Day 23: La Isla – Villaviciosa (25,4k)

The night before, I ask the (dead-sweet) hospitalero what is included in the €2,50 breakfast at Albergue de Peregrinos La Isla. “Bread, juice, coffee,” he replies. “Jams, a sweet… you will love it!”

I should’ve known. Filled with spongy bread, cream and sugar I waddle off from La Isla somewhat nauseous together with the Belgian, whom I keep forgetting is Belgian, so I will call him Waffles. Also because waffles are wholesome and cliched, and Waffles is anything but. In fact, Waffles, who is 25 and wears a lot of jewellery I’ve never seen before, reminds me a lot of my younger self: deeply passionate, excitable, talented, capricious, wise, ambitious, bit lost. You get the feeling he might just be writing a sequel to The Sorrows of Young Werther on his cafeteria breaks. The Sorrows of Young Waffles. If I’d been a decade younger I’d have been all over that shit.

Instead, I get an opportunity to appreciate how much calmer I feel now than I did at 25. I know, laugh a minute. But I am more stable. Less angry. More forgiving. My need for validation isn’t as acute. And I just understand things better. Take things less personally. Roll with the punches.

However, I do sometimes feel like a wise / realistic / life-worn old grandma in his company, and have to bite my tongue not to ruin all his youthful romanticism with my somewhat cynical lexicon of grown-up concepts like love-bombing, neurochemical addiction and trauma bonds.

At any rate, the conversation is interesting as we walk along the coast to Colunga, where we have some coffee before he says he wants to walk alone that day. Him! The cheek! That’s my move! But hey, at least I’m good at taking my own medicine, so as he trots off I sit down to do some writing and give him a head start.

This turns into half an hour of deep shit, and when I finally bounce out of Colunga I’m wondering if Waffles sprinkled some of his magic mushrooms into my cafe con leche. My feet feel like clouds! My heart like a sun! The backpack weighs nothing! I even break my No Headphones Rule to listen to my playlist of Swedish childhood classics, feeling as I sing along to Carola that everything is going to be not just okay but GREAT. I’ll write an amazing novel! I’ll move to a fantastic place! I’ll keep meeting incredible people! Whoop whoop!

Perhaps this is a good moment to clarify that I have been professionally evaluated for bipolar disorder (at my own request, no less) and was denied access to this club of deranged geniuses. But man, do my emotions swing. As I take my raincoat off for the second time in two hours, it strikes me that my emotional climate is not unlike the actual climate of Asturias, where you’ll get sunshine at nine, showers at nine thirty, sun again at ten, and a thunderstorm at eleven.

It’s a fucking pain to dress for, I tell you that much. And I am me. What must it be like, I wonder, to be with me?

These swings often feel like a good argument to go on antidepressants. Cause who the fuck can deal with a climate like that? These swings make me feel incomprehensible, to myself and to others. They make me want company one day and solitude the next. They make me seem like a very happy person, when I’m actually incredibly neurotic. And they make me start a ton of ambitious projects, which then leave me very disheartened if (when) they don’t turn out as great as I’d imagined.

Maybe, if I went on antidepressants, I wouldn’t have that? Maybe I’d be stable? Realistic? Content?

More like, I don’t know… if not Southern California then at least… Paris?

Can I be Paris?

Or should I just accept that I am fucking Asturias, and just learn to dress for it? Pack a raincoat? And hot pants?

No sooner have I thought this than I want to stop walking and rename the blog to Raincoat & Hot Pants: learning to pack for the Asturias within. But I’ve already renamed the blog three times. Goddamnit. I just need to sit down. Stop being such a storm.

Or I just need a blog name that can contain all my changes of heart. Ditto a relationship. I mean the lonely hearts ad writes itself: B THE CONTAINER 4 MY STORM! ME: TEMPEST. U: TEACUP?

Alright chill I can hear y’all loud and clear. Gotta be my own teacup. Getting there.

But then, maybe not. Maybe I don’t need a teacup at all. Maybe the problem is not the tempest but that I keep pretending it’s all sunny. Keep packing for Playa del Carmen when I’m clearly on a segment of Spain’s northern coast that receives more rain than Ireland but where you also need to wear factor 50.

Asturias at 12:04

Asturias at 12:18

Right. Well that was a fruitful spot of Metaphor Boogie. Thanks for the shrooms, Waffles.

All I have to do, then, is learn to pack the emotional equivalent of a raincoat and hot pants. Forever. Taoism? Back to Guemes for another jaunt through the Catholic Church? Acceptance and Commitment Therapy? My own, organically-grown system of tools and values? Sounds time-consuming. Let me walk on it.

Met a big fat cow

#moodswings #soulsearching #CaminodelNorte #travel #anxiety #hiking #CaminodeSantiago #antidepressantsornah

Day 22: Casa Rectoral – La Isla (30k)

The hospitalero at Casa Rectoral wakes us up at 7am with some classic monk choir hits that soon go over into 70’s disco bangers including “Lambada” and “I Will Survive.” Though we rush to get out in time, we fail and at 8:06 he forces German Carpenter to pour out her tea so she can leave the building without the cup. Slam lock goes the door, behind it on goes the vacuum cleaner.

We stay on the terrace frenetically packing as she finishes her baguette with Iberian ham and the rain pisses down outside. We leave not so much because we’re ready as because we feel like the hospitalero may any moment come out and lecture us about trespassing onto other people’s property, as he did when, at 3:30pm the day before, he arrived for his albergue-opening duties to find two pilgrims had taken shelter from the rain underneath his veranda roof. Later, he shouted at German Carpenter for slamming the microwave door too hard. She does not understand Spanish so looked at him rather questioningly.

“You may not understand,” the hospitalero muttered. “But you know. You know what you did.”

I start walking with my two new faves, and they are just as funny as the day before but after a mere half hour my head starts spinning so I pause and say I’ll catch them later. I need some alone time. They go on and I slow down. There are puddles, cows, more butt-related nomenclature. Also the perfect tennis court.

True, it could’ve been red. 

After a while, I run into the Belgian guy from the night before, the one with the cheese and mushrooms. He left a half hour earlier than me but took a wrong turn, so we walk together to Ribadesella where we have coffee and talk about love. Infatuation. Passion. Wounds. The usual.

It’s like the first chapter of a novel so afterwards we separate again, with vague plans to reunite at an albergue in La Isla.

The walk is beautiful. Huge eucalyptus forests, stunning beaches, rolling green hills. I see more cows I vow not to eat. Still okay with the incomprehensible animal that is chicken. We shall see if veganism happens. 

It’s a long one today. I pass through a tiny village called Vega where everything feels right. They have an adventure centre offering surfing and horse riding and walks through the monte. Add some plant medicine and I’m home. IS THIS WHERE I WILL LIVE? I ask myself, as always. Surely that perfect place is around here somewhere?

Endless fields of nasturtium. I chomp away like a horse that’s broken into a hay barn. Vitamins! Long time no see, my old friends. Cute little houses on stilts. Wild tomatoes growing everywhere. An epic beach, as usual. Vega has the vibez.

I continue across hills above the sea. As always when I walk alone the beginning is anxiety and bad voices and all the exhaustive repetitive little “pretend voices” as Gertrude calls them. But just like with Mo Gawdat’s superb “Listening to Becky” journaling technique – and, of course, Mara – once those voices have been heard and acknowledged, you get to the good shit. 

Today, it’s the voice of the first narrator of my ayahuasca novel. I plan on having three. I’ve told the basic plot to a few people and they’ve been excited. This is good. I’ve never really done that, even though it’s the advice of all the writing books, especially Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat. Tell your story to loads of people before you start writing. Then you’ll naturally refine it, until you have something that works.

It’s true. It happens. Also with life stories, as you tell them to new pilgrims every day. You start seeing the patterns beneath the fluff.

Talking, folks. Not that bad after all.

So the first protagonist starts talking, which is nice, cause for two days I’ve walked around with a great plot and no idea how to go about it. But today it feels like things are starting to get shaken loose. Bird by Bird has helped. Bit by bit.

“E. L. Doctorow once said that “writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” ”

Also:

“All I am going to do right now, for example, is write that one paragraph that sets the story in my hometown, in the late fifties, when the trains were still running. I am going to paint a picture of it, in words, on my word processor. Or all I am going to do is to describe the main character the very first time we meet her, when she first walks out the front door and onto the porch. I am not even going to describe the expression on her face when she first notices the blind dog sitting behind the wheel of her car—just what we can see through the one-inch picture frame, just one paragraph describing this woman, in the town where I grew up, the first time we encounter her.”

I love books. I love Anne Lamott. I love writing. Whatever comes of it.

This is important. The road is life. Santiago is not the point.

Rinse and repeat.

Finally I get to La Isla. The hospitalero is so nice. The opposite of the night before. He doesn’t have a cat; he has four kittens.

Onwards and upwards. The Belgian and I cook some pasta and talk about our family histories, fathers, the thin line between madness and spiritual enlightenment. I love these stories you get on the road. I love the glimpses, the quick portraits that get deep so fast, and then bye-bye. See you, or not.

Let go, and know in every moment that you will never see it again.

#albergues #oneofmyselvesisacunt #selfflagellation #searchingforahome #AnneLamott #tennis #CaminodelNorte #ayahuasca #travel #LetItGo #Asturias #hiking #CaminodeSantiago #carnivoreguilt

Day 21: Llanes – Casa Rectoral (22k)

Three weeks. This is the halfway mark. Time to panic.

When not panicking, I eat the best hostel breakfast to date (€2,50 for toast with olive oil and tomato, a Napolitana, coffee and orange juice!) then walk with funny British fake vegan and a German carpenter. They are so entertaining I do no thinking at all. It’s a great day of fast walking that doesn’t feel like walking because of the company. We talk about mania and drugs and shitting in bushes and restraining courses and insecurity and generally What We’re Going to Do with Our Lives.

After many many kilometres we arrive at an isolated stone house in the countryside, next to a beautiful church. It’s run by a very grumpy man who owns a very beautiful cat that gives Fake Vegan very bad allergies. So after a brilliant dinner of lentil salad (German Carpenter), wine and sardines in tomato sauce (me) , tortilla (Fake Vegan) and cheese (new mushroom-carrying Belgian guy) we move outside and watch the sunset from the roof of some kind of countryside construction (Potato cellar? Dungeon?) while listening to German schlagers.

It’s a beautiful house. I’m still reading. I meditate under an oak tree. Maybe I’ll panic more tomorrow.

#soulsearching #CaminodelNorte #travel #Asturias #hiking #CaminodeSantiago