Wandering, Pondering, Sondering
Sonder (noun) - The profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passed in the street, has a life as complex as one’s own
Wandering, Pondering, Sondering
Sonder (noun) - The profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passed in the street, has a life as complex as one’s own
Sonder (verb, and made-up word) - To dwell on that (above) profound feeling
I am wary of anyone who only listens to top 100 songs. What does that say of a person? That they are some sort of amalgamation of the musical interests of the populous? More likely, they are a person who has not yet explored their own musical identity to its fullest. A person taking the road most heavily paved, most easily travelled, so to speak. This is not to say that Taylor Swift is not worth listening to; she is a genius contemporary songwriter . On the flipside, there is a value in taking the road less travelled.
My own commitment to roads less travelled is what lead me to a hotel room in Pontevedra, Spain accompanied by two Canadian travelers, Josh, and Eldo. Together we were listening to the droning soliloquies of Bob Dylan over Josh’s iPhone speaker while laying down, decompressing from a long day of walking along El Camino.
El Camino is a pilgrimage of religious origin, a pilgrimage that finishes at a mammoth, ornate church in Santiago, Spain, the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral, a church that is built over the grave of Saint James the Great, one of the Apostles of Jesus Christ. I initially mistook “el camino” to translate to “the walk” in English, however, it more fittingly is translated to, “the way”. El camino de Santiago is not one trail, but a network of walking paths that stretch out across Europe in every direction. The most travelled path to Santiago is El Camino Frances, a trail that starts in the Alps, at the southern border of France and stretches across the North of Spain. Being a path-less-travelled-traveler, I chose El Camino Portugues, the route to Santiago that skirts the western coast of Portugal before moving inland and north across Portuguese and Spanish hillsides towards Santiago, with about equal distance in Portugal and Spain. As Robert Frost less famously remarks of the road he thought to be less travelled, “the passing there, Had worn them really about the same”. Perhaps this was true of El Camino, Portugues, as in recent years it had become more popular.
What led me to seek out a pilgrimage of the spiritual variety? Many things. I booked my flight to Porto, Portugal in the two days after leaving from my most recent job in an abrupt and jarring fashion. I moved to San Antonio in the toasty early days of August. Mostly, to work on the sales team at a young solar energy company that was building a solar buying process that was respectful and easy to navigate for the homeowner; or at least they were trying. After 3 months of conversations with homeowners, deals won, deals lost, and many nights of spiraling anxious thoughts about deals on the fence, I arrived at a simple and profound conclusion - this whole “sales” thing was not for me.
On a Monday, I approached my manger with this revelation, inquiring about the possibility of working for the company in a different capacity. There was no other capacity for me at the company - the economic environment for solar sales was turning more barren by the day due to rising interest rates. The next day, a Tuesday, I was told to pack my things, this would be my last day. Along with most of my dignity, I left with a 12,000-dollar severance package (comprised mostly of my yet to be received commission). While stressful, solar sales can be lucrative.
Here I was, jobless, with 12,000 dollars that I had not expected to receive. With this new economic classification of “unemployed”, and no definitive plan for what was next to come in my life, I somewhat compulsively planned my trip to Portugal and Spain. Within three days of leaving my job, I had booked my flights. I thought a long job search might be in order and that I should get the fun stuff over with before getting back to the drudgery of finding the next step in my meandering career.
I had heard about El Camino de Santiago from acquaintances, friends whose friends had trekked across Spain. People spoke of the trip with a reverence, their voice glowing like the embers of a dwindling campfire. The idea had hooked onto a morsel of my brain and I decided to plan my own trip. With the help of a few blogs, I planned my own adventure. By my rough estimations, I could plan the trip for about 40 to 50 euros a day. A 14-day trip would run me about 750 dollars. The flights, about 600 dollars, and a new sleeping bag to keep my toes warm on the chillier Decembeer nights, about 100 dollars. About $1,450 total. I planned on walking the route from Porto to Santiago, a roughly 155-mile journey over the course of 11 days, entailing about 14 miles per day on average.
My flight into Lisbon on TAP airlines was kind enough to offer Portuguese lessons. I was able to pick up two or three phrases on the flight - “bom dia”, the only of which I remember today, means good morning, or good day. My flight over the Atlantic took off at 10PM from Chicago and landed in Lisbon the following day at noon. From there, I walked a mile to the train station. Sunshine, tropical 60-degree weather, and little Peugeot cars all signaled to my body that I had made it to a new world. The circadian rhythms of my brain and body were a bit askew after the red eye. As the bus started its journey from Lisbon to Porto, I peered out the window as the city turned to suburbs and then forest. “Portugal looks a bit more tropical than I expected” I thought, before drifting into a slumber
After a 4-hour bus ride from Lisbon to Porto, I departed the Flix bus in a sleepy fog. In this state, I did my best to make sense of the google maps directions to my first hostel. The maps were no help, so I asked a stranger to point me in the right direction towards Porto’s public transport. Drained from the day of travel, I trudged my 25-pound backpack to my first Alburgue (albergue is Portuguese for hostel) in Porto where I would spend the night. The quarters for the night had 6 bunk beds and I slowly drifted off on one of the firm plastic mattresses with my sleeping bag for warmth. Throughout the night, a slumbering dragon filled our common quarters with snoring that kept me up for more hours than I had hoped.
On December 3rd 2022, I set out on the first leg of my camino, leaving the albergue with an awkward embrace of the hostel keeper. I bid good way “bom camihno” to the travelers of the way whom I had shared breakfast. From the hostel, I set off to the Douro River that runs through the city of Porto and out to the vast Atlantic. The mouth of the river sings out into the Atlantic Ocean. My first day took me along the river and then up the shores of Portugal where surfers flock to the beaches and appear as little buoys bobbing in the ocean, hoping to catch one of the waves that curls towards the sandy beaches of Portugal.
I walked, and I thought about where I would stay the night, about the lives of the people I passed. I dreamt of the day I would come back and give myself time to learn to surf those beautiful waves. I also struggled to find public toilets and on one occasion resorted to peeing somewhat sketchily behind a tree in a park. At the end of a grueling and beautiful 17-mile first day of walking, I found the hostel I had planned to stay at in Labruge, a small ocean-side town. The hostel keeper checked me in while absent mindedly scrolling through Tik Tok. Once the hostel owner left at around 6pm, I was alone for the night, or so I thought. For night one of dinner, I made a large pot of pasta with red sauce. Simple, effective. As I slept, I heard ominous creaks and rustling in the night.
The next morning, I sat down to eat a bowl of oatmeal across from the hostel owner, and the ghost of the albergue appeared. It was a little black juvenile cat; Santiago. One day in and I had already made it to Santiago.
On the second day I cut in from the ocean towards inland Portugal, I left the beautiful dunes and beaches for permutations of farmland, quaint stone villages and lush forests, green with tree foliage and reddish-brown ferns that quilted the undergrowth.
At the end of my second day of walking, around 3pm, I found my resting destination, an albergue in the small town of Rates. My arrival was right alongside a French traveler coming from the opposite direction. The hostel keeper who we met at check-in was Kristina. Kristina was a bubbly spirit who had a clear love for hosting the many worldly travelers that came through her hostel doors. She provided a brief tour of the hostel, first to me in English, and then to the man in French. After making my bed (unrolling my sleeping bag), I cut out to watch the US men’s soccer team take on the Netherlands in the world cup at a local pub.
Upon my return, Kristina asked if I would like to share in a pot luck dinner. There was a woman with a buzzcut from Brazil, the Frenchman I had met earlier, who spoke just enough English so we could swap sentences in each other's languages (I speak “un peu de francais”), a Portuguese woman, and a German woman who taught computer science at a university. The dinner conversation flowed, mostly in Portuguese, as it was the dominant tongue at the table. I listened intently, picking up near nothing, and mostly made conversation with the German woman Kristina, whose English far surpassed her Portuguese.
The Brazilian woman with the buzzed hair and a lovely scarf had been on her own camino for 5 months and had started in Italy. Between her and the hostel keeper, I saw a glint in their eyes and heard a musicality in their voices when they spoke of el camino. That glint was the magic that came from meeting strangers who treated you like family, of meeting world travelers all searching for something greater than themselves. Kristina the hostel owner talked briefly of her day-to-day job working for a debt collection company and I could not help but imagine the dichotomy of her two lives.
My next night at Casa de Fernanda bestowed a bit more of the essence of el camino upon me. Casa de Fernanda seemed to be a place of legend to the travelers I spoke to at the potluck dinner. I altered my travel schedule to spend a night at her casa. After a day of walking, I neared Fernanda’s home at around 5:20pm, somewhat late, and as with most stays on that trip, I had made no prior reservation. I tenuously walked down the driveway, which besides hiking boots with plants growing out of them pointing towards the home (a symbol to signal a welcome place for pilgrims), looked the same as the rest of the stone and brick houses with red clay roofs that bordered the trail. The yard was overgrown with fruit and vegetable bearing plants and as I rounded the corner to find an entrance, there were four or five cats nibbling at bowls of kibbles.
Only partially sure I was in the right place, I tentatively knocked on the door. No response. If this plan did not work out, it was 6 or so miles to the next town, and getting dark, so I really hoped Fernanda was around the corner. Soon, a woman appeared from the plants growing between her and her neighbor’s yard.
“Fernanda?” I asked.
“Yes, that is me” replied a kind looking woman who appeared to be in her late 50s. She asked if I was looking to stay the night and when I told her that I was she seemed to contemplate for a second before saying, “alright, let’s go make a bed for you. Come this way.”
She led me towards a cabin type structure in her backyard that had benches outside. “Sit, take off your pack, make yourself comfortable. I am going to make up a bed for you.”
I sat, glad to be off my feet after 5 hours of walking. Fernanda made up a bed and showed me the cozy house where I would be sleeping. There was no heat but plenty of thick blankets, and I had brought my sleeping bag to keep me warm. “I’ll start to cook up some food, do you have any allergies or dietary restrictions?”
“I am vegetariano, but I would also try a little fish.” In the United States I had been vegan for a year, but was prepared to make exceptions for this trip, not wishing to burden myself too much with the challenge of finding a substantial meal, and also more trusting of European methods of animal agriculture.
“Okay, you take your time to wash up and get settled and tonight we will eat vegetables and fish. In Portuguese you say that as pescatariano.”
At right around 7pm Fernanda called to me, “Alex, dinner is ready.”
That meal was my best in Portugal. Fernanda started with a brothy soup and hearty brown bread for dipping along with finely chopped leafy greens of a variety that grows in almost every Portuguese garden and looks like a cousin to kale and collard greens. Next, padron peppers in a cast iron pan layered with large crystals of salt. As Fernanda served me these dishes she asked about where I was from, what I did for a living.
“Most recently, I was doing sales for a solar company in Texas. I left a few weeks ago though, sales wasn’t for me and I didn’t exactly get along great with my manager.”
Fernanda listened on as though she were my aunt, while flipping fish cakes with hands as deft as an olympian fencer. I asked Fernanda how she had gotten into this business of hosting people alongside el camino, whether she had known the house was next to the path when she had purchased the property.
“No, this property used to belong to my uncle and was handed down to me. I had no intention of making this an albergue. But then one night there was a woman pilgrim who knocked on all my neighbor’s doors looking for a place to stay and no one would let her stay in their home - and they call themselves good Christians! Of course, I opened my door to her and let her stay.” Fernanda wore a gold cross that dangled from a thin gold necklace. “And would you like a glass of wine?”
“No that is alright, I think I will stick to water.”
“Are you sure?” She raised an eyebrow, incredulous.
“Maybe I will have a glass of wine.”
The main course was more of the leafy vegetable sauteed with white beans, a pot of rice soaked in rich broth, crispy fried fish cakes with turmeric, and a lightly dressed oil and vinegar salad. And with the meal, wine from her uncle’s vineyard just down the road. The wine was as full bodied and delicious as I have ever experienced and potentially stronger than your usual red. After dinner there was cake, sweeter port wines, both red and white, along with a liquor described to me as “fire water”. I sampled each so as not to offend while keeping in mind the 20-mile hike I had planned for the next day. My head was swimming pleasantly after my second glass of red wine, and my cheeks turned rosy with the warmth of the fire water.
Fernanda’s husband and daughter each came home around 8pm. Her husband was an ophthalmologist in the town and her daughter was working at a nearby winery. The daughter was close to my younger sisters age, around 21 years old, and had the indifferent attitude of a daughter bored of living with her parents in a small town, quickly saying goodnight and leaving to her bedroom. I could not help but inwardly chuckle at the personality resemblance to my sister who likes nothing less than making conversation with strangers, especially in the company of parents. I suspect my own sister would grow tired of the never-ending parade of strangers coming through her door for her parents to entertain. Although, how lovely, to have strangers from over 100 countries come dine at your table, all while staying comfortably situated in rural Portuguese farmland.
Before I went to bed in the albergue out back, Fernanda left me with a passionate monologue. “El camino is for walking, for meditating, for singing, for praying. It is a trip for the spirit and the soul. Enjoy it and all that you meet on the trail.”
If my soul had been a half-filled cup, it was now brimming with inspiration and red wine. The next morning, I awoke spiritually refreshed, a bit dreary, and ready to walk 20 miles to the next checkpoint on my path. It took a couple miles to shake off the cobwebs of the night before. After 20 miles through cloudy weather, I arrived at a small town of maybe 400 people just as night was falling on Romarigães, Portugal. The hostel owner informed me that the one restaurant in town would close at 8pm and as it was 6pm now, I should hustle.
Portugal played Switzerland in the world cup that night and I hoped for a bustling restaurant or bar of locals to watch the game with. Instead, I ate a hearty pilgrim’s dinner with the single chef, the sole waiter, and one other villager who had stopped by to watch the game. I got to experience the excitement of Portugal’s victory as an attacker turned and missiled a shot into the top corner early in the game. The chef, waiter and villager cheered out in unison and I smiled.
The next morning, I left for the edge of Portugal, a crossing from Valenca to Tui. There was no shift in the air or even a border agent to check my papers as I crossed a bridge from Portugal to Spain, just a UN flag and a Spanish flag flapping on the Northern side of el Rio Minho. I had finished about half of my journey.
In the Spanish hostel, I was placed in a bunk room with two French twenty somethings that looked about my age. I asked if they would want to eat dinner together at a restaurant as I thought it might be fun to test my broken French with them. They seemed to be set on cooking their own food. Their Camino was a 3-month long expedition that had started with camping in the south of France and they were now headed south towards Portugal. I would imagine, being my age and being on such a long trek, spending unnecessary money on meals out was somewhat unaffordable over such a long period of time.
I ate peanut butter and jelly with bananas that night. Nuts, bananas, fruit, and bread provided roughly half of my calories on the Camino if I had to guess. After dinner I tried to speak avec les madames by asking what places had been their favorite to stay at along the way.
First, I constructed the sentence in my head: “Qu’est ce qu’il y a les alburgues qu’etait ta plus favori?” Translation: What were the albergues that were your most favorite? Upon starting the sentence, I began to stumble, falter a bit, and suddenly I was an actor out on stage who had lost his lines with an audience of two looking up, expectant, puzzled, and hopefully sympathetic. Eventually, I got my point across, and they showed me on Google a few places they had stayed and enjoyed. I went to bed imagining all the people in the world who move to a new place and must learn a second language to survive.
The next day I rose with the sun and walked out into Spanish daylight. The clouds had begun a slight drizzle overhead. I was worried, because walking in the rain is much less enjoyable than walking in the sun. About half an hour into my walk, I was blessed - the sun broke through the cloud cover and shone across el Río Miño, above the cobbled streets and red clay roofs of Tui. A long and vivid rainbow soon began to emerge. I stood there for a few minutes, taking photos on my phone and then on my camera. A Spanish woman walking south had her hood drawn, and I excitedly waved to her and pointed into the sky. She looked up, puzzled, then said “ahh, arcoiris”, the Spanish word for rainbow. She was less enthralled than I was, but smiled all the same.
The rain held off that day, a welcome surprise, as I made it from Tui to Redondela. The alburgue in Redondela was near the city center, a large stone structure that must have held grand meetings once upon a time. I paid the 8 euro cover for the night and made my way upstairs to choose from one of the many empty bunks. In the bunkroom next door, I heard two native English speakers with Australian accents. As I put the paper-thin sheet on my bed and pillow, one of the Australian women I was overhearing popped into my dorm room where the main thermostat was to take a look at the temperature controls.
“Hi there,” I chimed.
“Oh hello, I didn’t see you there.” Replied a woman with silvery hair and a friendly smile. She introduced herself as Rachel and we went back and forth on the usual building blocks of introductions, where we were each from, a bit about our trip on El Camino thus far, etc. After a couple of days not talking with a native english speaker, conversing in my native language was a welcome sigh of relief. Rachel, around 55 years old, also introduced me to her daughter Della, who was going on 20. A mother and daughter pair on the trail.
Rachel and Della and I walked out to find a lunch spot together. I was happy to be around the company of other people. Rachel and Della were likewise glad to have a new voice to freshen their own conversations, I think. A nineteen-year-old and their mother’s conversation can only be fresh for so many days of solitude before seemingly all conversations have been exhausted and the teenage impulse to leave your parents side emerges. At around 4PM we set out together only to find that in Spain, most restaurants do not serve food from the hours of 3:30PM to 7:30PM and so a trip to the supermarket would have to do for lunch. Over guacamole, carrots, and chips, I learned that Rachel was a deputy head of school at an alternative independent school in Australia while Della had just finished her first year of University in Melbourne, studying to become an expert in medicine.
After lunch and a repose in our respective bunk beds, we ventured out at a better dining hour to find a suitable enough restaurant. I got a salad while they had meat dishes, a fried chicken dish and a sausage dish. Unbeknownst to us, everything came with a side of fries, and we had ordered an extra side of fries for good measure. We each had a drink that came with a miniature hot dog. That is a thing in Spain, or at least the places I went; every drink you order seems to come with a free side of food, usually a little sausage on bread. I was torn between eating the free sausage out of respect for the pig or other animal that had given its life and not eating the sausage since I was mostly vegetarian and did not want to support the continued production of free mini sausage sandwiches. I just wanted a beer. I ended up not eating the little hot dog.
The next day, I set out on the camino after a brief espresso stop in the morning. This was my usual opportunity to review my route for the day, mentally prepare, and usually to use a restroom once the espresso had hit my stomach so that I could set off a little bit lighter.
On the trail that morning I came across a fellow who looked and sounded North American from the way he said “Good morning” to a passing traveler. Standing on the side of the road with his backpack and sleeping bag bungee-chorded to his back, it was no secret that he was a fellow peregrino.
“Good morning, how are you doing?” I smiled to the young man about my age.
“Good morning,” he replied. “I am just waiting on my friend who is using the facilities of nature.”
I thought of stopping to talk, his smile and demeanor were inviting of further conversation, but in a moment’s decision I decided against it. “Bon camino,” I added as the catch-all reply for pilgrims.
“Bon camino,” he responded.
I walked on, wondering if perhaps I should have stopped and chatted. Could I have made a meaningful friend or two? A bit longer ahead on the trail I came across Rachel, the Australian deputy principal from the night before. She was moving up a hill at a gentle pace. I slowed down to say good morning and walk with her for some time. I am not sure what we talked about.
Afraid to overextend my conversation with Rachel to the point of dryness, I said good day and picked up my pace to move forward on the trail. A bit later I passed her daughter Della. Della “not a morning person,” as described by her mom, and I exchanged greetings. She had created a soccer field’s length gap between her and her mom and was listening to something on her headphones, which I later found out to be the American comedy, Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
After passing Della and Rachel, I continued onward at my usual pace, which was not so much faster than their own, but I put a bit of pep in my step to create enough distance so as not to be left to the tug and pull of passing one another throughout the day. I find that there is nothing more awkward than exchanging “hellos” and “goodbyes” an unnecessary number of times.
Shortly thereafter, I went off to the side of the path 20 or so feet into some trees and beside a stream to use nature’s facilities for myself. Most people are aware of the natural connection between running water and the human bladder or whatever part of the mind controls that system. I wonder if it is the biological signal that this place of running water is a good place for a break, and with fresh and clean water nearby, you can now dispose of your current wastewater. Whatever the reason, one of the simple pleasures along the camino was relieving myself to the gentle sounds of water rolling over rocks.
After wiggling off the last drops of urine, I returned to the trail to find that Rachel and Della were walking along the path with Josh and who I assumed to be his friend. Rather than another twenty something guy of our own age, as I might have expected, Josh was walking along with his companion Eldo, who was 68 but looked closer to 58. Eldo wore shoulder length hair that was bright and silver. Sporting a bushy mustache, and a comfortable flannel, his look was very much that of an adventurer and wanderer.
Now I felt a much stronger urge to join the crew, as I recognized that this might be one of my last and best chances to meet some interesting people on the way. I said “hi” to the group as I returned from my break and easily dropped into conversation with Josh. I soon learned of Josh’s background. Josh was a photographer who had been working on a photobook project over the course of the past 2 years. The project was on Gold Mining in Dawson City, where he had met Eldo in a running club.
We walked in our cluster of 5 for the rest of the day and Eldo found a hotel room with three beds for the guys and a room with 2 beds for the gals at a reasonable 20 Euros per person. Walking as a group was splendid after days alone and upon making it to the hotel, we were asked to wait for our rooms to be prepared, which allowed us the opportunity to sit around a table and have an end of day beer. A light drinkable Spanish beer is a pleasure after 13 miles with a heavy pack, and on a light stomach and a head filled with endorphins, I felt tipsy after two sips of the golden elixir.
It was at this table, that Josh and Eldo discussed their new favorite piece of vocabulary.
“Our favorite word of the trip has been sonder, which is a noun, and it is the state of realizing that all of the strangers that you pass, have lives as important and complex as your own,” said Josh.
Eldo chimed in “but I have taken it and made it into all sorts of different parts of speech, a verb, an adjective, a preposition. I have really enjoyed sondering along the trail with my sonder partner here.”
We all laughed at the expression. Personally, I prefer sonder as a verb to a noun, describing the act of recognizing the complexity of another person or group of people. Wandering, pondering and sondering; the three things I appreciated the most about the camino. And what better way to sonder than to walk with 4 people from across the globe and learn from their stories, their own complex lives.
That first night as a family we had dinner and red wine in Pontevedra, Spain, a town of 83,000 that was vibrant and in festive spirits leading up to the holidays. Arriving to the restaurants at 7:50PM we had to wait 15 minutes for the head chef to finish his cigarettes.
He said, “yes we open at 8, but maybe come back at 8:15 and then I will be ready?” Overweight, eccentric, with a purple mohawk, I imagined he knew a thing or two about cooking food. I had a salad topped with goat cheese and a honey vinaigrette that had been caramelized onto the top of the salad. Complete with walnuts, tomatoes and shredded carrots, the salad, along with the wine, was the highlight of the meal.
The next day we headed out from Pontevedra towards a teeny town called Vilar, in the hills of Spain. Over the two days of conversation on the trail I learned more about Josh and his prior 2 summers documenting the gold mining community in Dawson City. How he settled on that topic, I never asked, but I could tell from the way he described his compositions, he took his craft very seriously. I saw one of Josh’s pictures, not of gold miners, but of a boy he had photographed while on a trip to Iceland. The boy had a joyous smile and freckles across his face. Perched on his neck, behind a snug winter cap was a soccer ball. Quite the trick.
I learned much of Rachel’s life as well. Of her travels to London in her 20s where she worked various jobs in finance and met a soon to be boyfriend, who was from South Africa. Her boyfriend to turn husband was a photographer and worked in dark rooms developing photos. Upon his visa expiring the two had decided to marry, so that they could secure a green card for Rachel’s husband which would allow them to travel and return to England without issue. Rachael recounted this story to Josh and I as we made our way on a winding cobblestone path.
“I told myself that the marriage should last at least 6 months. If it lasted 6 months, that meant I wouldn’t look silly for marrying.” Still married twenty something years later, I think she felt as though the marriage had been worthwhile. She talked much of how her wages were always a factor of two or three times that of her husband in their London days, and even later I suppose as well. Further on down her life’s path, at age 30, Rachael had taken an adventure to go to Korea and teach English. There, she was in-charge of a small class of students and was given the job of assigning her students their English names. Rebecca allocated the names of her Australian friends from home to her Korean students. I quite love the thought of her Korean pupils, (Evelyn, Oliver, George, etc.) slowly developing Australian accents to go along with their Australian names.
Rachel recounted that more recently in their life, her husband had sat down with his two daughters to say, “Don’t do what I’ve done. Don’t spend your whole life working odd jobs that never amount to much.” In his fifties, Rachael’s husband had just finished nursing school and was about to begin a new career.
Della, Rachael’s daughter, told me that she was studying medicine going into her second year at university. She never said as much, but I wonder how much her father’s words had influenced that decision; a doctor being in many ways the ideal of a career that does amount to much. A pragmatic and intelligent person, Della fit the role of doctor-to-be.
Oh, what a splendid thing it is to learn someone’s life, or at least the cardboard cutout version that can be expressed over conversation. Perhaps the true depth of a life cannot be understood entirely, but the conversation can certainly provide many lessons and pass the time well. We walked our way from Pontevedra, the bustling city of 80 thousand, up cobblestone streets that wound into hills up above the city and into a forest, where the town of Vilar was situated.
Vilar had only one place available for us to spend the night, a municipal albergue that charged around 8 euros a person. Arriving at the albergue after 14 miles, many of which were uphill, was a tremendous relief. After unstrapping my 20-pound pack, I stretched out in the sun and did a few upward and downward dogs to free my spine from the tension of gravity on a backpack that compresses the spine over the course of a day of walking. The sun hovered just above the trees and all of us soaked in the last light of the day.
While the day's travel was over, we had not gotten into the albergue yet. There was a number to call on the door. Once we dialed, it quickly became apparent that my extremely rudimentary spanish was not going to get a message across to the keeper of the hostel.
“Hola, cinqo personas. Acqui, a la albergue.”
I couldn’t make out the words being returned and gave up my attempt.
Within about 10 minutes, our needs were answered. A woman, Monsay, arrived, whose primary language was Spanish. Slender and wiry, Monsay spoke quickly and communicated with gestures and odd words of English quite effectively. She lit a cigarette within moments of taking off her pack and sat beside us. After explaining our predicament, she said, “Ja, ja, I call” gesturing telephone, “and ask to open door.”
Monsay proceeded to call the keeper of the hostel and talk in a very impassioned manor, bordering on yelling, as though this were a longtime friend. A cultural familiarity thing, I thought. Soon she had the instructions to retrieve the hostel key from a lockbox beside the door to let us inside the albergue. Monsay said, “you must be back at 8 tonight. He will return and lock hostel then.”
After laying in our hostel beds for a short rest, our party walked up the hill to a 7 o’clock pilgrims blessing that we had seen advertised on our way into town. The pilgrim’s blessing was held at a monastery. We walked into the gates of the monastery and found our way to a dimly lit room. The blessing began with a gentle song from the nuns at the convent. I couldn’t help but think that many of the nuns looked quite stern, as though they had smelled the devil upon us.
One of the nuns looked entirely kind and was around my own age, maybe a couple of years older. She was pretty, with dark black hair and a warm smile. She handed out programs, and I felt as though she might be encouraged to see some younger folk at this Pilgrims’ blessing, especially since she seemed to be the youngest nun at the convent by about 15 years. The nuns wore plain black gowns and head dresses of white; a timeless classic look. Below her gown the younger nun wore black adidas trainers with 3 orange stripes that proclaimed her modernity as a nun and revealed that even a nun’s convent cannot keep out twenty first century sneaker culture. I imagine there is a nun somewhere in the world wearing a clean pair of jordans.
Since we had walked through lunch, and only snacked along the way, we had not had a true meal since breakfast, and I was hungry. While I did not mind the pleasant singing of the blessing, I couldn’t understand the roman lyrics and could only half-way appreciate the service while my stomach was lightly suggesting that I find my next meal. I told my party I would scope out the town’s one and only pub and restaurant, because the most important blessing to me at that time, I knew, would be hot food and a refreshing Estrella, the Spanish beer that flowed through almost every tap in the restaurants of northwestern Spain.
The two strongest pillars of this small town were the monastery which traded in blessing and hymns, and the restaurant, that provided beer, wine, foosbal and bubbly chatter. After being seated by a hostess at a table for five a waitress darted over to take my order. She was just about the same age as the nun had been, a little less pretty, and a little more stressed, speaking quickly. My waitress informed me that the kitchen did not open until 8pm, and it was only 7:20pm, but they still had hot soup, bread, and beer, which I gladly ordered.
My temporary family of the road joined me at the restaurant after the blessing. I informed them that the kitchen did not open until 8pm, which presented a predicament because the hostel keeper had demanded that we be back at the hostel at 8pm. Soon, Monsay joined us at our table as well and we explained the situation. She said that she could ask for our bedtime be pushed back, but that the hostel keeper was stern and the best she could likely get was 8:30. Our feathers were a bit ruffled at the prospect of being required to the hostel so early, because there was only one restaurant in the town and we were hungry. Monsay said she could likely go down and talk to the man and we could follow soon after.
Eldo was the most put off by the arrangement. Having reached the age of 68, he felt the strongest need for freedom and being held captive at a hostel was not his idea of a spiritually freeing adventure. Eldo kindly offered to head down along with Monsay to see if he could check us all in to the hostel at 8:30. We would finish our meals and follow shortly behind. Eldo and Monsay left the restaurant together.
After our meals, we were ready to leave. The meal was not quite as fulfilling as if our party had been whole, and there was an ominous insecurity in the air that I might have superimposed only in my memory.
We left the restaurant and followed the single street that remained light after dark. Fluorescent lightbulbs poked out from poles 15 feet in the air on one side of the street and we walked through the night. About a third of the way from the restaurant to the albergue a silhouette came into view, moving in and out of the circles of light cast by the street lights and the shadow of night. It was Eldo, his silver hair bouncing with each deliberate step.
I called out into the night “How’d it go?”.
There was no immediate answer and his pace did not slow until he got very close.
“Do you want the whole story? Or only what you need to know?” Eldo’s usual casual Canadien cadence had hastened a bit.
“You can tell us everything,” Rachel added. After knowing each other for a whole 36 hours, we were comrades, and curious about this situation.
“It’s a sad story. The guy down there, he lost it on me, started yelling and getting worked up. At first, I had him talked into letting me check you all in and he was being okay about it, but then Monsay said something that made him snap.” Eldo was clearly in some distress.
“Now here’s the good part.” Eldo held our attention like a yoyo suspended in air, “I stole the key to the hostel.”
We all raised our eyebrows and took in a little extra air.
“I wasn’t going to leave your passports down there with that man, no way, and as I was taking the passports off the desk, I saw the key and swiped it.” Eldo continued, partially to himself, “I don’t know what came over me, I haven’t had the urge to steal something since 8th grade. By now, I’m sure he’s realized it’s missing and he’ll be in some mood.”
Suddenly, our day had been turned into a true adventure. I felt like a team as we threw out ideas. Maybe we could walk back and distract the hostel keeper and then drop the key on the ground and pretend to have found it. Or maybe we were too far removed from a sitcom for that to work.
Soon, Monsay our translator friend was yelling in the not too far distance. “Hey, you come back right now!” “I cannot sleep on the streets tonight you know!” “Bring back that key!” A jumble of frantic phrases that all had the same general message, as communicated by tone even better than phrasing. Anxious not to lose our beds at the one place to spend the night for miles in all directions, our crew started moving with some urgency.
Della and I led the way. I am a person who is eager to appease the wants of others and I was hoping there was some way to smooth this situation over with a friendly smile and some nice words. As we walked, Della remarked, “This feels like we are walking into a pit of vipers.”
Eldo started to elaborate a bit on the size of the guy, half-jokingly. “He was big, and I’m not sure I could take him, so I definitely need you both there, Josh and Alex.” Josh was at least six feet tall and a bit burlier than I was. A wiry 73 inches myself, I thought we could hold our own if needed. On the other hand, Josh and I both have dispositions that are closer to those of your typical golden retriever than a pitbull, and so fighting would certainly be our last resort.
As we drew up closer on the hostel, we saw the keeper’s car parked outside the hostel. The car had a taxi cab light on top. “Ah, so he’s a taxi driver. No wonder he’s pissed he doesn’t want to miss a night of work,” exclaimed Rachel, always the sonderer.
Upon walking into the hostel, we saw the man. He wasn’t as big as I’d imagined him in my head, he was somber and when Rachel handed back the key to him, he didn’t make any sudden fuss. Perhaps it was the five of us together that had calmed him down and shifted the power dynamic, or perhaps he had used the time stewing to resolve whatever intense anger he had been feeling. Whatever the issue had been, it was now a non-issue and the hostel keeper, who spoke only Spanish, took our passports, filled out our paperwork and was on his way.
After the resolution to the situation, Eldo seemed a little shaken, his age a bit more apparent. We sat on our respective beds in the hostel and reviewed the itinerary for the next day. Rachel addressed the unresolved feeling of tension in the air, “I hate the way this turned out, as though you are the one who got us into trouble, when really you were the one who was doing us all a favor by trying to check us in while we ate our dinners.”
I added on, “You know, Eldo, I am still up to go back to town for a beer if you are.”
Ever enthusiastic, Josh chimed, “Yea, I’m up for that too.”
Eldo, “ahh maybe we can trek back into town for that.”
When we walked back in to the town’s restaurant, the last foosbal game was coming to an end. Josh, Eldo and I did go back up to the restaurant that night and shared the house bottle of red wine. We sat around a table beside the last embers of a fire and sipped on the red wine from white ceramic bowls. The wine wasn’t too special in taste, only in location and occasion. We were the last three people there at 10PM, aside from the waitress and two men at the bar, an early night for a restaurant in Spain, but this was a quiet town.
Eldo recounted the time he held a job as a teacher at a high-security prison for us. “You had to be ready to get choked-out from time to time.”
At first, I thought he was joking about getting choked out, but when he added, “yea I think I got choked out twice during my time as a teacher there,” I could tell that he was being serious. At the time, I pictured 68-year-old Eldo, up in front of the classroom, with a sense of wit and humor about him, silver hair and silver moustache. A prisoner, burly and tattooed, jumping up from behind a desk too small for him and putting Eldo in a headlock and squeezing the air from him as security guards rushed to the front of the classroom. Now I picture an Eldo, age 30, blonde hair, younger.
“Over time, you might earn the respect of some of the older guys in the classroom. Once I had the respect of some students, if a new guy was being disruptive, they’d tell that guy to knock it off,” retold Eldo, his eyes foggy with remembrance.
Josh and I listened, captivated. After two glasses of red wine each, we left, weight lifted from the earlier happenings of the evening. And we made our way down the road to the hostel, where I slipped easily into slumber.
That night, I awoke intermittently to a howling wind. Upon waking in the morning, I joined my travel companions in the sterile, cafeteria-looking eating area to discuss the day’s travel plans. Originally, we had planned on hiking 10 or so miles to the Ria de Arousa (Estuary of Arousa) where we would take a hired boat to Padron, leaving a final day of hiking to Santiago de Compostela. But with the presence of a wind and rain ripping through the forests surrounding the small town of Vilar, the proposition of hiking and then taking a boat towards our final destination became daunting and potentially unwise.
Instead, we decided we would find a way back to where we came which would allow us to skip the boat and finish on foot, as the boat would be more weather dependent. This was deliberated over a casual lunch at the only restaurant in the small town of Vilar. We were soon able to call a taxi service and orchestrate a pickup, and all we would have to do was wait either fifteen minutes or fifty minutes, depending on which of those options our taxi driver said. Our party was split on which it would be.
Fifteen minutes later we were driven the 12 miles back to Pontevedra, Spain in about 25 minutes. Walking on foot gives a vast appreciation for modern travel methods. Those same 12 miles had taken us about 5 hours the prior day.
At our deliberative lunch we had settled on renting a five-person Airbnb apartment in the town of Pontevedra. The place was nice and not so much more expensive than our hostels usually were, about 20 dollars per person, if I recall correctly. As for the rain, it was sticking around and so the day consisted of a nap and a streaming of pulp fiction, a film Josh and Della pulled up. When given a good reason to relax, a day of leisure can be the greatest of pleasures. This day became a wonderful rest day after 12 consecutive days logging 10 miles plus.
We went to a restaurant that had been right next door to the restaurant from two days prior. Owned by the same establishment, our waiter from two nights prior saw us and gave a big friendly hug to our guy Josh on the way in. Some people have an amazing ability to lean in to the good vibes of others and Josh was one of those guys. I stuck to a salad but one of the other members of our crew tried an inky black octopus soup that was a tad medieval looking. I wouldn’t seek out such a dish on my own because of the intelligence of the octopus, and my fear that overfishing is damaging our seas, but once it became clear that Josh wouldn’t be able to finish his own soup my curiosity drove me to try a bite of his dish. The tentacles were fleshy and rubbery but there was an undeniable flavor and I understood why someone would be attracted to such a dish. Our boisterous waiter provided a few coffee liquor shots on the house after the check was paid either by the good grace of seeing friendly return customers or because that was a trick that made all of the patrons feel special. Either way, I appreciated my shot of coffee liquor.
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Throughout that day travel plans were discussed. I was going to walk the 35 or so remaining miles to Santiago de Compostela over the next 2 days. I was flying out of Madrid in 4 days’ time and I wanted to have one full day in Madrid to explore and generally decompress from my miles on the trail. A day of stillness after 13 in motion.
Josh was headed south to meet up with a friend from Canada in Lisbon. He was not going to make it to the end of the trail, Santiago de la Compostela. It might sound silly to walk many days towards a giant church only to turn back days before completion. But the tired mantra is true, the journey is the destination. And when the destination is a friend, well, that can often beat out a church. Della and Rachel had no desire to walk at my pace, Eldo surprised me though and said he would accompany me for my two-day push. The effort would be two of my longest on the trail, and here was a 68-year-old saying he would go with me for what I knew would be challenging. Humbling and inspiring.
Eldo and I set off in the morning with rain gusting nearly sideways. I had dropped my rain jacket from my pack days earlier and was left with just an umbrella of Eldo’s to shield me from the rain. We were off in the early hours and it was dark. Wandering the streets of Pontevedra, we made a wrong turn once or twice, missing the yellow arrows that marked the path, but here we were setting out on the final leg. It was not exactly enjoyable, in the wet and rain. Eldo and I passed the time with some conversation and some silence, probably in equal parts.
Eldo told me of time he spent living with Native Americans (or Native Canadiens?). We talked about the book “I Heard the Owl Call My Name,” a story of a priest who is sent to live among a Native American tribe in the pacific northwest. I had received the book as a gift from my 94 year old grandmother, a former pastor in the presbyterian church. I found the read refreshingly absent of a white savior motif that I feared would play a central role. In truth, the native americans showed a missionary priest with a terminal disease a new way of life. When the owl calls your name, it means you are ready to die, according to the native tribe. Upon learning the native’s way of life, the priest had learned enough of life so that he could pass onward.
Eldo told me about his home in Dawson City where his wife and him were living out their golden years. “We always thought 65 to 75 could be the best years of our lives and sometimes we take a step back and think ‘We’re really doing it’”. Although Canada is a massive country, 90% of the Canadian population lives within 100 miles of the US border. This owes almost entirely to the fact that much of Canada is near inhabitable, too cold in the winters. Eldo liked to quip that Dawson City also fell into the statistic of being 100 miles from the US border. The city is stuck way up in the Yukon within 100 miles of the Alaskan border. Heating his home through the winter cost around 5,000 dollars in the winter, between gas and firewood. In January the average high would be a balmy negative 6 degrees Fahrenheit without accounting for wind chill. No wonder Eldo was spending December in southern Europe hiking across Spanish countryside with a stranger from the states.
These longform conversations, with Eldo, with Rachel, were the most effective forms of sondering I experienced on the trail. A few days prior, the five of us reached a lookout on the trail up to Pontevedra, and we could see down to the town below where tiny dots of homes, rooves, cars, boats, and people filled the landscape. To sonder the lives of that many people makes you feel insignificant, a piece of sand on a vast beach, or a star among a wondrous constellation. Talking with Eldo and Rachel on the other hand, gave a glimpse into the narrative of their own lives which were long, each more than twice as long as my own had been up until that point. Looking at the long view gave me a sense that even within my own life, I was only on a single stage of a longer pilgrimage. At age 24, perhaps I was on day 4 of what would be 14 days of walking through the journey of life, if I was lucky. And perhaps I had not reached what was to be the most meaningful or impactful stages of my life, even as I quested to bring meaning out of each stage of my own walk.
After walking about 20 miles with Eldo, we reached the outskirts of the town of Padron and were greeted with a downpour of water, worse than we had seen all day. We stood under a large concrete awning outside what appeared to be a local elementary school. We both pulled out our phones and looked for places to stay the night. I was looking for hostels, a cheaper option than hotels, where you were provided a bed in a bunk room, a paper-thin bed cover and pillow case. I think that Eldo was travelling in elevated style to myself, opting mostly for the luxury of two-person hotel rooms that he and Josh would split, complete with a private bed and shower. These went for about twice the price at about 25 dollars a night.
Once the rain stopped, I led us down into town towards a hostel, and I remember there being a bit of tension about staying in the hostel. Eldo had some reservations about staying in a bunk room with the Covid-19 pandemic still lingering, it being the fall of 2022. I ended up finding a hostel that was uncrowded and did its job. We went into the town of Padron and ate at a kebab restaurant. Kebabs proved to be some my favorite meals that I had during my time in Spain. The plant-based falafel on a warm pita with olive, red onion, tomato and lettuce never got old for me. Oh, and then a large side of French fries to try to make up for the day’s energy burn.
The total walk on that day was just shy of 22 miles over the course of about 6 hours and 45 minutes and my phone told me that I had burned just north of 3,000 calories. Even on this semi-spiritual quest, I was able to look for hostels on google maps and track my day’s mileage and calorie burn on my pocket-sized personal iPhone. While useful, I hope to try a similar quest one day without the aid of a technological gadget, as I do think there is romance lost when we resort to our pixeled friends to solve our problems. I think the readership of the Lord of the Rings might be much lower if Frodo had the aid of a cell phone on his quest to Mordor. One thing I learned from the Camino is that the path provides you with what you need, and I think it was my insecurity or lack of belief in that ever-guiding hand that pulled me to use my phone. The path of most ease is often the one we take, unless we are deliberate about creating room for a more challenging and romantic journey.
On the last day of walking, Eldo and I had about 15.5 miles to go before we arrived at the church the pilgrims walk to. There was no diagonal rain like the prior day’s weather had brought, just alternating spells of drizzle and sun showers. At one point as I walked in Eldo’s footsteps, a large rainbow arched across the sky over the red-clay roofs on the farm-houses we passed. Your likelihood of seeing a rainbow rises immensely when you spend all day every day outside, rain or shine, for an extended period.
Every 5 miles or so Eldo and I would break for a snack and, just as important, a reapplication of foot powder. Eldo told me that he had broken his foot a few years back. It was something as simple as stumbling backwards down a hill in his yard while not paying attention to his footing. In his words, the fact that he was walking on his two feet on that day and that they were working as well as they were was an absolute blessing. Eldo was a man who counted his blessings, a great and important lesson. Part of counting your blessings is not taking what you have for granted and Eldo made sure his feet did not go unappreciated. On a trek such as El Camino, the comfort of your feet can and will make or break your progress. On wet days, the rain can soften the skin, making your feet prone to blisters from miles and miles of walking in hiking boots or sneakers. As a young man with little history of foot issues, I might have overlooked the importance of applying a bit of baby powder to my feet on those last wet days. Taking off our slightly soggy shoes and socks during a spell of sunlight and applying a bit of Eldo’s foot powder became a beloved ritual.
My snack of choice while on the trail was often dried figs and nuts. Those figs were a blessing, each one with hundreds of tiny little fruit inside a thin leathery exterior. Some were a bit dried on the inside but others had preserved their moisture and so each bite was a surprise as to how sweet and juicy the fig would be. The figs themselves were coated in a powder of some sort to ensure they maintained their dried state and so it became my habit to call our stops powder breaks.
As we approached Santiago, it felt surreal to think two weeks of trekking had led to this point. At the same time, it felt very real. The city streets of Santiago de Compostela were alive with the bustling of a modern city. Eldo and I stopped for a last peregrino lunch about 2 miles from the church so to savor the journey and put off the end of our trek.
After lunch we continued towards the church, and modern city streets gave way to cobblestones and narrow walkways that cars were not allowed to enter. Shops with merchandise for tourists, bakeries, restaurants all gave a life and charm to the city center. Pedestrians were out and about. Soon the meandering cobblestone streets gave way to the church we had pilgrimaged to see. It was beautiful, but I couldn’t help but feel that the beauty of the Spanish and Portuguese countryside had been more beautiful. And the waves cresting along the shore on my first days on the walk, well weren’t those more scenic than anything that could be made by man?
Eldo and I had made the journey. We took celebratory pictures and sat in the square in front of the church to let it all soak in. Once soaked with our achievement, it was time to check into a hotel that Eldo had booked – since hostels weren’t exactly his style at that stage in life, he booked the hotel and requested I only pay what I would have paid at a hostel so that I wasn’t overreaching my budget. That night we went out for a drink, and a lovely meal at a vegan restaurant. Eldo ordered a glass of tequila at the restaurant, and we went to one more bar for a final beer, a miniature pub crawl. Any tension from the miles of walking and disagreements on places to stay had dissipated.
We each slept soundly in our twin hotel beds and in the morning, I was up quickly and off to catch a train to Madrid. The train ride from Santiago de Compostela to Madrid takes less than 4 hours and covers more ground than I had walked in 14 days from Porto, Portugal to Santiago, Spain. The hillsides, farmland and forests glided by and I dosed in and out of consciousness. Soon I would fly back to the United States where I had no job, no real direction at that moment. I had a second-round interview set up with a non-profit that worked on building infrastructure for other non-profits. The people I would be working with seemed cool. I wouldn’t get that job, because another candidate was just a smidge better of a fit.
I was about to enter one of the more depressive episodes in my life, searching for my next work opportunity, fruitlessly, for a long time. Getting out of bed in the morning would be harder without a defined reason to be up. Eventually, I would be accepted to a Community Economic Development position in Fiji with the Peace Corps and regain some life trajectory. I tell you this to say that, while this journey was wonderful, and I learned about people, myself, and the world, it did not have a long-lasting impact in my everyday life. I think that is because it was a break from everyday life, a trip or vacation. In order to find myself truly happy, I would need to put in the work so that every day would have a bit of the magic of walking alongside kind people and feeling the openness that people along el camino offer unguardedly.
Looking back, I think the perspective of more senior, wanderers, ponderers and sonderers, Rachel and Eldo, was the most important thing I took away from the trip. It provided a little reassurance as to how long my life could be. And then there is also comfort in knowing - while I scrolled Linkedin from a living room at a modern, kitschy apartment complex beside a highway in San Antonio, Texas - Fernanda was preparing a delicious meal for a group of weary travelers in her quaint garden home.
[1] Thank you to https://stingynomads.com/, a useful resource for travelling El Camino de Santiago on a budget