Day 2: Morgade to Mercadoiro

Day 2
The morning was cold and grey. The Irish lady was in two minds about walking. She had sweated throughout the night and her head was pounding. "I feel as though I have done a few rounds with Mike Tyson" she said.  The taxis came for us at 9am and dropped us off at Morgade.  Belin would take our baggage to Portomarin.
She and I would try a km or two whilst the others walked on. We walked a few steps, stopped, walked a few more, stopped.  She sat on the walker and I pushed her where it was flat but even a slight incline exhausted her and she was too heavy for me to push uphill.  After an hour or so, and probably not more than a km, she was feeling weak so I called a taxi.

We arrived at the Pension but the room wasn't ready so we went to a café-bar in the square and had a hot drink.  They advertised that they had rooms and while we were there a German couple arrived and asked for a room but the young man told them they were full - completo. He offered to find them a room elsewhere and started phoning around.
Albergue Ultreia is uphill from the square and Pension Caminante (where she and Reinettte shared a room) is in a side street before the Albergue. When her room was ready I took her back to the Pension. The bathroom was a wet-room, especially designed for people with disabilities.  The toilet was so high that she could barely get onto it.  The shower area had no curtain and the water went all over the floor making it slippery and dangerous.  Understandably she wasn't very happy with it.
Jose arrived with the baggage from Sarria and I was able to check into our rooms.
I took the room with a double bunk and the others had double rooms.  The owners are a lovely family.  Warm and kind they made us feel welcome and their two charming daughters made a point of introducing themselves and welcoming us to their albergue.
By lunch time the albergue was full as was the one across the road. Pilgrims spoke of full albergues in most small and large towns and of having to walk long distances to find beds.  "More pilgrims are booking rooms ahead," said one pilgrim, "and this means there are no beds left for us".  Another pilgrim defended his right to book beds at private albergues or pensiones.  "Who is 'us'? He asked. "Am I and  my wife not part of the pelgrims? We knew that the Camino is going to be busy in May so I booked my beds" he said.  "We are all pelgrims - we are all 'us'. when you go on holiday you cant expect special treatment when you arrive and the hotel is full."  I left the dining room as others joined in and the discussion became heated.
The others arrived back from their walk and settled into their rooms. It started raining and we spent most of the day in the albergue.

At 5pm we got taxis to take us to Vilacha where we had a lovely meal with Gordon Bell in Casa Banderas. We met Johan from Cape Town and two German girls who arrived as we were leaving. It was raining again and the forecast was for much of the same the next day.

A Spiritual Experience on the Camino

Many pilgrims, most with no religion, recount having had a ‘spiritual’ experience whilst walking the Camino even though the majority find it difficult to describe the experience. As a non-theist, I too have found it difficult to explain the spirituality of walking the Camino, leaving aside the history, the religion, the traditions, and the folk-lore. It’s more than all of that.

If we look at the word ‘spirit’ it might help to explain the state one reaches when on a long-distance hike. I have often explained my own spiritual state, after a week or so on the Camino, as being in the ‘Zen-zone’ – when mind separates from the body and the whole becomes one with nature. (This is especially so when walking on the wide open plains of the Meseta).

Spirit (n) L. spiritus

My large, heavy Websters gives at least 18 different meanings of the word ‘spirit’.

1. Breath, courage, vigour, the soul of life.

2. The thinking, motivating, feeling part of man as distinguished from the body, mind, intelligence.

3. Life, will, consciousness, thoughts etc, regarded separate from matter.

What does this mean, “.. the thinking, motivating, feeling part of a person as distinguished from the body and intelligence?”

I remember reading the Pulitzer Prize winning book by Professor Carl Sagan, the well-known scientist, called “The Dragons of Eden - Speculation on the evolution of human intelligence.” Although it was written over 30 years ago, the information, suggestions, speculations and assumptions he made then are just as relevant today.
In the chapter on the development of the human brain he focuses on the differences between the left (mostly rational) and right (mostly intuitive) hemispheres, suggesting that our pre-verbal, pre-ambulatory ancestors relied on their ‘intuitive’ non-verbal perceptions and cognitions to survive in the world.
“Intuitive knowledge has an extremely long evolutionary history: if we consider the information contained in the genetic material, it goes back to the origin of life.
The other of our two modes of knowing – the one that in the West expresses irritation about the existence of intuitive knowledge – is quite recent evolutionary accretion.”

Sagan says the people in the West have made so much contact with the left-hemisphere functions of our brains and very little with the right, that we find it difficult to connect with our intuitive brain. The scientist Robert Ornstein compares this to the stars being invisible to us during the day, despite the fact that they always there, day and night. ‘The brilliance of our most recent evolutionary accretion, the verbal abilities of the left hemisphere, obscures our awareness of the functions on the intuitive right hemisphere, which in our ancestors must have been the principal means of perceiving the world”.
He suggests that in the meditative state of many Oriental religions the left hemisphere of the brain is suppressed which allows the ‘stars to come out’.

Isn’t this what meditation and spiritual ‘awareness’ is all about? An Eastern guru said, "Enlightenment flowers when individual consciousness merges into universal consciousness. It is an experience beyond mind.”

Spirit - the thinking, feeling part as distinguished from the body and intelligence.

You can pick out pilgrims who have been on the road for a long time. They have calmness about them, serene and laid-back they don’t rush to be the first to leave the shelter in the morning; they are never the first to arrive, they don’t get caught up in the rush for beds. They don’t judge other pilgrims. They don’t complain about the shelters, or the food, or the paths or even the weather. They have become the Camino – the Way – they are in the Zen-Zone.

Is adrenaline? Endorphines? Is it Seretonin that induces that feeling of emotiona wellness? Is it Zen?
“Zen emphasizes experiential wisdom in the attainment of enlightenment. As such, it de-emphasizes theoretical knowledge in favor of direct realization through meditation and dharma practice.”

Walking-Zen is the exquisite state you reach when you walk without awareness. You are no longer aware of the pack on your back or the blister on your heel or the sun on your head. You are one with everything around you and although you see everything, you do not think about them in words, they just are. You just are. You are just walking.

You are in the Zen-zone – having a spiritual experience.