Day 26: Pola de Siero to Oviedo (18,3k)
- Frida Stavenow
- Oct 3, 2022
- 4 min read
On Day 26, I dust myself off and get back on it. Skies are blue inside and out as I leave Pola de Siero, not axe-murdered and feeling pretty good about it, too.
I know I only have 15k to walk today, so already in the first town I stop for a cup of coffee. I open a new notebook and it pours out of me like Niagara Falls. I create plot beat tables, character portraits, graphs for emotional arcs. The bar plays Never Gonna Give You Up, Heaven Is a Place on Earth and A Little Respect. I order another coffee and look for jobs in the psychedelic industry in Europe. Most are in The Netherlands, which I’ve always thought of as too dark and cold. But maybe that’s just where it’s at? I remember a Dutch woman from my Medicine Wheel group who was giving mushroom ceremonies in Amsterdam. Maybe I could ask her about the climate? And then I remember – she just moved to Ibiza.
Ibiza!
Why haven’t I thought of Ibiza? Hippie, medicine-loving, gorgeous, hedonist Ibiza? Dutch Medicine Woman moved there to give her own mushroom ceremonies. It was always on the itinerary for the ayahuasca and peyote shamans I used to hang out with in London. There are mountains. Beaches. It’s Spanish-speaking, but not quite Spain. Doesn’t feel as tightly held in the oppressive claws of the Catholic Church as the mainland, which, despite my recent flirtation with the their teachings, is something I appreciate. I bet there’s even horses, probably living as wild and free as the ageing hippie population that I’m sure remains on the island since its 70’s heyday. How could I forget Ibiza?
When I finally walk out of El Berrón, I continue listening to 80’s New Wave and feel like my heart is about to explode. I probably can’t get a job as a mushroom translator (aka svamptolk, God it sounds better in Swedish) immediately and I doubt living in Ibiza is very easy if you can’t drive, but there are lots of English-teaching jobs, and driving schools. Teaching isn’t my end-game but it is something I can do in my sleep, know how to make money from and won’t have to turn a half-blind eye to values-wise. Like I would with, say, advertising, or really most full-time writing jobs. Then I can write my novel in the mornings, help in mushroom ceremonies at the weekends, spend my money on learning to drive and probably find a stable that needs their horses exercised, too. Why not just do that?
Why not just be happy?
Walking along a beautiful little stream while listening to The Cure and seeing the novel take shape like a developing photograph in my brain I feel like this will be enough. Even if I never get a novel published, how can I stop writing when it makes me feel like I’ve got pure MDMA coursing through my system? Clearly, for all my desire to be published and recognised and become worthy of love, writing is also, for me, its own reward. Something that I enjoy and that makes me feel good. Like other people go sailing, or play squash, or binge-watch Game of Thrones. A hobby.
Seen like that, publication doesn’t matter. I write because I like it. Which is enough to keep doing it, for ever.
So On Day 26 I decide to move to Ibiza to teach English and eat mushrooms and swim in turquoise seas and write failing novels until I die. I know on Day 23 or something I decided to move to Mexico and be a svamptolk but this is clearly much better! Ibiza is in Europe! Okay an island so I’d still have to fly but less climate guilt than Mexico still! And I have the right to work! And healthcare! And it’s so close to my family it barely even counts as running away!
Which all begs the question: how is there a thriving antidepressants industry, when you can just get another cup of coffee!?
The rest of the walk is peaceful and sunny. More donkeys. Rivers. Bridges. More cute houses on stilts. Right before Oviedo things get industrial but I break it up by stopping at a cafe for a beer and a tuna sandwich. €3,60.
In Oviedo awaits a great surprise – Waffles and Fake Vegan have taken a rest day, and are still there! I will not have to spend the rest of my life Camino in solitude! I have a shower and we put on some laundry to celebrate our reunion. Fake Vegan, who contrary to me is all socialled-out, goes to eat some solitary chorizo in the cathedral while Waffles and I go to a bar where we drink beer (me) and red wine (him) and talk about stream-of-consciousness writing versus outlines.
And then, even though we have to be back at the asylum-looking albergue just forty-five minutes later, we decide to get stoned. I haven’t smoked since Gertrude and I had Mexican food which feels like ages ago, and though I’m a little apprehensive to do it with someone I barely know, my gut says Waffles is a good smoking partner. And he is. We talk about tree spirits and what’s a spirit and do we actually see these things or are they projections and can you ever, then, really learn anything or is magic real? Stoner stuff. We go back to the albergue and eat an epic tomato, mozzarella, avocado and pesto sandwich and then I go back to my Girl, Interrupted bedroom and finally watch the Michael Pollan episode about LSD.
I think magic is real.
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