“Most [people] either compromise or drop their greatest talents and start running after, what they perceive to be, a more reasonable success, and somewhere in between they end up with a discontented settlement. Safety is indeed stability, but it is not progression.”  ― Criss Jami

Nothing like a heat wave in Valencia and not being able to use a/c, thanks to Russia’s war with Ukraine, causing Spain’s record high, unstable, electricity costs, to make us scramble to find a place with cooler weather. The 60 degree temps in Scotland in June made it an easy decision to hop on over.

I brought along a book of Ernest Hemingway’s short stories as the UK was reporting long lines at the airports. I contemplated and dismissed bringing my laptop to catch up on long overdue blog posts, as the last several months lingering COVID brain fog has left me discombobulated and feeling like my musings are trivial and pedantic. During the long wait at the airport, I read Hemingway’s The Snows of Kilimanjaro, written in 1936 while he worked in Spain as a journalist and reporter during their Civil War. In the story, the protagonist Harry has been injured on his trip to Africa and is dying from gangrene. He laments: “Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. He would never know now… he would never do it, because each day of not writing dulled his ability and softened his will to work so that, finally, he did not work at all.“

This prodded my brain: “each day of not writing, dulled [my] ability,” and the thought hovered as we touched down and drove through Edinburgh. Certainly there is safety and stability staying on the non-writing sidelines, but if the cost was a “discontent settlement,” and ‘non progression,’ then returning to my scribblings, despite a cotton filled, dizzy head was imperative. I was reminded of one of the lessons from childhood, from my physical therapist mom, that dizziness and instability was never an excuse for inactivity. She would get patients up and walking right after surgery, even while the room was spinning and weakness threatened their collapse. And as part of her patient’s dizziness recovery, she would have them turn circles, with arms reached straight out from their sides, to help their brains learn stability in their instability. It seemed counterintuitive that to become stable, you first had to make and embrace the unstable. This memory felt like a nudge, to keep writing when I felt like I couldn’t write anymore… and in the continued writing, I would find the stability in the (in)stability.

Nothing is stable including life itself.” – Sunday Adelaja

Edinburgh was rainy and chilly our first full day, and the walk through the Princes Street Gardens, under the imposing Edinburgh Castle, was just what we needed. We stopped at the Scottish National Gallery to see the works of some of the masters: Degas, Van Gogh, Sargent, Correggio, Raphael, Da Vinci, Velasquez, Botticelli and Monet.

One of my favorite paintings in the museum was not Claude Monet’s “Haystacks,” that everyone rushed to and crowded around, but his little known Seascape. Monet’s father wanted him to pursue a career in business, and Monet tried to appease him and find joy in it, as that was where the money was, but Monet’s passion was for art. He left home for Paris and studied with the masters, but struggled with depression, self-doubt, poverty and illness, and considered giving up. He met and married Camille and together they experienced even greater financial hardship. Monet was so despondent, that he attempted to drown himself in the River Seine. His wife died with TB after the birth of their second child, and Monet was at a crossroads. Give up and return to stable businesses a career, or carry on in the instability of painting and pursue his passion. He wrote, “It’s on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.”

“No one knows the anxiety I go through, and the trouble I give myself.” C. Monet

Monet dug deep and created, and failed, delved into other styles, didn’t care for them, reflected upon what he enjoyed, which was painting flowers. Eventually, he came up with a technique called “en plein air,” as he painted a Still Life, a static jug resting on the table. It depressed him so much that he took the jug painting outside, and painted over it with this stormy sea at Honfelur Harbor in Normandy. The bold techniques and thick dark paint were very unusual for Monet, but this was the beginning of his love of outdoor painting, “en plain air.” Traditionally artists painted inside in a workshop, where they ground minerals for pigment, mixed paints and sat their subjects, but Monet despite the chaos and disorder of throwing everything into his satchel, he bound his supplies and his easel to himself and headed into nature to paint. He painted what he saw in the world around him…the fields surrounded by wildflowers, ponds with waterlilies, and did what made his heart leap. His enlightened work became sought after, and he painted contentedly for the rest of his life achieving financial solvency.

Disorder is inherent in stability.” Tom Robbins

Edinburgh’s Folly on Calton Hill

We followed up the art museum, built by city architect William Playfair, by taking Mary King’s Close tour under Edinburgh, and the following day by climbing Calton Hill for the birds eye view over Edinburgh. At the top of the hill was a section of columns copied from the Parthenon in Greece. Edinburgh city officials tasked William Playfair to build a replica of the Acropolis as a way to commemorate the Scots who had lost their lives in the Napoleonic Wars. Because Lord Elgin had just brought the British museum some Entablatures from the Parthenon, known as the “Elgin Marbles,” Playfair was inspired to continue the Greek theme. However, in 1829, the money ran out, and the Parthenon on Calton Hill was never completed. The roofless shell became known as “Edinburgh’s folly” or disgrace. A folly is an architectural element, but it plays on the meaning of a folly being a lack foresight, and an unstable undertaking. William Playfair, worked hard to push past the reputation of his unfinished facade of the Edinburgh Parthenon and went on to complete the University of Edinburgh, the Observatory and the Royal Institution. It was a life lesson and reminder that we are not the sum total of our mistakes, missteps, unfinished undertakings if we move past letting them define us and allow them to redesign us. Architect Playfair didn’t tuck tail, find another career, stay in the stability of laying low, but he kept on building in Northern Ireland, England as well as Scotland and he progressed while pursuing what made him tick. And Edinburgh is a remarkable city because of his talents.

William Playfair’s University of Edinburgh

This reminded me of a biography I read on Madame Curie. She said something that applied scientifically as well as to life in general: “Stability can only be obtained by inactive matter.” It is less drag and energy to be inactive matter… But while it is stable, the unproductive mass only takes up space. In that vein, if happiness is to be found in creative outlets and pursuits, writing, painting, building, etc., a period of floundering, instability and evolving, is worth the energy and output to become active matter. This is where joy and steady footing in life is found. As Saul Bellow aptly put it: ” My balance comes from instability.” The drumbeat of the trip seemed to be surrendering to instability.

With the rain as our companion, the next day we took a train to Stirling to see one of the most important castles in Scotland. Stirling Castle was built in a strong defensive position, high on a stable sill, where molten lava rose from far below, but the history inside the castle had its share of instability.

“I choose unstable possibilities. I choose to surrender myself to that instability.” -Haruki Murakami

James IV started building Stirling castle during his reign, and his son James V took over completing the castle after he married French Marie de Guise. Their daughter, Mary Queen of Scots, had an inordinate amount of instability after her father James V passed away. Her life was always in danger, and she stayed in France for a time before returning to Stirling with her infant son James VI. Mary was forced to abdicate her throne in 1567 by anti-Catholic forces, became a political pawn and was imprisoned for 19 years in various castles in England by her cousin Elizabeth I. Mary Queen of Scots was deemed guilty of treason by a fearful and jealous Elizabeth I, and was Mary was beheaded in 1587. It was a terrible business with a dull ax. But out of such an unfair and brutal time, Mary Queen of Scot’s legacy is that England and Scotland were united under a single ruling monarch, as her son, James VI, moved to England after Elizabeth I’s death and ruled both Scotland and England. He became Scotland’s most successful king. It was a time of stability and metamorphosis for the two countries. Out of instability, a transformation of stability became possible.

Homeostasis, from the Greek “state of stability,” is a core tenet of physiology. It is where the body intercepts distress signals, and corrects disturbances found in the organs, muscle and glands. The internal workings of the body constantly fight to maintain a stable state of equilibrium. For example, when we get chilled the body shivers; when we get overheated, the body sweats; when sodium spikes, the kidneys conserve water and expel salt. It monitors everything from temperature to blood sugar, but also calcium, oxygen, hormones, etc.. I am learning, as I fight for internal equilibrium and health, that to be truly happy in life, it requires breaking through homeostasis in our thoughts and behaviors, to reach our true potential. Our brain rests on autopilot, thinking and doing less, to try and save and conserve energy, and to overcome this default state wiring requires activating and challenging the brain. In the long run, breaking out of homeostasis, becoming unstable and uncomfortable for a time, brings more wisdom and happiness.

For instance, when starting a new exercise program, the pain and discomfort activates the brain which tells the body to quit and save energy. The brain will cajole and rationalize that there is too much exertion; but, when pushed through, the discomfort makes the heart and lungs stronger. With this understanding, comes the knowledge that when pursuing passions and talents, the brain will try to sabotage in order to conserve energy, but breaking though this, working harder and concentrating helps strengthen not only the brain, but the creativity within and without. It took Marie Curie over three years to isolate one-tenth of a gram of radium chloride. It was painstaking concentration and work. We have X-rays and cancer treatments because she fought past the homeostasis, sacrificed and followed her vision. Einstein’s theory of relativity was a struggle of eight years. The fascinating thing is when the brain tries to conserve energy, many times the outcome is boredom and deficiency. It is living an impoverished life internally. Pushing past this deficit requires purposefully trying new things, extending ourselves, working on our talents, goals, passions, and putting homeostasis and stability in the backseat to instability and new ground. The brain will resist, but continuing anyway, means the neurotransmitters fire, a sense of accomplishment and happiness reigns, when we produce something of value. We leave the cocoon of safety and metamorphosis into a better version of ourselves.

“Even the sun has its cycles of instability. Every revolution produces a new order. Every death is simultaneously a metamorphosis.” Jordan B. Peterson

“[The moon] … is an example of practiced instability … it wanes when it must, and reliably returns to full strength … it is a humble model of reasonable potential that I can emulate, and follow.” 
― Terry Crawford Palardy

On our fourth day in Scotland, we took the train to Glasgow, and then hopped aboard the Highland Express, with stunning water views, to Loch Lomond. We were planning on hiking Ben Lomond mountain, but the unexpected heavy rain and shortened ferry schedules put a damper on all our plans. I felt disappoint and kept trying to make it work. Finally, I changed tactics and found a boat cruise on Loch Lomond on the northern fjords. The lake water started out like glass, but the wind and rain kicked up and suddenly the boat was rocking and passengers were getting whipped by the wind, and they ran for cover inside the boat on a lower deck. Steve and I had the upper deck completely to ourselves. It was unsteady with the waves and wind, but we widened our stance and engaged our core for stability and held on. We were rewarded with cascading waterfalls, and vibrant green hills, and I, the girl who likes a plan and tries to stick to the plan, was suddenly happy that our plans were all disrupted and that we carried on even when our brains said ‘give it up and stay in the dry hotel.’ “Practiced stability” and transformation. I like the idea of transforming into someone who pushes past the brain’s call to conserve and live impoverished… to become a person capable of accepting disappointment, who reroutes at dead ends, who glimpses the remarkable and works harder to achieve and create.

“A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed.” -Tom Robbins

 “There is nothing so stable as change.” Bob Dylan

In a time of upheaval with wars, fires, heat waves, lakes turned to dry beds, animal diseases leaping to humans, mutating viruses, etc., it is easy to give in to fear, depression and despondency. But in realizing unsteady footing helps us move differently, think differently, become more fluid and discover the time and life we have in front of us, however imperfect or disrupted, is a gift. Stability and safety make the brain less hyper-vigilant, but there are times when we must tell our brain– “That’s enough. Calmly step aside as I am challenging myself.”

I am a person who seeks peace and always tries to soothe, smooth and not rock the boat, but I have noticed by not rocking boat emotionally, and by avoiding a rocking boat physically, as I get seasick, I am limiting myself and squelching growth. As we are headed out to pursue sailing in the Mediterranean, I know it’s time to tell my brain and stomach to embrace the queasiness, the unsteadiness, and focus on the challenge, new skills and new horizons instead. Living in the dulled and softened places, that Hemingway’s character describes, is not where I want to reside. Leaning into the instability of possibilities, putting myself in the path that forces movement, allowing for waxing and waning of courage and lack of it, searching for the balanced in an unbalanced world, is an uncharted island for me but, .I know its the place transformation and metamorphosis inhabit.

Pollock Park- Glasgow

As a visual learner, images and places help me find my way. This gem of a park in Glasgow, with its shaggy Highland cows, meandering river and shrubbery maze, has become my (in)stability muse. The Pollock family did not have the heirs to maintain it and gave it to the Glaswegians with love, and with the hope that it would inspire them to contemplate and create. It was here Steve and I further brainstormed a mystery thriller we want to write. The idea of sitting still long enough to write a book, and putting in the energy to finish it, makes me tremble and feel cattywampus. As the city fights the weeds and rodents rom taking over this Pollock home, I fight against homeostasis and giving up before I even start writing the book. The new path is worth the energy to find out where it leads, so I don’t each the end of my life and lament: “Now [s]he would never write the things that [s]he had saved to write until [s]he knew enough to write them well”. Join me in picking out your new paths, picking up old passions and pursuits, and understanding we are more than our body and brain impulses that convince us not to reach for what is just out of reach.

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“You might be tempted to avoid the messiness of daily living for the tranquility of stillness and peacefulness.”

– Jon Kabat-Zinn

It’s been nine months this week since we left Santiago de Compostela with our Camino shells, completion certificates, and equal parts struggle and resiliency etched upon our bones. I truly believed a few months after we returned to Valencia, that we were done with the Camino lessons. However, we are rushing toward the year mark, and the Camino lessons don’t seem to be done with us, todavia — not yet. In Spanish todavia means “still,” an action that happened in the past but continues in the present. Or, something that continues happening, “on top of” the original experience. The eyes of my heart have been slowly opening to todavia, the evolving taking place “on top of” our camino experience. It started as a gentle tide, flowing and pulling me along, but the current has grown stronger, and I am learning resistance to lessons deemed necessary by the universe is a waste of energy, and acceptance is the flotation device that rights me after crashing waves do their best to submerge and drown hope.

My first inkling of continually running Camino lessons occurred with glass breaking on the Camino, a quick succession of glass items breaking right after the Camino, and its continuance nearly every month since the Camino. It went from a bottle of perfume, a tumbler, a wineglass with water in it, to a gallon jar filled with distilled water, and finally a brand new mirror I’d hung that fell and broke right beside my bed, waking me up from a dead sleep. The first couple broken items, I chocked up to clumsiness, or the full moon, a Twilight Zone moment, then worried it was a neurological COVID symptom, but the final straw of the mirror glass breaking made me sit up in bed and ask out loud “what is up?” And craziest of all, after I replaced and hung a new mirror in its place, that new, well anchored mirror also fell broke beside me as well. The universe shook my by the shoulders with all the annoying broken glass synchronicities. I am not a superstitious person but as an English Major, drawn to repeated symbols and motifs, the increasing mountain of broken glass has given me great pause.

Glass as a property is quite fascinating. It is made of sand grains of quartz crystal, heated until molten, and then cooled to an amorphous solid (meaning it becomes a non ordered crystalline). When glass breaks, it can be recycled, re-melted and transformed into something else…even though its elements remain the same, the lack of orderly arranged atoms means it can be reworked and evolve to a new thing. But even in the evolution, glass still possesses its unique qualities of both strength and fragility. This dichotomy of glass, strength and weakness, has occupied my mind. As a farm girl, prone to think of myself as strong and capable after all the physical labor, of late I’ve had to accept that I am also fragile after several bouts of COVID. I am durable yet delicate like glass. And in this state of being weak yet strong, with broken glass all around me, all the introspection has still left peering “through the glass darkly,” as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, still searching for a sliver, a shard of light and understanding. My thoughts circle often to my sister who is suffering with compounding mental illness. She has broken from reality and no amount of positive thinking, prayer or psychiatry has returned her to cognitive soundness and able to raise her three teenage children. I have felt the loss of her as if she has actually died. But the symbolism of the broken pieces of our relationship evolving, glasslike, into something else, eddies in the currents of my mind. In the sweeping up of broken glass, two thoughts have come to me: one, things break and I need to move past broken things in my life, and two, I needed to change the glass lens I am looking through.

On our first week of the Camino del Norte, once scorching afternoon I was so parched upon arriving at the hotel in Zarautz, I straightway poured myself a glass of water, but before I could drink it, broke it by knocking it off the bedside table with my phone cord. A few minutes later, cleaning up the watery glass, I started hearing glass breaking. Going to the window, partially encrusted with salt, as we were near the Cantabrian Sea, I made out that our room was directly above a glass recycling container. All evening long, I could hear glass being dropped and broken in the recycler. I went from cringing to appreciating the universe’s nod that we too were being broken on the Camino, but were in the makings of being repurposed. And on the last week of the Camino Primitivo, my iPhone fell off the lanyard around my neck and broke the glass lens inside my camera. It was rainy and foggy on the trail and it took me a while to realize the camera lens had broken with the fall. In the video below, of our sixteen days on the Camino Primitivo, the last few days are blurry because of the broken lens. I was irritated compiling the video because of the blurry images, but it dawned on me the dark areas were fuzzy but the light areas were not. The light areas were clearer……

General George S. Patton’s wrote a poem during the dark days of war: “So through a glass, and darkly, The age long strife I see, Where I fought in many guises, Many names but always me. And I see not in my blindness… ” George Patton

The lens I peered through at life, at my sister, appeared dark, distorted and broken, and in my blindness I didn’t comprehend the cracks of light. “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” (Leonard Cohen) I was not “seeing” or focusing on the light with my sister. The kaleidoscope pattern of all the months of broken glass, shifted just enough in my head that I caught a glimmer that I was seeing not in my blindness… All the broken glass and cracks were designed so I could find the path, the trail, the camino to seeing in my blindness.

Ancient Romans were fascinated with glass and picked up where their predecessor, the Mesopotamian’s, left off with their glass blowing techniques. Romans began experimenting, blindly at first, trying to create the strongest, clearest and loveliest colored glass. Breaking bits of old glass, heating it and adding new crystalline as well as limestone, potash, cobalt, manganese, gold and silver, they discovered while the liquid glass became very dark and opaque in the melting process, once the mixture was removed from the furnace and blown, the glass would become translucent, and the light could come through. New possibilities, discoveries and blindness to sight could only take shape in me when I repurposed all the glass wreckage, my misguided thoughts and actions and purposefully and methodically searched for the translucent.

“It is not what you look at that matters, but what you see.”- Henry David Thoreau

A friend just visited me in Valencia, and because 2022 is the International Year of Glass, we visited the Vicointer ’83 contemporary glass exhibit by Spanish glassmakers, (Joaquin Torres Esteban, Pablo Picasso, Gaudi, Jorge Oteiza) dedicated to the new glass movement. We came across one cut glass exhibit where the artist had broken the glass he was working on. Instead of trashing it, he kept it as a guide and started again. He appreciated the reminder that progress only comes after things break. After the exhibit we reminisced about a Museum visit in Tokyo, where we saw a glass bowl that had been broken and repaired with gold. The broken part, instead of detracting from the beauty, added a unique dimension and internal strength. We mulled over the idea that tragedies, illnesses and breaking points are designed to give depth, resiliency and beauty. It would be nice to bypass and sidestep the “messiness of daily living for the tranquility of stillness and peacefulness,” but such a life cannot give us power or true strength. I just finished rereading Ernest Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms. One of my favorite lines in his sparse narrative is: “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” How backward and counterintuitive it seems that the struggle is the purpose, and yet, todavia, the camino lesson continues to teach that weak places only become strong places after we are broken.

“She understood that the hardest times in life to go through were when you were transitioning from one version of yourself to another.” – Sarah Allen Addison

“Change and growth is so painful. But it’s so necessary for us to evolve.” – Sarah Mclachlan

This reminder that evolving only happens after pain and breakage pressed in on me one stagnant Valencia summer evening where the sunset turned all the white Mediterranean buildings a beautiful terracotta hue. I was fighting a fever and another bout of COVID, and I had just broken the lid to the sugar bowl and dropped a teacup trying to make a hot lemon and honey drink for my sore throat, and the despondency of broken me and the broken cup all seemed too much to endure. Steve had just flipped through the channels and paused on an old Star Trek Next Generation movie, where a sentient robot character named Data, who had been severely injured, fights off the Borg queen’s poisonous, invading thoughts ‘to just give up.’ Data fights back and declares: “I will not give up. I am programed to evolve.” This gave me another nudge and reminder that this was my moment to evolve. To become better and stronger in the broken places.

“Look around you. Everything changes. Everything on this earth is in a continuous state of evolving, refining, improving, adapting, enhancing…changing. You were not put on this earth to remain stagnant.” – Steve Maraboli

Charles Darwin, while writing The Origin of Species, suffered debilitating stomach and chest pains, and various panic disorders. Reading a biography about Darwin and his wife, I caught a glimpse of Darwin’s evolution from faithful, to unbelieving, and back to faithful as he wrote: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives but the most adaptable to change.” Breaking, adapting and evolving. Maybe all the breaking of my kitchenware and mirrors set the course so I could evolve enough to embrace the future. The Camino was just the beginning of embracing the messy, the blind curves, the breakable and chaotic, and was always meant as a reminder to search for trail markers of changeability and adaptability. Maybe the Camino was always an evolving journey without a finish line or end.

A Coruna – The City of Glass

The day before we left Santiago, and headed home to Valencia, we took a train to A Coruna, the Glass City, where the Camino Ingles traverses, to see the Iglesia de Santiago Apostol, where St. James appeared in a vision to a discouraged Spanish Commander, in the 8th century, who was outnumbered while fighting off Turks. The vision gave insight and courage to the Spanish Commander, and he rallied his troops and pushed back the invaders. Looking back, I find it interesting that the church doors look like broken glass pieced back together. And around the corner, the City of Glass “Galerias,” glass enclosed balconies, shimmered. The glass allows Galegos to still see the sun and sky during the rain and dark skies of the harsh winters of Galicia. They see through the winter glass darkly and find light.

Looking out at the big bright orange moon tonight reminded me of looking through my Aunt’s telescope. She loved to pick out constellations and planets, and tell stories, and show my siblings and I far off planets through the glass lens. I remember I was upset that I couldn’t see what she saw so clearly through her telescope lens. One night after hearing me sigh in frustration, that I couldn’t see, she told me to keep both my eyes open (not close one eye like I had been doing) and then look though the lens. And for the first time, I could see clearly and admired the planet Venus. I think again of all the broken glass around me, my poor sister’s broken brain, my broken health, and I wonder if I open both my eyes, my physical eyes and the eyes of my heart, if I can see better through the lens, through the dark, and see how to love her best despite the pain and destruction she causes, how to love my life even when I’m Long COVID exhausted all the time now ( I could walk 22 miles a day on the Camino and struggle now to walk 2 miles without extreme fatigue). I wonder if this is the camino lesson “todavia,” still carrying on long after leaving Santiago…. broken isn’t really broken… just change the lens I’m looking through…..

One last thought about the broken glass… In Japanese culture, broken glass is a positive thing. It signifies an end of something, an end of a cycle, and the beginning of possibilities, new life phases, adventures, people and new paths. Feng Shui tradition says when glass breaks in uncountable pieces, it is a time to embrace change. I can’t count the pieces anymore, and it feels like a time of change. Steve has taken up sailing, and we have been talking about buying a used boat to sail the islands in the Mediterranean. The tradition in the Med after buying a boat is to break a bottle on the ship’s bow to ensure good journeys ahead. Perhaps that’s fitting end to all the breaking glass. We purposefully break the glass and move on. Join me breaking through the old, breaking out of blindness and moving towards clearer vision, mindsets and journeys with both eyes open.

“Underlying the beauty of the spectacle, there is meaning and significance. It is the elusiveness of that meaning that haunts us, that sends us again and again into the natural world where the key to the riddle is hidden. It sends us back to the edge of the sea...”

Rachel Carson

It’s been six months since we chucked our Camino de Santiago backpacks in a cupboard with our dusty boots, still adorned with bits of grass on the grooved tread. We have recovered from the ailments that compounded by walking 38 days on the Camino del Norte and Camino Primitivo– the shredded feet, yelping knees, fatigued limbs– but elusive remnants, phantom prickles and twinges of memories cling, grass like, to our minds, to the grooves of the cerebral cortex that processes pain and attempts to assign meaning. My thoughts, unbidden, work their way back to the Camino coastline of Northern Spain, to the trail and sea, to prod and poke around at the unexamined, on a second walk with the heart as a guide, to get at the meaning, a clearer picture of the Camino’s significance.

“In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive resolves itself into crystal clearness.”

Mahatma Gandhi

One memory that circles back through my heart occurred twenty-three days into the Camino de Santiago on the Camino Primitivo where we noticed initials cut into the dirt on the trail and along side were grooves from boot tread that reminded me of university days looking at grooves, called sulci, in the outer gray matter of the cerebral cortex. These grooves in our brains divide the primary motor cortex (planning and execution) from the somatosensory cortex (receiving and processing sensory information). With stimuli like pain, and touch, these grooves in the brain change depth and shape, and as a fascinating byproduct, can create empathy when viewing ourselves or another person in pain. Because we were both in pain, the morning we saw the initials and grooved tread on the ground, our empathy, not just sympathy, kicked in for the pilgrim who sat, with upturned boots, rubbing his shins and examining his thrashed feet on the wayside. We stopped and asked him if we could help and upon finding out he suffered terrible shin splints, I shared with him how my physical therapist mother helped us recover from the terrible pain. He was so surprised and grateful for the help. I didn’t ponder it then, but I mull over the implications now that for empathy to surface in society, it requires acknowledging and looking beyond our pain and using our eyes and ears to observe suffering and pain in others — this is the mechanism for empathy. Looking away from others distress, downturning our eyes to our phones, filling our ears with wireless earbuds, leave us disconnected from humanity and from our empathetic self that was designed to reach out to lift and help another. As I sit turning over the soil of the Camino my mind, I wonder about the connection to boot grooves and brain grooves– both designed to stabilize and help us navigate depressive bogs as well as scale heights in the steep trails of life.

Another memory that still clings to me is interwoven with the pilgrim phrase: “Ultreia et Suseia.” Spaniards and weary travelers say it to other exhausted pilgrims on the camino as encouragement to keep walking. It translates to: “Let’s go higher.” The idea of Ultreia helped us up a difficult and steep ascent, along a shadeless mountainside, on the third day from Deba to Markina Xemein where thirst, discouragement and pain intersected. I was gritting my teeth from nerve pain in my shoulders and hip, and Steve was hobbling from his torn, blistered feet. But Ultreia coaxed us to look up and see other pilgrims slumped on the side of the trail and stop and get them up emotionally and physically. Getting to our destination for the night, I could barely move my legs to go do laundry. Hearing the sobbing of a woman so debilitated and exhausted that she couldn’t even lift her hands to wash and hang her clothes to dry, I paused and asked for a strength higher than myself to help her… enough strength was given to me to do her laundry so she could rest and continue her journey the next day. It came to me today that experience was not just the Camino providing the way to “go higher” for that instant, but as a way of living forever. Higher living– with kindness and patience, with eyes quick to observe, with a heart that discerns real need, with strong resolve to help the despondent no matter your fatigue level.

When we got home from Santiago de Compostela and kicked up our battered feet, we watched the movie “Don’t Look Up,” about a comet rushing to destroy earth. There were people who looked up and tried to change their course of action, but there were many others who ignored the prompts and everyone suffered. The thought occurred to me today that destruction is always rushing towards us, and if we are all connected empathetically to everyone around us, then wisely lifting our heads and looking up, and ‘asking up’ for a better way to live, means we also need to encourage everyone around us to lift their heads and do the same. Shortly after I saw the movie, I came across this: “There shall be great distress in the land … the sea and the waves roaring… distress of nations…When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads for your redemption draws nigh.” (Luke 21) It seems an elusive thing to try and make meaning of our lives as we spin faster and faster on our planet. Banishing distrust, disgust, disinterest, and despair is as simple as smiling at someone, offering a hand, or being quick to praise the good in others. More profound living, a healthier brain and society is summed up in Looking Up and Ultreia–going higher emotionally, mentally and physically by setting down preoccupations, unplugging ears, and simply looking up and acting on empathetic impulses.

It circled back to my mind that the last two weeks of the Camino despite storms, wind and mud, we no longer hung our heads and endured the camino but raised them to see a pony standing over and sheltering a lamb from the rain, to see the beauty of the raindrops on spider webs, to watch the waves of a stormy sea crashing against jagged rocks and not be diminished but gather momentum, and this has changed my heart and helped me view everything with new eyes and with love where it seemed impossible.

“What we practice we become. [We can] move through the world mindlessly and destructively or generously and gracefully. There are superstar virtues… love, compassion, forgiveness… gentle shifts of the mind and habit that make those possible. Work patiently though the raw materials of our lives.” Arita Tippett

“It is through the passage of time that life acquires its meaning… we are always revising, ordering and rendering our understanding of the past.”

Natalie Hodges Classic Violinist

One other thing that has clung to me post camino is proprioception, also known as the sixth sense. It is Latin for knowing ones self. Knowing ones self is also the mechanism to knowing others. In the groves of the cerebral cortex, sensations are received through receptors specifically by the hands and touch. Through tactile experiences, the body perceives its own position in time and space. When we affectionally touch loved ones and reach out with our hands to people in distress, we gain a sense of ours and others embodiment, and learn deeper emotional communication. Devastating consequences happened during the quarantine when we were denied contact with others. Misanthropy, dislike of mankind, grew among other things because people were isolated and not touched emotionally and physically. The Camino confirmed to me that hugging those around us, the downtrodden, the hurting and grasping someones arm or hand and helping them up helps both parties feel connection, grounded, loved and seen.

Grasping the elusive messages of the Camino, a microcosm of life, may not be so elusive after all. While we are wired to escape pain and hardships, we also have the capacity to be in a moment, embrace pain in ourselves and others, and evolve into living a higher, more compassionate life. This is the secret to happiness. “Wherever you are, be there. Until we learn to be there we will never learn to master the art of living well.” Jim Rohn

CAMINO STAGE 34: O Pedrouzo to Santiago de Compostela. El Camino De Santiago: 13 Miles, Day 36, last day

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We stepped out into the inky darkness with our headlamps at 7am, as it was a 4 hour walk to Santiago for the final 13 miles. We wanted to be there before noon, because not arriving early enough could mean not getting a Compostela certificate. 900+ pilgrims have been arriving everyday in Santiago in October, and the lines are so long some pilgrims get turned away. With our headlamps pushing back the darkness, we passed several pilgrims who were also making an early start. After climbing a few hills, we found ourselves in a stretch with no one in front or behind us. Serenaded by the birds and greeted by an orange sunrise seemed a fitting way to complete this last stage as we entered the outskirts of Santiago.

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Five miles away, we encountered a mob of “tour-egrinos” (peregrinos) or pilgrims who take a tour bus and just walk the final leg and few miles into Santiago. We talked about the differences of those on a 10k or 100k vs a 800k Camino — the exterior comparison of muddy boots, dirty pack and hobbling “Camino shuffle” from aching limbs being the most obvious. We concluded the external comparison of pristine boots and normal gait wasn’t the point…. each pilgrim leaves with a physical manifestation of the road walked (Compostelas, t-shirts, patches, tattoos, or bruises, blisters, knee braces, bandages, etc)…….but internally, that is where the true Camino differences lie. Inside longterm pilgrims are the lessons gleaned while walking for weeks—Understanding limitations, strengths, what makes you tick and what keeps you going when you are beaten. Camino lessons from the highs and lows, the rain and mud, making unlikely friends and walking miles in their burdened shoes have intrinsic weight that remains long after the pack is set down and the trail ends.

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“There is something deep within us that sobs at endings.” Joe Wheeler

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Bagpipes and flutes greeted pilgrims as we entered the plaza to the Santiago Cathedral. The excitement and exhaustion was palpable. Setting down our packs, flashbacks of the last 500 miles where we had traversed mountains, stumbled along streams, with rocks in our boots, aching knees, and bleeding feet all while we crossed Spain, flooded back. Tears bubbled to the surface. It was finally over. The feeling of completing a goal was exhilarating.

Within a few moments, the inevitable moment arrived, the dawning realization …. “It’s the end… now what do we do?” I felt immediately a deep knowing that Camino never really ends…. It will continue in our lives long after the blisters heal and feet recover. The Camino leads to other roads, ones not taken, with courage to go down them now. A Camino ending is just a beginning.

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

After all our journeys, when the end comes, there’s always a fresh page to look forward to and new book to begin. Here’s to weaving a new story …. Chapter 1…

“Our lives have ebbs and flows. Ends and beginnings are illusions. Starting over is nothing more than recognizing The Pause before picking up your thread and continuing to weave your own story.”

Molly M. Cantrell

CAMINO STAGE 33: Arzua to O Pedrouzo Camino Primitivo route merged with Camino Frances on El Camino De Santiago. 14 miles, Day 35, 2 days to go

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I was told to be prepared for the emerging hordes and bus loads of 100 km Camino walkers when the Camino Primitivo merged into the Camino Frances. I was not prepared to climb the first hill and see this….

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We chose the Camino Norte and Caminó Primitivo to be alone in nature. This was our usual view and we enjoyed the solitude and tranquility.

Upon reaching the crowds, we started passing people right and left, and eventually found our Camino Primitivo friends. They looked as shell shocked as we felt. We stopped at a cafe for sodas and to decompress. When the café filled with the pristine shoes and mini packs of the 100 km walkers, we the footsore, bedraggled 800 km peregrinos hit the trail again and were soon accompanied by three little dogs that followed for miles.

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Feeling a bit overwhelmed as more crowds appeared in front of us, I focused on the seemingly insignificant—cats, ducks, colorful doors and flowers that appeared on the Camino. I was even grateful for a wrong turn that gave us a reprieve from the crowds.

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We bumped into new friends, Dave & Heather from Connecticut, that shared the same names as our dear friends from Brazil. I had a thought drop in my head that we were Pooh Bear, Piglet, Tigger, Owl and Eeyore dropped in the “Hundred Acre Woods” on the Camino, just trying to make our way. We each had our strengths to help each other. These friendships, more than anything else, were what helped us endure, thrive, laugh and carry on.

“‘Friendship,’” said Christopher Robin, ‘is a very comforting thing to have.’” AA Milne

Tomorrow we finish our last leg and we will start walking in the dark, with headlamps on, to make it to the Santiago cathedral before noon. The trail is supposed to be like a Black Friday sale with everyone jostling and maybe a little impatience. I take calming strength from Milne again :

“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there…”

CAMINO STAGE 32: Melide to Arzua Joining of the Camino Primitivo to the Camino Frances of El Camino de Santiago, 10 miles, Day 34, 3 days to go

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Patina is a thin layer than forms on surfaces. It takes time, and the right conditions to create it. There has been such lovely brown and green patina produced by oxidation or other chemicals all over wood doors and outdoor furniture in Galicia.

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Along with the patina there’s another interesting effect called efflorescence on almost all the natural stone and concrete surfaces in Galicia. Efflorescence creates white or grayish deposits when moisture on a stone’s surface evaporates and leaves behind salts & minerals. Or, moisture from inside the stone brings the internal salts & minerals to the surface which creates crystalline “blooms” on the stone.

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The word Efflorescence comes from the Latin word – florescere – which means to bloom.

I see efflorescence on myself after walking for over a month— salt crystals have formed on my sports bra from lost calcium and magnesium from sweat. But most notable are the invisible efflorescence blooms that have occurred internally. Everyone walks there own Camino and takes away different lessons.

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For me, I’m stamped indelibly, like our Camino credencial (passport), from the beauty of the Basque lands, Asturias and Galicia nature, the kindness of Spaniards, the confirmation that I can not only endure but thrive during challenging moments, and through the stories of the hurting but determined people around me, and their friendships. This blooming is marked on us forever.

“I am blooming
into something radiant.”

Melody Lee, Moon Gypsy

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“The best kind of change, is the change that blooms from the inside and begins it’s way out until it emerges on the outside; a change that is born underneath then continues and spreads until it has reached the surface is a true change.” Joybell

CAMINO STAGE 31: Ferreira to Melide Camino Primitivo Route of El Camino De Santiago. 14 miles, day 33, 4 days to go

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“They cuddle up to a brighter side of life by expecting to eke out some soothing moments of buoyancy in the wings of their expectant quest.“

Erik Pevernagie

Another day, another muddy rainy slog toward Santiago…. but there was a break in the clouds, and we were gifted a little peek of morning sun through the clouds. We are fluid now at putting on raincoats without breaking stride when it starts to spit on us yet again. We are finding even with aching feet, there is a buoyancy in our steps because we have hit 54 km— just 33 miles to our destination. We have wings now on our quest.

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“And this seems like a beginning, this here, the start of everything. “ Karen Thompson Walker

Finally decided to ask another pilgrim to take our photo—- it turned out a bit stiff lol. We have been seeing these mannequins used as scarecrows in gardens. Not a bad idea as they scare me.

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The green accents on faded barn and front doors, window sashes and hórreo blends so well with the scenery. There were Viking raids in this area hundreds of years ago so maybe it helped Gallegos hide in plain sight? Regardless, it feels hopeful and happy in the gloom. In 1906, O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) wrote a short story entitled “The Green Door.” It was a musing on the human need to embrace “the twin spirits of Romance and Adventure.” As we pass through this neck of green door Galicia, romance and adventure, sums it all up.

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“A beautiful day with the buoyancy of a bird.” Truman Capote

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We were so hungry pulling into town that we could have gnawed on the giant mushrooms that were almost knee high. Pulpo or octopus is famous in the area so we planned on being adventurous and stopping to try some local cuisine until we saw the long lines. The Camino Primitivo joins with the Camino Frances trail so pilgrim numbers have quadrupled. We had lamb fajitas at another restaurant and Merluza fish. We felt warm and full as the rain continued falling outside. All is right in our Camino world of love and adventure and its buoyancy carries us on,

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CAMINO STAGE 30: Lugo to Ferreira Primitivo Route of El Camino De Santiago 19 miles, Day 32, 5 days to go

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We left Lugo a bit groggy after the city partied until 3 am with rambunctious music, shouting DJs and cheering crowds during their Autumnal Equinox festival. Staying in many Spanish historic Old Towns on the Camino, we’ve discovered Spaniards enjoy their nightlife, chanting and singing until dawn, just as much as we like our sleep at night and getting up at dawn. How their circadian rhythms, driven by the light-dark cycles, differ from ours eludes me. It gets dark, and I get sleepy. But Spaniards seem to suscribe more to the Marilyn Monroe’s philosophy: “Who said nights were for sleep?”

Joining the Camino trail in the chilly morning hours, while the city finally bedded down for the night, I walked, yawning, alongside Steve, noticing several interesting Gallego Hórreo with Christian crosses on one side and pagan phallic symbols on the other, existing right next to churches. At the Minho River, I admired the stonework and repairs over the centuries that kept this Roman bridge connecting the two banks. At the high point of the bridge, zipping up my jacket against the wind, I thought about the unspanned cultural bridges between us and the wild, myth rich Galicia we were walking through—quiet suburban Steve and I on one riverbank, and exuberant, forest spirit believing Spanish Gallegos on the other riverbank —an unbridged gulch between nocturnal night owls and the diurnal creatures who sleep when it gets dark.

Artists find the idea of a bridge between being awake and asleep, and the journey we take into sleep land, very appealing. One artistic image of sleep I find lovely was done by a surrealist artist in 1929 named Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky). He created camera-less photography called photograms. Man Ray manipulated this photograph he called Sleeping Woman, using heat to melt the medium making it appear dreamy yet real.

Surrealist artists were enthralled with the idea of tapping into the subliminal mind to find answers to mysteries. I wondered crossing the old Roman bridge if it was possible to connect with people on different banks of sleep schedules? And was there a moment, crossing that bridge from alert to drowsiness, where you could connect with the beyond? (I had a brief moment my third week into the Camino, just as I was nodding off into exhausted oblivion, where a family member that’s passed on, leaned in to say hello. A definite first for me.) If sleep was a bridge where we could meet halfway to connect to ourselves and others, was it a place where we could find common ground with Spaniards?

“A bridge connects instead of separates.” Santiago Calatrava

“Wisdom is just a bridge .”

Mehmet Murat ildan

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The idea circled back to my mind that here is always a bridge to people— it’s just finding the spot where we overlap.

“We should always keep a bridge standing and maintain it because bridges are what we all need to improve.” Nick Catricala

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Later that afternoon we passed through an ancient segment of the Camino called San Romao da Torta. It had a Roman cylindrical milestone dedicated to Emperor Caligula that marked the distances between different populations. The town also had copies of Roman Hórreo to store corn and grain, that were longer and narrower than their Asturias cousins. This bridge to the past and present was as fascinating as the idea of milestones that mark the distances between people. Nearby, Stonecutters were rebuilding some rock homes of decades past. The binding link of old and new, and Roman and Gallego (Galician) was bridged.

Encourage others to create bridges of their own.” Nikos Kazantzakis

As we rounded a final bend to our accommodation in Ferreira, we ran into a farmer taking his cows from the field to the milk barn. This pastoral scene of herding cattle, flooded back childhood memories of walking cows to the barn to be milked. That moment was my bridge to Spaniards. There were Spaniards who still went to bed before midnight and got up early to tend animals and crops. It was a reminder of reaching out to people even when it seems like our side of the bridge will never connect with theirs. It was a milestone that marked a shorter distance between people.

Now we, strangers in a foreign land, are motivated to find other places where we merge with Spaniards of various communities. We are thoroughly loving the Spaniards we meet on the Camino and appreciate their generous and warm natures.

CAMINO STAGE 29: Baleira to Lugo Primitivo Route of El Camino De Santiago 20 miles, Day 31, 6 days to go

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It’s small things, even just one step, that have a cumulative effect on the Camino…. Yesterday’s walk took a toll on the psyche and bodies of our little Camino family shuffling on. We saw one hungry pilgrim from Spain eating food scraps off another person’s abandoned plate. Another two Portugal pilgrims had to stop only after a few miles as their legs could not hold them up. One pilgrim from the US hobbled on in her sandals in the mud, boots tied and swaying from her pack, her feet too battered and swollen to get shoes on. Another man could only take a few steps before sitting down again and again to rework the tape on his swollen leg. 135 km to Santiago….

But then a sign on a fence post, a man inviting pilgrims to sit and eat melon, apples and walnuts from his farm. We sat on a tree stump not far from the hungry pilgrim and rejoiced he had something to eat and the man with a taped leg could sit. A 126 km to Santiago…A small gesture had lasting ripples.

“Understand the virtue of small things.” Greg Mortensen

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We were not without our own pain… when you are in pain, you notice so many others worse off than you. It’s in that suffering that we cheer each other on, one foot in front of the other….a smile anyway….118 km more to go to Santiago,…

“Small things are best, especially those done with love.”

Mother Teresa

My vision narrows and simultaneously expands when I’m in pain. Green doors lighten the gloom and whisper push on anyway. Horses whinny an encouragement and a church missing two of its three bells reminds me broken doesn’t mean you have to quit….105 km to Santiago

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“IF YOU CANNOT DO GREAT THINGS, do small things in a great way.”

SACHIN RAMDAS BHARATIYA

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So many simple things add up to great things in life and on the Camino. We all need each other and small acts of encouragement … an aspirin here, a ‘you can do this’ there, a friend to walk along with you. A reminder that minute kindness grows and expands….

“The smallest things can make you feel good about being alive.” Marty Rubin

100 km… we reached the old walled city… heavens opened with crazy wind and rain as we staggered into Lugo. But shortly after, the sun came out so we could see the end of traditional festival dance, and could walk the Roman wall ramparts. This incredible UNESCO wall with 10 gates and 71 towers rings Lugo for nearly two miles.

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As we wove through festival music, parades and crowds and saw other limping pilgrims smiling and waving and appreciating the victory of finishing another day…. I thought maybe the real Camino begins now…98 km to Santiago…

CAMINO STAGE 28: Fonsegrada to Baleira Camino Primitivo Route of El Camino De Santiago. 16 miles, Day 30, 7 days to go

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“Rocks, wood and water, brooded the spirit of repose, and the silent energy of nature stirred the soul to its innermost depths.” Thomas Cole

Early this morning, as we stepped outside into the dawn, it felt like we stepped into a Hudson River School painting. This school of American artists painted nature and landscapes in “En plein air,” or outdoors, in the mid 1800s. Thomas Cole, spearheaded the movement. I’ve bumped into several of his paintings in the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum in Madrid, DC’s National Gallery of Art and NYC’s Metropolitan Museum. His paintings of the American wilderness show a time before industrialization, railroads and factories, and uninterrupted rural vistas. Galicia’s still and peaceful countryside would have inspired Cole.

“None know how often the hand of God is seen in a wilderness but them that rove it.” Thomas Cole

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We tackled several of Galicia’s hilly mountains (thankfully not the ones that rise up 7,000 feet) on today’s Camino. While doing so we started noticing all these stone villages with slate roofs and one large rock balancing on all the edges. I learned the people of Galicia are known as the “Stone People” because they work(ed) with stone.

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The only thing we knew about Galicia before the Camino was the people speak a language which is a combination of Portuguese and Spanish. We learned this by watching a thriller mystery series called Bitter Daisies (O sabor das margaridas ) on Netflix. The lead is a female detective trying to find her missing sister who disappeared in the town of Murias (just 30 miles from where the Camino trail lies). Galicia is a great setting for a mystery with the dark clouds, rain and unpopulated areas.

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It was a brutal day on the feet. We bought inserts at a pharmacy yesterday but it made little difference. We heard from people walking a day or two before us that there were people crying on this leg from foot, knee and hip pain. Switchbacks are not a thing here and pilgrims go straight up and down on slippery, rocky trails.

Regardless of pain, our imagination is stirred by the beauty all around us.