El Camino – Day 3

When you give yourself to places, they give you yourself back; the more one comes to know them, the more one seeds them with the invisible crop of memories and associations that will be waiting for you when you come back, while new places offer up new thoughts, new possibilities. Exploring the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind,and walking travels both terrains.

Rebecca Solnit, “Wanderlust: A History of Walking”

Slowly but surely we started getting into the rhythm and developing some sort of a routine. The morning breakfast routine. The “packing up and making sure we have all of our stuff with us” routine. Even on the road we naturally have this routine where we’d walk 100-200m apart from each other, walking in silence for a little while, then regrouping after an hour or so to check in, and resting every 5km.

I like the solitude as we walk alone, together. There’s not a lot of places where one can walk undisturbed for hours without having to pay too much attention to road safety. You can on El Camino. It’s so conducive for walking meditation that I often lost track of time, distance and speed. The trails themselves were new and familiar. The landscape similar to walks we’ve done in other places; I recognized the trees, wildflowers and plants and the overgrown blackberry bushes offering their fruits to us. I’m writing two long pieces in my head – one about insights that one tend to develop from these long walks, and another on race and identity. They’re more like bits of scattered snippets of paragraphs at the moment, but it’s interesting how new insights often develop when you’re walking even as I wonder if one could come up with original thoughts by walking on a well-trodden path like the one we’re on.

It was raining the whole morning. The misty drizzles made it look like we’re walking through clouds, wet clouds. At least it’s not cold or pouring rain. We walked in between farm lands and cattle fields. Some sections were covered in cow/horse/goat poop; the soles of our shoes were caked with the smelly brown stuff.

The whole time I was simply amazed by how fit Pilar is. This is not one of those “she’s fit for her age” kind of compliments. She’s fit, period. There are people my age who would not be able to do this walk. They would be huffing and puffing and complaining the whole time. She, on the other hand, plowed through uphill sections with no problem. Never looking out of breath. Maybe tired at times, but I have yet hear her complain.

After 11km or so, we arrived at Dozón, another small town by the highway. At least here they have a gas station with a store next to it, a grocery store, two restaurants and an albergue that serves food. Things are looking up!

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