Ah, the meseta. The great interior plateau of the Iberian peninsula. Hot, dry, vast, solitary. It is day 14, although in truth I have stopped thinking of time like this. Each day on the Camino is its own perfect—or not-so-perfect–self-contained  little narrative. Yet as the days continue, they begin to lose these hard edges. For all that they are distinct—the landscape, the weather, the people–they are the same: I awake in the dark, put on the same clothes, lace up the same shoes, heft the same backpack. Walk. Stop for café con leche. More than once. Eat the lunch I packed the night before, always the same: cheese, bread, red peppers. Walk some more. End the day sleeping in surroundings more humble than I ever could have imagined. Awake in the dark. Walk.

But leaving Burgos after an indulgent rest day, after a night luxuriating between crisp sheets in a private room, after a full day of day of wearing flip-flops and strolling through parks, the meseta now spreads out before me. And it is something else. Officially, the meseta runs from Burgos to Astorga, about 220K, but the heart of it, the vast nothingness of it, the bleak, flat, emptiness of it, runs maybe half that distance. These are long days of staring at far-off horizons and failing to see, often for many hours, a single sign of human habitation. These are days where a single tree in the distance takes on mirage quality, and you think: Is that a church steeple? Could that be a village? You walk three more hours and find out it is just a tree.

My first day of walking the meseta, from Burgos to an isolated albergue (aptly named the Oasis) is the most challenging 10 hours—yes, 10 hours–I’ve experienced so far. The walking itself is easy. The terrain is flat; the ground is solid. But the landscape is so overpoweringly empty, so seemingly endless, I lose a sense of myself. Of my actual body moving through space. If that sounds trippy, it’s because it is. It is both deeply discomforting and absolutely liberating. Sometimes simultaneously.

That day is half slog, half trance. I would like to report that as I trudged along I thought big thoughts. Or any thoughts. Or that insights and revelations flooded my sensory-deprived brain. Nope.

But I can report this: At the almost empty Oasis albergue, the owner invites me to sit on the little front porch that faces out to the nothingness and brings me a glass of cold water. Then he does my laundry and hangs it out on the line to dry. It comes back to me folded with a small shell necklace on top.

“No sane person fears nothingness.”
― Robert A.F. Thurman, The Tibetan Book of the Dead (yes, Uma’s father)

A charming man from the Netherlands operated a tiny tienda next to the albergue in Larrasoaña, my third stop on the Camino Frances. I ordered a café con leche at his place and listened, for the better part of an hour, to his stories. He had walked the Camino thirteen times, he told me. His stories had the air being oft-told, so it is possible that, over time, he had embroidered a bit. It seemed he had created a legend, modest though it was, around himself.

Nevertheless, I listened with great curiosity because I could not imagine why, with all the places in the world to explore, with all the extraordinary hikes through extraordinary landscapes, this guy would choose to walk the same 490 miles thirteen times. As I walked on, I met other repeat Camino pilgrims. Or heard first-timers vow they would return.

It was a mystery to me, this urge to repeat, this do-over mentality. Oh yes, the countryside was extraordinary as the path meandered across undulating plains, roamed through olive groves and vineyards, ventured across both arid flatlands and green rolling hills; as it traversed the cobblestone Calle Major of tiny villages both quaint and (no other way to say this) sorry-ass. The experience was extraordinary, a potent and often unexpected ping-ponging between daily grind and dazzling revelation. But do it again? And again?

Now more than three months since I returned from my trek, I think I understand. I think it is because those Camino lessons in simplicity, focus and clarity, in what matters and what doesn’t, in the camaraderie of souls, in delighting in the ebb and flow of life, those lessons learned while walking, those lessons you told yourself you’d never forget…they are damned hard to hold on to.

I remember thinking, so very many nights, sleeping between paper sheets or in a bunkbed or in a room of snorers “I’ll never take my quiet bedroom with my big bed and my flannel sheets for granted.” And then I did. Within days. ”I’ll never take an evening in front of the fire reading a book for granted.” And then I did. “I’ll never forget that you can be independent and interdependent simultaneously, that receiving help and being helpless are not at all the same, that things make sense when you stop trying so hard to make them make sense.” How to hold onto all this?

I think people walk again and again to recapture these moments, to relearn the lessons, to sink back into the magic. That’s what I am attempting with my writing.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along..

I awoke on this chilly first day of February thinking of the Marge Piercy poem “To Be of Use” and my 36 time-out-of-time days on the Camino this past fall. I was thinking about the people I met along The Way and how they were all seekers, highly privileged seekers. I don’t mean that as an insult. It is a fact: They—and I—had the privilege of moving out of our separate worlds, our separate lives, to explore and ponder what we were doing and where we would go from here. We were in a position to choose this journey, this challenge, unlike so many whose daily life is challenge enough.

I was thinking about my fellow pilgrims, the ones I walked with for minutes or hours or days: the Israeli men fresh from their military service, the Korean girls with their TikTok accounts, the burned-out political fundraiser from Massachusetts, the nurse from Colorado, the new widow from the Netherlands, the tough/tender bear of a man from Sweden, the Irish guy with his bunions, the beautiful young French woman with the sad eyes. They were walking to take a deep dive into who they were. They were walking to understand their lives, to make a change, to find meaning.

And then, because today is my regular shift at Food for Lane County’s Dining Room, where I help to serve hearty sit-down meals to those in need, I was thinking about my fellow volunteers: the nurse, the former middle school teacher, the retired magazine editor, the community college guidance counselor, the store owner, the yoga instructor. They are not out walking the Camino searching for connection and meaning. They have found it. At the Dining Room, helping to nourish and support the community they love, they are living a life (or at least a few hours) of purpose and meaning.

I admire the spirit and heart of those I met along the Camino who search for meaning. But I celebrate and deeply respect those who have found it, who submerge/in the task, who go into the fields to harvest/and work in a row and pass the bags along.

Day 3 of the Camino was supposed to be easy. I had walked 25 kilometers over the Pyrenees on my first day, starting at dawn, fueled by anxiety and wonder. On the second day, I walked 27.4—6 kilometers longer than the recommended stop—because I wanted to avoid replicating the prescribed “sections” in Camino guidebook everyone was using. I walked past Zubiri into Larrasoña, to the albergue where, that night, Tom appeared in my dream. And now day 3.

Piece of cake, I thought. Only 16.5 kilometers to Pamplona. And I would be meeting up with a new friend there, the “Kiki” you have read about in past essays. We had (kis)met in the afternoon of day 1, found each other unexpectedly on the path in the morning of day 2 (one of those “camino magic” moments), then separated as I walked on, but not before making a plan to meet up in Pamplona.

A short day. A stress-free day. I knew where I was going and where I was staying. A friendly face would be waiting.

Alas.

That was the day my oh-so-carefully enlightened (speaking of weight not spirituality) backpack began to dig into my unusually bony clavicle, the start of a painful bone bruise. That was the day I discovered my “international plan” from Verizon did not work in Spain (thus, map-less). That was the day I realized, upon entering Pamplona, that it was a feast day, that the Spaniards took their feast days mighty seriously, that the winding streets would be impassable, that I would spend three hours ass-to-elbow, backpack feeling like I was carrying rocks, lost and wandering, interrupting various raucous revelers to ask in broken Spanish if they knew the way to this little hotel, the name of which I had misremembered. That was the day I thought: Maybe I’m not as invincible as I thought I was. (Happily, that thought passed, as it is impossible to continue this journey without the shield of invulnerability)

When I finally found the hotel—okay I didn’t really find it…an extraordinarily kindly, gnarled, cane-wielding old lady walked me there—I discovered that the reservation I thought I had made I had not made. The place was full up. But the woman behind the desk took pity on me–I did, in fact, present as pitiful—and found me a windowless room the size of a prison cell, with a twin bed wedged against the wall. But the bed had two pillows. Two! And sheets. Real sheets made of fabric not paper. And a telephone-booth-sized private bathroom. With towels. It felt like a palace.

I dropped my backpack, unlaced my walking shoes, flopped on the bed, and vowed never to take the luxury and comfort of my life for granted ever again, a vow I kept for maybe 4 days after I returned to the luxury and comfort of my life.

Later I climbed the stairs to Kiki’s room where we got drunk on cheap wine sloshed into plastic cups.

(Out and about, mixing it up with Papa, post-wine)

Kiki is reaching around into the side pocket of her backpack to grab her poncho. It is pouring rain. No, it is sheeting rain. It is blinding rain. It is rain coming at us sideways. We’re standing off to the side of the path, somewhere between Rabinal and Ponferrado or maybe just outside Triacastela. I don’t remember. I remember the rain. I remember starting to help Kiki grab the poncho. I remember her telling me, no, I’ve got it. I can do it myself. And I remember thinking: Yes, I know you can do it yourself. That’s not why I am offering.

In that moment, I saw myself so clearly it just about floored me. Kiki was the mirror.

I was the one who almost always refused help. I was the one who conflated being helped with being helpless, who interpreted an offer of assistance as a criticism of my abilities. “I can do it myself” had pretty much been my motto for as long as I could remember. Sometimes it takes someone else doing just what you have done, saying just what you would have said, to shake you awake.

It occurred to me, there in the downpour, in the mud, at the tail end of a tough day, while watching my companion struggle (successfully, of course) to extract the poncho from the pocket of her backpack, that when someone offers help it may have absolutely nothing to do with whether they think you’re capable of handling the situation by yourself.

I knew Kiki was capable. I had seen her grab the poncho a dozen times or more. I offered my help to be of service, to perform a small act of kindness, to show friendship, to connect in the moment. When Kiki refused (as I had so many times refused such offers)—I can do it myself!—she was not just proclaiming her self-sufficiency, she was depriving me of this opportunity to be a friend. Of course she didn’t do it for that reason, or knowingly, just as I had not all those many times I had refused such offers.

Lesson learned? I am trying.

Day 3 of the Camino and I knew nothing. I had yet to learn that I carried too much water and not enough food, that the revered Brierley–the guidebook everyone used–could be full of shit, that the trail would be kinder and crueler than I ever imagined, that, among those I randomly encountered, I would meet una amiga de mi alma. Also: I didn’t know if I could do this thing. I didn’t know if I wanted to do this thing.

On day 3 I found myself in Larrasoaña, a small village, at an albergue chosen without the thought I’d later learn to devote to decisions about where I would sleep. The host directed me to a room on the second floor with 4 sets of metal bunkbeds that would eventually be inhabited by 8 people, all women. I thought same-sex rooms was the usual thing. I didn’t know that this would never happen again. We women shared a bathroom, which was clean and had new bar of soap and a tiled shower with abundant hot water. I thought this was the usual thing. I didn’t know this would never happen again.

Clean, clueless and concerned, I tucked myself into the bottom bunk below Michele from Quebec who was busy writing in her journal (which it occurred to me I should be doing, but I hadn’t brought a notebook in a wrong-headed attempt to save backpack weight) and across from Margit from Sweden who was bandaging her already blistered toes. In this room full of women—not one of whom snored–I fell asleep easily. This would not again happen.

That night I had a dream so real, so palpable, that when I awoke I was convinced it had actually  happened. In the dream Tom knelt beside the bunkbed, reached in and touched my shoulder. I felt that touch. I got out of bed. I stood up. And we embraced, the kind of full-body embrace that lasts long enough for you to feel the other person’s body heat. I felt that embrace. I felt that heat. Then we stood apart. “Go,” he said.

When you dream, your subconscious is trying to tell you something. When you dream of people who have died, you pay close attention. My dreams are often embarrassingly obvious. Once I dreamt I hit my father over the head with a frying pan. Like that.

“Go,” said Tom, who was for three decades my husband. And I did.

“I feel comfortable in the world in a way I have never felt before. Never in my younger life. Never in the life I just recently left to be here. I am in a foreign country, among strangers, where I know too little of the language, finding (and sometimes not finding) my way, often clueless. Yet there is this peace.”

I wrote this in a blue spiral notebook I bought on day six of the Camino in a shop in Estella that I happened upon while lost on winding streets trying to find my way to my albergue. I was lost a lot. That late afternoon, I was really lost. I happened upon the shop by pure accident and enjoyed a moment of feeling like I knew what I was doing. I needed a notebook. And I actually remembered the word for notebook in Spanish. So I asked the man behind the wooden counter for a cuaderno. I also asked him donde esta mi albergue…and he laughed and pointed across the street.

A week later I was sitting in a little café in Burgos taking a rest day and transcribing the voice memos I had made while walking. This, the one about feeling comfortable and at peace, was one of them. I listened to my own slightly breathless voice with the crunchy sounds of my footfalls in the background. And I wrote in the blue notebook.

I remember everything about this café, how I found a little corner table upstairs and had the space to myself, how I teared up when I  heard Ray Charles singing “Georgia on my Mind” over the sound system, how I felt bone-tired and overflowing with energy at the same time, and oh, the creaminess of the café con leche. I had to order another. But as I transcribed, I didn’t remember what prompted me to record this note to myself. Was it a particular moment? A conversation I had with a fellow pilgrim? The mountain views that felt like home but weren’t?

It is three months to the day I wrote this in the blue cuaderno. And only now do I think I know what I meant back then:

When you leave everything behind, you encounter the essential you. Boy does that sounds cheesy. Or bumperstickery. But bear with me, friends. I mean you have the opportunity to encounter, to be, that person who is not attached to things or people, who, for the moment, has no home. You are without portfolio. No one knows your backstory. You are not who you were. You are who you are. Who you forgot you were. And truly, there is peace in that.

Kiki and I had decided to go for it. It was day 26 on the Camino. We would walk almost 30 kilometers from Villafranca to the tiny village of O Cebreiro, the last 12K of which would be a climb of 600 meters. That is an almost 2000 feet ascent. At the top, up at about 4500 feet, the views were supposed to be spectacular. Many pilgrims split this section in half. Not us.

Before I continue this story, you should know a few things: First, apparently when the ancient path that is the Camino Francés was created, no one had ever heard of switchbacks. When you go up, you go straight up. More harrowing, however, are the descents, especially down very narrow, rocky trails that are more like slot canyons than paths. Both would be part of that day’s hike.

The second thing you should know is that there were five kinds of rain that day: spitting rain, heavy rain, downpours, horizontal rain, and wind-gusted torrents.

And thirdly, to put these two together, there would be five kinds of mountain ascents and descents that day: muddy with slippery leaves, muddy with rocks, muddy and rocky with cow pies, and ludicrous.

We hiked, tromped, trudged, slogged—and peregrinated (we were, after all, peregrinas) for 10 hours. Yes, 10 hours. What did we talk about? The Wife of Bath, the glories of cheap Spanish wine, how we both knew and used the word “peckish,” Joan Didion, Roz Chast, snappy comebacks we could have made to that bitch M but didn’t think of in time, lame jokes about our emergency stashes of almonds which we persisted in referring to as “nut sacks.” Also, much silence. And more than a lot of cursing.

By then Kiki and I were soul (I am so tempted to be cheesy here and write “sole” as in, you know, shoes) sisters. We had crossed paths during the first third of the journey, coming in and out of each other’s hiking lives until it was obvious to both of us that we belonged together.

Allow me to fast-forward as you do NOT want to slog along. When we finally got to the little village at the top. Kiki turned on Google maps to locate our lodging for the night. Google maps confidently informed us that the lodging did not in fact exist in this town but was, instead, located 4k away (that’s another 2.5 miles) in a town we never heard of. Various bad words were uttered. And then, on we hiked, at first hard by a busy highway, then up through a sketchy, unmarked forest path. Did I mention the rain?

We got to the aforementioned town. The colorful town map directed us to the hostel. Which was not there. Walked back to the map. Yes, on the map. No, not actually in the town. Maybe you want to know what we did then? But I do so like a cliff-hanger.

Besides, if you know my writing, you know that I employ the small story to illuminate the larger issue. Here’s the larger issue: It is about choosing challenges. How life throws shit at you, trials and tribulations, illnesses and deaths, unexpected, unwanted, unmooring. This day–the Camino itself–was about my power to choose the challenge. About the privilege of being able to choose what is hard and uncomfortable, risky, chancy. This is how you strengthen the resilience muscle before you need it. It is practice for the challenges that come unbidden.

Ultreia.

Almost every morning I walked in the dark, my head lamp illuminating the way ahead, but just barely. In Spain, even as early as late September when I started the 500-mile Camino Francés, dawn came later than I was used to. By the third week of October, as I was nearing the end, the sky didn’t lighten until close to 9 am.* And I was walking west, facing the darkest edge of the sky.

I am unaccustomed to walking without fear in the dark. What woman walks without fear in the dark? Some inky mornings I would walk for an uncomfortable distance without seeing the familiar waymarker, that bright yellow arrow announcing I was headed the right way. Some mornings, walking out of small villages into the black pre-dawn, I would see up ahead a dim light, the head lamp of a pilgrim in front of me. That sense of being alone but not alone was one of the core experiences of this journey. To be both solitary and connected, self-sufficient yet dependent. It’s hard to recapture that now, yet it was my everyday life then.

Occasionally, especially navigating through city streets I would get lost. Getting out of Burgos, I was spectacularly lost. I was without cell service, without maps, both a terrifying and a liberating experience. When I finally did come upon an embedded shell-marker in the pavement, my relief was so overpowering I believe I may have cried.

Sometimes I was so intent on looking ahead into the darkness, of navigating the uncertainty, of needing reassurance that I was on the right path, I forgot that the dawn was happening behind me. And then I turned, and there it was: a soft gray flannel rim to the sky, or lemon yellow streaks, or once the pale blue and pink of a baby’s room. And boom. If that is not a life lesson, my friends, I don’t know what the hell is.

It took some time to learn to embrace these mornings. But after a while, the pre-dawn hours were the most glorious, empowering moments of the long day.

I write about this today, Winter Solstice, the latest dawn, the longest night, reminding myself, reminding us all, about the coming of the light.

*Spain’s clocks have been set to Central European time since World War II, which means the sun rises considerably later compared to countries in its region.

Harry. “Harry, like the Prince,” he says to me, introducing himself, “Harry, like Potter.” Harry is a 23-year-old from London, fresh out of university and an expert in everything, from literature to  philosophy to finance. He lectures me on Aristotle and the existence of alternative realities, on the proper footware for the Camino. I can’t wait to lose him along the way.

Joan. She walks slowly and encourages you to walk ahead. She will catch up at the next village, she says. And she does, always. She is 79, bird-like in body with eyes that dart everywhere and take in everything. At dinner one night, a raucous pilgrim meal in an impossibly crowded room, she asks for a second bottle of wine, even though our little table hasn’t polished off the first. And she gets up and takes the bottle over to a table with four South Korean girls we all know from the trail, and she pours them each a glass. And then takes the bottle over to the next table where three guys, Italians, sit. One gets up and hugs her. Another smiles, slyly, “You want to get us drunk and take advantage of us, don’t you?” he says.

Alexander. He injured a tendon and has been sidelined for a week in a tiny village inhabited by more goats than people, an outpost with one church, one restaurant, one bar. Every day he borrows a guitar from the guy who owns the bar, sits in the sun and plays. He asks me what I’d like to hear. I tell him Dylan. He sings it in French. I think: I could stay here for a while.

Maria, from the Netherlands, who carries her demons with her. Yevgeny, the son of Russian Jews who fled to Israel. Michael from Derry who has his first of a half-dozen beers at 10 in the morning. Emily, quiet and sweet. Jo, who never seems to have a down day. Andre, a young man in search of himself. Hans, from Norway, the big tough guy who calls his 6-year-old daughter every night.

On the Camino, enmeshed in the intimacy of that fluid community, you learn a lot about people. I don’t mean the facts of their lives, although there is that. I mean what kind of people they are: humble or vain, talkers or listeners, people who observe, who are curious and struck by wonder. Or not. People who think you are interested in seeing the x-rays of their bunion surgery that they happen to have saved on their iphone. People who tell you they went to the same middle school as Joan Didion and assume, oh-so-correctly, that this will forge a bond.  People with a sense of humor, with a sense of purpose, with no sense at all.

*Avijeet Das, a poet and a writer from New Delhi, India.