Lasting Impressions

Certain memories linger long past the details of art and history. Today we entered Galacia. It smells of ripe apples, new mown hay and cattle. We walked up hill all day on mostly rocky paths through cool forests, across streams and along hot dusty fields of corn. Working farms host buildings centuries old with modern updates. If not for the modern tractors and an occasional television antenna it could be hundreds of years ago.

I find, however, that it is the memory of the people I meet that linger in my night-thoughts. It started at the airport with a little boy of perhaps two. Such pure joy shone from his large black eyes. We shared a seat for seven hours. His mother tried to put a neck pillow on him and he didn’t want to. I showed him my pink neck pillow and told him, “Tambien tengo,” which is, “I have also.” My Spanish is a collection of words rather than proper sentences. He didn’t care. He laughed and patted my pillow and put his on. Then he blew me kisses.

Such joy. May he always be filled so. The stitches on his face that promise of many more surgeries to come to close the open hole and give him a nose, speak loudly of his life ahead. Life is cruel to those whose don’t fit in.

Many people walk the Camino, young and old. We passed four women of my age by a water stop. Mary-Kate was well ahead as I chugged like an old steam engine with a too heavy load up a too steep hill. Our eyes connected with complete rapport. How I would have liked to walk a stretch with them.

Intrepid bicyclists passed us, wheels churning for traction and bouncing among the fist-sized rocks that littered the path. Just watching made me grateful I was walking even though my back screamed and lungs struggled.

Perhaps the most joy-inducing sight, however was a young Italian man with his burro. He treated the burro who carried less weight than himself as though it were a dog and his best friend.

It is the people who linger in my thoughts. You, my readers as well. Send me your prayer requests and I will pray for your needs and those of your loved ones as I walk.