LIVE from the Camino Meseta Magic... Derwen

[Derwen Rhys]

Having arrived in Carrion, footworn and tired I have a chance to reflect on the last few days. I stayed in the industrial outskirts of Burgos.. not pretty but they never are. I slogged it through Burgos at 6am. I know I missed wonderful things but I feel most content and safe on The Way. I climbed up into the Meseta. A cloudy start that broke up and wind picking up. I was somewhere else in my head. I arrived in Hornillos and decided to stay.
At about 7pm I felt strange. I had crossed my first part of the Meseta and not taken anything in. I threw on some shorts and started walking back up the way, from where we had all come. There is a small bridge on the outskirts under which an enthusiastic stream runs along covered in white crowfoot. Swifts were showing off all about me and I continued back up that antique white path listening to the poplars crackle and fizz in the breeze. Does the Meseta wind have a name? I was told by a local it blows mainly from the east so urging on tired caminotti. I called it la vela peregrinos, the pilgrims sail. It pushes you on, on course, through an ocean of wheat and barley the colour of mountain lions. I sat at the crossroads on the town sign, uprooted by a car by the look of it. I had my Meseta.
Next morning I left in the dark and trudged my way into a glorious dawn. The wheat watches you as you pass by. It tumbles down to the ways edge , surging forward to glimpse the strange but constant travellers. A land that smells of jasmine, marzipan, the middle ages and burnt ironing. I fell in love with the Meseta. I know I will dream if it.

 

[Al the optimist]

Funny that. The wind always seems to be in my face when I walk the Mesetta!

 

[indyinmaine]

Funny that. The wind always seems to be in my face when I walk the Mesetta!

Ditto, at about 50km/h!

 

[Derwen Rhys]

I

Ditto, at about 50km/h!

I will have to find that old man.

Funny that. The wind always seems to be in my face when I walk the Mesetta!

thanks dave. I'm gonna find that old man... I had a bit of a wobble couple of hour ago. I went up into the church tower of saintigo apostello and there was that wind again, easterly, urging me on. I have never had a period in my life where highs and lows hit you so often and powerfully. At times it feels completely unreal like I'm watching myself in a movie. There is so much to take it that you can't possibly. I listened to a wonderful personal story today... an American girl I walked with for a couple of hours . It just hit a nerve, there on the senda, and tears rolled down my cheeks. We said out goodbyes at the Templar church... there on a forgettable road side within the bounds of the way, raw emotion just took over. It's incredible

Funny that. The wind always seems to be in my face when I walk the Mesetta!

 

[vgen5122]

I found wonderful caring people on the Camino. Saying good-by to thoes people was the hardest part of my Camino.

 

[Jabaldo]

Having arrived in Carrion, footworn and tired I have a chance to reflect on the last few days. I stayed in the industrial outskirts of Burgos.. not pretty but they never are. I slogged it through Burgos at 6am. I know I missed wonderful things but I feel most content and safe on The Way. I climbed up into the Meseta. A cloudy start that broke up and wind picking up. I was somewhere else in my head. I arrived in Hornillos and decided to stay.
At about 7pm I felt strange. I had crossed my first part of the Meseta and not taken anything in. I threw on some shorts and started walking back up the way, from where we had all come. There is a small bridge on the outskirts under which an enthusiastic stream runs along covered in white crowfoot. Swifts were showing off all about me and I continued back up that antique white path listening to the poplars crackle and fizz in the breeze. Does the Meseta wind have a name? I was told by a local it blows mainly from the east so urging on tired caminotti. I called it la vela peregrinos, the pilgrims sail. It pushes you on, on course, through an ocean of wheat and barley the colour of mountain lions. I sat at the crossroads on the town sign, uprooted by a car by the look of it. I had my Meseta.
Next morning I left in the dark and trudged my way into a glorious dawn. The wheat watches you as you pass by. It tumbles down to the ways edge , surging forward to glimpse the strange but constant travellers. A land that smells of jasmine, marzipan, the middle ages and burnt ironing. I fell in love with the Meseta. I know I will dream if it.

My wife and I are readying ourself for our first Camino. We start 9/14 from SJPP. From reading your post I think you have found the meaning of the Camino. I envy you. I am looking for what you have found, inner self reflection, inner peace, inner satisfaction of just being. Thank you for your post it has inspired me to look forward.
Buen Camino

 

[indyinmaine]

My wife and I are readying ourself for our first Camino. We start 9/14 from SJPP. From reading your post I think you have found the meaning of the Camino. I envy you. I am looking for what you have found, inner self reflection, inner peace, inner satisfaction of just being. Thank you for your post it has inspired me to look forward.
Buen Camino

Make the same effort, or lack of it, to "listen" as you do to "look".

 

[Derwen Rhys]

No

Make the same effort, or lack of it, to "listen" as you do to "look".

Not quite sure what you mean and whom this is intended for. I have been listening for two weeks now. I stop all the time to just 'listen.'

 

[jayree]

Having arrived in Carrion, footworn and tired I have a chance to reflect on the last few days ... I fell in love with the Meseta. I know I will dream if it.

Buen Camino Derwen. Thank you for your wonderful thoughts about the Meseta. Below is another description to ponder as you walk. It's one of my favorites.

“One of the medieval meanings of the word ‘pilgrim’ is that of an exile on earth, and nowhere does the long-term pilgrim feel as if he or she were an exile than in the great sun-and-storm-beaten Meseta of northern Spain, passage through which is one of the pilgrimage’s essential defining moments. In this place, seemingly devoid of people or human habitation outside of its small and very circumscribed towns, the pilgrim feels at the complete mercy of the sun, the wind, and the rain - which, along with the wretched earth on which the exhausted pilgrim rests, makes up the four elements of nature in the medieval sense - with no one and nowhere to turn to for relief. For me, it was especially here that the pilgrimage took on the feeling of a permanent way of life, due in part, no doubt, to the featurelessness and unchanging aspect of this place to which I came to be inexplicably drawn.”

Conrad Rudolph, “Pilgrimage to the End of the World” (2004), p82