Meseta and the Camino of Life

[bib]

Hi everyone

It’s been a year now since returning from my Camino and it’s largely felt like the meseta of my life. I’m curious how your ‘after’ experience is so please feel free to share. Here’s a poem I write a while ago...

Meseta
Some say you are boring
Or too challenging
And actively avoid you
By catching the bus

I admit
On that first stretch
I largely ignored you too
And chose to put my headphones on
To listen to my music instead
To get me through

And I enjoyed my familiar playlist
Dancing in the rain
To my favourite
More upbeat tunes

Yet later
As I got more deeply into you I appreciated you more
You were so green
And expansive
And beautiful
You were nothing like the dry pictures
And derogatory stories I’d heard and read about you

And don’t think I didn’t notice
The way you protect your valleyed towns Where even the highest church
Is humbled
By your plateaued heights

Flat landscape of wonder
Thank you for being you
And not trying to be
like other landscapes
As you are equally true

 

[malingerer]

Hi everyone

It’s been a year now since returning from my Camino and it’s largely felt like the meseta of my life. I’m curious how your ‘after’ experience is so please feel free to share. Here’s a poem I write a while ago...

Meseta
Some say you are boring
Or too challenging
And actively avoid you
By catching the bus

I admit
On that first stretch
I largely ignored you too
And chose to put my headphones on
To listen to my music instead
To get me through

And I enjoyed my familiar playlist
Dancing in the rain
To my favourite
More upbeat tunes

Yet later
As I got more deeply into you I appreciated you more
You were so green
And expansive
And beautiful
You were nothing like the dry pictures
And derogatory stories I’d heard and read about you

And don’t think I didn’t notice
The way you protect your valleyed towns Where even the highest church
Is humbled
By your plateaued heights

Flat landscape of wonder
Thank you for being you
And not trying to be
like other landscapes
As you are equally true

sounds as if you will be back! Skip the headphones!

The Malingerer

 

[bib]

sounds as if you will be back! Skip the headphones!

The Malingerer

yeah....I thought my Camino would be a once in a lifetime event...but I think I will be back one day...week...month

 

[bib]

I just noticed a few typos in my original post (so that's an OP right?)...should read 'a poem I wrote a while ago'. Anyway, that's what happens when one is Camino reminiscing in a cafe on one's phone!

 

[Robo]

I love the Meseta.
Why is it singled out as being somehow different though?
It's just part of the Camino Frances.........
The landscape changes.....

 

[Turga]

Nice poem!
I have had just about everything on the Meseta: Baking hot solitary days, clear starry nights, chilly (cold) mornings, heavy rain. The Meseta will always have a surprise in store for you –love it!

 

[bib]

I love the Meseta.
Why is it singled out as being somehow different though?
It's just part of the Camino Frances.........
The landscape changes.....

I've got a whole book of Camino Frances poems...the Meseta has just been my mood lately. I love it too - even though it's a long hard slog sometimes

 

[moxy]

I just noticed a few typos in my original post (so that's an OP right?)...should read 'a poem I wrote a while ago'. Anyway, that's what happens when one is Camino reminiscing in a cafe on one's phone!

No worries, it just makes it genuine. There is a kind of beauty in imperfection where our human side is showed to others.

 

[lt56ny]

I know many people skip the Meseta. I have had some of the most intense moments spiritually and psychologically on the Meseta. Those long stretches, that some found monotonous, for me allows me to empty out all the crap in my messed up brain and allows my brain to go blank. It helps clear the crap out to allow good things from your spirit and the universe to come into your head, heart and body. hope this doesn't sound too new age or anything hahaha But it is true for sure!

 

[Chris Gi]

I love the Meseta.
Why is it singled out as being somehow different though?
It's just part of the Camino Frances.........
The landscape changes.....

I think my favorite part of the Frances is the Meseta. But then I haven’t been there in mid summer - that could be a different experience.

 

[RJM]

I love the Meseta.
Why is it singled out as being somehow different though?
It's just part of the Camino Frances.........
The landscape changes.....

I have no idea, and wonder that every time I read something about it describing it as such, and there's actually very little variation in temperature in it than the rest of the Frances.
It actually looks just like other places in Europe and North America I have visited. Same flat landscape filled with agricultural fields, broken up with occasional patches of wood and rolling hills.

 

[Stivandrer]

The Meseta has the greater Comtemplator Factor

 

[Former member 42123]

I love the Meseta.
Why is it singled out as being somehow different though?
It's just part of the Camino Frances.........
The landscape changes.....

I too love the Meseta and it draws me back yet again in Sept, Burgos to Ponferrada.I have difficulties trying to get family and friends to understand my fixation,and I fail to understand why some Pilgrims avoid it.I will be 72 this time and due to circumstances this is possibly my last Camino.I will miss it ,but it will be in my heart forever.

 

[André Walker]

I just noticed a few typos in my original post (so that's an OP right?)...should read 'a poem I wrote a while ago'. Anyway, that's what happens when one is Camino reminiscing in a cafe on one's phone!

It just goes to show that you're living in the present

 

[Thomas V]

Hi everyone

It’s been a year now since returning from my Camino and it’s largely felt like the meseta of my life. I’m curious how your ‘after’ experience is so please feel free to share. Here’s a poem I write a while ago...

Meseta
Some say you are boring
Or too challenging
And actively avoid you
By catching the bus

I admit
On that first stretch
I largely ignored you too
And chose to put my headphones on
To listen to my music instead
To get me through

And I enjoyed my familiar playlist
Dancing in the rain
To my favourite
More upbeat tunes

Yet later
As I got more deeply into you I appreciated you more
You were so green
And expansive
And beautiful
You were nothing like the dry pictures
And derogatory stories I’d heard and read about you

And don’t think I didn’t notice
The way you protect your valleyed towns Where even the highest church
Is humbled
By your plateaued heights

Flat landscape of wonder
Thank you for being you
And not trying to be
like other landscapes
As you are equally true

After our first full Frances (we also thought our first Camino was going to be a once in a lifetime deal) we went back for a second Camino. We didn’t have the time to complete the full Frances so we choose Pamplona to Leon so we could enjoy the Meseta again. Walking into and out of Castrojeriz is amazing. The villages on the Meseta are not to be missed. May you find your way back soon. We are now heading to the Norte. Just one more “once in a lifetime” Camino

 

[CESAR Ribeiro]

Wonderfull Bib, thank you for the beautiful words!!!

 

[MarkyD]

I know many people skip the Meseta. I have had some of the most intense moments spiritually and psychologically on the Meseta. Those long stretches, that some found monotonous, for me allows me to empty out all the crap in my messed up brain and allows my brain to go blank. It helps clear the crap out to allow good things from your spirit and the universe to come into your head, heart and body. hope this doesn't sound too new age or anything hahaha But it is true for sure!

I completely agree with you. My Meseta experience was profound on all levels. I met wonderful people at various stages, despite the long lonely stretches walking in the early morning darkness or the baking heat of the day. I think at one point I must have cried a bucket load of tears while remembering my dear mother who had passed away over 5 years previously. Her name was Isolina, and she was from Spain - a small mountain village about 12km from Villafranca del Bierzo. I thought that I had a grieved plenty 5 years ago, but on the Meseta it took me deep into my heart and mind and allowed a massive release of emotions and feelings. I felt her presence with me at various stages on the camino: starting in SJPP, a church in Navarrete, a church in Burgos and that day on the Meseta was where it all opened up completely, at least that was what I thought at the time. But then the descent into El Bierzo after leaving Cruz de Ferro was where it all came out again, only deeper and left me almost totally exhausted. Yet every day I woke up smiling and seemed to have a constant smile within my heart, no matter what physical difficulties I was facing, and there were a few. The Meseta is to be embraced for what it is, just like the Camino, just like life.
Reading that poem just allowed me to release a little more while on the bus to my English class!

 

[bib]

remembering my dear mother who had passed away over 5 years previously. ...
Reading that poem just allowed me to release a little more while on the bus to my English class!

Thanks MarkyD. I remembered my mum a lot too while I was walking as she had also passed away about 5 years before. Glad to hear my poem enabled you to release a little more.

 

[Wockin]

The Meseta was a time of reflection! I felt it was needed right where it is.

 

[arturo garcia]

The "Meseta" invites us, as well as the hills and mountains, to placate our mind, to make it more flat and equanimous, to contemplate the vastness of the sky and deflate our Ego. Every Meseta is a potential mountain and every mountain will one day be reduced to a Meseta.