Copyright © 2022 Danielle Aird
Graphic Design by Anthony Aird
ISBN: 9798414023265
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to every friend I made along the way, and to all the wonderful hosts and volunteers, backbone of the Camino.
I thank first and foremost my son Anthony Aird whose graphic design, art, computer skills, and inexhaustible fountain of patience transformed my prose into this beautiful object. I am grateful to my husband Neil and my daughter Katie for not minding my frequent escapades and for holding the fort while I am away. I thank my son Robin for making me fall in love with nature from his Golden, B.C. home. A special thank you to Chloë without whom I might never have ventured onto the famous path.
A book is never a solitary enterprise. A very special thank you goes to my friend Gabrielle Henry for helping edit and for her productive comments. I look forward to reading her fascinating memoir about life in New Zealand, the U.S., Tanzania, Guyana, and Canada.
And I would like to thank you, my readers. Without readers, there can be no writers. I hope my book will bring back some of your Camino memories or inspire you to take that first step. Buen Camino.
Almonds
Portomarín
Introduction
Dad captivated us with tales of hopping on trains with his buddies. He was not a hobo. He loved adventure. I dreamt of the day when I could ride all the way to the other end of the country.
I was six years old when Mom put me, my seven-year-old sister Michèle, and eight-year-old Lucie who would be in charge of us during the three hundred and forty mile journey, on an overnight train from Val d’Or in Northern Quebec, to Ste Ursule, in the south. We were going to the Sisters of Providence’s convent, where I would attend school for five years. My sisters knew the ropes. We would see our parents at Christmas and come back home for the summer holidays. It was the happiest day of my life. I waved cheerfully as my parents, standing on the platform with our three younger sisters, waved goodbye to us. Dad’s eyes must have been misty. Mom must have sighed with relief. My love of adventure had just begun. I can still feel the excitement today.
By the age of fourteen, totally unbeknownst to my parents, after school, a friend and I were hitch-hiking from Val d’Or to another small town an hour away, joining other friends for a soda in a restaurant, and thumbing back home in time for dinner. Years later, while at university, in Kingston, my roommate Marg and I spent many weekends on the road to Toronto, Montreal, or perhaps to the Winter Carnival in Quebec City. At dinner Friday in the cafeteria, one would turn to the other, “Where shall we go?” The next morning, our thumbs, and perhaps Marg’s good looks for tickets, we would be bouncing on the seat of a transport truck, cheerful company for a lonely driver. Only once or twice did we find ourselves in danger in a car. Never in a truck. Fortunately, although stupid enough to hitch-hike, we were clever enough to get out of trouble when needed.
My feet never stopped itching. When I met Neil, my Scottish husband, he had already travelled to forty-nine of the U.S. States. Marrying him meant trips to Britain and Europe. Closer to home, children in tow, we explored Canada from coast to coast, and beautiful areas of the United States. Neil loves pristine scenery. He loves flying over icebergs, mountains, rivers. The bird’s-eye view was invented for him. Looking at his exquisite photos,
I understand. He also needs bland, familiar food, hotels with at least a few stars. He was happy with his head in the clouds; I wanted to learn about different cultures, languages, history, architecture, sample different foods, stay in a cabin, anywhere. I loved the idea of roughing it. Having slept in youth hostels during his solo bicycle trips through Britain and the Continent in his teenage years, Neil had ‘been there, done that’.
After our kids had flown the coop, we started punctuating our travels together with separate trips. In Turkey, I discovered international hostels where I met like-minded travellers and explored with them. That was the way for me. While my husband’s lifelong hobby, (a website about the Beaver airplane) took him to Australia, New Zealand, Alaska, the Southern U.S., I indulged my wanderlust across Central America, Europe, Morocco, Turkey, India, sometimes with a friend, sometimes solo. I especially enjoyed exploring India and Spain. In the spring of 2001, my sister Nicole at the wheel and I, a map on my knees, we travelled from Barcelona, across the Pyrenees, to Santiago de Compostela, and down the Portuguese coast before crossing over to Morocco. Santiago meant nothing to me then.
A few years ago, when it was time for Neil to renew his passport, he announced: “I have seen all I want to see; I am perfectly happy at home.” I, too, am happy at home, but like the Eveready Bunny, I plan to keep going until I drop. I was hearing more and more about a certain 730-kilometre trail. I joined a local group of hikers and met them for short hikes, intending to go on the longer ones if I felt capable. They walked to stay fit. I wanted to stop and listen to the birds, examine a plant, a flower, a patch of moss, look at the sky, slow down when tired perhaps take a photo or two. It reinforced my feeling that no matter how friendly, groups are not for me. Rumour had it the Camino could be walked in segments and at one’s speed, and a person like me would never be lonely along its path. There could be no stopping me now.
Horreo in Galicia
Stepping stones
There will be more commemorative monuments along the path. One doesn’t need to know Basque or French to understand. The dates, the names, obviously Basque (were two of them brothers?) and three words: Aleman Nazian torturapean, any pilgrim can translate this. What some might not decipher is that thanks to these three men, thousands of people were saved. It is sobering to think I have been walking in peace and serenity along paths where so much good and so much evil have been done.
Does a Shroud Have Pockets?
Last May, while Joanna and Chloë scooted ahead from Roncesvalles in the morning, Randall, Janine, Vicki, and I brought up the rear. We were still getting to know each other. Soon, another woman about our age who was walking alone ahead of us slowed her pace and joined our group until Zubiri. Recently widowed, she was in a talkative mood. Mesmerized by her incredible life story, I must have been blind to our surroundings. I think none of us paid much attention to anything but the woman’s story as she related how, forty years before, in her twenties, she had met a mysterious, charming man, very attractive, although he looked a bit old for his age. He was funny, smart, debonair, and full of great business ideas. Soon they were dating. Soon they were married. Soon they were having children.
One day, the husband confessed he was ten years older than he had told her. “Had you never looked at his birth certificate?” asked Janine. It had never occurred to her. Janine was surprised. I wasn’t. I don’t think I have ever seen my husband’s birth certificate. I thought nothing of it. “I had never felt the need to question his age,” said our impromptu companion. A clever man, her husband took care of all business, filed the income tax papers and any form requiring a date of birth. They were married for over forty years. Even after he confessed about his age, she never saw proof of it, never looked for one. Life went on as before. He was a sharp entrepreneur and a good provider. He went from one eccentric venture to another, some successful, some not so. At least that is what she guessed. He kept his business details to himself, and talked about his successes, but only by accident did she stumble upon hints of occasional failures. Once, she had inadvertently come
upon a warehouse of his, filled with dusty, unsold, obsolete merchandise. And there were business trips whose purposes were never discussed. “You would be bored,” he would say. I could imagine him dismissing her inquiry with a casual wave of his hand, and refilling her wineglass, until one day she understood that his business was none of her business. He was also a gambler. Big time. At least, that is what she suspected. Although they lived in Britain, she often saw wads of American dollars in his pocket. Somehow, he always seemed to come out on top. As long as there was food on the table, money for clothes, pleasant holidays, as long as all the bills got paid, she learned not to ask questions. We could tell, between the lines, that it had not always been easy. Is sharing a life with another person ever easy? But he was a loving husband and father. “I had a good life,” she said. She had accepted her role, and instinctively known not to venture out of that role.
At a restaurant, she showed us pictures of him in his last months. An attractive old gentleman, smiling, surrounded by their three sons. They seemed a genuinely united family. She and the children obviously loved him. And he loved them. “He died three months ago today,” said the woman.
She had a Mona Lisa smile. I wondered who amongst us doesn’t have a secret, a skeleton in the closet? What had loosened her tongue? Was it the fleeting moment of intimacy amongst strangers who would likely never meet again? Was the Camino a good place to bare one’s soul? Oh, there was nothing on her conscience, perhaps not even a slight embarrassment at having been duped for so long by her most intimate companion. I had the feeling that back home, while tending the rose garden he had planted years ago and she seemed so proud of, more dreams of adventure would dance in her head.
Randal and Vicki were mostly quiet during the entire conversation. I sensed Janine was not given to intrigues. I have never liked intrigues, but I didn’t think too much of this since I could easily imagine many others subtracting ten years from their age if they could get away with it.
“After his death,” said the woman, laughing, “I found out he was not ten years older than he had said.” She paused and gave us a quirky smile. “He was twenty-five years older! He was ninety-three.”
My eyes nearly popped out of my head. I don’t know how long we stood there. Although it is not unusual for couples to have a vast age difference,
the strange thing was it had never occurred to her, even after his initial pseudo-confession, that she was being hoodwinked. How many people carry secrets all their lives? I wondered. How many carry secrets into their graves? They say a shroud has no pockets. I believe it does. And they are full of lies.
We knew little about the woman or her husband. All that stood out now was the lie. A monumental lie. She didn’t seem half as perturbed as we were. I suppose she had had time in the months since his death to get over her shock. She meant to fully enjoy the rest of her life. She would be meeting two of her granddaughters in Santiago, and they would travel around Spain and Portugal for another month. Like a bird whose cage door has been left open, I don’t think she planned on settling down too soon. Marriages and partnerships need an enormous amount of compromising. I could easily see her dedication to a man she loved. In his last years, he had suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. Did I detect a slight sense of relief that she was now free, and still young enough for adventure? There was no bitterness.
Blackberries
Today, since I plan to walk alone at least part of the way, there will probably be no amazing tales to gather. But each pilgrim is a book. I have an entire month to collect their stories while enjoying the scenery.
At the entrance to the pristine little town of Burguete, I am treated to a visual feast. One balcony straddles the front of a house, red from one end to the other with large potted geraniums. I love the white houses of Basque architecture. Here, some have attention-getting scarlet doors and shutters. Others have the more typical, thick, soft-cornered brown slabs of stone inset around windows and doors. Not an inch of peeling paint anywhere, nor a weed in front gardens. Tidy four-foot high stacks of firewood line the sides of houses. Winter must be cold around here.
Hemingway stayed at Hostal Burguete a hundred years ago, but there is more to this village than its claim to fame for having hosted a famous writer. In past centuries, women accused of witchcraft were burnt at the stake here and in many other villages in this area. I would like to know what exactly constituted witchcraft. Was it a midwife saving the mother instead of the
steps to a bus shelter, and waited happily for half an hour in the shade for one that eventually took us close to our destination, the Casa del Cubo.
Today I am sorry I have missed all these tiny villages, but not the part around the airport. The ‘greener’ alternative into Burgos that Andrea and I would take the next September was not great either, but it was not dangerous. For those of us here because of our love of nature, the entrance to large cities is often best skipped.
The Escape Artist
At the last stop before Burgos today, a short, barrel-shaped woman with thinning grey hair waddles aboard and takes the seat across the aisle from mine. When the bus has come into the terminal, and we are standing in the aisle, she blurts out: “You know, I’m an escape artist. This is my third time on my own on the Camino.” It turns out she is running away from an intolerable situation at home: her middle son has been suffering from breast cancer for two years. “Yes, men can get breast cancer,” she assures me. (I was sadly aware of that; we lost a friend to it in his forties.) Her other son is a drug addict, bipolar, in and out of jail. Her daughter has become estranged from the family because she cannot stand the dynamics. I didn’t ask about a husband.
My life has not been without obstacles. Whose life has? Once in a while though, the vicissitudes of my own life seem rather inconsequential. I can see why the woman finds the Camino soothing. As I walk, day after day, my spirit rises far above my inner turmoils. Even though I don’t think I am running from anything, except perhaps the noise of lawn mowers, leaf blowers, garbage collectors and partying students, I know the blissful rest walking the Camino can offer.
La Casa del Cubo
Across from a vibrant outdoor Café in Burgos, near one of the most grandiose cathedrals of Spain, where El Cid lies entombed, sits the imposing Casa del Cubo where I will not be staying this time. Welcoming, immense,
