At the Bottom

CAMINO STAGE 4 – Deba to Markina-Xemein Camino Del Norte route- Camino De Santiago

“Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even.” Muhammad Al

Found ourselves standing at the bottom of the mountain—again. Deba was in our rear view sites by eight am, as the Markina-Xemein stage was a 5/5 difficulty with 93 degree temps, no towns or services along the way, distance and ascents. All grocery stores were closed the night before and didn’t open the next morning until after we’d left. We had four slices of left over subpar pizza from a Kebab place, 3 liters of water, and a handful of hard candies to carry us 18 miles. At the mountain trail first rise we knew we were going to have to dig deep — down to the fumes at the bottom of the soul for the match to be even for us against the mountains as we were battling fatigued legs and Steve’s feet were trashed.

We got a little reprieve of purple shade before bursting into scorching sun, thistles, blackberry briar. Any deviation left or right to avoid swampy rutted roads rewarded us with scratched arms and snagged clothes.

“When there is no way out — that is the very moment when we explode from within. The sudden surfacing of a strength of unknown origin, welling up from beyond reason, rational expectation, and hope.” — Émile Durkheim

The hills were barren of shade because they had all been stripped for lumber. Thankfully we found a natural spring dripping water so we could refill our water bottle as we were dehydrated and still had six miles to go. This was enough to give us energy to trudge on.

With three miles to go I was panting in the heat and Steve was hobbling from blistered feet. It’s always at this do or die moment, when hitting rock bottom and you can’t take another step, that the magical surfacing of strength kicks in. My hands went from numb to alive and my aching legs decided to get a second wind.

We scrambled along the Highway and jumped the guard rail, got screamed at by a man who said we were trespassing and finally found our pensione with two other beaten down pilgrims who arrived just before us. With laundry done, we had a fabulous meal and hobbled to the grocery store with other limping pilgrims. While our clothes dried in the breeze we watched the sunset on another terrible wonderful Camino day.