Dispatches Del Camino

The village of Tineo is bathed in thick morning fog. The impenetrable miasma is smothering the Sierra de Tineo mountains like a damp dishrag.

The miasma is really spectacular. I have always wanted to use the word “miasma.” But I’ve never had a reason to use it until now. I’ve gone for many, many years with a burning passion to use this word, just like actual authors do in actual classic literature, but alas, I’ve never had the opportunity. Until today. But now that I’ve used “miasma,” I don’t feel any elation inside. In fact, I feel nothing. It was not the exuberant vocabularial experience I was hoping for.

But anyway, the cloud surrounding us is so thick within these mountains we cannot see where we are hiking. An elderly local Spanish woman told me that in conditions like this all you can do is “Put one foot in front of the other, peregrino.”

So this is what we do. We see nothing but white. We hear only our footfalls and the sound of our frail lungs, feebly fighting with each inhalation, plunging through the thick brume engulfing us.

Consequently, I also had to look up the word “brume” in my thesaurus app. I have never had a burning passion to use the word “brume” like I once had for miasma. I did not even know “brume” existed until today. But now that I’m trying it out, I am thinking this word is a keeper.

We are told the views are spectacular in these mountains, some of the stunningest overlooks in the entire world, actually. Hikers travel from all four corners of the known planet simply to walk this portion of the route we are currently hiking. They have come from Korea, Australia, Fiji, Cameroon, and even Milwaukee.

But there is no way to know how beautiful the scenery is because nobody can see. Not even one tree.

One foot in front of the other.

I’m worried about the Spanish people. I’ve tried to let it go, but the American part of me is frightened for them.

Firstly, because the Spanish do not use peanut butter. They do not sell it in many mercados. Many of the elderly residents have never even heard of it.

This concerns me. It would be one thing if they didn’t like peanut butter. This I could understand. But many of them have never tried it, never seen it used, and still many proclaim to hate it.

One young woman supermarket employee even plugged her nose and fanned the air when I asked whether her store carried “crema de cacahuate.”

That is because the Spanish use the Latin American term for peanut butter, “crema de cacahuate.” Which makes it sound disgusting. Nobody wants to eat something with “caca” in the official title, which is the Spanish word for “poo.”

How would you like it if your culture called it a poo-and-jelly sandwich? You wouldn’t.

So I’m worried about these people. I’m worried that in many of the public restrooms, they have signs on the toilet seats, illustrating the proper usage of the receptacle.

I’m worried about these people because in every little village, nobody ever seems to be working. They are always mingling at cafés. They drink beer with breakfast, without shame.

They sip wine for lunch, unrepentantly. They snack all day, eating five meals, and never get fat. They take three entire hours for lunch, spending all three of these hours dining with their entire family surrounding them, laughing and carrying on. Then, as if this isn’t lascivious behavior enough, they go home in the middle of a WORKDAY and take a two-hour nap.

I’m concerned because each of their villages, even the smallest ones, have fruterías where residents can purchase farmer-direct fruits and vegetables, freshly grown, plump with life, still covered in rich black soil chunks, because a Spaniard would rather be stabbed in the eyeballs with hot pokers than eat a supermarket tomato.

Each hamlet in this country has panaderías where bread is baked fresh daily, without chemical preservatives, excess sugar, or plasticized silicone conditioners, then sold for pennies on the euro so that even the homeless can afford high-quality bread. This is shameful.

Don’t the Spanish know about mass production? Don’t they know about the miracle of corporate commercial food suppliers who procure stale, shelf-stable ingredients from China, then manufacture their bread in a Texas laboratory, then ship their food to a supermarket chain distributor warehouse in California?

Don’t these people know? Don’t they know about the joys of laboratory manufactured food? Don’t they know about 14-hour workdays? Don’t they know about the Colonist Puritan Work Ethic, about spending all your waking hours in hard labor so that you can earn enough for your family to afford another subscription to yet another TV streaming service they’ll never watch?

No. All these poor Spanish people know is that this earthly experience is to be savored. This experience is confusing, yes. And sometimes, nothing in life will make sense.

Sometimes, you will be surrounded by chaos and thick miasma. Sometimes you won’t be sure where you are, or whether you will make it. But you will make it. You will. Certain as the sun will rise, you will make it.

Someday the brume will lift, and uncover the glory of an afternoon sun, warm and pleasant upon your back, revealing the view of a lifetime.

But until then…

Just put one foot in front of the other, peregrino.