San Zoilo.

I left Fromista at 5:30 AM while it was still dark. It was good

starting early before everyone was up and about and miss the crowds.

22 km later at 10:00 I had my credentials stamped at the convent of

Santa Clara in Carrion de los Condes where St. Francis of Assisi is

reported to have been given shelter. In order to get stamped, a nun

came to a deep window with bars on both sides and a rotating shelf

into which the stamp was placed and passed to a nun on the other

side. The arrangement was designed to avoid any contact between the

sisters and lay people who came to visit. At the other end of town I

spent some time in the beautiful San Zoilo monastery which is also a

luxury hotel. The cloisters, tombs of the princes, and elegant

carvings on the capitals were very moving and I appreciated the rest

after a long morning's walk. Last night I dreamed that people were

telling me that I had done this incredible thing for which I received

a certificate. The dream obviously referred to the pilgrimage, but

another aspect of the dream was that I was very surprised by the news

of what I had done since I had no memory of it. It was as though I

was asleep during the entire pilgrimage and awoke to the news of

having done something notable. I took this to be a wake-up call. Was

I asleep at that very moment? Would I walk the entire camino in a

trance? I thought about this and made a special effort to awaken as I

considered the skulls beautifully carved into the columns of Zoilo's

cloisters--there to remind us that time is short.

Now I entered what I like to think of as the "badlands" since this

stretch of the camino was particularly difficult for me. Right up

there with the two or three hardest parts of the journey, such as the

second day crossing the Pyrenees when I thought I would die. It

probably has more to do with my condition at that particular time

rather than anything unusually challenging about the road. Soon after

leaving San Zoilo the road became part of an ancient Roman way which

was straight and rocky. I was wearing sneakers in order to allow the

blisters to heal and had my hiking boots strapped to my pack making

it feel even heavier. This road, while only about 17 km, seemed

endless. It was very hot with the brutal Spanish sun directly

Roman ordeal.

overhead and my feet and legs hurt. I have been walking for 17 days

and don't seem to be in any better condition than when I started. But

this road was especially deceptive. One added difficulty was that I

had misjudged my water supply and had to ration it carefully to avoid

running out since there was nothing between Carrion de los Condes and

Calzadilla de la Cueza. And that was part of the psychological

difficulty of this stretch of road - the dreary, boring, nearly flat

lonely quality of it. No towns,or even buildings, just fields of

cereal as far as the eye could see. Here I was at the tail end of

what was to be my longest trek to date, about 40 km, and already

tired from the 22 km I walked in the morning. I had to keep to the

sides of the road as much as possible since the sneakers I was

wearing were no match for the rocks and the souls of my feet hurt

with every step. The road began to play insidious tricks on me: as I

walked towards the horizon which seemed close, it would suddenly and

continually grow further away as I crested an almost unnoticeable

upward grade. This trickery of never seeming to make progress

continued for four hours until I really though I had reached the

limit of my endurance. Then like a miracle, as I crested yet another

slight rise, the town of Calzadilla de la Cueza lay before me only

100 meters away. It was completely invisible before that moment and

the feelings of relief and gratitude were overwhelming.

Resting pilgrims.

Thankfully, the refugio was on this end of town and I was given water

from a jug immediately upon entering. It was quite full with pilgrims

who had arrived before me, some getting checked in and finding their

beds, while others sat in the backyard, talking and tending their

blisters. This refugio was an simple house in a row of houses in the

town, with a second floor containing several rooms where pilgrims

slept. After my credentials were stamped, the hostess offered to help

me by carrying my pack upstairs (I must have looked a wreck) but when

the young woman bent down to pick it up, she couldn't lift it off the

floor. As I lifted the pack she scolded me for carrying such a heavy

load and I resolved again to lighten my load as soon as possible.

There were no beds or bunks upstairs, just mattresses on the floor

packed in as tightly as possible. This was not an appealing sight. I

knew that my loud snoring would bother the other pilgrims and begged

her to allow me to sleep downstairs somewhere. She didn't think there

really was anyplace but finally decided to let me put a mattress on

the floor in a downstairs hallway which was a great relief for my

sudden and severe case claustrophobia.

Camping out.

They were turning away pilgrims now, so I just made it in at the last

minute. Then the bed people showed up. This was one of the most

unusual encounters of the pilgrimage. A German couple were

transporting an actual bed on a cart by pushing and pulling it with

bicycles. They had started in Germany and were well on their way to

completing their mission of reaching Santiago de Compostela. The

arrival of the "bed people" caused quite a stir among the pilgrims,

and of course everyone was curious about their motivation. As it

turns out, despite some discussion and distribution of literature by

the bed people, no one quite fully understood their motive, including

myself. Briefly, it seems that the bed was a relic from a holocaust

site and their transporting it to Santiago was in some way a national

penitence, though that aspect was down-played in favor of the

pilgrimage being a performance or art piece of sorts. I believe they

also had personal motives. In any case, we all marveled at their

commitment and were amused to see that they installed it in the

backyard and actually slept on it as though it were a camper. A

couple of Frenchmen also decided to forego the crowded second floor

quarters and camped out in their sleeping bags outside in the

backyard. This too was the source of quite a bit of joking and

teasing especially since they turned in quite early in the evening.

Eventually, at about 8:30, after eating some remnants of food I had

brought with me, and everyone finished their toilet duties, things

settled down and I was able to place my mattress and end a very long

and excruciating day of walking 40 km in extreme conditions.

Bed People.