On the plane ride here, Sammy and I watched a movie called Interstellar, which explores many topics related to space and time travel, the destruction and creation of civilizations, relativity, simultaneous realities, and much more. In any case, as we flew through the sky and the clock ticked 9 hours ahead, we were thinking of our relationship with time and space. Travel always has a way of igniting this in us, especially when we are visiting ancestral lands and preparing to walk a pre-Christian (thousands of years old) spiritual pilgrimage, where people from all over the world are squished together in an alternate realm of time and space.
Every day, there have been portals to enter. Every day on El Camino, we experience a kind of opening through a threshold that can take us away from the linearity of our walk, and deeper into the spirit of our pilgrimage. We tend to say YES to these portals.
We had heard about a beautiful old pueblo that we were going to go to yesterday. However, we missed our turnoff and headed 3 km west of our desired locale. Something was telling both of us to not stay in the place we arrived (Santa Catalina de Somoza) and to travel backwards (!!) in time and space to Castrillo de Polvazares. On a trip like this, it’s almost impossible to let go of a linear journey. When you’re walking step by step, breath by breath, mile by mile, it seems completely bonkers to go backwards over land you’ve already crossed. Granted, that’s exactly what we did yesterday. We surrendered to non-linearity, to portals and labrynths, and swung back to the previous pueblo (with the help of a graceful woman who gave us a ride – though we walked the same road again today for the second time to continue west).
As soon as we arrived to the pueblo (Castrillo), we felt we had made the right choice. We entered a gorgeous pre-medieval town of stone and mud. It was incredible. A group of children led us to a place we could eat, which ended up being a secret garden in the middle of the ancient town with a fig tree and an ode to the fig tree poem hanging from it.
The only unfortunate aspect of this journey was that I couldn’t sleep and Sammy only slept three hours (sometimes portals wear you out) – so I write this now as we are attempting to walk a 12 mile day on no sleep. I’m not sure if I’ll make it. We shall see how it goes….safety first.
Our friends for the day–Jose Miguel and Patricio from Murcia, who are biking the Camino de la Plata from Merida to Santiago and Finisterre. They will be in Santiago in 2 days–we in 2 weeks!
