I'm on a roll--two travelogues in one week! I’m still behind though, so before we get to the El Camino de Santiago, here’s what was the latest two weeks ago, prefaced with an anecdote about my brother, included for illustrative purposes for what's to follow.
Prior to coming to visit me for the first time in Dallas, my oldest brother, Andy, says to me during our annual Happy Thanksgiving phone wish, “If I can get the time off from work, I thought I might stop in to see you on my way back to New York from Mexico.” (His fiancé lived there and he was going to spend Christmas with her.)
“Great!” I respond, “I would love to see you! When should I expect you?”
“Sometime after the holidays,” he says, “I’ll let you know.”
Along about mid December, I’ve heard nothing, so I inquire about his plans and he says he’s definitely going to Mexico, but he hasn’t bought the tickets yet and he’ll let me know about coming to Dallas. Christmas comes and goes and no word, so I figure he decided not to come.
January 1, 8:30 a.m., I’m jolted from a post-party passout into this exchange:
“Hell-low.”
“Hey, G. Happy New Year. Did I wake you?”
“Oh, no…I was just getting up,” I lied. I know the person on the other end is either a family member or a close friend because they are the only ones who sub my two syllable name with one letter, but I can’t place the voice. “Happy New Year to you….who is this?”
“It’s Andy,” he says with a muted, but palpable well, who the hell do you think it is?
“Oh, hey, what’s going on?”
“We’re out here taxiing on the tarmac.”
“Tarmac? What tarmac? Where are you?”
“I’m at the airport..…in Dallas,” he answers with a clearly communicated, but unstated where do you think I am, dummy? “How long will it take you to come pick me up?”
“Dallas? Pick you up? Did I miss something? An email? A phone message?”
“I told you I was coming to visit after the holidays.”
He’s damn lucky I love him so much or I would have told him that the holidays are not officially over until tomorrow and left his ass at the airport with instructions to go sweep the tarmac with a broom.
What does this have to do with a travelogue from Spain? He illustrates a certain class of people who assume, with a nerve grating certainty, that others know what they are thinking. They, themselves, are not telepathic, but they believe everyone else is, or should be. Marta apparently suffers from the same communication deficit disorder, which I became aware of when we went camping in Santander:
When I hear the word “camping” my ears perk up and I start salivating like my Pekingese when she hears “treat.” Marta decides that since the big Valladolid fair ended on Sunday and the whole town will be hungover until Wednesday, it would be a good time to close the bar for a few days and take a camping trip to the northern coast. No arm twisting necessary on my end. Days in advance I start asking for details--I want a full description of the topography, climatology, activityology, facilities available, etc. I’m a planner, not just because I derive great satisfaction from seeing a plan successfully executed, but because I abhor those, “I wish I had brought….” moments that are avoidable with a bit of forethought. They undo me and plunge me into a childish, nasty mood, which I will own upfront. To not have what I need, had I known what I would be needing, had I had a reliable source of information communicate it to me, is absolutely inexcusable. I resent having to take my attention off enjoying the pleasure at hand and putting it on adjusting my attitude to accepting an avoidable disappointment.
No need to point out that I am the source of much of my own suffering, I know it already.
I notice that after a few questions about what I should expect, my inquiries are addressed with increasingly short replies, never angry or ugly, but with a tamed exasperation, much like a mother who’s scrapping the bottom of the patience bucket to attend to the 3-year-old’s incessant, “Why? Why? Why?”. Marta seems to assume that either I should know, or don’t need to know this information, despite never having camped in Spain or with her.
Not wanting to be a bother, I reduce my questions down to the bone and decide I will deduce enough essential information from the clues given to pack. Here you have the results of that flawed strategy:
Communication deficit #1: clothing
Should I take my hiking boots?
No
Well then, I conclude, we are going to a warm, sandy beach that stretches for miles and miles. I’ll be barefoot most of the time and sandals will suffice for short treks across hot sand.
Will it be chilly? I hold up my Northface waterproof, polar fleece, hooded coat and point to it with an inquisitive look.
We are going to the coast.
That answer could go either way. It’s been hotter than a Georgia tin roof in July in Valladolid since I got here ….but we are going north…. Undecided, I throw it into the ‘maybe’ pile, where it has a very brief stay.
I take a second pair of pants from the drawer and stuff them in my packback. She shakes her head. What are you taking all this stuff for? It’s only 2 nights.
“I like to be prepared, but if you think I won’t need it…..” Out come the pants and the extra shirts and the socks. The abandoned coathanger on the bed slides back under the coat’s shoulders and both return to the closet.
Communication run amuck # 2.: distance from car to tent site
Shall I fill up the 2 gallon jug in the kitchen with water to take with us?
No, there’s a spigot
We must be car camping if there is a spigot, so everything will be close by and we won’t have to carry stuff very far.
Communication fowl-up #3: food
What are we going to eat?
I don’t know. I’ll think of something.
Can we make a campfire?
Nope.
O.K. then, I need to help prepare a menu and it will be of non-cookables.
Misassumption #4: supplies
Shall I pack some cups and plates and stuff to eat with from the kitchen?
No, I’ve got stuff at the bar.
She’s taking care of all that, so I need not worry about it.
Communication fuck-up #5: departure time
What time are we leaving?
After lunch. I want to do a few things in the bar before we go.
I begin calculations. Lunch here is a 2 p.m. So we get to the bar at 12, work, eat , leave around 3, it’s a 3 hour drive, get there at 6, we’ll have plenty of time to set up the tent before dark, settle in, have a relaxing glass of wine and watch the sunset as we dine.
Ha! In my dreams. At 12 o’clock she’s rolling out of the bed. At 2 p.m. we still haven’t left the house to go to the bar. By 3 o’clock we’re still in the bar without having eaten. At 4 we are still pootin’ around (Pop’s expression) mopping floors and shining glasses. At 6 we are in the car, but still have to stop at the sister’s to drop off keys and then get the groceries.
Attempts at organizing a menu have been futile, and I Hate, with a capital “H” to follow someone around a store, so I grab my own basket and say, “meet you at the check out.” Fifteen minutes later, she looks in my basket and says, You know it’s at least 2 kilometers from the car to where we are camping. Are you going to carry all that?
What?!! #@$%^&*(@#!$%! 2 kilometers? Why didn’t you tell me that before!! So back I go, retracing my steps to downsize my purchases: the 1 liter orange juice for a 3 pack of kiddie lunchbox juices with straws taped to the side, a loaf of bread for a pack of crackers, etc.
I look in her basket and she’s got cans of soups and pasta and asparagus. In other words, heavy things that require flame. “Are you going to carry that?... and how are you planning on heating it if we can’t make a fire?” I ask.
I have a camping stove, but I need to stop by a store to get some propane.
What?!! #@$%^&*(@#!$%! Another stop? A stove? Why didn’t you tell me that!! I got peanut butter and tuna fish when we have the means to make hot meals???
A stop for propane, a stop for gas and at last we are on the road.
We arrive to a gravel parking lot on the coast just in time to catch the last possible photo of the sunset. She takes me to the edge of a cliff and points down at a stretch of beach that from our vantage point looks about the size of a Band-Aid.
That’s where we are going to camp.
What?!! #@$%^&*(@#!$%! “How do we get down there?”
She sweeps her arm over to the left to indicate a barely visible tan colored line zig zagging down the side of a mountain.
What?!! #@$%^&*(@#!$%! That’s not just 2 kilometers! That’s 2 kilometers of goat grade terrain!
We load each other down like a pair of mules porting a royal court into the Grand Canyon for a week stay and start the 2 K stumble down a dirt and rock road in the plum stark of night. Besides the bigass packs on our backs, each has a grocery bag of food in hand pulling us toward a face flop and a sleeping roll tucked under an armpit.
“Don’t bring your hiking boots, my ass,” I mutter to myself. Every fifteen steps I’ve got a rock under the sole of my foot and have to stop to stomp the toe of my sandal to shake it out. It was during this descent that the previously mentioned, “I wish I had brought….” poisoned my well-being like arsenic in an oasis. It wasn’t just that I didn’t have appropriate footwear. It was that I didn’t have my hiking boots, the ones I bought special, throwing months and months of penny pinching to the wind to make a purchase of the highest quality in honor of the life changing journey upon which I am embarking. I had only worn them through the airport and I was chomping at the bit to break them in on some short hikes.
When I step in a hole and about take a tumble I have to ask why in the hell we didn’t leave earlier.
We couldn’t leave any earlier. We’re camping illegally. They would catch us if we set up before dark. Why do you think I told you we couldn’t have a campfire?
What?!! #@$%^&*(@#!$%! Illegally? There are lots of reasons, legal ones, for why we wouldn’t have a campfire--draught, fire bans, no firewood, park rules. Why in the world would I ever assume that it was because it would blow our cover and get us arrested?
4 switchbacks later, we’ve hit sand and I drop my shit with a thud the zillions of white grains absorb. Marta combs the beach by flash and starlight for a suitable spot to pitch the tent
while I stand like a one legged stork, plucking gravel from between my toes and stewing over my hiking boots. I could give a rat’s ass at this point where the tent goes, but she takes her time before deciding on a stretch about 30 yards away behind a row of rocks some tiny tot has lined up to protect his sand castle.
All I want to do is get the tent set up, have a glass of wine and get some vittles in my gut, in that order.
The first task complete, she pulls from a canvas bag a white plastic disposable picnic bowl so flimsy that the average dollop of potato salad would bring it to its knees.
“We don’t have any cups?”
No.
In the accident-waiting-to-happen she pours white wine from a waxy, green box and passes it to me as if it were a million dollar golden egg rolling around on a warped plate of blown glass. Three sips later it buckles and my flannel p.j.’d crotch gets a bath in cheap chardonnay. I have no extra clothes suitable for sleeping, so I resign myself to wet dreams of having peed the bed.
She unfolds the crease in the bowl and pours steaming lentil soup into it. I volunteer to eat straight from the pot.
It’s about 15 degrees chiller than in Valladolid and my feet are cold, as is the rest of me. I want my coat and my boots and not having them stirs my stewing. Then I say to myself, “G, you have an opportunity here to practice nonattachment. Let go of the boots!”
So, I let go of the boots. By 10:30 we are in our sleeping bags listening to soothing sound of waves turning themselves inside out and my mood perks back to grateful.
At 4:30 a.m. I awake to see Marta sitting straight up in her bag staring out the front of the tent.
“What is it?” I ask assuming she’s heard something stirring outside.
Nothing, I’m just watching the tide.
Silly me, I think it endearing that she is having a deep, existential moment with Mother Nature and I leave her to it and go back to sleep.
At 5:15 a.m. Gigi, wake up! The tide has reached the rocks. We are about to get soaked.
What?!! #@$%^&*(@#!$%! You’ve been watching the tide this whole time thinking it might reach us and you had to wait until three waves before we are flooded to sound a warning?
We fumble for the flashlights, bail out of the tent, pack everything up, us included, and scale the gravelly hill (in sandals!!) to the first flat ground to set up camp all over again.
Shortly after daylight, I peek out the tent and see on each end of our 100 yard stretch of beach a trail head leading up to the cliffs. Boot rage consumes. The prefacing question as to whether or not I should pack my hiking boots was, “Are there any good places to hike around there?”
No, not really.
Not really my ass.
“Let go of the boots, G!”
I do, and put on my Jesus Tevas. Once I rock climb the trail out of the beach bay I top out onto a cliffed shoreline that offers a breathtaking view of the ocean and a neighboring village.
Curiosity consumes me. There is a cow path to follow, suitable for goat hooves and shepherd’s feet toughened to the rugged conditions, but my babied footsies quickly complain. Again, I know the issue isn’t really the conditions, but the fact that I want my new boots! I make the discomfort of a briar scraping my toe or a sharp rock grazing my insole equal to that of a barbed whip coming down across my back. I’m on a martyr’s march.
I follow the trail for an hour and a half, through cow pastures, cobblestone streets, a eucalyptus forest and eventually to an inlet where clam diggers fill their buckets with the deposits of the tide’s recession.
I’ve honed and chanted my mantra, “Let go of the boots, G!” a hundred times, yet on the way back when it starts to rain and my coat is at home in the closet, I lay my walking stick across my shoulders and hang an arm over each side like the Savior on a crucifix walking toward Calvary. I’m stuck in my own drama and I want to instill some guilt when I plod back into camp, cold, wet and limping.
It doesn’t work.
The weather forces a packup of all that shit we lugged down there and didn’t eat
and a drive to a little fishing village for a day of sightseeing all a dreary little fishing village has to offer.
That night we stay, legally, in a campground as crowded as Disneyland in June. When she comes out of the showers in a fresh change of clothes, I feel like throwing her in the bay. After my bath I have no choice but to put back on the damp, sour-smelling one pair of pants and shirt I was instructed to bring.
Let go of the boots, G…and the wet clothes and the late departure and the long haul to the campsite. Hold on to the beautiful beach all to yourself and the hike along the coast and the stars so clear in the night and the chance to see the north of Spain, and most importantly hold on to having someone who cares about you to share it all with.
That’s the latest, until I can get to recounting the 4 day trek on El Camino de Santiago. Hope all of you are swell and enjoying the change of seasons.
Much love, G
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