Happy trails to you, until we meet again

Sometimes an alternate path on the Camino works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

A friend from Poland recently chose an alternate and spent the day wondering if everybody else had quit the Camino.

His 40-bed albergue had only four occupants, no market nearby, and no water.

The walk was nice, he shrugged.

I wrote about my own alternate route to O Cebreiro the other day. It was nice but I’ll forever wonder what I missed.

Today, I decided to try another alternate route, to Sarria. On the plus side, it shaved 6 kilometers off the walk to Sarria. The official route is 33 kilometers from my starting point, high atop a mountain in Fonfria.

That’s a lot of shaving.

When I asked Complexity, the AI program, it said the pluses were shorter route, beautiful scenery, fewer people. “Your legs will ache,” AI added.

Sounded like a fair trade off.

They do ache.

This is a notoriously downhill trek on the official route. I think a lot more ups and downs were added to the alternate.

By taking the alternate, I got to walk through lots of little farming villages, see lots of cows and tractors. There was a New Age respite garden where everything was by donation. I ordered an herbal tea from Pilar.

They have a naturalist labarynth built into a small poplar grove and offered lots of thoughtful hand painted signs for sale. Tea was just right for a day of walking.

I also ran into my five ladies from Long Island. We’ve been tag-teaming each other since. the first week.

They wanted to sing their newly composed Camino song, something they concocted while scaling the trail to O Cebreiro.

It was sung to the tune of “Someone’s in the Kitchen With Dinah.” Four of them belted out their version while the fifth and most senior of the bunch marched resolutely ahead of the pack.

“Isn’t this your lucky day, “ she muttered as I moved on ahead. “They haven’t stopped singing that for two days.”

So, for the most part, the alternate route offered something that made me feel the age of the Camino for the first time.

The path was worn deep into the ground, as if excavated by thousands of pilgrims over centuries, stepping into each other’s footprints.

Ancient walls were carpeted in moss. Massive tree trunks lined the trail, branches bending into a cathedral-like effect. Roots either pressed the walls in or pushed them outward.

The effect was such that I felt sure I was traveling through the spirits of pilgrims from seven hundred years ago and yesterday.

In some spots the forest was so dense that the ground was still wet, though it hasn’t rained in weeks.

Naturally the iPhone camera captures little of this. It flattens hills, levels steep downhill trails, compresses rolling landscapes. It is all I have to work with.

I hope some of these pictures tell today’s story.

Click on the to open them up — that will give you the best sense of the moment.

I was hoping to grab a quick bite this evening when the restaurants all reopened at 7 pm. Sitting in the first one I walked into was my friend and muff-rescuer, James from Seattle.

He was waiting for a Camino group to join him. Naturally I could not turn down his invite to join them.

Besides, there was the local favorite, octopus, on the menu.

I recognized many at the table from casual nods and “Buen Caminos” as we walked. Good people, mostly in their twenties.

But not my people.

I’ve been thinking about those I first walked with, and others I met I the early weeks. Some are close to Santiago. Some ran out of time. Some couldn’t surmount injuries. Some are still behind me.

It is hard to keep a Camino family together. At this point, adding new friends isn’t a goal. Finishing the Camino is.

I left the dinner early and returned to pack my bag for tomorrow. Looks like rain in the forecast. The first since I crossed the Pyrenees 30 days ago.