defend? It's called capitalism. As opposed to communism, which puts communing with the earth and with your family, friends, and neighbors above all else, or socialism, which places the greater good of the society that we live In above all else, we have chosen to place capital, the accumulation of wealth, above all else. Say what you will about communists and socialists and their failed attempts at creating a utopian world, but have you read the documents that form the base of their philosophies? I have read many of them, though certainly not all. As capitalism does not strive to separate, or alienate, the people from one another, in the most stark, Marxian. terms, neither does socialism or communism seek to create totalitarian, Stalinist states. Something gets in the way every time around. Could it be the seductive lure of power or of money, or of influence, that all of us have sown genetically, evolutionarily within us? The desire to better provide for our own, to spread our seed and our genes and our influence over the earth? This same pitfall, this same kernel of destruction, earning enough money to reach the stars, perhaps that is precisely where the fall from grace, the termination of the Garden of Eden, occurs. Tell me, dear reader, which is more difficult to accumulate, money or time? Who, upon reaching their last moments, regrets having spent more time with their children and less time earning 'capital'? And who, dear reader, most benefits from our accumulation of said 'capital'? Not usually us, as worker bees, so much as those who have the capital to provide us jobs. Does this recipe sound more like freedom or like indentured servitude? Does it sound more like providing for our own or for others? And when taken in this context, doesn't the entire capitalist system smack more of Amway than of perfection? As a father I don't want the precious, precious angels that I raised from infancy, that I cried and worried over, to give their lives over to the whims and greedy pulls of those 'up line' from them. No. I pray for them to find a path that provides for them time to be, time to spend with those that they love, not time to earn. Okay, enough from the Pulpit of Peb. A surreal moment is occurring here as I sit on the cold, wind blown steps of this municipal albergue in a small town of five hundred on the Northern portion of the Iberian Peninsula. Barry White's 'I can't Get Enough ofYour Love, Babe' is playing on my everything tablet and I'm preaching anti-capitalist proverbs, the splashing water of the fountain in the courtyard the only sound. As usual, all the others are asleep, and it is me, my can of beer, my cigarette, my concerns and fears ruling my actions. Another night hanging in the Kingdom of Nod, as Art Bell used to say, the Twilight Zone, the dark, embracing arms of Morpheus.
Met a lovely young woman from Germany tonight, goes by the name of Julia Ramirez Perez, having been married to a Columbiano. Teo, she, and the only other person staying in the albergue, a French woman named Maria Joseph, went to dinner at the local restaurante/bar. Perhaps thirty two years old, blonde, blue eyed, waifish somewhat in appearance, a bit introverted, friendly, with excellent English, I introduced myself, was impressed with her more or less flawless English, thought, in fact, she was American, and struck up a conversation. Before long, she Teo and I were wrapped in conversation, talking excitedly, making plans for going to dinner. The four of us stepped around the corner, stopping in at one of the two places in town that serve cena, dinner. She sat next to me, we had lots of good, engaging conversations, the four of us. She shared interesting perspectives of what it's like to be raised in a culture that is globally viewed as being responsible for the murder of millions and millions of defenseless people, how her grandfather 'served,' thus creating for her a strange and indefensible culpability. How when she went, as a teen, to a World Scout's Meeting, it was only the representative group from Germany, her group, that did not post their national flag. Dinner went well. We talked rapidly, much, connecting. By the end of things, she, relayed that as a German she needed to go to sleep early, arise early, hit the trail early, wanted to know what time we would hit the trail, how far would we walk tomorrow, where would we be staying tomorrow night. Look, folks, as a good friend has frequently told me, a friend I've known since childhood, 'Pebby, you think every girl likes you." All true I suppose. What can i say, I'm a half full kind of guy! At any rate, never having been a guy who places much value on conquests, interested so, so much more in connecting, in merging with another, it is wonderful and surprising to me to see within myself some form of, I don't know, vitality? Of interest in the eyes of a woman? A sense of myself as something other than a carbon based machine designed 'to take it,' something other than a being struggling for stasis and equilibrium. Someone who recognizes, after such a God damned long time, that perhaps another who isn't there to haunt me, can actually see me. That I am not a phantom, irrelevant, too old and beaten down by the psychic wars to count. And, yeah, I may get up early enough to 'run into her' before she hits the trail tomorrow, take her temperature, see if I'm not just some old fool, and aim for the same destination. You know the saying, 'Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it?' Well the other less well known half of it is, 'First as tragedy, then as farce.' My life, as it pertains to my most recent marriage, passed the 'tragedy' part about seven years ago and has run through so many cycles of 'farce' that I feel ashamed, silly, drunk on self destruction, plain old stupid. All I really want, at this somewhat late juncture in the game, is to mean something to someone who takes me in any way seriously enough to value my company enough to respect me enough to matter. Is that really too much to ask?
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Location:Plaza de la Iglesia,Grañón,Spain
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