Whispers from the Camino—Day 17
September 21. San Anton to Fromista. 28.2 km.
Breakfast on the trail—a daily routine to get a cofe con leche.
As deliciously sacred as the night before was, the early morning was nearly the opposite. First of all, I was awakened during the night by someone yelling in Spanish and banging loudly on the locked gate. I was the only one outside and I decided that my safest choice was to not move and draw any attention to myself. The stars were now gone as clouds must have floated in during the night and it was pitch black dark. Finally, I could hear someone shuffling in the dirt heading toward the gate.
Everything calmed down then. It turned out our injured pilgrim had gotten patched up at the hospital some kilometers away, had gotten a ride back to the ruins of San Anton where we were staying, and was dropped off in the wee hours of the morning. He had successfully arrived back, but was locked out.
Crossing the 200 km Meseta between Burgos and Leon
Amazingly, he was ready to resume his pilgrimage. Given the compound fracture of his hand I never expected to see him again. I thought his Camino was over for sure. But there he was pounding on the gate in the middle of the night begging for someone to let him in.
I fell back to sleep and woke a couple of hours later to a light rain hitting my face. I knew I had to move quickly. Without an actual sleeping bag I was using a down throw blanket and needed to keep it from getting wet. Plus, if it was going to rain I needed to make sure I was dressed for the rain and that all of my gear was protected before getting back on the trail.
It was definitely a slog of a day. Interestingly enough all of my musings and strategizing about my future finally loosened up some of the grief I felt about the past. I was coming out of a messy dissolution from my last position when it became clear that the presbytery and I had different visions about my role and their general direction. I had gone in with high hopes of helping them discover a revitalized sense of purpose after years of membership decline (the presbytery had fallen from 29,000 in 2000 to 14,000 members in 2017 when I took over). It was an ambitious vision, but I felt like we were putting the building blocks in place for a hopeful future. Then COVID hit! Nothing else needs to be said expect that the world shifted along with the presbytery. In the end, they needed something that I could not provide.
Entering Fromista
I spent the first part of the day walking and grieving how much the world had changed and how it had personally affected me. It was probably healthy that finally, rather than trying to run from my grief by coming up with some perfect future picture, I was now just acknowledging the pain of the dissolution and unmet expectations.
It didn’t help that this day it rained. It really rained! I had shoes that breathed and that were essentially water resistant. But they weren’t waterproof. For two hours a steady downpour enveloped us and there was no escape from the weather in the almost treeless Meseta plain. The path eventually had streams of water running down it and we did the best we could to avoid the little rivers and the gooey mud. I can remember when I shifted from trying to stay dry to simply walking with my head down knowing that I couldn’t get any more wet. I felt resigned to the rain and resigned to my grief.
Drying clothes in the courtyard and vying for space!
When I arrived in the town of Fromista dozens of other pilgrims had already hung their wet clothes out to dry hoping that there would be just enough sun to dry the clothes and gear before waking up the next morning. Starting a day with wet clothes and gear is no fun!
As much as the morning and the day was dampened literally by the rain and allowing some honest grief to be felt, in the evening I began to feel some hope about where my life was going. It wasn’t official yet, but a church in Eastern Oregon was talking about having me guide them through some closure/legacy conversations in a 6-month half time position. Plus, I was currently in conversation with four different agencies including the Cherokee Nation about a Trail of Tears pilgrimage project in the Southeast. And I was expecting to meet with the leaders of the British Pilgrimage Trust and do about two weeks of research after completing the Camino.
I woke up feeling the heaviness of grief and I went to bed feeling more hope.