Logrono:Fuente de los Peregrinos.

10:30 A.M. Having breakfast in the Plaza del Mercado in Logrono

after walking the 8.5 Km from Viana. This is a beautiful city and

the Plaza is very impressive being dominated by the Cathedral. I

spend a little time walking around the city looking for a store

that sells camping supplies with no success. I am trying to buy a

lighter sleeping bag than the one I am carrying-something that is

just a couple of sheets sewn together. After asking a few people

and investigating one or two stores, I give up and walk out of the

city. This is a city rich in history and well preserved

architecture, but I am too tired and sore to really focus my

attention on that aspect of my pilgrimage at this point. Leaving

Logrono is even uglier than entering which was not pretty. Miles

of a grim industrial sector and garbage dumps guard the beauty of

the city's interior. At about 4:00 thankful to be well free of the

smelly industrial wasteland, I stop for lunch at the artificial

lake about half way to Navarrete. A serene spot with landscaped

parks and benches.

At 6:30 after arriving in Navarrete, I take a room at Fonda La

Carioca which is apparently the only place in town. There is a

refugio under construction (a splendid, comfortable refuge

according to my guide), but not yet ready. At the hotel, the

proprietor sits at a table near the kitchen working on his books

while his wife feverishly scurries around the kitchen preparing

dinner. Rather than check me in himself, the woman must interrupt

her work and attend to me. I wanted a room with a bath and this

took some doing due to our mutual language barrier. Eventually,

after consulting with the proprietor three times about prices, and

each time the price was reduced, we agreed upon 3,000 pts. for a

room with bath and meals on the third floor. Very expensive for a

hotel in the middle of nowhere, and clearly taking advantage of

being the only choice in town. The room was adequate, clean and

spare with a single bed, side table, chair, and a window looking

over the street. After washing up and resting, I made my way to

the dining room back down on the first floor. It is a large room

illuminated by a zillion watts of fluorescent light. Dinner is

decent but not inspiring: salad, four paper thin pork chops,

french fries, and melon. There are ten other dinners and the

waiter is very efficient, serving meals quickly, and removing the

used dishes and utensils almost before the guests have left the

table. After dinner I went next door for a cafe solo. Thank God it

was only next door since my feet were very painful. After coffee I

had planned to walk to the church but my feet wouldn't allow it.

Instead I returned to my room and lanced a few blisters with

needle, thread, and alcohol wipes.

As I prepare to sleep, I am feeling intensely lonely for the first

time. After 8 days of walking, meals mostly alone, and no real

conversation, it is beginning to get to me. My pilgrimage is

undoubtedly the most difficult physical experience of my life (so

far). My body is sore, my feet ache, and I have gone out of phase

with the few people I was traveling with a few days earlier. Not

that we had formed any real friendships, but it was nice to see

some familiar faces now and then and say hello.

Highway Hell.

Breakfast of cafe con leche and roll at 8:30 and back to El Camino

which turns out to be about 5 Km of road hell. At 3:00 I reached

the refugio at Najera where I checked in and made myself some

lunch of bread and cheese. This is a beautiful refugio run by a

volunteer from California named Dave.

Dave from California.

Pilgrims relaxing in refugio at Najera.

We talked a bit, and he

offered to help me out with reorganizing my pack with the goal of

reducing its weight which has been a constant annoyance to me

since I realize I am carrying much more than necessary. Sitting on

my bunk we took everything out of the pack and accessed its value.

With Dave's help, we made two piles: the essential and the

unnecessary, the later weighing at least a kilogram (2.2 lbs.),

and while seemingly insignificant, it constituted a much welcome

reduction in the overall weight of my pack. When I asked Dave when

my feet would stop hurting his pithy reply was simply: "when you

stop walking". I guess I was hoping for a response such as: "after

you go 200 Km you will be used to it and everything will be fine."

Items left behind.

After rearranging my pack I visited the celebrated church of Santa

Maria la Real. Legend holds that in 1052, Don Garcia, the king of

Najera, was hunting when his falcon disappeared into a cave after

a dove. When the king went in after them he discovered a statue of

the Virgin Mary, lit by a lamp with Madonna lilies at her feet.

The elements of the legend, the statue of the Virgin Mary, the

lamp and the Madonna lilies are part of the current church which

is built into the rocks. In addition to the Madonna, the church

contains a beautiful Pantheon of the tombs of the Kings of

Navarre. I spent an hour or so experiencing the church and the

cloisters which were very inspiring and relaxing before returning

to the refugio. At about 8:30 with the town just waking up, I went

for a walk down by the River Najerilla which runs through the town

and has parks on both sides.

Cloisters of Santa Maria la Real.

As I sit absorbing the activity of the people playing with their

kids and buying food from cart vendors, I try to get a sense of

how all these relics relate to contemporary life. I feel as though

I am walking through shadows of the past. Even though the past is

no longer with us, its presence is so strong on El Camino that it

exerts a tangible pull on my consciousness. With the existence of

so many artistic and architectural masterpieces, the past is

almost as real as the present. While the past may be gone forever,

in this place its shadow is long indeed, and I can see it in the

buildings and sense it in the people who inhabit the ancient

cities and towns. These are the ancestors of those who lived the

legends, and through their veins runs the blood of the heroes and

villains. Yet like all shadows there is a hollowness. Contemporary

Spaniards are not living in a glorious period of their culture

represented by the relics of the middle ages which surround me.

The belief systems which inspired the artifacts we admire are no

longer in place and as a consequence there are few, if any,

masterpieces being built which would rival the achievements of the

glory days. Today's Spaniards are caretakers of an inherited

cultural myth which seems to have almost more of a presence than

life in the present. I have had a similar experience traveling in

the southwest of the United States. There, the presence of the

past is equally powerful, exuding as it does from every adobe hut,

and it seems as though the present is overshadowed by the past and

lived vicariously through it. Still, I am a willing player in the

game of perpetuating the reality of a past epoch. With one leg in

the here and now, and the other in the long shadow of history, I

trudge along a path worn deep by the sacrifices of countless

pilgrims over a thousand years.