Graffiti along the Camino, 2001:
"Every day is a journey and the journey itself is home. --Basho"
Thinking about Marz on Camino––she must be on the train now (it's afternoon in Spain), almost to Pamplona, where she'll spend the night––I got out the tiny notebook I kept on my first Camino, twenty-two years ago, July 5 – August 16, 2001.
These are the very first pages--from flying into Madrid, where I stayed over, to getting on the train to Pamplona the next morning. (I wish I'd kept up drawing as much as I did on these first days--I did very little later.)
I was meeting bink at Roncesvalles later that day.
No regrets, but I wonder what it would be to walk the Camino alone, like Marz is doing. I envy her that. (I don't wonder enough to actually DO that, but I wonder.)
It's harder to travel alone--you have to make all the decisions--but also... I don't know... All the decisions are yours, and that makes you dig deeper. I let bink do all the navigating, for instance, so I never learned how.
But a lesson of Camino is that EVERY day is a a journey--there, or here. I am always navigating my life, or I am letting someone else do it.
I've planned my walk for today.
This morning, I'm going with a coworker to the funeral of volunteer Art's sister. (I didn't know her.)
Then to work, then to see Marcia, former publishing coworker and cat-sitting client.
In the evening, I will go a little out of my way to walk home along the lake path.
Maybe I should keep a sketchbook on my walks? Mm, probably more to my liking, a photo sketchbook.
I like the challenge to look CLOSELY, to see the familiar as foreign, to see home as a journey.
I took pictures on my little walk yesterday. Below: freshly cut tree stump
It had rained on my way home. I stopped under a tree for while, and then I said to myself a German phrase I learned on Instagram--"You are not made of sugar".
I walked home in the chilly rain, and I did not melt.
Below: rain drops inside a lily.
