Although we agreed not to set an alarm but to sleep as late as we wanted and wake up naturally, River woke up at 4 am rarin' to go. Near 5 am Chris got up to go to the toilet and seemed distressed. River asked "Are you alright?" And Chris said "Not really. " She had been up every hour since midnight with diarrhea much more drastic than River's (which River had thought was fairly severe), and had had to wash out her underwear and even her fleece long pants repeatedly because she couldn't make it to the toilet on time. You get the picture. But she was miserable enough in bed that walking seemed to her preferable, so we agreed to get up.
In spite of Chris' being quite sick and River quite worried, it was another beautiful morning. Photo 1 shows as arrow pointing the way along the Camino in the beautiful morning sunlight.
And we were lucky. Although the first town where we hoped to find a bar/cafe had none, we found an alburgue with an open door and just went in and used the toilet (in the nick of time for both these two leaky peregrinas). Chris had no appetite and ate nothing and, perhaps because of that, the diarrhea subsided at least for the rest of the morning.
The next town had no bar either, but the third town had a very nice one where we got coffee and orange juice and a chocolate croissant for Chris (which it turned out she had no appetite for, so that River decided to experiment to see if European wheat might not trigger her sensitivities, and ate it herself).
Across the way from the bar were some tiny houses built into a hillside with chimneys rising out of the hilltop. They were utterly charming and we read that they were left from ancient Roman times, and had been built as storage houses for food and wine. Here's a glimpse of one in Photo 2.
We hiked a much shorter day today and arrived in Sahagun by 11:15. Chris went promptly to bed for a long nap and River showered, washed clothes and hung then up to dry.
When Chris woke we wandered around Sahugun and scouted the way out of town so we can find it tomorrow in the dark. With a lot of help from other pilgrims, we located a small store and bought Riv's now standard banana and yogurt for breakfast. (We find it strange this is only day 5. It feels as if we have been doing this forever). Among those who directed us to the store were a lovely young family with two red-headed children probably around 9 and 11, who at stayed at the same alburgue we did last night in Calzadilla de la Cuesa. We ended up sitting down at s table near them and learned they were from Holland and had been walking the Camino during their vacations since 2014. This year they hope to walk from Fromista to Ponteferrada, having done the Camino from St Jean Pied a Port to Fromista in their fist two sections. Somehow we got to talking about my experience on the PCT and the whole family got very excited about the possibility of hiking a wilderness trail together. We both wished we had taken their photo.
Then we returned to our albergue, one we chose because our guidebook described it as a "gracious, imaginatively furnished private refuge in a comfy extravagant building style. "
So here is what we saw whe n we arrived (photo 3)
Chris wants to add a photo from the row of sculptures to the far left of the photo above, which are labeled Camino mistico, Camino Interior, Camino de Fraternidad and Camino de Sabiduria. So here is photo 4
And River wanted to include this old probably Roman bridge we saw on our stroll around town as Photo 5
River got curious what "viatoris" -- the name of our albergue -- meant and found a short piece on the internet that she wanted to add to our blog. It's at
She also wanted to share a poem she wrote a couple days ago and revised today:
***
May I Have This Dance?
It all began along the Camino:
a mural I saw
of a tall man reaching out
as if inviting a woman to dance
and she lifting her arm and
placing her own hand so delicately down
upon the palm-up offering of his,
so one could almost feel the gracefulness
with which they would start to dance,
the strong gentle clasp
of his hand at her waist
and the way his other hand would allow
her to twirl freely yet also
would lead her along.
Then something about the round white
shape of his face made me think "Death,"
which was when I knew I wanted to go back
to photograph the mural, but didn't,
deciding instead to make up this poem
which was when the mural
began to transform and the man did become
Death, a tall lean skeleton on an elegant staircase
spiraling down from the stars.
I knew then how their dance would
end, how she who had become stiff, aching, old
would have now become young
and how Death would descend all the way
down to the ground, his bare bone feet touching
the earth itself after she'd placed
her warm flesh and blood palm
onto the cold bone of his hand
(because
this would be Death she was dancing with,
however gently he might linger awhile on earth,
leading her, twirling her, until she too
could hear the music he listened to, and
how gracefully then he would begin
to dance up those spiral stairs again,
up, up, up, and around and around and around,
until she and he both would have danced
at last to a place where they
and those stairs along with them
dissolved
***
Tomorrow we choose between a very short day (11 miles) and another long one (20 miles). Based on our history so far one would predict the latter. Also our beautiful young family from Holland plans to walk that far and we might get a chance to photograph them.
Thanks as always for walking with us. Your comments or emails are very welcome and contribute more than you can know to our Camino.
Loving you guys all the way. I hope you are both feeling better. Please take care so I/we don't worry!
ReplyDeleteRobyn