Time

CAMINO STAGE 26: Berducedo to Grandas de Salime. Camino Primitivo Route of El Camino De Santiago. 14 miles, Day 28, 9 days to go

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“We have only today. Let us begin.” Mother Teresa

It’s the end of September, and almost the end of our Camino, and I can’t reconcile the days as they’ve all dissolved together. The first few days on the Camino Norte, getting used to carrying 20 pound backpacks over twenty one miles at a time, seemed to last an eternity. But by the second week into the third, days melted together quickly on the Camino. Now we have one week left before arriving in Santiago, and I have mixed feelings: my feet, after repetitive pounding, are begging me to find a lounge chair and not move for a week. My heart, which loves being outdoors in the Fall, says please carry on past Santiago to Finesterre— the very edge of Spain. Spending the entire month outdoors, walking nonstop through various elements on challenging terrain filled me with perspective, hope and perseverance for hard days, in real life, that will rear their head in the future.

With days and hours sliding together on the Camino and time losing meaning, I finally understand Spanish painter Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory with melting clocks. Having been ruled by the clock my entire existence, now following the rhythm of nature— getting up when its dawn and going to bed at dusk, to read before nodding off, feels natural and healing.

“Your time… What do you want to be doing? Are you doing it?” – Anita Dhake

Dali was part of the avant-garde movement of Surrealism in the late 1920s and soon became one of its leading exponents. I saw The Persistence of Memory at the MoMA in NYC many years ago, and it’s niggled my brain since. This morning, specifically looking at my watch to gain some semblance of time, I nearly stepped on a giant snail moving across the trail. I paused to watch him slowly inch over rocks and dirt. Dali’s painting popped up in my mind’s eye, and I made a connection to the blob in the right bottom quadrant of The Persistence of Memory— time draped over a snail shaped memory. Memories made slowly, joyfully and even painfully endure and withstand time. A slow and steady snail was the perfect symbol for memories that persistent despite time sliding away. We have slowly slugged on day after day for 29 days and chipped away at the miles that will total 500 at the end of next week. The slow travel and lessons of the Camino will be a persistent memory even as the years tick on and melt away.

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” — Thoreau

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“The trouble is, you think you have time.” — Buddha

“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.” ― Charles Darwin

Onward we move, savoring time.