The field
Day 6 on the Camino de Santiago
Gray rain clouds floated between us and the sky, rendering the morning even darker than usual. The sun wouldn’t come up over the mountains til well after 8. We donned waterproof shells and pack covers and traipsed silently, single file, through the “Witch’s Wood” in Roncesvalles, Spain, where mystical people met in secret hundreds of years ago (and where horrible things happened to them when they were found out).
“Remember this,” went my mind, or my soul, or God or Whoever (GOW?) as we wended our way through the solemn quiet.
It was going to be another long, long day. The morning brightened a bit as we entered a village. Ahead was a crowded cafe that attracted most of our group straight into it for chocolate croissants and cafe au lait. Still riding the magic of the previous day—my virtually solo trek over the Pyrenees—I left them to it and kept going through the village, past the water fountain where I probably should have stopped to refill my bottle. As it was, the boisterous group of 20-somethings I’d encountered repeatedly the day before were taking a lengthy break there. The only pull in me that trumped self-preservation: avoid these people.
Yes, I know this could have been a different, possibly more compelling story if I made friends with them using my limited Spanish, discovering that they all have their own stories and pain and perhaps were walking for deeper reasons than their neon spandex implied. So far, though, the Camino hadn’t aroused anything remotely that magnanimous in me. I just wanted to be alone.
I knew my pace was too slow to stay ahead of them, so when they inevitably caught up to me I stopped and let them pass, watched them chatter away into the distance.
And I was still far ahead of my own beloved group, which was unusual and refreshing. Even though millions of people had walked over this ground across thousands of years, being out in front felt kind of like I was trailblazing, discovering something.
Village became damp farmland became another dimly lit wood, where I stopped for a few minutes to stand in the startling silence. Ahead and above (“the way of the Camino is always up,” our guide Rachael had half-joked at one point), I saw an opening in the trees. It looked like a doorway. To … ?? GOW only knew. I moved to take a picture, but the voice piped up again: “Remember this.” I did. Then I climbed toward it.
I emerged not into heaven (I don’t think), but onto a dirt path running alongside a field: a few acres of muted green grass bordered by a line of trees, views of the village and mountains beyond. I followed the trail marker to the right and kept walking, the grass on my left and the woods I’d just emerged from on my right.
Out of who knows where, my high-school crush sauntered unbidden into my mind. In that same flash I was back in my 14-, 15-, 16-year-old body, in the persistent, googley-eyed, hormone-ruled thought cycle of that age: wouldn’t it be great if I was here with him? Immediately a response from somewhere bigger, truer, more current: oh hell no. All we’d be are two bodies, two sacks of meat and bone and ego, negotiating this landscape and each other. I let the ghost of his young self walk along with me for a few steps and then sent him out into the field. On his heels came another old love. Same response—nope to that meat sack as well—same release. Then another.
Then I started inviting them: exes, old friends, current friends, people I still love. Anyone who still had their meat hooks in the walking hunk of flesh I am. Anyone who had traces of dust in the toroidal energy field of my being. First they came chronologically, along the timeline of my life, and then arbitrarily. Walk with me a few paces, I told them, and then peel off to live your own life. I thought I needed these parts of you—or all of you—to be OK. I’m cool on my own now. Into the field you go.
And off they drifted happily—glad to be free of me too, I think. Free of the unnecessary tangle.
It left space in me to love them more.
The stretch was only a kilometer or so, if that, so my time was limited. I couldn’t escort everyone. Again: “Remember this.” Instantly the field imprinted onto my psyche the same way all those people had been—all of it living outside of time and space. I saw that from now on, no matter when, anyone else taking up residence in me gets brought to the field and freed.
Like so many moments on the Camino I didn’t fully get what was happening at the time. Nor did I see the obvious symbolism of that gaggle of kids I couldn’t shake earlier: those I wanted so badly to be rid of but couldn’t until I literally let them go—go ahead of me, off into the lives I’d never know anything about.
And on this morning so heavy with clouds and metaphor, as if to echo what my soul had just done, the day turned from overcast to sun drenched. My body now free of the burden it didn’t know it was carrying, it turned toward the task of navigating another blazing hot afternoon, toward endless steps uphill over sharp, sun-warmed rocks. The world once again asking nothing of me but to be there, be present, be uncomfortable, be astounded.