Caldas de Reis

This day is my last long walk, which is a good thing because I have no more long walks in me. And, as the day progresses it turns out I don’t really have this one in me.

I do it, but it ain’t pretty.

I start down the Camino after a relaxing stay in lovely Caldas de Reis, where I wandered along the river and had ice cream for dinner. It was about five or six miles to get to the small city. Still, I’m bone tired as I head our for a 12 or 13-mile day. I know what bone tired means now, intimately. It means all your soft tissues have surrendered, and your skeletal forward motion is all you have left.

Santiago is close, and this may be my last long walk. I am consciously attempting to soak it all in. This is not easy because the tour busses have arrived. These luxurious monstrosities are filled with clean, per,y pilgrims who swoop into towns and, I cannot lie, annoy the shit out of me. The busses disgorge them at one end of the Camino and pick them up at the other. Bus pilgrims can skip the hills if they like.

I am trying not to be salty. It isn’t working.

As I hobble and groan my road
-weary way along the last of the forested pathways, I am in the moment. The morning sun gives the ferns their own glowing life and lights the edges of the oak leaves aflame. Ahhh.

Several dozen bus people jabber past. They are loud, and American.

“I don’t even like social media any more….” “And then she says to me…” “Oh, I only drink bottle water here…” “…hotel…” “…daughter…” “…dinner…”

It’s DIFFICULT to be one with nature right now. I finally find a pace, about a 30-minute mile, that keeps me between these gaggles of folks who, without meaning to, are seriously harassing my mellow. It’s an imperfect plan. At one point a guy is blithely sitting dead center of the stone walkway over a creek, lighting a cigarette.

But I do manage about 5 miles of connecting with the mockingbirds, and moss covered trees and the glowing morning sun. The chipper birds are singing up a storm. There’s a river below the path. I hear it constantly, and it occasionally sweeps alongside the Camino so I can glimpse the clean, bright water. There are a couple of horses along the way. I like horses.

Somewhere between mile 5 and mile 6, my body revolts. Not like the French storming the Bastille, but like a pissed off toddler fighting a nap. My pace slows to about half of normal and my brain turns to oatmeal. This is the point at which exhaustion and pain merge to become one lumbering beast.

I want to soak up the small farms and hamlets I’m passing, but I know if I take my eyes off the cobbles or gravel or dirt in front of me I could trip. And if I trip my feet will crumble like graham crackers, and my ankles, calves and knees will follow suit. Then I will flump forward, never to rise again. I consider a taxi. Even in its oatmeal state, my mind rejects the notion. I have not come this far to call in a lifeline.

So I keep moving forward…not so much walking as perambulating. Bus people who pass increasingly look concerned and offer a worried, “Buen Camino?”

I am the grumpy old woman waving them on, mumbling incoherently. “Gedda, gedda air conditioning…fancy shoes…gedda gedda…”

My accommodation is off the path, of course. I trod a half mile through farmland into a mean headwind. A dust devil attacks me. “Gedda, gedda… dust teeth….”

In a final moment of clarity I just have to laugh. I take a selfie for my friends, my hat at full mast and my cooling scarf flying. Life is ridiculously hard sometimes.

I finally reach the family hotel where I’m staying and I literally, not figuratively, lay my head upon the reception desk. I am THIS CLOSE to a full meltdown. The receptionist does not care a whit. She is rude. She checks me in without even looking at me, then waves over at my suitcase. (I carry a pack with basics, but send my other stuff ahead via courier.) I’m going to have to haul it up about 30 steps to my second floor room.

Friends, I have never been so tired that I can’t carry my suitcase up a flight of stairs. Today I am. I sit on a couch at the foot of that climb and ponder it for about 20 minutes. Then, with my last ounce of will, I ascend, dragging the bastard thump-bump one stair at a time.

When I arrive in my (not kidding) attic room, I call Jake. Because I need to cry very, very much. He bears witness to my meltdown, offering loving support. He also teaches me a new word.

I, he informs me, am bonked. This happens to hikers when they have pushed themselves past the limit; when electrolytes go bye-bye and continued forward motion becomes a sort of body-mind meld insanity.

This has not been the mindful last big push I wanted. Still, I didn’t give up. Maybe I should have, but I didn’t. I am about a dozen miles and two days from Santiago. Today has been one of the most physically demanding of my life: 13 miles and the equivalent of 14 flights of stairs. It sucked.

Buts it’s also part of the story: The Day I Bonked.

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