Sunday, September 6
For the past 48 hours, I’ve been with my co-leaders, readying everything for the arrival of our student pilgrims. Since our trip is called “the Creative Camino,” we’ve been discussing the best strategies for integrating art and writing into our journey, while walking 8-14 miles a day. Walking that far, there’s no energy for formal classes at the end of day. People want to shower, eat dinner, put their feet up, and go to bed. That’s why we’ve built in layover days to focus on art, writing, and rest. Still, even on our walking days, we want to find ways to infuse creative spirit into our journey.
From the outset, we will be stressing to our pilgrims that this isn’t “just a hike.” It’s a pilgrimage and a journey of creative exploration. To that end, Brenda has created a beautiful art/writing journal and put together a fully supplied art kit for each member of our company, including a palette of watercolors chosen specifically for the Camino. I’ve cut up strips with inspiring quotes to hand out each morning, poems to read on the theme of pilgrimage, and have spent many hours thinking of prompts that can be written quickly on the go—by the side of the trail, at a rest stop, while waiting for lunch or for stragglers to catch up with the rest of the group.
I’m delighted to be working with Brenda and Andre again. They are experienced, well-trained wilderness guides. Although the Camino hardly counts as wilderness, I am fully confident that everyone will be very well cared for should an emergency arise.
Just a few hours from now, we’ll be meeting our group at the airport. All is in readiness. The bedrooms are made up. We’ve filled the refrigerator with food; Andre will be prepping an arrival snack and making our dinner—yes, in addition to being one of our guides, Andre will be cooking our meals during the three days we’ll be at Hola Camp Camino.
We’ll spend our first days before we actually start walking the Camino focusing on group bonding and orientation, introducing writing and art to the group, getting to know each other. This mini-retreat at the start of our pilgrimage will also give people time to recover from jetlag and adjust to a new time zone.
Meeting a new cohort of students is always exciting. Personally, I know two-thirds of those arriving today; it will be wonderful to see the folks I know in person, great to meet those who are new. I feel a quiet happiness in my belly right now—kind of like holding a gift in my hands before I unwrap it and discover what’s inside.
And maybe, just maybe, my CPAP will come?
Meanwhile at the Madrid Airport
While Brenda and Andre and I were having a morning meeting to plan our group orientation later that afternoon, a WhatsApp message came in from Gaia. It featured an image that made me smile:
Gaia didn’t have time to spare and reported that the clerks at the Lost Items Department were moving slowly. They’d insisted on printing out the “you can hand my precious belongings to this woman” letter, along with an image of my passport, that I’d emailed Gaia the night before. Apparently, this office worked on Spanish time—no hurry to hand over the goods.
But finally they did. Gaia had my CPAP machine! And just 27 minutes to check in for her flight, check her bag, and go through security again.
I wrote back that my fingers and toes were crossed for her. And texted, “Run, Gaia, run!”
Six minutes later, another text message appeared:
“Shit, I made a very stupid mistake. I picked up my black suitcase, but I forgot my red backpack on the conveyor belt. I think I can still go get it, but it’s gonna be tight.”
We discussed by text whether one of the members of our group might be able to retrieve her red backpack for her. They were already at the flight gate, getting to know each other and preparing to board. I knew from personal experience how long it takes to get back from the J gates to security—a very long time. Just the day before, trying to retrieve my CPAP on my own, I’d gotten utterly lost and confused trying to find my way back to security. There wasn’t enough time for any of them to help Gaia. She was on her own.
That’s when I asked her what was in her red backpack.
Losing her hiking shoes was a lot worse than me losing my CPAP machine. You can’t hike the Camino without your shoes.
Two minutes later, we had this exchange:
She texted back: “I’ll get a train or something. Or another flight. There’s always a way.”
Remember how I said Gaia was a seasoned traveler? This proved it. She was nimble, able to roll with unexpected outcomes.
But I still felt terrible. If she hadn’t signed up for my Mission Impossible, this never would have happened. How could I not shoulder the blame?
As if reading my mind, Gaia texted back, “It’s really no big deal. I rebook stuff all the time.”
For the next 30 minutes, Gaia tried to get through to a customer service representative from British Airways. She called customer service lines in Spain, the US and the UK, trying to reach an agent so she could officially cancel the flight she was about to miss. She couldn’t get through on the phone, so she tried the chat queue online.
Gaia explained to me that if you miss a flight without having canceled it, airlines will often cancel your return flight automatically, and Gaia didn’t want that to happen. She needed that return ticket.
In order to prevent an automatic cancellation from occurring, Gaia had to cancel her outgoing flight before the plane took off. But the chat queue at British Airways was so slow and unwieldy she doubted she could make the deadline.
As I read her ongoing updates, I texted back, “It’s like witnessing a disaster in real time.”
She replied, “This isn’t a disaster. It will affect our lives approximately 0%. I was pissed for about 45 seconds and then let it pass.”
I loved her attitude. She’d definitely been the right person for the job.
I still felt terrible about the whole thing. But I had a lot of other things on my plate as well. Brenda and Andre and I had deadlines, too. Our group was arriving in just a couple of hours. We resumed our planning meeting.
Fifteen minutes later, a Whatsapp message popped up on my screen. Gaia had successfully retrieved her red backpack and had my CPAP bag in hand.
Hallelujah!
How she’d get to Santiago was still an open question, but at least she’d have shoes to wear on the Camino. And thanks to her valiant rescue, I’d be sleeping better at night.
After that, there was radio silence from Gaia for a while.
At noon, Brenda and Andre and I headed to the airport to meet everyone who’d actually made the flight from Madrid. Just as we were walking out the door, Gaia texted me with her new plan—she’d take a train to Santiago.
What an intrepid traveler!
Once she got settled on the train, Gaia learned that British Airways had in fact canceled her return flight from Santiago to Madrid. As she shared this news, Gaia texted that she was “kinda depressed.” She’d been up since 4:05 in the morning, hadn’t had lunch, and was fried.
But throughout her train ride to Santiago, she persisted in trying to contact British Airways, trying to get her flight reinstated. After many frustrating attempts, she got through to an actual agent on the phone, but just then, the train went through a tunnel and she lost the signal.
Eventually, she was able to file a complaint with the airline, asking for her ticket to be reinstated.
And a whole new round of red tape began.
In the meantime, back at Hola Camp Camino, our new arrivals were getting settled in their rooms. Some jumped in the swimming pool. Others had a snack. And at 3:00 o’clock, we all came together for an all-group orientation.
After months of planning and anticipation, the Creative Camino was beginning.
I welcomed everyone, “Bienvenidas peregrinas!” Welcome pilgrims!
After acknowledging how tired and jetlagged everyone might be, I read a quote about the nature of pilgrimage to help set the tone for our journey.
A Pilgrimage Is Where Your Soul Becomes More Fully Embodied
—Elayne Kalila
Here is what I have remembered about the true nature of a pilgrimage.
It is not a holiday. A pilgrimage is an active spiritual practice. It is a practice where you are called to let go of the habits and routines that clutter your everyday life, and to unknit yourself from the known.
In truth, what you are doing is dislodging yourself on purpose.
Every tradition that walks its people somewhere knows this. You take the body a long way from its routines and its comforts and its usual rooms, and you keep going, and the routines fall off. Not because you renounced them nobly. Because they cannot survive the distance. What is left is a good deal barer than what set out.
You do not go to acquire anything. You go to be emptied out.
And in that emptying, something else becomes possible, which is the actual point. The soul comes further into your body. You begin to feel the edges of your own aliveness, in your heart and in the soles of your feet. You become more embodied as a soul. More present. More here.
Emptying is the point…
…And what is real is that you are changed by a pilgrimage. Genuinely changed, in ways you did not choose and cannot undo.
And then you come home to a life that was built by the woman you were before you left.
That is where I have been these last weeks.
Standing in my own kitchen, almost breathless, looking straight at the edge of what is next in my life and having absolutely no words for it. I have been rearranged from the inside out.
That is the beauty of it, and it is also the whole challenge of it, and I do not think you get one without the other.
Over the next hour, we established groundrules for our community, talked about ways to respect the culture and people of the land we’d be walking through, shared basic introductions, and introduced safety guidelines like, “Don’t walk and do anything: take a picture, adjust your pack, fiddle with your gear. ALWAYS stop first.”
As I sit and write this post, our pilgrims are unpacking, resting, swimming and relaxing. Dinner is in an hour, and hopefully, Gaia will be here soon.
Just moments after I wrote those words, Gaia texted me this picture, and said, “I made it.” Her train had arrived in Santiago!
“Still smiling,” she said.
What a trooper. She had completed Mission Impossible.
Forty-five minutes later, Gaia arrived by taxi from the train station. She held my CPAP bag overhead, triumphant. When she came in to join us for dinner, everyone cheered.
After polishing off a big salad with salmon and whole grain bread, with chocolate cake and blueberries for desert, Brenda introduced us to our art kits.
But more about that tomorrow!
P.S. Three hours later: My brain and my body say thank you, Gaia! I can breathe fully again.
