Twenty Ninth Day On The Camino, Tuesday, October 16, 2018

This post is a day late because I was too tired to work on it when I finally crawled into Molinaseca.

Today we walked from Rabanal del Camino to Molinaseca. It is almost 30 kilometers and takes us uphill to the highest point on the Camino, Cruz de Ferro, or the Cross of Iron. And then almost 15 kilometers downhill to Molinaseca. This is a shot of sunrise outside Rabanal.

This is a shot of the trail on the way to Foncebadon, our first stop on the hike today.

This is a shot of a spider web dusted with dew on the trail climbing up to Foncebadon, the first stop on our hike today.

This is another shot of the trail.

This is a shot of the mountains we are climbing to get to Cruz de Ferro.

This is a shot of a roadside cross at the entrance to Foncebadon. We stopped here and said a prayer for Anna.

This is a sign at the alburgue in Foncebadon, just a few kilometers below Cruz de Ferro. This sign reminded me of The Clean Plate Club at the Hansen house when I was a young whipper snapper.

At Casa Hansen once food was on your plate you had to eat it. No matter how the food got on your plate or how inedible it was, if it was on your plate, you had to sit at the white Formica kitchen table until you finished it. You also got a lecture about all the millions of starving Chinese children who would love be sitting at the Hansen kitchen table wolfing down the food that you were refusing to eat.

I developed a technique that allowed me to eat the sometimes inedible food without the torture of tasting it. As I moved a forkful of food from the plate to my mouth I would breathe through my mouth, not my nose, so that the smell from the food would not gag me. Once I got the food into my mouth I would quickly drink a big gulp of milk to wash the mouthful of food down my gullet before it could spend too much time making a bad impression on my taste buds.

The most traumatic food memory I have from my time at Casa Hansen was The Corned Beef Sandwich Episode. One day my father decided he wanted a corned beef sandwich for lunch so he went to the grocery store and got some Wonder Bread and Oscar Meyer Corned Beef. Oscar Meyer bologna is bad enough. Oscar Meyer corned beef takes bad taste to a a much higher level. I was in the kitchen when my father got home from the grocery store. He wanted some company while he ate lunch so he told me I was going to join him for lunch. When I found out lunch involved a corned beef sandwich I told him that as much as I wanted to join him for lunch, I was allergic to corned beef sandwiches and if I tried to eat one I would wind up in the Emergency Room with a life threatening allergic reaction. He called bullshit and plopped a big corned beef sandwich on my plate and told me to shut up and eat my sandwich. I took one bite, using the technique I described above, and I got that first mouthful down but it immediately tried to come back up my gullet. No way was I going to take another bite of that sandwich. My father told me that come hell or high water I was going to eat every bite of that sandwich and I was not going to leave the table until I showed him a clean plate. I sat there for an hour trying to figure out how to get rid of that hideous corned beef sandwich without eating it. Finally, my father went into the family room to watch the Cubs game and, out of desperation, I decided to stuff the corned beef sandwich down the front of my pants. I then yelled at my father to come in and inspect my now clean plate. He did a cursory inspection of my plate and certified that I had complied with the rules and regulations of the clean plate club and was now released from my kitchen table incarceration. I immediately jumped up and ran out the back door before he could change his mind or ask me about the big bulge in the front of my pants. Once I got out to the back yard I took off my pants and started to dig all the chunks of corned beef and bread out of my underwear. While I was doing this the neighborhood mongrels caught the scent of corned beef and, in a large slavering pack, came running at me barking like it was the end of the world. I ripped my underwear off, threw them down on the ground, pulled my pants on and started running as fast as my terrified legs would carry me. The hounds from hell gulped down the bits and pieces of the corned beef sandwich and then took off after me like I had a pork chop tied around my neck. After running around the block three times I got tired and decided that the only way to avoid getting torn to shreds by this pack of deranged hounds was to climb the cottonwood tree in the vacant lot next to our house. I got up high enough in this tree to get beyond the reach of the pack of hounds who had encircled the trunk of the tree and were leaping at me and snapping their jaws in a mad corned beef induced frenzy. All this commotion caused my father to get out of his BarcaLounger and come outside to find out what the hell was going on. As he was coming out of the back door he grabbed my underwear and waving them around his head, he screamed at the dogs to stop barking and go home. He then helped me out of the tree and asked me what in the hell my underwear were doing in the backyard and how did I wind up in the cottonwood tree surrounded by a howling pack of neighborhood mongrels. I gave him a shrug of my shoulders and a dumb look and told him: “I don’t know.” He shook his head, called me an idiot and told me to go bother someone else in the neighborhood and leave him in peace to enjoy the Cubs game. To this day I can’t stand the sight, smell or taste of corned beef.

This is a shot of the ruins of an old farmhouse on the trail up to Cruz de Ferro.

This is a shot of Cruz de Ferro.

This is a shot of the Camino Family at Cruz de Ferro. From left to right, Giorgio from Italy now living in Canada, Marco from Italy, Kim from Denmark, Oliver from Denmark, Tina from Denmark and your humble correspondent.

This is a shot of me at Cruz de Ferro.

This is the stone I left at the foot of the cross at Cruz de Ferro.

In the mid 1980s I was working at the Gorsuch law firm and was asked to be a mentor for one of our summer associates or interns. His name was Rob. At the end of the summer I took Rob out to lunch to thank him for all the great work he had done that summer. Rob said he had a gift for me and gave me this stone. He said that in order to do the work I did I needed to be pretty hard hearted and that in the short time I had been an attorney I had developed a heart of stone. I didn’t think much of his comment at that time but I always kept the “heart of stone” that he gave me. According to tradition you should bring a stone on your pilgrimage and leave it at the foot of the cross at Cruz de Ferro as a symbol of something within yourself that you no longer want to carry around as part of the baggage we all accumulate during our journey through life. I left this stone at the foot of the cross because I wanted to leave my old hard heart there and work on a new softer heart that is kind, generous and loving. I know this is a tall order but this is the Camino and anything is possible on the Camino.

Abe left a stone from Little Round Top at Gettysburg. Abe has been carrying this stone, and his guilt over the 650,000 to 850,000 soldiers who died during the Civil War, around with him for over 150 years. He wanted to leave his guilt and sorrow for the deaths of those boys and men at the foot of the cross at Cruz de Ferro. St. Christopher left a stone that he blessed representing Anna’s cancer and his fervent prayer that her treatment will be successful and that she will go on to live a full and happy life. Then, the three of us shed a few tears and exchanged hugs and started to walk down the Way, feeling a lightness that you can only experience after shedding a heavy burden.

This is an Italian who is riding this crazy bicycle from Rome to Santiago. He has a boom box attached to the bike and is playing music from the Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns as he pedals along the Way. I am sure this would make Clint Eastwood’s day.

These are shots of me walking down the mountain to Molinaseca.

The scenery on the walk from Cruz de Ferro to Molinaseca was spectacular.

This is a little wayside rest stop run by a lunatic that thinks he is a Knight Templar.

More shots of the scenery as we walk down the mountain to Molinaseca

This is the trail. What a nightmare!

This is the river valley leading down to Molinaseca

This is Molinaseca

I hope everyone had a good Tuesday.

Good evening from Molinaseca, Spain.