Scallop

424

What’s their story?

Martin, the Austrian who’s been living in Spain for 15 years, and his girlfriend Monica, from Tenerife, the Canary Islands. Joe, the older Irishman who is quiet over dinner, perhaps not hearing everything, especially after the TV is turned up as Spain trounce Croatia loudly and enthusiastically in the European Cup.

Saffron, the Canadian with the shin splints, the French guy, I didn’t catch his name, or the German couple who also started walking in Burgos and gave us magnesium to swallow (“for the muscles”). The sullen looking man at the picnic spot after we climbed our first hill, who obviously slept there. Maybe he was worried about being caught? He was friendly when we left but suspicious when we showed up.

The people who pass us on bicycles, some electric, often clad in lycra. People with loads they carry, or none at all, because it’s easy to get bags sent forward. The large beefy guy who walks past us with his phone pressed to his ear, talking loudly in German amidst all the wheat, passing through the Meseta like it is an office corridor. 

All of us drawing towards the same point, not only on this path but on the multiple caminoes that head towards Santiago. The coastal route, the Camino del Norte. Or the one that passes through the mountains, the Primitivo. Or the Portuguese, traveling up from Lisbon. So many paths leading to the same goal.

I think about the shell, symbol of the camino. Most pilgrims carry one on their packs, loosely dangling away attached to a zipper or an unused toggle, the symbol of the way, but up until now I assumed it was just another Christian thing I didn’t need to know much about, like a fish on a bumper bar, a wafer, a cup of wine.

But then the meaning of it hits me and I stop and tell your Mum. She looks at me with as though I’m stupid. I know the look, it means she’s already told me something before and only now am I understanding and talking about it as though I have come to the realisation all on my own (which I have). With an air of impatience she proceeds to tell me something she probably told me back in Australia when it didn’t mean that much to me and I heard but didn’t really hear, if you know what I mean.

That must be annoying, so this time I really listen, and she points out that, on the camino, the shell always faces a certain way. When she says that I say “yeah, you’re right!” (which doesn’t help), because all the shells we have seen so far are either on their side or upside down (as I think a shell should be shown). The open fan part is down so that all the lines end up converging at the top. The top being Santiago! All the lines are all the roads leading to Santiago de Compostela! I say it out loud as though I’m the first person to ever see this (which doesn’t help).

I keep walking and turn the thoughts over. Ok, I should have (listened) thought about this before because it is symbolic and symbols are becoming important. They tell stories and this one, the shell that points the way, is about how all these people I’ve met, and all the other people I haven’t, are moving on different paths towards the same goal, physically, geographically, spiritually.

Many roads leading the same way.

The sun burns the back of my legs. No-one mentioned this, or at least I didn’t read about it, but because the Camino travels west and we’re trying to get the majority of our walking done in the first half of the day, the sun is always behind us, snapping at our heels, scorching the backs of our legs. I’ve already seen a dark patch of skin, a camino tan, on dozens of pilgrims as they walk past us, or spotted the sock line at the back of their legs when they’re stretched out munching on a bocadillo.

Speaking of bocadillos, it’s getting time to stop for our lunch soon. I look ahead to see if there’s any shade coming and as I do so I realise I’ve been staring down at the path, watching each foot strike the gravel as we cross the expanse of wheat, barley, sky, crumbling stone, wildflowers. Each foot sending a puff of dust into the air when it descends and lands on the dry earth.

I grunt out loud. My hips are killing me, and they occupy my thoughts. Recently I had the right one x-rayed and the news wasn’t great, a degeneration from overuse. Now I think about all the ways I have pounded that hip over the years, always favouring it to land on, repeating the same moves over and over in classes I was teaching or shows I was performing. The life of a dancer. I think about the way I always performed a kind of suffering body onstage, and how that was no longer a performance, more of a reality.

My feet hit the dust.

“Hip, hip hooray, there is joy in every day. I move forward with joy and ease at every age”. I repeat the wonderfully daggy Louise Hay affirmation to myself. It’s not lost on me it’s the same hip that has caused my Mum so many problems. My hip is part of my story now. Each step I take is both beautiful and horrible, pain and discomfort, mingled with the joy I feel to be here. When I sit down it takes me a few moments to straighten, if I have to put my shoes back on after a break, it’s a long and awkward reach. I recognise that I am a long way away from the dancer I used to be.

Dust.

I look up and out, away from this story that’s condensing inside me. Ahead on the path I see others moving forward. Behind me, still more, currently out of sight but inevitably catching and passing us at our current pace. Further away, out of sight, dozens of other caminoes, other routes to Santiago, full of people all converging on the same goal. Facing their own realities as they walk their paths through life.

Lines on a shell. All of us carrying our stories, whatever the weight.

Hip, hip hooray.