It’s Mother’s Day – my first one without my mother and I’m weighed down with heavy thunderclouds of sadness. I’m still in shock and disbelief and cannot fathom how I can move on without her. I vaguely realize that I will never – not ever so long as I live – see her, touch her, talk to her or the worst blow of all – beg her forgiveness for all that I said that I shouldn’t have and all that I didn’t say that I should have. Never – never – never – NEVER EVER – so distressing and so terrifyingly final!
A friend tells me about Emilio Estevez’s “The Way” – that it is available for streaming on Netflix and how it’s just what my broken heart needs. I have wept all my tears for the day and am drained by the time we – my husband and two of my best friends and I – sit down to watch the movie. Almost immediately the movie sweeps me in and hurls me into the Camino – right alongside the other pilgrims – and deep within me is born the first spark in the three weeks since I lost ma – one that flickers and burns stronger as the movie goes on – and a raging flame that consumes me by the time the movie ends. “THIS IS IT!!!”
Prepping and Research – Oh what was I thinking!!!
In the very beginning I decide that maybe it’s best I coddle myself – let a tour operator plan my daily route – book my accommodations – transfer my luggage – that the 500 miles walk itself will be challenge enough without the added constraints of logistical levelers and back-breaking back-packs. I research travel agents and am immensely pleased when the very first one I email calls me almost immediately and assures me that she will have my entire trip planned and ready within 24 hours. And she does – my itinerary tells me I have a daily walk of 14-18 miles with an assured place to rest my weary head at the end of each grueling day.
Then I stumble upon a Camino forum where a chorus of voices are joined in unison to warn me against pre-planned, pre-organized, pre-booked walks that will end in nothing but catastrophe and disaster. I am told the Camino “will provide” – I will find/make many friends and I will want to walk with them – only to realize that I can’t because I have foolishly tethered myself to an itinerary. There might be a rainy day when the Heavens open up and I won’t be able to walk more than a few miles (if that) – “what will you do then?” they ask . What if I sprain an ankle – acquire some blisters – can’t keep to the set pace – want to stop for more than one day at some quaint village that catches my fancy – relentlessly go on and on the advisers and warners and well-wishers wagging their collective admonishing fingers.
Suggestible that I am, I keep vacillating between making the Camino “my own” – being open to surprises and adventure and whatever else awaits those who dare to embrace the unknown or succumbing to the safe cocooned comfort of transferred baggage and private rooms and the sinful luxury of attached bathrooms. Several people (in the minority) advise me to pay no heed to anyone and to do whatever my little heart desires – indulge in pre-booked just as I originally planned, take each day as it comes and revel in the flexible fluidity of stop and go as I please or dictate my own schedule and book ahead and/or have bag transferred depending on which way the (mood) wind blows. I finally decide that I *will* play it by ear – and be guided by my body (mainly legs and shoulders) and my new Camino friends (surely I will make at least one?!)
And so I start scouring the Camino forums for tips and tricks from those that have done the Camino once/several times – some are walking the Camino even as I scour. I read with much dismay about the lone female pilgrims that encounter flashers and one who recounts suddenly coming upon a man who is “doing dirty things”. I worry that with my tendency to walk with my head down keeping a keen eye open for stones and roots and knobbly things that will trip me and make me fall, I will miss flashers if any. And why should that bother me?! Because don’t flashers flash because they “enjoy” the attention of women and might it not provoke them to do more than flash if I take the “look at me” fun out of it for them? I am also concerned about not being able to take in whatever pastoral landscape unfurls before me if I have my head down the whole time. So I tell myself that I will stop ever so often to make sure that I am on the right track and at the same time take in the sights and sounds and smells as I ought. And if the sights include flashers doing dirty deeds, I will use my loud storm whistle (readily hanging around my neck on a lanyard) and summon aid as well as (please let this be true) make the flasher disappear in a flash!
Just as I am starting to convince myself to not be a wimp and to leave early morn even if I have no fellow peregrinos/perigrinas to keep me company, I read about 2 peregrinas – one who leaves before dawn cracks and one who leaves 10 minutes later. The later-peregrina posts that the dawn-cracker is held up at gun point by a “bad hombre”, but being a marathon runner she is able to drop her backpack and run back for dear life – headlong straight into later-peregrina. There ensue police reports and visiting the scene of the crime and discovering that there is no trace of man and gun but that the peregrina’s belongings are intact. So I think to myself – first flashers – now highway robbers – whatever next?!?!?!
Dogs and Bulls that’s what is next on this exciting menu in a journey that is getting to be more than a little dizzily daunting. I hear of a stray dog getting a nip at someone’s ankle (albeit not on the Camino Frances where I am headed), and also of other canine encounters where there is at least snarling and growling and much brandishing of trekking poles that dutifully double up as dog-distancers. I also hear of charging bulls – no I mean really bulls – where pilgrims deftly and nimbly leap out of harm’s way and miraculously remain un-gored and undeterred.
If there is an escaped convict in California I lie awake at night imagining him making a beeline in his stolen car headed straight for the woods behind my home 3000 miles away on the East Coast. I have never paid much heed to statistical reports – you know the kind that say that the chances of being in an automobile accident is a zillion times higher than being in a plane crash – such reports do nothing to dispel my fear of flying. Therefore the mental notes I have made after my research is to be on the lookout for flashers, people with guns who will hold me up, snarling stray dogs, charging bulls and even bad guys who pose as pilgrims just so they can win your confidence and then – take your money? your life? who knows what unimaginable what?!?! Instead of being the person who says – “it will never happen to me” – I am the glass-half-empty person who says that excitable nervous paranoiacs like me will most likely attract all these vagabonds and unfettered animals.
I go for a stress test at the suggestion of my husband. Not that he has any inkling of what a sissy I am or the extent of my mindless idiocy, but he thinks it would be prudent to go for one just in case. My husband has been my training coach and we have been going for long walks on the weekends – we started off with a seven mile hike the first time and then slowly work up to 10 miles and on some days even 14 miles. I carry a weighted backpack to mimic the eventual Camino walk as much as possible. I am wholly confident that the stress test will be a breeze and I waltz in with complete nonchalance. I am on the treadmill and even when the incline is so steep that I am practically staring at the ceiling, I keep up a conversation with the lab assistant – and I continue (albeit huffing and puffing like the bad wolf) being able to talk even when the pace increases from a brisk walk to a jog. It is therefore with complete shock that I hear the doctor saying that I must come back for an echo or nuclear test (NUCLEAR sounds so aggressive and war-mongering) the following week because of some false positives. My next test is scheduled ten days later and just so I don’t jinx my Camino in any way, I stop walking and training. I even stop drinking my one cup of tea in the mornings because I am told that I must not have any caffeine beyond 7 am on the day of my 1:45 pm test. Why wait until then – I bid caffeine adieu immediately so it has no chance to mess with my heart rate.
It is July 25th – St. James Day and the day of my second stress test. It is also a Tuesday – an especially special weekly prayer day for ma and the day she transitioned from a quiet sleep to an eternal one and slipped away into another world. I tell myself that whichever way my stress test goes today, it will be a sign from St. James and ma and I must take it as such. I brace myself when the doctor walks in test-results in hand and hear – “you’ve the heart of a teenager”! I am heartily haha grateful (that’s the kind of joke my husband would make) and tell the doc that I am relieved that ’tis the heart and not the brain of a teenager I have. I skip out of there vastly relieved – sending a BIG thank you heavenwards, from where I believe St. James and ma have sent me a sign that can only mean one thing. Now I can resume walking and training and figuring out how to use the real backpack that has been sitting in its Amazon box still looking pristine and forlorn. My teenage heart is all a-flutter now that the Camino is getting closer and looming larger.
I wake up to a painful toothache a few days later – one so painful that I question the sign from St.James and ma and wonder if they’re testing me in some mysterious ways and see how I hold up?! My Camino excitement is waxing and waning in synch with each new development and I wonder how much of this yo-yo bouncing my young heart can take! I haul myself to the dentist and beg her to relieve me of my pain and ask her what I can do if it flares up again mid-Camino. She gives me 2 prescriptions of antibiotics – one to cure me pre-Camino and the other to take along just in case. And so it is that right up to almost my day of departure from the U.S. I am still playing “should I stay or should I go”! My husband and friends stop dropping oblique hints and tell me directly that I should cut my losses – kiss the airfare and other expenses goodbye and venture forth again next year. But the need to get away from the sad memories at home are very strong and gritting my (considerably) less achy teeth, I tell myself that it’s now or never – and – fly – away.
