Names and Dawns
Camino. Chapter 7
This is my serialized story of walking the Camino de Santiago across Northern Spain with my sister-in-law. If you’d like to start at the beginning of our journey, click here.
Day 5. Waking up in Pamplona. Marlene and I are much alike and, as early risers, we are excited to get going. Here, though, we have spent the night in a hostel with a large number of fellow pilgrims and now, while others are sleeping, find it hard to pack in the darkness of the room. One couple left at 3:30 in the morning and I couldn’t help but wake and listen to them whispering, going off to the bathroom, and rusting around putting their things into their backpacks. Now at 5:30 AM Marlene and I are doing the same. Welcome to the world of dormitory hostel life.
Walking through the kitchen and lobby area with its worn couches and easy chairs, we put down our backpacks and, for the first time since the Pyrenees, join a number of pilgrims from other dorm rooms who have wandered in for a breakfast of cereal, bread, and fruit laid out by the staff. This hostel is our first large, dormitory-type accommodations. We were lucky to reserve two beds here, which Marlene booked months earlier, especially with the celebration the day before, and have been pleased with the overall organization of the place - boots and shoes in cubicles, poles in a barrel, separate men’s and women’s showers, backpacks under our bunk beds with a wall of security boxes where you can lock valuables between the beds. The place must accommodate hundreds of pilgrims in the course of a week, thousands in the course of the year.
Blessed are you, pilgrim, when you contemplate the road and discover it full of names and dawns.
Sitting in the front lobby area with cups of hot tea, Marlene and I both put on our shoes and socks, but not before Marlene hands me her jar of vaseline. Marlene is crazy - just know this. I have succumbed to her way of seeing the world and, in this instance, it is through a constant stream of vaseline which she keeps on her person throughout the day. Marlene swears by it for our feet and before we put on our socks, we coat our toes in the sticky gel. After three blisters already, I am prepared to do anything to stop more from occurring, so vaseline it is: on my toes in the morning and again when we change our socks mid-day.
Like every morning, outside the hostel, we pause, hold hands, and each of us verbalize a prayer. We each pray for our families back home and our health. We pray for our fellow pilgrims and for the state of the world. These one-to-two minute prayers seem out of place at times in the darkness of the early dawn, especially today, given where we are and the local partiers walking by, heading home in the early morning light. Strangely, these biscuit-size prayers represent the start of the day as much as lifting up and putting on our heavy backpacks, as much as taking time to study our guidebooks, as much as finding our poles, or searching outside for the Camino signs to be sure we are on the right track. Yes, such prayers for our daily walk is another Marlene-thing that is crazy, but I am beginning to find comforting too.
Heading west, we soon leave the walled-in, old city behind and walk out of Pamplona on the other side of the modern city. At one point we are talking away about the night before and dinning with Karen and Rich, Jim and Leah, our new Camino friends, when a woman who appeared to be on her way to work, stops us somewhat irritated. She puts her fingers to her lips, as if to say hush, then points to her eyes and motions to the park across the street. It is then that we notice the the Camino signs have turned into the park and we missed it. Her gesture is greatly appreciated and we thank her profusely in our halting Spanish. “Gracious, gracious, Senora.” Another lesson for us: this one provided by a local woman: Not to get so wrapped up in talking that we fail to pay attention to the signs showing us the Way.
Hiking out of Pamplona, it’s hard to believe the number of pilgrims walking along the roads and pathways with us. We are in a stream of humanity, with hundreds of people walking in front of us and behind, and if we want to walk alone or in solitude, it’s not happening today. Along a dirt path, Marlene spots a small blue sticker, like trash, and picks it up. She shows it to me. It’s shaped like a Chiquita sticker you see on a banana. Only this sticker says, “Marlene.” Of all things to find! She takes it as a sign, a message from God to be especially mindful.
About seven-and-a-half miles out of Pamplona, we climb in elevation to the ridge line of the Alto del Perdon, the Mount of Forgiveness. The excitement of climbing 1,000 feet to pass by the famous iron statue of twelve pilgrims (with the inscription “where the path of the wind crosses with that of the stars”) is tempered by the number of 21st Century pilgrims and tourists surrounding it. A second memorial nearby honoring Spanish opposition leaders who were executed during the rein of General Francisco Franco, Spain’s Fascist dictator from 1939 until his death of old age in 1975, is less frequented and more sobering. Here, honoring them on the Mount of Forgiveness, with its constant winds seems appropriate. Marlene says we should pray for them.
We sit and change our socks near the memorial, adding vaseline to our toes. Now the Way points downward into the next valley, and we follow on gravely road into a series of towns and churches. At one point Marlene puts down her hiking poles at a statue of the Blessed Mother where we stop to take pictures, and it isn’t until about a mile later in the next town when we realize she left her poles behind at the statue. In a lovely town square, I sit next to a 11th Century water spigot and watch over our packs as she returns to the statue to reclaim her poles. However, it isn’t long before she is back with another pilgrim who picked up her poles. Marlene says, he expected to see someone walking back to the Blessed Mother and, of course, there she was.
A short while later between towns, we realize a Camino sign has us turning abruptly to the right down a steep, gravel road. Heading down the one-track lane, Marlene loses her footing in the loose dirt and soft bed of stones and, in trying to recover, begins to fall forward. She stumbles down awkwardly as her backpack jerks over her head, but catches herself just in time with her poles splayed out into the ground in front of her. This happens so suddenly, I can only watch, and, though I am beside her and want to reach out and grab her, I am way too slow.
“My god! Marlene, are you all right?” I ask, now grabbing her, helping her up and taking off her pack.
“Thank god for my poles,” she mumbles, as she dusts herself off. She begins to try and walk and is clearly limping. We decide to take a break right there on the path, drink some water, and let us both catch our breaths.
“The blue sticker earlier today was a sign.” Marlene says out-of-the-blue. “Then that pilgrim retrieving my poles. God must be watching over me.” She looks to me for affirmation and repeats this idea several times. She might be right. It dawns on me, as I stand there with my new hiking poles, he seems to be watching over the both of us.
The 14-mile walk to Puenta La Reina stretches our fellow pilgrims out on the route, and we end the day’s hike in the middle of the afternoon hobbling alone to our hostel, which, it turns out, is a hotel calling itself a hostel to get pilgrims to book rooms. With a bar, restaurant, and conference rooms, we feel like we may have walked to heaven. Our private room is equally nice with bright walls, big windows, light hardwood floors, and modern furniture. We love having a washing machine and dryer down the hall from us and take advantage of the mid-afternoon to wash our clothes.
That evening we eat a satisfying meal in the restaurant and invite a young English woman named Katie to join us. She is walking the Camino on her own while her husband stays at home watching their pets. Both Marlene and I can relate to her situation, given our spouses at home, though, in her case, due to her job, she only has two weeks for her Camino pilgrimage. She tells us she will pick it back up in the months ahead and at the end of the evening we wish her a safe journey back to England. Talking with her is refreshing moment to the day and adds to the sense of having met already in this first week of our journey incredibly interesting people.
Later, a bus-load of Koreans arrive at the hostel and are assigned rooms all around us. It isn’t long before we realize how paper-thin the walls are. We listen to them the rest of the night as they go up and down the hall visiting with each other and going to the communal bathrooms. Finally around 10 PM the hostel settles down. Around 4 AM the Koreans are up as a group and rolling their luggage down the hall. By 5 AM they are gone, but we are wide awake and looking at a new day.
We agree in our early morning prayers, holding hands in the dark outside the hostel, to try, as humble Camino pilgrims, to always contemplate the road before us and give thanks to the names and dawns we have experienced as well as what lies ahead.