CAMINO STAGE 24: Salas to Campiello Camino Primitivo Route of El Camino Santiago. 23 Miles, Day 26, 11 days to go
After the rain —comes mud. It was a “Mudder” today slogging in goopy black mud up to our ankles with a bit of cow manure mixed in for good measure. With 23 miles to our destination, we sloshed on as quickly as we could. An friendly cow appeared and seemed content to walk the Camino with us on her side of the fence… until she got stuck in the mud and could go no further.
“You are not stuck where you are unless you decide to be.” Wayne Dyer
We bumped into one of the other pilgrims, Matthew from Ireland, who was at our Albergue the night before. He’d left early but we’d caught up to him as he had gotten stuck in one of the muddy ruts and stopped to rinse off his boots. He said ‘if the cows could get unstuck so could he.’
“When we are stuck in a rut we are being invited to grow and expand.” – Dana Arcur
Having spent my adolescence digging and pushing trucks, and tractors out of muddy ruts, I know full well what an arduous task it is getting unstuck. As we climbed out of the mud and into an area of higher ground, past numerous pastel flowers, it made me think about Claude Monet, one of the best known French Impressionist painters of the 1860s and 70s, who destroyed thirty of his Water Lily paintings and commanded his daughter-in-law to destroy even more of them, Monet felt stuck in his work and was hung up thinking how future generations would negatively view his work. He eventually went on to paint 250 versions of his Water Lilies.
“If you find yourself stuck… there is only one way to go, forward.” Richard Branson
Walking the Camino has left me oodles of time to ponder areas in my life where I’ve gotten stuck. It has left me motivated, with Monet as my muse, to go on anyway—Continue creating when I’m stuck and feel the outcome is subpar. Inertia and movement is the key. So we “keep on keeping on,” fighting the rut and moving forward.
The Unhurried Traveler 
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