The Epic Day

(Pictures will follow soon)

9:00 PM, August 3, Hospital de la Condesa, Municipal Albergue, Bed 20

Today was a wonderful day.

Dan and I left our albergue early and walked to breakfast in a town 10 km away. There, we encountered 3 very friendly town borrachos, as well as Lia, Inigo, and Rafael (the Canadian, the Spaniard, and the Frenchman). It was wonderful to see some old friends and to talk with the young guys who were drinking Beefeater at 8 am.

I then gathered the courage to ask Dan to go on without me. It has been rather suffocating to spend all of our walks together every day. I had spent literally every minute of the last week within 30 feet of him, and I wanted the feeling of walking alone again.

It was excellent. I waited by a peaceful river for 20 minutes before continuing the hike. Today was first on the highway, then through a series of small towns, then a hike through a forest, then a steep climb to the top of a mountain, then some walking through pastures on the top of the mountain to the final destination. To walk alone helped me to really enjoy the breaths of fresh mountain air.

I also talked with many people with whom I had been meaning to talk. Dan isn’t as friendly and is very, very focused when he walks, so he rarely even says “Hola” when passing peregrinos. I like to at least greet everyone I pass, if not strike up a conversation. Today I spoke with two elderly Spanish women for a couple hundred meters, I had a long awaited kilometer next to Giuseppe—an Italian man who has been staying with us for two weeks now but who I never got the chance to meet—and I spent 3 kilometers with an American man who graduated in the same class as Coach K at West Point. All had fascinating stories to tell, and all were fun to walk with, even though I also enjoyed the long stretches alone.

At the top of one of the peaks is a monument letting pilgrims know that they are leaving the Junta de Castilla y Leon and entering the final state in this journey, Galicia. I’m now in the province of Lugo and there are monuments every so often that are counting down the kilometers to Santiago. We’re now 6 days from our destination, and less than 150 kilometers to go. I’m in the final fifth!

Perhaps my favorite moment of the day was this: Following the high point of the day, there is a slight descent where there is forest on the left, and the pastures and small cities lining the mountain in the valleys on the right. The sun was warming, and the earth had that “earth” smell—a sweet, comforting smell I had never smelled before this trip, but now it’s become quite common. And there I was, walking alone, no one around me, and singing “Breakeven” with a seriously out-of-pitch voice. Epic.