The Same, But Different

Buen Camino! Day 2 of Walking

We’ve survived two days of walking and it is everything I thought it would be and surprisingly NOT what I thought it would be. How funny I was to think walking 5-6 miles at a time in flat Green Bay would prepare me for 17 miles through the foothills of the Pyrenees! LOL!

You plan and you speculate and you wonder, and then you do. And it is different. Doing is always different.

For example, I knew that this would be a time to disconnect from the internet. We’ve got Eric’s phone set up to take calls for emergencies, should our parents or Katie need to get in touch with us. We put minimal quantities of phone, text & data on the phone, and switched my phone and Rachel’s to airplane mode. Meaning we can do things with our phones when there is free wifi. But in reality, I had NO idea just how many times a day I pick up my phone. Let’s find that on google maps, whats the weather, let’s listen to pandora, what is that word in Spanish. This is a great pic, let me just text it to Katie, download something onto Facebook, tweet about it, send an instagram. My oh my, how instantly connected I am…WAS!

While I knew we would meet people along the way, walk together for a while, go our separate ways and come back again, that’s different, too. We might walk quite a while, just the three of us. Then someone comes along, we smile and say “Buen Camino!” and they hurry by. It’s AMAZING how quickly they come upon us and how quickly they are no longer in our existence. I wonder: where did they come from and where did they go? It baffles the mind how instantaneously they are gone! Are we really moving that slowly? It sure doesn’t feel like it.

And then there are the times when a small group might come along, and we can walk in a little cluster and carry on a conversation. It’s amazing how “Where are you from?” invites a conversation. And how much fun it is to hear the answer to that simple question. And what a small reunion it is to see a familiar face on the trail later. (How much more so when we’ve come and gone from each others’ lives for 6 weeks?)

And it’s interesting to me that everyone isn’t on the same journey. We talked to a Norwegian who started in France (couldn’t understand the city) and was traveling to Pamplona. And another lady from France (Melanie) who had started 3 months ago and was on a “reverse” journey doing the Camino Frances backward and not sure she wanted to go home. It’s funny because she said she didn’t like people, yet we had a wonderful conversation and she was very talkative, funny, engaging.

And the trail itself. It is what I had heard, read about, seen in the movie (If you haven’t watched The Way yet, it will help you understand what we are doing and I highly recommend it). But still very different. In two days it has led us through forests, along busy roads, up mountains, down mountains, over streams and bridges, along narrow trails with a steep drop off to our right. It has been cut through grass that grows as tall as my head. We’ve walked on concrete, rock beds, muddy paths, up and down stairs, over crushed rock. We wander along a trail with nothing but vegetation on each side and then suddenly pop out and we are in town.

And I would be lying if I said the walk wasn’t challenging. Only two days of walking and the leg muscles are sore. The bottoms of my feet are sore. And I don’t think I could ever had prepared for the ups and downs, the changes in terrain. My breathing gets heavy going up the hills. And down the hills are rough on the feet, ankles, knees.

But, surprisingly, what I thought would be the hardest part of the walk has been the easiest—hauling a backpack. We are so thankful to Patrick Toomey for telling us about ultralight backpacks. They are worth their weight in gold—which actually wouldn’t be much gold, because they are so light. But, they adjust easily and seem to sit well on all of our backs. But, I will say I walk a little more lightly when the pack comes off in the evening and we can wander the city unencumbered.