St. Jean Pied de Port to Roncesvalles

Last night I went through my pack discarding a few items, then re-supplying from the small bag I left here in Espinosa. I am ready to set off again. But such preparations are premature. If only I could make a quick visit to the Lost island and hang out with Locke for a few hours....

One advantage of the respite is that I have time to write, and so I´m going to return to the first days of the walk, when I did not have such time....

While by now I have become familiar with albergue life, the first night in St. Jean Pied de Port I was still at sea. In the downstairs lobby of Le Chemin vers l´Etoile, the owner gestured for me to remove my boots. He pointed to a pile of well-used sandals and flip-flops, apparently expecting me to choose a pair before we went upstairs to the sleeping room. When I hesitated--only because every pair I could see was obviously too small--he reached in and chose for me a set of old-lady denim espadrilles. Also too small. I followed him up the stairs, at each step trying to kick back on the falling-off espadrilles. And feeling like an idiot. It´s funny how in unfamiliar, foreign situations I tend to lose all free will.

Breakfast was included at this first albergue, but the next morning there was little in the kitchen that I recognized as legitimate morning fare. The Europeans—which was everyone but me—were fine. Apparently they considered the several choices of dust, over which one pours milk, to count as breakfast. In my ignorance I asked someone when breakfast was going to be put out, and he gestured at the dust containers as if to say, are you blind?

I soon left the others to their bowls of thin gruel and set off . Up the wet, narrow streets of the town I took my first steps towards Santiago. Over the tops of the buildings hung a low fog, not quite rain, but wet enough to soon accumulate droplets on my eyebrows, causing the hairs to descend into my line of vision.

The yellow arrows that mark the path led me through a stone arch out of town and immediately uphill, along a small paved road. Light brown cows grazed beside the road in pastures of tall wet grass, and for the first part I passed an occasional farmhouse. For the next twelve miles I would walk steadily and steeply uphill, eventually gaining 4200 feet in elevation. On a clear day such a climb would be rewarded with striking vistas of the Pyrenees, but on this day the drama was more intimate, as visibility was limited to fifty feet and often less.

As I rose, the trees became fewer and the pavement gave way at stretches to a muddy path. Eventually I came into alpine habitat of short grass and lichened rocks. The wind rose, shoving about but not dissipating the heavy mist. And it grew colder. Out of the wind and cloud came the wild clanging of bells, a strange and exciting music. As I approached the sound, shadowy bands of wooly, curly-horned sheep emerged alongside the track. They paused and raised their heads to watch me pass within a few feet. The wind more than the sheep themselves tossed the bells tied around their necks. High up I came upon a dozen brown workhorses, also marked by the clang of bells, though they stood stolid in the wind.

Near the peak the wind crescendoed, whipping my sodden raincoat and making it hard to see at all. A group of people had paused together beside a stone cross just below the summit, more to adjust their raingear than to pray, it seemed. Right at the top, the path led through a shallow cut in a rocky outcrop. There a band of sheep was gathered, and in small bunches they paused then quickly dashed across the path, bells clanging.

On the other side the wind relented and soon I crossed into Spain, into Navarre. I came down into a lovely forest of small beech trees, ghosty in the mist. Before much longer the sky began to clear, and I had my first view of the hills and alpine meadows among a scattering of clouds. The four mile descent into Roncesvalles was steep and muddy. I was within sight of the town, within one hundred yards, when in a moment of inattention I went down on my ass right into the mud. A little annoying.

Roncesvalles was smaller than I´d expected, a gathering of massive stone buildings from the 13th and 14th centuries—a church, Iglesia de Santa Maria, a cloisters, a medieval version of the office building, the Real Collegiata de Santa Maria, and a few others. The town was one of the earliest and most revered pilgrim refuges on the Camino.

The albergue is in a gothic stone building, originally a pilgrim hospital. The large rectangluar space is now filled with bunkbeds—60 or so of them (bathrooms in the basement). One hundred and twenty people sleeping in one room sounds a bit much, but actually there was a good vibe, a camaraderie I liked (at least until the lights went off at ten and the snoring began). A few bunks down from mine was a ten-year-old girl with her parents, American, I think (maybe Canadian). She was arranging her belongings along a short stone ledge above her bed. I had seen her up near the top in the wind and cold, wearing a pack and holding a stuffed animal. She was the only child I saw that day, or that I´ve seen since on the Camino. While she had apparently made the hike over from St. Jean without too much trouble, in the albergue she was having an argument with her mother about showering. Her mother was insisting that they would shower together, but the girl wanted to shower with her father. “Boys and girls aren´t allowed to shower together,” her mother said.

I had dinner at one of the two restaurants in town, at the first sitting at seven. I sat at a large round table with ten or so others—three French woman, a couple Italians, a couple Germans, a pair of Spaniards, and a Japanese woman. Several big tureens of of brown soup, with kidney beans and little hot dogs, were already on the table when we sat down, as were three bottles of wine and pitchers of water. The French woman beside me, Monique, made small talk, but very small as her English was minimal and my French had for some reason completely abandoned me. She and her sister Soulange were walking as far as Burgos. The second course was trout and fries. Dessert didn´t match the rest of the very good meal—a carton of banana yogurt.

After dinner I attended a mass at the Church, conducted by three older priests and a younger one doing it up on the organ. The lead priest read a list of the nationalities represented in town that evening, and a special blessing was offered for the pilgrims. Before Communion, though, one of the priests made it clear that the rite was only for Catholics, and while others might be good people they were not to share in the body and blood of Christ on this occasion. OK.

I haven´t attended mass since this first night on the Camino, though I have been inside a number of churches. It´s worth noting that while many people might have religious reasons for walking to Santiago (often symbolized by the scallop shell they have attached to their pack), no one has spoken of such motivation to me. Only once has religion come up, and that was when Christoph, the German man in Burgos, asked if I was Catholic. I didn´t sense that my status was all that important, only that he was curious if I shared his faith. When I said no, he asked what I “was,” a large question indeed.