Ecotone

145 Along the Camino de Santiago Jacqueline Kolosov In Spanish, the word for pilgrim is peregrino, though this is not its only meaning. Peregrino is also strange and absurd as well as fleeting, transitory. Strange and absurd made sense to me, for a pilgrim had to be a little weird to choose the blisters, leg pain, and cumulative fatigue that inevitably accompanied days of walking in the hot Spanish sun. But fleeting? This other meaning, I decided, would take time to reveal itself. Onward, from the jewel-like St. Jean Pied-de-Port through Roncesvalles I walked, immediately grateful for the gentle curves of the Pyrenees, and the mild temperatures. To guide me, a yellow scallop shell, the official sign of the pilgrim, adorned trees, telephone poles, even the corners of buildings. Six days into a pilgrimage I had begun on a remarkably mild first day of August, I left the mountains for the softer rise and fall of Navarre. It was outside the village of Estella that I misread one of the yellow signs and wound up straying a good eight kilometers from the Camino before realizing that I was heading east, back into the mountains , instead of west toward Santiago. According to the medievals, the pilgrim shed her former self en route to Santiago, the sins or at least the baggage vanishing with the sweat and excess pounds. By walking west, a person walked out of herself . The old self must die for the new self to be born, the Compostela said. And what did I need to shed? The tear-streaked face of the twentyfour -year-old woman who stood before a candlelit altar at the university chapel and vowed to love, honor, and cherish Ian—a man I had met during my first year of college—until death do us part. Ian, a man who had walked with me through the Alps of Austria; but also a man who had become someone strange to me, someone in whom I could no longer recognize my own face. Until death do us part. Cuando la vida no pesa, es possible vivir. —Mario Benedetti 146 Ecotone: reimagining place By the time I reached the auberge (pilgrim’s hostel) in the village of Viana, it was pitch dark. The dinner had already been served, and there were no leftovers. As for the beds, each and every one had been claimed. My faulta meant that I had to dine on a gristly hunk of cheese and some hard bread. Worse yet, my only sleeping option became a tent with three Spaniards, all of whom were named Jesus and all of whom snored. Getting lost was one of my problems, but it wasn’t the only one. Although the Outward Bound salesperson had sold me a superb pair of featherweight boots before I left Chicago, blisters cropped up on my toes. These I treated nightly, alongside the other pilgrims, bending over my feet, as if in prayer, as I applied the trademark slick white ointment . Eight days later, in the town of Fromista, I failed to make the traditional early start. True, my feet ached, and new blisters had begun to bubble over the old ones that still had not healed. Yet foot pain was not the only reason for my slowness. That morning I felt especially lazy, and there was a dull ache in my low back. With the hot Spanish sun beating down, I actually began to contemplate blowing my Santiago savings by checking into a chic hotel, or any hotel for that matter (Fromista was not a glamorous place), where I could spend the day soaking in a hot bath, then settling into the cool, clean whiteness of cotton sheets. Such subversion was the reason why 11:00 a.m. found me sitting at an outdoor café in a cobblestone plaza, drinking my third café con leche and gobbling pastry as gray pigeons scouted for crumbs beneath my feet. Into this tranquil scene stepped Mariano Guitierez, his brown cheeks flushed with sweat, his enormous smile just preceding his throbbing baritone voice. “It’s the lovely American! My god, what are you doing here?” Not only me but every other...