Chapter 6
To Walk, Eat, and Sleep
After Navarrete I began to count the days differently.
Not primarily by dates or kilometres, but by what the body required.
Water.
Food.
Rest.
A clean dressing.
A place to sleep.
When I left the hotel room, the foot was better, but not forgotten. Every step carried the knowledge that the walk could stop. I could no longer treat the body as a silent means of transport. It had become a fellow traveller I had to consult.
In the morning I examined the wound before putting on my sock. In the evening I took off my shoes and looked for redness, swelling, and new blisters. I washed the socks and hung them to dry. I filled the water bottles and bought bread, cheese, tomatoes, fruit, or nuts for the next day.
Then I slept.
The next morning I did the same.
This was not how I had imagined a life-changing journey in advance. I had expected something to happen. I had thought that insight would come through powerful encounters, beautiful landscapes, or thoughts I had never thought before.
Instead, the way began to teach me repetition.
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On Wednesday, 1 July, the fourteenth day of the pilgrimage, I walked into Burgos.
Two weeks had passed.
The way led first through small villages and then along busy roads and industrial areas. The transition was abrupt. After many days of paths, vineyards, and small places, the cars, the tarmac, and the restlessness of the city returned.
In the middle of Burgos stood the cathedral.
Its towers rose above the city, so large and richly ornamented that I could not fit the whole building into the camera. I went inside, but felt no devotion. The structure overwhelmed me. Everything reached upwards and demanded attention.
I wanted to get out.
I wanted to return to the way.
Many pilgrims choose to take a bus from Burgos past the Castilian high plain. I had read about this part of the route. It was described as flat, hot, and monotonous. Long stretches had neither shade nor villages. There were few places to buy food or refill water.
I walked.
After Villalbilla and Tardajos, the landscape changed. The lush country fell behind me. Ahead, the high plain opened, with grain fields and sky in every direction.
There was almost nothing for the eye to rest on.
The way continued straight ahead.
For the first few weeks I had been searching for stillness. Here I no longer needed to look for it. It lay over the landscape waiting for me.
The stillness was not peaceful.
It was vast.
I felt small within it, and more alone than earlier in the walk. When the sounds disappeared, there was also nothing to distract me. I heard my steps, my breathing, and the staff striking the ground. The pack moved slightly against my back. Apart from that there was only the wind in the grain.
After three hours I reached Rabé de las Calzadas. There I got a bed in a small hostel with room for six people. The other three guests turned out to be from Larvik.
They walked the Camino for one week every year. After four years they would arrive.
I had given myself thirty-five days.
We visited the church and ate a simple dinner together. Then we went to bed early. None of us made the evening longer than necessary. The day had used what strength we had, and tomorrow waited without promising anything new.
◆
On the high plain, the days took on a simple form.
I woke early, often before it was light. Around me other pilgrims began to move in the bunk beds. Some tried to pack quietly. Plastic bags rustled in the dark. Zips opened and closed. A torch swept across the floor. Someone coughed. Others slept on.
I folded the sleeping bag, packed the rucksack, and checked whether the socks from the night before were dry. If they were still damp, I fastened them to the outside of the pack.
Then I examined my feet.
Before Navarrete I had asked how far they could carry me.
Now I asked how they were.
It was a small difference in phrasing, but a large difference in attention.
Some hostels served breakfast. Elsewhere I walked without eating until I found an open café or a shop in the next village. After the first day over the Pyrenees, I had learned to buy food the night before. A piece of bread, cheese, and tomatoes was usually enough. A few nuts in my pocket could keep me going until the next place.
The water bottles mattered more.
I filled them whenever I could, not when I thought I would soon need water. On the map, the distance between two villages could look modest. Under the sun, with no shade, the kilometres took on another length.
When the pack was ready, I went out.
The first hour was often the best. The air was cool, and the sun rose behind me. Because I was walking west, my shadow travelled ahead of me. It was long in the morning, drew closer as the day went on, and grew again towards evening.
I walked until I was hungry.
Then I ate.
I walked until the body asked for a break.
Then I sat down.
I took off my shoes, let my feet rest, and drank water.
Then I walked on.
This was not a break from life.
It was life.
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On the second morning on the high plain, I walked alone.
Thirty kilometres lay ahead, under a burning sun and with almost no trees. The grain fields continued until they met the sky. The way was visible far ahead of me, but the distance was difficult to judge. A point that looked close could be an hour’s walk away.
I did not know where to fix my gaze.
When the landscape did not change, the eye lost its usual task. There was no bend I had to reach, no summit promising a view on the other side. The way demanded only the next step.
The stillness made me dizzy.
Not frightened, but uneasy. At first I tried to fill the emptiness with thoughts. I went through conversations, work I had done, and things waiting at home. I tried to solve problems that were not on the high plain.
But the thoughts got nowhere.
They went in circles while the body walked straight ahead.
In the end, the task became more concrete: put one foot in front of the other, drink before I became thirsty, rest before the foot began to ache, and receive what came.
Not very much came.
A thin dog searched for shade between a few houses. Washing hung out to dry in a village where I did not see a single person. A church stood open. A butterfly followed the way a few metres ahead of me.
In Hornillos del Camino I passed the building that had once been a hospital for pilgrims with leprosy. Later I passed the abandoned settlement of San Bol and the ruins of the monastery of San Antón.
The old places did not lie along the route as sights to be seen. The way passed through them.
Others had been hungry here.
Others had had wounds beneath their feet.
Others had searched for water and a place to sleep.
I was no longer walking alone in quite the same sense. The almost empty way was full of traces of people who had done the same as I was doing, but under conditions I could scarcely imagine.
When I reached Castrojeriz, I bought bread and tomatoes. I sat in the shade with a cold soft drink and an ice lolly and watched the people in the streets.
After a day of solitude, that was enough.
I needed no experience beyond this: food, shade, and other people nearby.
At the municipal hostel, pilgrims paid according to their means. There was a kitchen, showers, and somewhere to wash clothes. I washed what I had worn, hung it to dry, and sat outside with bread, tomatoes, and red wine.
Later I slept in a room with fifty people.
Some snored. Some turned constantly in their beds. One person got up during the night and groped for the door.
I slept well.
◆
At home, meals were simply part of the day.
On the way, they divided the day.
Food was no longer something I could postpone because I was occupied with something more important. It was the important thing. I noticed what a piece of bread did to my mood, and how quickly my thoughts grew darker when I had drunk too little.
Hunger made the world smaller.
After food, it opened again.
These were not elaborate meals. Bread with tomato. Cheese. Spanish sausage. Olives. Fruit and nuts. Sometimes a hot soup or a stew in the evening. Often a bottle of wine came with the pilgrim menu whether you asked for it or not.
The food tasted of what the body lacked.
Dry bread on a bench could be better than a dinner I would otherwise have called exquisite. A tomato could be an entire meal. Cold water could give more joy than the wine.
I began to understand that need and desire are not the same.
Need could be satisfied.
Desire always found something more.
After I had walked for several hours, I did not need to ask what I felt like having. The body answered precisely. It wanted water, nourishment, shade, and rest. Once these were given, it demanded little.
The simple life was not poor.
It was clear.
◆
In Frómista I stayed in a former pilgrim hospital beside the Church of San Martín. The bunk beds stood close together. Privacy had been reduced to what I could keep inside the sleeping bag and the rucksack.
There I met a young German man. He was divorced, unemployed, and uncertain about what direction his life should take. In the evening we ate together, and he spoke while I listened.
At home he experienced life as meaningless.
On the way he knew where he was going.
Santiago lay ahead of him. The yellow arrows showed the direction. The day’s task was to reach the next place. He hoped the walk would give him back his faith in life.
I understood him.
It can be a relief to be given a destination that can be reached with the body. Many of life’s questions cannot be solved by walking. A marriage does not become whole again because you put kilometres behind you. Work does not appear at the end of a path. Grief does not wait politely at home until the journey is over.
Even so, the way does something.
It gives the day a form that is possible to live in.
You do not have to find the direction for the rest of your life before breakfast. It is enough to find the yellow arrow leading out of the village.
You do not have to know who you are going to become.
You only have to get up, lift the pack, and walk the stage that lies ahead.
At the time I thought of this as a form of therapy. Later I came to understand it more as a practical philosophy.
Not philosophy as a system of thoughts, but as a way of ordering the day.
To walk.
To eat.
To sleep.
And between these actions: to be attentive enough not to walk past your own life.
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In Carrión de los Condes I stayed with the Poor Clare sisters.
The convent had thick walls, small rooms, and bars across the windows. Women and men slept separately. The four men in my room spoke quietly, as though the building itself had asked us to.
Everything was simple, clean, and practical.
I had nothing there that could be called mine except the contents of the rucksack. Yet I lacked nothing.
The next morning was Sunday, 5 July. I was going to walk forty kilometres to Sahagún. The first twenty led through grain fields without shade. I had three bottles of water with me.
It was too little.
The sun rose, and the landscape remained the same. I could not make the next village arrive sooner by wishing it closer. The water had to be rationed. My steps had to become calmer.
I tried to let the surroundings speak, as I had practised doing since the beginning of the journey. When I stopped demanding variation, the differences emerged. The grain had a smell. The wind changed strength. The flowers along the roadside had colours I would otherwise have walked past. A butterfly settled on my hat.
The stillness was not empty.
It was my attention that had been full.
In Calzadilla de la Cueza I took off my shoes and drank. I ate bread with tomatoes and let my feet cool. Before walking on, I filled two one-litre bottles and bought fruit and nuts.
It was fifteen kilometres to Sahagún, with no shop in between.
When I finally arrived, I found a hostel in a converted church. I had my pilgrim passport stamped, found a bed, and went into the shower.
After forty kilometres, no action was small.
Taking off the pack was a relief.
The water over my body was a gift.
Sitting down was a joy.
I tended my feet. The wound beneath the left foot was almost healed, and my ankles were free of pain. The body had not only set a boundary in Navarrete. It had also repaired what was damaged while I slept, waited, and gradually began to walk again.
I felt proud of the forty kilometres.
But I now knew that one long day was not the most difficult thing. What was demanding was to walk far again the next morning, and the morning after that. The difference lay not primarily in strength, but in repetition.
The everyday life of the pilgrim was to walk, eat, drink, wash, tend, and sleep.
I had about ten kilos on my back. Everything I needed was there.
The rest had been left at home.
◆
Later I reread Kierkegaard’s discourses on the lily of the field and the bird of the air, and I read them differently.
On the walk I knew the words, but not yet the connection they would later acquire: silence, obedience, and joy. The high plain taught the body something before thought had found the language.
Obedience was not submitting to another person’s will.
Nor was it ceasing to think.
It was responding to what was actually given.
The sun was hot.
The water was limited.
The foot had its limits.
The distance to the next village was what it was.
I could wish for a different day, but the wish did not change the day’s stage. I could long for shade, but shade did not arise for that reason. The task was to live within what was real and do what the situation required.
In Kierkegaard, the lily and the bird do not teach an indifferent passivity. They are wholly within the life that has been given them. They do not postpone life until circumstances are different.
On the high plain, this thought became bodily.
I had to walk while it was time to walk.
Eat when the body needed food.
Sleep when the day was over.
It sounds almost too simple to be called philosophy.
Perhaps that is why it is so difficult.
◆
From Sahagún the way continued west.
One morning I crossed Puente del Canto while the sky was still dark. The sun rose behind me. The trees along the path cast their shadows in the wrong direction; they shaded one another, but not me.
After El Burgo Ranero, three hours straight ahead towards Reliegos awaited me.
The photographs I took that day resembled one another. The way was flat. The grain fields continued. The sky changed slowly, but nothing happened that could give the day a story.
I began to think about everyday life at home.
We get up, eat, work, come home, eat, and sleep. Then a new day begins. Weeks and years can take the same form. We call it monotonous, as though repetition itself were the problem.
On the way I discovered that it was not necessarily the surroundings that were monotonous.
It could be the gaze.
When I changed my attention, something happened. Later I met a farmer walking ahead of a flock of sheep. There was no dog driving the animals. They followed him of their own accord, as though they knew both the man and the way.
I smiled and walked on.
In Reliegos I found the hostel because drying racks lined the pavement. After the shower I sat in the shade with a cold beer. In the evening I ate lamb stew with a young Italian couple.
For many hours the day had looked much the same.
Yet it had not been empty.
Repetition did not conceal life. It carried it.
◆
After nineteen days I noticed that I had to pull my belt in another notch.
My beard had grown. My face had darkened in the sun. My feet had toughened, and my hands knew where everything belonged in the pack. I could pack in the half-light without thinking.
I had acquired a rhythm.
The rhythm did not remove tiredness, loneliness, or doubt. It made them possible to carry. When my thoughts asked why I was there, the way did not answer with an explanation.
It gave me a new morning.
A water bottle that had to be filled.
A piece of bread.
A yellow arrow.
I had believed that meaning was something one found by thinking long and carefully. On the high plain I experienced that meaning can also lie in a sequence of simple actions. It does not always arise as an answer. Sometimes it arises as a rhythm.
Get up.
Walk.
Eat.
Rest.
Wash.
Sleep.
Begin again.
The way had made life smaller, but not poorer. What had been cut away was mostly noise. What remained was what was necessary, and within necessity there was a freedom of its own.
I did not need to master the whole walk.
I only needed to take care of this day.
The sun was still behind me as I walked west. Ahead of me, my shadow slid across the ground, hour after hour.
I began talking to it.
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