Alone once more, I flowed onward with ease on this dry & dusty day — up and into the hamlet of Ilarratz (where I met and said my final farewells* to Diego from Argentina at the font located across from the St. Lucy’s Abbey), and then through the town of Eskirotz, whereafter Trevor from England […]
“It is not the path that you have trouble finding, my friend. For you have known your truer path since you were but dreaming of toddling into your very first step. No, it is actually courage you are searching for – the courage required to trust yourself ; to stop searching for a travel partner […]
And so it was that I passed by places of past reverie and recollection; sites of potent memory from my 2008 Camino pilgrimage – through the hamlet of Akerreta (where I had left a shrine to a dearly beloved), past a waterfall on the River Arga (where I had paused for a peaceful repast of […]
“It is inevitable that we will all – each & every one of us – leave a legacy behind; for the simple reason that life cannot be lived without leaving footprints as we walk it. In truth, whether we are the most powerful of women or the most inconsequential of men, we will all leave […]
There was a weird, openly distanced vibe as I then entered and flowed through the town of Irotz (where the hearts of the residents — peering coolly down upon me from their half-closed windows above – were as seemingly closed as the town’s church doors, which were solidly locked up tight), and yet I smiled […]
I started to follow the posted signs up a thin & winding pathway up towards the hostel on the hill when a passing cyclist yelled loudly for me to stop and head up a neighboring roadway instead. I wasn’t “in the middle of nowhere” here, and yet this particular part of the Way was unusually […]
We had been encouraged by Pedro & Carmin to later partake of the abbey’s church tour that was offered to all pilgrims each afternoon, and the conversation shared amongst the few other pilgrims who had arrived and were waiting for the same (Helena from France & Yen from Taiwan) was calm and amicable, though noticeably […]
Dinner was served in the hostel thereafter and the vibe had somehow clearly shifted in a “love dampened” direction, with my fellow pilgrims being overtly disinterested in either the nature or the purpose of my Walk and with Pedro openly downplaying (even denigrating) the same … I shrugged it all off easily enough, of course, […]
As was the case far more often than not on this pilgrimage, I woke shortly after going to bed in the hostel’s designated sleeping quarters and headed – this time downstairs – to find a place more secluded in which to rest; in small part to provide more subconscious solace for self, yes, and yet […]
“As I make my steady pilgrimage through the world, a certain sense of beautiful mystery gathers all around me and grows up from within … My childhood home drove me into the wilderness, where few look for me and fewer still hear my words. And yet I am never even remotely alone here … To […]
The walking was smoothly fluid this morning, and it didn’t take long for me to enter the surprisingly large Pamplona subdivision of Burlada, where benches offered me respite, where swallows serenaded my Journey, where the sunrise lightly caressed church steeples, and where lush trees gave my Way a cool & peaceful canopy for what felt […]
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