Citizen Writers Fighting Censorship by Helping Americans Understand Issues Affecting the Republic.
A rooster crows as day breaks over the surrounding Cantabrian Mountains. He crows every few moments, singing an anthem to morning, his voice ringing throughout the tiny village of Cornellana.
I am in a bar, drinking morning joe. My bartender is working his buns off.
Our first day walking the Camino. We leave our inn at Oviedo a little after daybreak. There are no people on the streets. No cars. Only one stray dog, dutifully cleaning his privates, and one old man hosing down a section of street in front of his shop while smoking a cigar the size of …
2:16 p.m.—We step off the plane in Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport, and it is pure chaos. People crowd this ginormous public space like ants swarming a fallen Tootsie Pop. This place is like Black Friday at Walmart, only with less exposed thong underwear.
We entered Santiago de Compostela at 2:11 p.m. On foot. We’d been hiking since sunup. Our pace was slow. Our clothes, threadbare. I was muttering the 23rd Psalm—a kind of private meditation on the trail.
Some of the most powerful lessons we pilgrims have learned on this proverbial Chisholm Trail have not been about life, or the nature of the universe. Our lessons have been in relation to each other.
I am standing at a bus stop in the unrelenting rain. Although to call this a “bus stop” is being generous. It’s just a highway guardrail. I am alone on this empty highway, waiting to catch a ride out of O Cebreiro.
Somewhere in the distant mountains, my wife is hiking the Camino. I should be with her, but I am here with shin-splinted legs and swollen calves.
My taxi arrived at Ponferrada after a long, twisty, pleasant ride through the mountains. And by “pleasant” I mean that only one of three taxi passengers actually vomited. I paid our driver, then found a nearby bush where I could double over.
My wife and I parted in the lobby of the albergue. She was crying. It was a little-girl cry. The kind of crying you do when you don’t care who is watching you. She has never been self-conscious about her own emotions. Thank God nobody ever told this beautiful woman that it’s not dignified to cry in public.
My eyes first caught the sight of a rosary, lying on my nightstand. The rosary was given to me by a nun, a few villages back. The rosary bears a hieroglyphic-like symbol on it. I have no idea what this symbol means.
We limped into Rabanal Del Camino on three legs. I was holding Jamie for support as we ascended the inclined street into an isolated Spanish village with a population of 60 residents.
Dear God, thank you for letting me happen upon this small church, so I might rest my anguished feet. This little church, alongside the Camino, somewhere in the far flung regions of rural Spain. A place where I can kneel and pray in solitude.
Leòn Cathedral is among the greatest of human works in Gothic style. The church features one of the world’s largest collections of medieval stained glass windows.
In today’s dispatch, Sean answers reader questions about his trek across Spain.
It was our first day off. We had been walking the Camino for three weeks, upwards of 18 miles per day, until our feet bear a striking resemblance to USDA-approved ground ch
A bar, somewhere in rural Spain. A rooster is crowing near the open door. Distant goats are bleating. Spanish farmers gather to chew the morning fat.
We are walking the Camino de Santiago when the power goes out in Spain. At first, we do not know the power is out, of course. The only thing we notice is that our phones have quit working.
We arrive in the city of Burgos after a 14-mile walk. Although it feels like 14 million miles. Today is hot. We are sunburned, thirsty, and our skin is covered in a fine layer of crystalized salt from evaporated sweat.
You do three things on the Camino each day. You walk. You talk. You stop to pee.
