One Day Like This

How I slept that night...

I may have found a place of magic. Tonight I sleep in the loft/attic of the Church of Saint John the Baptist. It's a parish albuergue and the church dates back to the 16th century.

Entering the church balcony

I'm sleeping on a mat on the floor and I can already tell that it'll be close quarters within the inescapable vicinity of snoring, but I think I'll be alright. It's just so beautiful.

I'm glad I walked the extra 8km to Granon when the group I was mostly walking with stayed in the more traditional stopping point of Santo Domingo de la Calzada. I don't think my body can take another nearly 30km walk three days in a row.

View from the balcony

I may have been dehydrated today.  Almost out of water and on the last long stretch of the hottest part of the day, I started having really silly thoughts like:

"If only I had an umbrella, I could be under shade all the time!"

And I may have started singing my favorite tunes from Disney films, but I tend to do that anyway.

A nice Camino-themed door knocker

At one point someone passed by me and said they were surprised I was barely sweating.  This triggered thoughts back to my limited first aid training where I remember that as being a possible sign of dehydration.  Oh and then when I reached the town I completely missed the albuergue sign and kept walking, adding unnecessary steps.

Peeling potatoes

When I finally reached the church and where I was going to stay I walked in and was a bit disoriented by the dark stone corridor that narrowly led up to the common area. I sat down right away just to gain my senses while a pilgrim I knew grabbed my bag off my shoulders. I sat there for a while just coming back to life, looking like a complete mess, while the woman who ran the house and the other pilgrim spoke in Spanish.  At one point she smiled warmly and said something to me. I looked to my friend for translation and he said, "She says you're beautiful."

Dinner that night

That night we all cooked dinner together and afterward meditated and prayed in our own languages in a group in the balcony of the church. I was the only one who spoke in English,  and one of the things I said was to hope that we live spiritually everyday in the way we believe in ourselves on the Camino. I talked about the journeys we took just to get here and how our journeys cross now. I had no idea if people understood, but one person after came up to me, hugged me, and thanked me.