Mountains!

Today I set out in the dark, using my headlamp to avoid the muddiest spots. The rain had stopped, but clouds still filled the pre-dawn sky. It was cold--for one of the first nights on the trip I´d been able to sleep in my down bag. I walked steadily uphill as the light slowly grew, revealing bushy, wild slopes on either side of the path. Occasionally I came upon a small fuente among the high grasses, usually connected to a long concrete trough--water for the peregrinos struggling upwards. But I saw no other people for the first hour. Then I came into the small mountain village of Foncebadon, where nearly all the buildings were reduced to roofless, crumbling walls of stone the same color as the stone underfoot. A few people were just setting off from a tiny albergue, so I was alone no longer.

Another couple kilometers and I came to La Cruz de Ferro, a weathered wooden pole topped by a small cross. Surrounding the pole was a huge pile of rocks, built over who knows how many years by the passing pilgrims to mark the highest point on the Camino--about 5000 feet. A cold wind blew across the top and low clouds scudded past, but a few breaks had begun to appear, and the sun illuminated selected patches of green and yellow mountainside. There´s been little of the sublime in the landscape I´ve crossed over the last week, but today was different. I walked on a proper trail, not roads, through beautiful green mountains dramatically clouded and lit, and gazed down into narrow valleys, up at the rounded peaks running into the distance. The easiest, most satisfying day of walking yet, despite the rigors of climb and descent.

My dinner last night was not so satisfying. Not as bad as the Van-Dos disaster in Fromista, but second. There were three restaurants in Rabanal, and I had a look at each before choosing--and then chose wrong. How can you know? There were also three albergues, and I overheard a German woman ask a bartender which was best, but the bartender would only say they were all good. As for the meal, the fault was partly a poorly translated menu. Since the night was chilly, I decided to forego my ensalada mixta in favor of the "vegetable stew." Two words that sounded warm and good. But I was presented with a large dish of cooked green beans and peas, with a few bits of mushroom and asparagus tossed in. This is not something I would knowingly choose to eat, but I ate it, every soft, mushy bite. Segundo, the salmon steak I ordered could not stand up to the one of the night before. Not in color, texture, or taste. But the bread was very good.

I ate alone, so for entertainment I had to eavesdrop on the three Asian people at the next table (the only other people in the room). They were all young, each traveling alone, and all trying to communicate with each other in broken, painstaking English. The two women, Korean, were a little more adept than the man, who was Japanese. Much of their conversation at first seemed to consist of English-language practice. "Cee, gee, tee," they said to each other several times together, several times separately. They also worked on specific words, some of which seemed of little conversational value. "Ell-ee-font," the Japaneses man said, six or seven times in a row. Then the two women repeated the word. "Ellee-font," the Japanese man said, a little faster, about ten more times. A moment later one of the Korean women taught the man a more useful word: "go," she said. "Gah?" he answered, confused. "G-o," she said, and pointed to indicate movement. He nodded, vigorously in understanding, and repeated "g-o" over and over. "Son-doll," the other Korean woman interrupted, pointing to her feet. They all had a go at that one, before breaking into laughter at the ridiculous sound of the word. Towards the end of their meal they were picking bits of food off each other´s plates.

Earlier in the day I had run into Mandy when she was having a coffee at the bar in my albergue. We spoke for some time, and I want to retract the word "giggly," which I applied to her yesterday (and which was probably a little condescending). Upbeat, positive, sunny.... No those aren´t good words. Maybe ebullient. I´ve met only a few Americans on the Camino, so I asked her how it was that she had decided to do the walk. She took my how as more of a why, and said that after she quit her job decorating cakes she thought the walk would help her figure out what she wanted to do with her life. She seemed in the midst of a familiar mid-twenties crisis--a smart, educated person, she could find nothing in the career-oriented, obvious fields of work that appealed to her, and was worried that she had not settled on a clear path. Her father had worked in finance for the last forty-two years. "The same job," she said, with a mix of affection (for him) and horror (at such a prospect for herself). Pretending to be speaking to her father, she said, "so explain to me one more time, what´s a mutual fund?" She screwed up her face in mock confusion. "And annuities?" When she was a teenager her father would ask, "do you want to come work with me as an office assistant?" The answer--"ah, no, Dad." She was quick to add that he was always fine with that.

We walked into the village together to look for the tienda, stopping in on the way at an open church. Mandy said, with a hint of disapproval, "there´s always the big churches, no matter how small the village." She´s a lapsed Catholic but not an angry one. "My mom sent me to Catholic school," she said. "But it didn´t really work. I was that kid putting up her hand and asking, ´so if God is all loving, what´s his problem with gay people?´" She laughed. "The teachers didn´t like that sort of question." In the tienda I picked up a bag of peanuts, and Mandy said, "I am dying for some peanut butter." Me too, but they just don´t have it here. And it would go so well with all the bread.

Once I passed the high point earlier today, the path stayed high for some time. Over the next ten or so kilometers I pased through only one village, Manjarin, a small gathering of stone huts. I don´t know what the few inhabitants do up there. Maybe tend sheep or goats, but I saw few of either on the rocky, gorse-covered hillsides.

The clouds blew off, revealing more of the surroundng hills. I saw a small deer dash off through the bushes, the first wild animal I´ve seen larger than a rabbit.

Eventually I started to descend--and kept dropping for quite some distance. By the end of the day´s walk, eighteen kilometers from the Cruz de Ferro, I had come down 3000 feet. Coming down I passed through a pair of handsome (and more prosperous) villages, where the narrow streets were surprisingly precipitous. At the bottom, down in the valley, I came to the town of Molinaseca, and on the far side found an albergue. After the usual cleaning tasks, I sat on the veranda in a green plastic Heineken chair and read one of my books--but paused often to admire the surrounding green hills.