Since we weren’t on walkers, why not walk? No one needed a knee replaced, a new hip or two, so why not make our 70th birthdays something to remember? Friends since pre-school, Gina and I wanted Europe, we wanted adventure, we wanted to return home after an athletic feat that would leave us fit, fierce, and fine-tuned for whatever lay ahead in the new decade.
“I’ve got it,” said Gina, who like me was eager to celebrate her big day – her birthday the day before mine – doing what you do at 23: land in France with no reservations or plans, and see where the whim will take you. “Let’s do the Camino! How hard can it be?” The Camino?
“Do you see us as pilgrims?” I wasn’t sure if this was quite “Europe,” tromping 35 days – at least – along the 500-plus-mile Camino de Santiago, aka the Way of Saint James, like the uncountable trompers since the 9th century who have walked from points in France, Spain, or Portugal to the shrine, and remains, of the Apostle James. This shrine, the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, is a Gothic/Baroque/Romanesque beauty dating from 1075 that is 22 miles east of the Atlantic in northwestern Spain. And if Pope Benedict XVI himself encouraged us to undertake the walk, which for many is a spiritual pilgrimage, why not? He said: “It is a way sown with so many demonstrations of fervor, repentance, hospitality, art, and culture which speak to us eloquently of the spiritual roots of the Old Continent.” So, the riches, adventures, and surprises we encounter along the Way, apparently, might definitely kick off our 70th year with who knew what splendors of personal renewal.
“We could have, like, an awakening,” said Gina with excitement. “What if some kind of crazy, miraculous thing actually happens to us?”
What if?
It turns out, something miraculous did: a cat. A Spanish cat, rather kitten, that at two weeks old with eyes crusted shut and shaking with sickness came screaming out of nowhere on Day 3 of our Way. Eighteen miles into that day’s hot, hilly, hellish trek that had left Gina bloody after a trip-and-fall on a steep downslope of jagged shale, it felt as if we were living the Camino’s Legend of Fuente Reniega. In this story, the Devil tempts pilgrims to renounce their faith in God, the Virgin Mary, and Santiago the Apostle in exchange for water. When the pilgrims refuse, they are rewarded with a miraculous intervention. Water was not our issue: having had enough was. The sun was sinking, and still no sight of our hotel for the night. “Another fucking hill!” Gina and I did not – would not – quit, however, even though later a taxi driver told us there is no shame in fatigue, or in finding one’s enthusiasm fading: he plucks people off the Way all day long, he said – those who yearn for that night’s respite of shower/dinner/spa, or those walk-weary souls wanting to make a flight home, like, now. At the top of the hill: our intervention. Blind little Camino de Santiago de Madeira, who took his last name from Gina, his future forever mom, simply appeared, running straight to us screaming for his life. Miles from anywhere but a far-off crumbling farmhouse, his pitiful mini-meows made his message unmistakable: there would be no choice. He was going to change our lives.
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