Autumn on the Trail to Santiago
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journal - 9/25/06 - a pass through the Pyrénées a day of constant changes. woke just after 6H despite the wine and was down by 7:30H for petit déj... bread and coffee, two corn muffins and a croissant. the Boozin’ Belgian Trio was up and down early as well... less bright of eye, more quiet of tongue. la ‘responsable’ all-in-one bartender, receptionist, floor ‘n pot-scrubber was morningly warmly chattingly friendly in the way good coffee after good rest makes... she wished me well, “courage et chance.” and i headed out through veils of mist-gauzed drizzle that phased on and off all the last remaining 10K of le Chemin d’Arles, which ends upon this mountain’s spine in the clouds. was concerned that the trail would follow the road, but no... only the first four or five K did, then it banged a left up into wooded mountain slopes, shorter and sheerer than the low-saddle-seeking road winds. a steep forest trail narrowly walled in with pungent boxwood, serrate-leafed beech and mossy stones... the infinite hues of green dancing phantoms with the fog. had some stumbling trouble - the body-engine working hard-and-hot in the cool humidity fogged my glasses and depth perception was lost. before clambering up into the clouds, where very little was visible anyway and depth perception mattered not, i got a few shots of Urdos way down below... the nestled town’s amber-lit streetlights flickering a constellation against broad V-gorge slopes behind... a gorge rolling full with lightning-veined cumulonimbal boulders. in the heights the temperature dropped, glasses cleared and alpine fields unfurled. cloudbank boa-ed mountain summits surround sight... tsunami vapor-waves climbing, uncoiling out of cavernous green valleys, on the slow crawl up precipitous mountainsides seeming great underwater beasts grazing coral reefs... slowly, nebulously, consciously creeping. monolithic shadowy shy tors looming their silhouettes then vanishing back into clouds... like feeling the sky-gods pull away after finishing their peering at pismire man. Somport’s Refugio / Bar was open when i arrived at 11H. ordered in Spanish for the first time in a while... the tongue all a-twist between French ‘muscle-memory’ and the intended Spanish in my mind. had a coffee while watching clouds break into shattered sunlight over Spain, past empty chair-lift chairs and cables swinging nearby in the wind. spoke with an older Spanish couple... he’s done the Camino from Somport and from various other starting points. after regarding my banged up and oddly bandaged Lomo in his hand for a moment he snapped a picture for me of me by the ‘858K left to Santiago’ waymarker! so many miles gone. so many yet to go. and i strode strongly on, bliss in the bloody marrow bones, down down down the steep rip-rap rocky Camino Aragonés... thoughts of Jack and Japhy galloping down a Matterhorn Peak mountainside, silent skies echoing their eternal howl and joy. kudos to those maintaining the trail! but i must say the visible battle of Camino organizations left me laughing. a Spanish yellow arrow on stump or stone showing the way... then two feet later on stump or stone, a red and white French Grande Randonnée (GR) balise - constantly. you love your paint! although there’s no complaint about a well-marked trail. but well-marked trail or not, they’ve got some hefty work to do after these storms... destruction! wreckage! ruination! a waterfall that must have been a rager a day or so ago slammed an immense stump and stump’s root-enmeshed flotsam against a cement footbridge in the forest, battering the railings into twisted shrapnel. had to scramble over a boulder and scree landslide before the bridge to the N330. and the torrentials flowing off the mountains used the trail itself as sluiceway, eroding the Camino away completely in places. serious flooding in Canfranc Estación... branch and log debris lodged high in roadside fences and Iwo-Jima-jammed in the saturate roadside earth. an engineer armed with a tightrope walker’s long pole paces the dam’s catwalk dislodging forestral wrack and clotting limbs from the floodgates. met a peregrino below the dam. he left his car up at the Somport Refugio... only going as far as Puente la Reina during this week’s vacation. he did Puenta to Logroño last year... Juan. Juan, who with instinctual generosity, immediately offered me part of his breakfast bar then tossed the shiny wrapper on the ground. yep, back in Spain. observation. in Somport Pueblo, Canfranc Estación and Canfranc Pueblo there are profusions of six-storey high Marxist grey cement block housing being built... practical, but not in the least attractive. clouds break. mind gasps. titanic vapor waves corkscrew off wet sun-struck-flaring massif ledge faces. snow-fringed alpine meadow bowls glowing green, unreachable Edens i imagine must be a haven for reclusive animals, a micro-climate for that one flower still in existence upon the Earth. at my feet, gale-strewn carmine mountain ash berries and storm-crushed purple crocuses among the ferrous bloodred stones.
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About the Book
Book Two: Autumn on the Trail to Santiago begins where Sons of Thunder left off... same man, same spirit... blood, sweat and soul expressed out the same marrow but much is changed with the landscape, skyscape and timescape that inform the in-scape of mind. The eye popping Whippit hit of June and July’s Spain mellows now in the soft autumnal exhale reflected in cooling days, lengthening nights and the repletion and harvest of agricultural labors along a string of trails spanning across southern France, over the Pyrénées, along northern Spain and into Santiago for a second time this year. While writing Autumn on the Trail to Santiago natural section breaks appeared in a way they did not in the flood-rush of Sons of Thunder. The initial ‘On n’est pas riche mais on vie bien’ segment is a toast to my family and to the love expressed in a plate of food. ‘Between the Rabbits’ puts comestible brackets around le Chemin d’Arles, from Arles to the Pyrénées. ‘Aragonia’ describes el Camino Aragonés’ descent from the storm ravaged Pyrénées-Pirineos into Spain, to re-connect with el Camino Francés in Puenta la Reina. And ‘Broken Water, Spanish Rain’ is the long last leg of the journey; a dark wet trek down the metaphysical birth canal to Santiago, to the sea, and to the rest of life beyond this adventure.
About the Author
‘Infected’ early on with a want to acquire foreign languages from hearing the musical French Canadian dialect spoken in the homes and streets of Lewiston, Maine, where he was born... ‘Infected’ with a desire to travel ever since his parents bought their VW Westfalia Campmobile back in the late 70’s and spent summers traveling throughout New England, to the Canadian Rockies, the Grand Canyon, Nova Scotia, Florida, and by being deeply stirred by the epic journeys undertaken across Tolkien’s Middle Earth... ‘Infected’ with a love for poetry by the late Boston College professor, Richard Hughes, under whose influence the author left his senior year at Boston College behind and went to study abroad in Nijmegen, Holland... ‘Infected’ with a worldly appreciation for food by Josefina Yanguas Perez - the proprietor of the Café Pamplona in Harvard Square who used to share the extras from her famous Saturday night dinner parties with Timberlake’s then yet inexperienced tongue, while he was a waiter there... ‘Infected’ by Thich Nhat Hanh and the teachers within the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center community with a mindfulness practice after realizing he was empty-handed and tool-less to deal with life’s sucker punches... These happy ‘infections’ have shaped James’ perceptions and ex-pression, and he continues to seek to bring these pleasures along with him on his next journey.