Last night I dreamt that I walked the camino again. Naturally, I am looking at flights this morning. I just found one for under $200. WHAT.
Before I left, I said to my friend Lindsay, “I mean, what if it doesn’t change me? What if I go on this pilgrimage and all I do is eat carbs and tone my legs?”
She laughed.
I was serious.
I am not the same. I will never be the same. I think about the camino every day. EVERY DAY. I think about singing in the rain with the Italian then drinking a beer in a pub along the way to dry off for a bit. I think about standing barefoot in the river in Zubiri on day 3 soaking my feet before walking another 5 km to my albergue where I had the most beautiful dinner to date (we drank, we laughed, we used google translate to tell jokes).
I think about how I got so overwhelmed in Pampalona because the energy was dark and dense. I think about staying in a monastery and being blessed by nuns in a church. I remember thinking, “Do nuns wear thongs?”
I think about the woman in that Albergue who was drying her hair under the hand dryer and slept in the bunk next to me. She was nervous and chatty. The luggage transfer service hadn’t delivered her backpack so she had only the clothes on her back. She couldn’t sleep because we had stage 5 snorers. The next morning she walked with me in the dark to get coffee which turned into a long breakfast. My friend Karl, a seasoned walker, a wise man from The Netherlands who understood energy and who I frequently saw speak into the lives of so many pilgrims, joined us. The woman, Grizzy, had lost her husband that year. Her kids were grown. She was searching for an identity. So far the camino had given her bed bugs, covid, and lost luggage. Me, Karl, and Grizzy shared coffee and toast that morning. We each cried about love, loss, and life on the camino.
I miss conversations with strangers.
It’s safe to say that I’ve been in a bit of a post-camino depression. I’m sure if I stalked reddit or some of the camino Facebook groups I left (because when I shared my substack posts, someone said, “Oh great. Just what we need. Another click-bait” and I didn’t really understand exactly what he meant but it was enough to make me feel ashamed) I would see that this is probably normal.
How can you return to life after an experience like that and NOT feel a bit of a depression?
Because I don’t have a car, I often take Uber or Lyft here in Colorado. I joke with the drivers that THEY are my social life.
Yesterday, 68-year old Scott, a recovering addict, picked me up where I was house sitting in Denver. For the next 30 minutes we talked about nuclear annihilation, greed, and misogyny. He doesn’t think women should be allowed to fight in wars, but promised he wasn’t a misogynist.
“You sure about that, Scott?” I asked.
I’ve gotten rides with poets who sing to me, the high-powered corporate woman turned Uber driving life coach, the woman who talked about angels and astrology, Matt who took his Uber career very seriously and offered to mentor me should I start my own. The day I left for the camino at 3am, I got a ride with this gentleman who had been in a coma from Covid and came out thinking he had been responsible for killing a nurse.
Uber and Lyft are where it’s at, I think. But it’s also an expensive way to socialize, so I think that maybe I should consider the camino as a more economical option.
I am prone to isolate myself during periods of depression and call it, “introverting”.
Dogs and kids are my exception here because they give me energy instead of drain it.
In all the talks about how to prepare for the camino, a conversation I didn’t see was how to prepare for returning from the camino. I used to feel this way after summer camp. Sure, it was mainly because I fell head over heels for that unavailable basketball player, Travis who lived in Indiana, but it was also because it was such a departure from the mundane. The whole mountain top to valley analogy.
“But you can’t live on a mountain” they used to say.
Um, hello. I literally lived at the top of a mountain at 8500 feet above elevation in Evergreen. I can assure you, that was not the typical mountain high experience (unless we are talking about weed, because I was in fact stoned for the majority of that chapter).
When I had coffee with my expat friend, Leigh who lives in Santiago now, I told her that I was thinking I should start a yoga and writing retreat for when you finish the camino before you return home. It would be a chance to unpack before unpacking.
Yesterday, I attended virtually, the graduation ceremony for Vermont College of Fine Arts, class of January 2023. The school is changing. It’s the last residency on campus in Vermont. The physical structure of the school is no longer, and changing much like the world we live in. I hadn’t processed the loss of the place that encouraged me to use instead of suppress my voice. The place that held me on and off the page as I processed the loss of my best friend. One of the only places I have ever felt like I fit in.
But yesterday, at the end of one of the speeches, Ellen Lesser, a Vermont College staple, read this quote and I could not hold back the tears but I also can’t remember the quote and none of my friends have texted me back yet reminding me what the quote was, so please forgive me and know that it went something like this,
“It was perfect, so of course it has to end.”
Experiences are MEANT To change us. We are not always meant to live on the mountain. We have to come down eventually and tell others about the view, to share what we learned, to maybe bring back a message and a good story. I think it’s okay to honor the entirety of the journey. Getting the call, avoiding the call, picking up the call, walking into the wild unknown, experiencing some portion of “the hero’s journey” and returning perhaps a bit more directionally challenged than before. Sometimes we can not see what is being worked out within us. We are too close, too invested in the outcome, too in our EGO about how we think things should go.
Maybe my dream was another camino call. Or maybe it was just a nudge to come out of hiding and be vulnerable because telling on myself is my idea of a good Sunday morning :).
I’m heading to the Dominican this month with this family I have been staying with that have become dear friends. So a shot of Vitamin D, flip flops, and time with good humans should help with tiny little SAD episode.
To be continued…