The in-between
I’ve been thinking a lot this week about the in-between - fuzzy borders and soft edges and transitions. Maybe it’s because in just a few weeks I’m headed back to America - I’m on the cusp of being home again.
Today’s walk was a dramatic example of the fuzzy border between seasons - heather bloomed purple on the hillside, the birdsong was raucous, and there was SNOW! I hiked by mountain flowers and brown hibernating ferns covered in crystals of snow.
As we started going down the mountain, the sun came out and the snow melted, leaving droplets on the brush that created millions of tiny kaleidoscopes - a repeating refraction of rainbows. It looked as if someone had thrown glitter all down the hillside.
It was our longest day yet, but quiet. We’ve seen very few people this time around because we are on the cusp of the start of Camino season. This means a lot of albergues and restaurants are still closed, which is why we had to walk 24 km over a mountain today to get a bed for the night.
The other day, we walked into the town we were planning on spending the night and ran into an Italian woman who we’d met the night before. She said nothing in the village was open. She’d picked up another Italian during her walk that day who spoke great Spanish and was able to figure out that the municipal albergue was open.
At the albergue we were “greeted” by the surliest person I’ve ever met. He didn’t seem to want us there but begrudgingly showed us the bathrooms (outside, which was not great since it was raining) and told us there was no heat (which was not great since it was 34 degrees F). But we didn’t want to walk 8 more km in the rain to get to the next place so we stayed and quickly bonded with the two Italians and a young German guy and his grandpa who came later.
There was a pellet stove in the dining room which we all huddled around for warmth. A delicious dinner was served but I made the grave mistake of not eating all of my salad and got a long and loud lecture from the surly man (of which I only understood about 40%) and wanted to melt into the floor. Almost everyone got some sort of scolding from him that night, which really bonded the group.
After dinner, the younger Italian woman wanted to teach us a “Camino card game” which turned out not to really be a game but all of us reading aloud meditative quotes from cards to “get us ready for the next day.” The cards were in many languages, so we all attempted to read each quote in German Italian and English. I think it was one of the only times that night where everyone was able to understand what was going on; it was really quite sweet.
Eventually surly man came and turned off the stove so we headed into a tiny bunk room with a heater that Andy thought was just a 60w incandescent bulb based on the amount of heat and light it gave off. I slept with all of my clothes on, including my puffy jacket, and I think everyone else did too. The next morning, after some additional scolding at breakfast, we headed off.
Because the Camino is small and there aren’t many places to stop right now, we all ended up seeing each other again a few hours later at a hippie hut run by a guy named Kevin.
He had a wonderful breakfast spread laid out and a cozy shelter with a wood-fired stove and a guitar. The German grandpa picked up the guitar and started playing a song one of the Italians knew, and it was pleasant to sit sheltered from the rain and listen to people sing, thankful for the in-between.