Camino 2024, Part IV: Possibility

This is the fourth and final part in a series. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Finally, we can sleep in. Santiago wakes slowly, and after breakfast at the Café Las Vegas—finally, true protein instead of a halfhearted menú peregrino—we start a circuit, around the compact downtown but always back to the plaza before the cathedral. Here the ritual repeats itself all day: exhausted pilgrims stride in and collapse, grinning. Some dance and jump and sing, some sit in quiet contemplation. Some embrace fellow travelers, others ask total strangers to take their pictures. Some, proud of their conquest, march off to collect their compostela or take a shower or find the nearest bar. Others linger, perhaps to lean up against the arcade on the university building opposite the cathedral, little live gargoyles lining the wall, there to watch the rite repeat itself.

The crowd who broke up the final day rolls through first. The Czech guy, now beaming and triumphant, takes his sweet time in the square. Ron and Marnie roll in a bit later, and I get a hug from their friend when she hunts them down at the bar, only two beers ahead of her. Of course there are more chance encounters with Alan and the Spaniards, too.

We attend the Pilgrim’s Mass. Alas, the botafumeiro is not on display today, but we do get a service befitting of the Camino. Priests from Korea, Ireland, and the US join the Spaniards who lead it, most words in Spanish but with nods to other languages. The students from Sevilla get a special shoutout, and one comes forward to read some words on what their trek has meant. Maybe half the congregation takes communion, the rest merely there to absorb it. Catholicism in the literal sense of the word.

Lunch comes with mediocre service on a pleasant patio. I then bid my dad Buen Camino as he rolls north to A Coruña, off on the final leg of his six-week journey across Iberia. I broaden my circuit around the city as I kill time before my own bus back south. I chat with Alan and Maria on a placid park bench, and I catch them yet again as I head for the bus station. I flag down Julie and Susan from Saskatchewan on the plaza, and later share a beer with them; they’ve befriended Marcia and Michelle from the States on the Spiritual Variant, though my bus leaves before their scheduled rendezvous, and I do not see them in the flesh.

Instead, I turn a reluctant back on Santiago and begin the return journey. It is a three-and-a-half-hour bus ride back to Porto, much of it lining the very route I just walked, past the factory in Pontecesures, the suspension bridge on the Rías Baixas, past a familiar little market outside Valença. We stop in Vigo, a clump of ugly apartment blocks on a stunning strait, as the sun slips toward the Illas Atlánticas, the last dots of land before the great expanse of ocean beyond. The sparsely filled bus is mostly populated by southbound pilgrims, including two women from Washington State who have just been to Muxia and Fisterra on the coast, and my seatmate, a shy, thoughtful Italian army kid on leave, who heads to Porto to start his own Camino. The cycle starts anew.

The Italian kid and I wander through the station together before we part ways in bewilderment at the signage in Campanhã station. After wandering in a circle I befriend a local who is equally confused, and she and I eventually find our way to the Metro together. The navigation challenges continue when I come up out of the Metro into a pile of construction barriers, as parts of downtown Porto are torn up for the construction of a new Metro line. Nevertheless, I find the Torre dos Clérigos, lit up in purple at night, and pick my way up a hill toward my hostel on the Jardim de Cordoaria, a pleasant leafy square bisected by a cable car. I’ve taken a private room in the hostel, though I spend some time at its bar sipping port and meeting the fellow guests, including a Brit who has just wrapped up several years working on his uncle’s butterfly farm in Kenya. As one does, of course. The room is lovely, with a grand view from a tiny balcony out on the square, though the party at the bars down below rages until past two AM, the revelers singing and shouting ceaselessly. It is a Wednesday.

Porto is to Lisbon what Barcelona is to Madrid: the smaller, cooler second city of an Iberian nation. Of course the port wine caves across the in Vila Nova de Gaia and the vineyards up the Douro may be its foremost claim to fame, but this is a flashy city, draped over hills rising up from the river, great church towers and pastel buildings with gilded balconies. Foremost, however, are the azulejos, the stunning blue tile that brings life to facades and back alleys and the São Bento train station. I don’t have nearly enough time, and it is a hot day to plug up and down its hills on still-battered feet. Still, I catch as much as I can, up and down hills and across the river, relaxing in the shade and dispensing some advice to Denise, the solo Canadian tentatively setting out on her Camino later that day.

Before long I am on the slow train back to Lisbon, which leaves on time but somehow gets two hours behind schedule. I befriend some Argentines, with whom I presage my next adventure. After some initial exasperation I find Zen as we roll through Portuguese villages in the late afternoon sun, and finally the train roles back into Santa Apolónia station in time for a stroll down the waterfront and into a sunset behind the Ponte 25 de Abril, the great red suspension bridge over the mouth of the Tagus. I am hungry, but I am compelled to join the watching crowd beside the Praza de Comercio, cuddling lovers and boisterous families, crews of friends laughing in unison. I am one with the sea.

I stroll back up and down Baixa, enjoy one last leisurely late-night meal, people-watch and admire the skilled buskers. I turn aside the double-digit number of guys who ask if I want marijuana or hash. As the crowds begin to thin and I tire of these circuits, I know it is time. I shuttle to the airport for an all-nighter ahead of a five AM takeoff for Amsterdam. I am headed home, but my Camino, I think, is still in one of its earlier stages.

I say this because it will take time to know what this Camino means. I knew this going in, and I will need to sit with it, even as other adventures build. There was occasional frustration, tired feet and a narrowed scope of life; bad weather days and language barriers drained the mood at times. (While I am fully functional in Spanish and possess more rudimentary Portuguese than most visitors from abroad, I appear to have traded my dad’s faculty for delighting in play with different languages for an obsession with precision in one.) But the Camino brought out long times of intense life in the moment, in striding up sun-splashed country lanes or strolling through teeming plazas, savoring a victory beverage and creating temporary travel friends.

There were also some moments of intense emotion, those flashes captured by Andrew McCarthy in an account of his Camino with his 19-year-old son, Walking with Sam: those moments when “the awful truth of the sweetness of life throbs in an unguarded mix of emotions.” I stood in front of the Cruz dos Mortos in the pouring rain and thought of another backpacking drip in a downpour with a cousin, now departed from this earth. Images of Mary cradling Jesus took me back to age eight; carefree Spanish kids on a plaza tugged at some glimpse of a childhood long since gone. Sunglasses hid swimming eyes as I gazed up at the spires of the cathedral at the end of our trek. I watched my dad disappear up a street in Santiago as he continued on to his next adventure at his ever-steady pace. I have always felt life vividly, but with every other external worry stripped away, the fierce intensity of the moment took a control it can never muster on a random Tuesday at the office.

It is alright to hold these throbs of emotion in contradiction. In Returning from Camino, Alexander John Shaia describes the internal chaos many pilgrims face after their returns from Santiago. “This type of energy is far more powerful than we can imagine, and it is almost impossible for our human intellect to contain it,” he writes. “It is largely beyond our rational control,” he writes, and we must “simply be with the energy,” knowing these oscillations will occur.

Perhaps something seismic is afoot and some insight will come, either in a burst of reflection or in accumulated thoughts over time. Perhaps nothing will, and I will simply look back on this trip as a once-in-a-lifetime venture through fun cities with my dad. That alone would be a sweet enough gift. But I have opened myself to every possibility, and that is why we walk these Caminos.

Camino 2024, Part III: Pilgrim’s Progress

This is Part Three in a four-part series. Part 1 | Part 2

Day 5: Rías Baixas

Tired of halfhearted breakfasts, we have scoped out a spot where we had a drink the night before, a bar named Fredyy’s, which delivers a tortilla Española before a plod out of Redondela under moody skies. We climb through its outskirts, snippets of the sea visible here and there, and at the start of a big climb are joined by Roland, a veteran Irish pilgrim shepherding 11 charges along the Camino. He sets a powerful pace up the pavement and talks of the spiritual power of the Camino while lacing in some of the joys of escorting 19-year-olds through bouts of stomach illness. Toward the top we stumble on a collection of North Americans: Ron from Phoenix, who flies a Duluth-made Cirrus plane, and his wife Marnie and a friend; a couple from Houston taking an easy pace; and Julie and Susan from the night before. The trail has grown more crowded, swelled by those who have taken the coastal version of the Camino Portugués and some who have started in Vigo.

Up on this alto we have views down the Ría, one in a series of inlets cut deep into the Galician coast. It is not quite a fjord—those require glaciers—but evocative of those jagged northern European coasts. The grey skies meet the mood, but the density of the greenery and the clusters of red-roofed homes tell us we’re in a place that is entirely its own. We pause in clearings in the eucalyptus groves to drink in the view.

We plunge down from the Alto de Lomba and into the town of Arcade, though, sadly, we are too early for its annual oyster festival, which will not start until the afternoon. German Knee Girl moves a bit better today, but we still leave her behind as we wander in search of food with Julie and Susan, and in time stumble upon a gem of a little shop with sandwiches and fresh fruit and kombucha and the biggest sello on the Camino, designed by the owner’s grandfather. We eat on a bench next to the Pontesampaio down where the Rio Verdugo meets the tip of the Ría, and here we property meet Alan and his Spaniards for a more in-depth conversation. Here on day five our Camino crew has taken shape, familiar faces now acquiring names as we leapfrog our way over the long bridge and up a second big climb of the day. This one takes us deeper into the wood, past some opportunistic entrepreneurs and then turning us loose on a long, slow descent before a road walk into Pontevedra.

At 80,000 residents, Pontevedra is the largest place we’ll visit between Porto and Santiago. That means for a large, sprawling suburban zone, and a long stretch down a bland pedestrian walk between apartment blocks. We run into Marcia and Michelle for the final time a few blocks before our hotel, as they’re turning off to do the Spiritual Variant along the coast that will bring them to Santiago a day behind us. The Hotel Madrid is a functional but nondescript tower, its back view on a bland, overgrown court between yet larger apartments.

A few blocks away, however, the old city of Pontevedra shows out, and it punches well above its weight. There is a scallop-shell chapel to pilgrims, a prominent convent, a musty old basilica with plants growing all over its façade. On the Camino we see a Spain far removed from the large restoration budgets in Barcelona and Madrid, still grand but worn down by time, the darkness and the odor adding the mystery of a deeper world. The old city’s streets are a maze of small plazas and arcades, ornate charms tucked away on stray corners, clusters of tables waiting to fill.

Slowly, Pontevedra comes to life. An intricate dance unfolds, residents and pilgrims alike, circling the narrow stone streets, seeking out bars and restaurants here on this Saturday night. Twice we cycle past a pilgrim couple we decide are Belgians, chatting the first time and laughing as we wave the second. A French-Canadian couple circulates past the mediocre brewery where we camp out to await an restaurant openings around eight; the first time around the wife appears peeved with the husband, the second time downright irate. Of course they are seated next to us when a taberna finally opens for dinner, and they too try the pulpo a feira, the simple but delectable Galician octopus specialty. Back out after dinner we go from square to square, every one of them filled with diners, boisterous with life and chatter, parents at one table, kids of all ages scattered at others, everyone here and finding their people, milling their way through the dance of Spanish urban life that runs late into the night. I could live this way for a very long time.

Day 6: Idyll

Sleep comes poorly in Pontevedra. Someone on the courtyard throws a birthday party complete with a botellón, the ritual smashing of every glass bottle consumed over the course of the night, leaving me groggy in the morning. That ends quickly: while there is a threat of rain on the initial walk out of Pontevedra, day six blossoms into the prettiest of the trip so far. The sun pokes forth, but it is never brutally hot; there is one moderate climb toward the beginning, but this is mostly a stroll down bucolic country lanes, the only disruption the Sunday bicycle riders. Early on we walk with an older Czech guy who takes it easy, our conversation all in halting English.

We do lunch at a restaurant with a sprawling terrace and a menagerie of goats, sheep, and geese parading by. Two more Galician delicacies await us here: eel casserole and then a stew with pig’s feet and tripe. Ron and Marnie from Phoenix plop down at the next table and we walk on with them for a spell, questions peppered steadily, and in time we lose them and pick up a British family, parents with two teenage sons. Mum chatters away about her oldest heading off to uni soon and the joys of the Camino, seemingly oblivious to her younger boy, who labors in misery on a gimpy leg. We leave the parents to wait for their straggling kids at a café a couple kilometers outside of Caldas de Reis, where we of course also find Alan and the Spaniards, stopped for food as usual.

Our lodging for tonight is a splurge: the Hotel Balneario Acuña, a grand old thing atop Caldas’ claim to fame, its hot springs. The French Canadians from dinner the night before roll into the room next to ours, and we share the warmer of the two outdoor pools with them and a Danish mother and son, and later Eduardo from Tenerife. The French Canadians are full of snobbish opinions (“It is essential to hike with poles!” “But of course we have the right shoes, we have no issues with blisters!”) but worth a laugh or two, the Danes are chill, and Eduardo spins a good yarn. We enjoy a shift in the indoor spa, a giant glowing tub with jets everywhere. Back outside the pool has become an amusing collection of aching pilgrims and retiree Spaniards. The place has vague Grand Budapest Hotel vibes, faded grandeur and a nod to a bygone era when a trip here was the vacation of a lifetime.

Outside its charming riverfront, where we have dinner at a tippy outdoor table down the row from the Poles and our Czech friend and the quieter-than-usual loud British girls, Caldas is a bit tired; we enjoy a good fish dinner and make a brief circuit, but my dad is ready to crash. I settle in at the dead hotel bar to catch up on notes.

This is very much my dad’s trip. A retired Spanish professor with a side love for Portuguese who enjoys long hikes and seeking out good beer: how could we design a much better venture? As the less interesting member of our twosome in these environs, I am along for the ride, content to make this trip his. In April, at least, the Camino crowd tends toward retirement age, though there are other scattered parent-kid combinations and a few youthful backpackers. While I would probably slide into this latter circle if I were alone, both our pace and our commitment to lodging with private rooms push against that, and on this trip, that is fine. It is more than enough to share this trip with my dad, a chance few sons have with their fathers, and when many fellow pilgrims observe this, I can only nod in affirmation.

The Spanish language offers a brilliant little glimmer that sums up this trip: the word for retirement is jubilación. Here in his first year out of the workforce, my dad is finding jubilation, the freedom to wander without the student charges he’s had on every previous visit to Spain, comparing notes to a Brazilian beer judge, sampling exactly what he wants to try in every town he visits. This is, indeed, how to do it right.

Day 7: Anticipation

The penultimate day on the Camino dawns damp, and we brush past our Czech friend and the British family before we trudge out of town. The rain increases in intensity. On a day like yesterday, today’s stroll through the woods would have been charming, but today it is a slog, our heads focused forward by the hoods on our jackets. The rain lifts for a bit when we get back on to country roads, and here Alan and his girlfriend Maria catch us for some extended chat on their life in Valencia; eventually they peel off to collect their crew, a necessity in a group of this size that I know all too well from extended family gatherings.

It rains again, and we take refuge in a Spanish trucker bar, where one man opines loudly over coffee where the rest stare vacantly at a nature documentary on TV. It only pours harder when we start moving again down a riverside valley path, any socializing with our fellow venturers left to a minimum. Many pull off at another café, and we wave at the Danes lounging on the covered patio. We soldier on, settling only for a brief stop at a self-service station with 50 Euro-cent bathrooms and a passable instant hot chocolate. The rain continues its off and on flips as we skirt views of industrial Pontecesures and drop across the Ulla River into Padrón.

Padrón is a small but dense town on the River Sar, a stagnant tributary of the Ulla. It was here that St. James is said to have first come to Spain; there is a monastery up on the hill where he first ministered, and the church in town has extensive art in his honor, first as a peaceful converter of the pagans and later in propaganda as Santiago Matamoros, slayer of the Moors. Our hotel is a charming, if rather cramped, time capsule from the mid-20th century, the elevator dumping us out on a landing between floors.

With a week-long festival having ended the day before, the town is dead outside of gimpy meandering pilgrims; we deduce the Irish boys using their phones to ask after a McDonalds from the locals must be Roland’s food-poisoned charges. (There is no McDonalds here, and we later see them bearing plastic bags from some convenience store.) The one place we find open for dinner is a wine bar that fills steadily with the Poles and some grumpy Germans and the loud British girls plus two less loud British girls and some French and eventually two of Alan’s Spaniards, all in a very narrow space. No one is too social, but at least the wine is good. Today there is a sense of general tiredness, the party on pause before the final push. Tomorrow in Santiago.

Day 8: Jubilation

Our last day is our longest on the Camino: while some pilgrims break up the 16 miles between Padrón and Santiago, we have decided to do it in one push. We are up early, free to groggily frown at the hotel’s breakfast of two slices of toast, though Alan and the Spaniards appear shortly after us and have somehow procured heartier fare. We head out before them, through the mists of a Galician morning, chilled through a maze of homes on the rural edge of Padrón. The route largely follows the N-550 highway but hides it from us in fog and back alleys, busting out by aged Jesuit church in Escravitude. The young guns of the Camino fly past us early, and a few more trickle by as we stop for a real breakfast in A Picaraña. In time we are back on rural lanes, the sun finally burning through the grey shrouds.

In the concello of Teo everything is impeccable, flawless lawns and fruit trees and what passes for Spanish suburban tract housing, retirees on walks to wish Buen Camino and see us on our way. With 8.5 kilometers left we stop for lunch at an oversold roadside café, where we stand in line for a while as the British girls laugh like hyenas at the next table. We let them get ahead of us, but we catch and pass them in time. After an apartment block in the suburbs we catch our first glimpse of Santiago, the cathedral spires looming in the distance seven kilometers out. Eventually it is a long, steady tromp through urbanity with nothing to recommend it, just us and some Germans powering through toward the center.

The march into Santiago feels somewhat discordant. Suddenly there are throngs of people on all sides, a small Spanish city humming at its own pace. Pilgrims, so often the objects of attention in small Portuguese and Spanish towns, melt into the backdrop. No one offers up a Buen Camino, and amid the crowds and narrow streets, the fellow pilgrims ahead and behind us blend in. It is a reminder that the world goes on, that this inward drama has little bearing on the people just down the street. We all walk our own Caminos.

In time it looms up above us: the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, the goal of this walk. Pilgrims collapse on its square, exhausted and freed, gaze about in a daze and lift their eyes toward its towering spires. A crew of kids from a Jesuit high school in Sevilla march into the plaza in full song, waving flags after a triumphant march here from southern Spain, and toss their teacher in the air in celebration. A Galician bagpipe trills in the background. All of the Brits we know trundle in, and a few other vaguely familiar faces, too. On our way to obtain our compostelas, the official proof of pilgrimage, we see the Possible Belgians from the plaza in Pontevedra, who have made a beeline for the beer. Two Canadian volunteers confirm our status and give us our certificates, and back in the square an Italian couple we’ve seen a few times arrives. Sure enough, Alan and the Spaniards are not far behind, victorious and ready for dinner.

We enter the cathedral and gaze up at its overwhelming altar of silver and gold; the horizontal organ, the crossbeams for the famed botafumeiro, the giant swinging incense burner; the side chapels to Santiago and his friends in ministry. We descend into the crypt, see the saint’s tomb, skirt the couple having a rapturous moment in its presence. From here we rise through a passage into the bowels of the altar where we are to hug the bust of the saint. I am more moved here than I was at St. Peter’s or in front of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City, more caught up in the ritual: this is deep, ancient, freighted with whatever power the Catholic church can still move on earth.

A few more familiar faces trickle through: some French in the square, the Poles in the restaurant where we dine, and of course my dad has found the best craft beer bar on offer. We have completed the pilgrimage, arrived in Santiago, ready to rest our feet, sins forgiven and life renewed. The nightcap comes on our hotel balcony, the cathedral rising up just beyond us, and while the beer is mediocre, the accomplishment is complete. I sit on the cool balcony, clean up my notes, and head to bed when the bells strike midnight on Santiago. Somos peregrinos.

Part Four is here.

Camino 2024, Part II: Finding a Stride

This is Part Two in a four-part series. Part One is here.

Day 1: Wet

It rains. And then it rains. And it rains some more.

We begin the Camino on a riverfront promenade and then cross the long span of the Ponte, built to stay above any flood. The Camino turns out of town and quickly becomes a country lane along a rushing watercourse, and we struggle around a marsh before finding easier paths. At first the Portuguese countryside looks to be in a state of crumbling disrepair, but the town of Arcozelo is well-tended, stone walls and gates holding fine lawns with swimming pools. Garlic-domed churches peek up here and there, their bells tolling out the walk in 15-minute increments, and roosters serenade us through the morning. The rain picks up.

Statistics would suggest about 200 people finish the Camino Portugués on any given day this time of year, but in Portugal, all above and beyond the 100 kilometers necessary for a compostela, the crowds are sparse. The first fellow pilgrims we see are a mother and a 10-year-old son on bicycles, plastic bags on over the kid’s legs to keep off the mud, the scallop shell that identifies a pilgrim strapped to the back of his bike. Later, by a thundering waterfall on the crystal clear Labruja River, two German girls march past, followed by a Frenchwoman who idly twirls a stick like a baton. We catch them all and collect a few more at a stop for coffee and sandwiches and a dry roof at Cunha Nunes in Revolta, the first of the classic Camino cafes that cater to passing pilgrims.

In our infinite wisdom, we have started our Camino on the stage with the biggest ascent on the whole route. Granted, summitting the 1,000-foot climb up the Alto da Portela Grande is no technical struggle for someone who tackles passes in the Rockies with a much heavier pack every summer, but it is long and steady, and did I mention it was wet? We slog upward, fixated only on the muddy path in front of us. Never is this truer than on the last great push up, where the trail has become a flowing cascade the whole way down, a lengthy dance up this dancing brook to a completely obscured overlook.

The descent is speedy, and as we have not booked any lodging between Ponte de Lima and Santiago ahead of time, we are enticed by a sign for an option with heat, private bathrooms, and rides to a restaurant in the otherwise sparse rural hamlet of Rubiães. We cross one last Roman bridge, are overtaken by rapidly marching Germans, and turn to find Sofía’s hideaway, where we arrive just behind the two younger German women we’d seen in Revolta, who have made their way back here after learning the municipal albergue has no heat or hot water. A crew of Taiwanese roll in a bit later, too, and we all populate the bedrooms on the upper level of Sofía’s house.

Despite strong defenses, everything is wet. So wet. We set about rigging everything up to dry, clothing draped all over the place, passports and papers placed over the heater to rescue them. One of the Germans, Ariane, joins us for 5:00 dinner at Bom Retiro, a mile down the road, where we consume heaping portions and a carafe of wine for about the price of a single American glass. The downpours come and go as they please, though we still hopefully note every time the sky grows lighter. The hope is always false. We pass out early in the evening to the soundrack of Sofía’s kid’s faltering trombone practice.

In past hikes I have been in more brutal downpours and I have climbed steeper slopes, but their total effect here makes for one of the most punishing days I’ve ever had on a trail. And yet, with the ability to wring everything out and take a warm shower and clear it all out with a hearty meal and some wine with good company, I am sold. If the Camino can be this enchanting on a day when the trail turns into a waterfall, what can it bring on a good day?

Day Two: The Fortress of Silence

On day two, though the rain threatens occasionally, is liberatory by comparison. We manage to turn the wrong way out of the hostel—we hadn’t realized the access road to Sofía’s was the Camino itself—but before long we’re at a glass box of a snack shop staffed by a woman from Massachusetts beside Rubiães’ main church and a Roman milestone used by later inhabitants as a sarcophagus. Much of today’s route is on the old imperial road, beginning with a big bridge over the River Coura followed by a series of mile markers, those same roads built for legions two thousand years ago still guiding pilgrims today. We wind up through a few hamlets, climbing again past sheep and garlic domes, and we pass a stream that boldly claims the be the troutiest in the universe. Before long we enjoy a steady plunge through a eucalyptus forest and moss-shrouded paths before a grand view of the Minho River valley opens up, our destination of Valença on the Spanish border looming in the distance. The pace differences between pilgrims are obvious on the descent, as we are both passed and overtaken.

At the bottom, the town of Fontoura proves a disappointment: first we are hounded by a Russian woman trying to sell us overpriced snacks, the ATM doesn’t work for me, and the café is closed. (If the Russian had told us this, we might have been more convinced to pay up.) Two Danish pilgrims are swimming off the medieval bridge over the Rio Pedreira, but from here the path is fairly nondescript, tame woods and clusters of homes, and then a long slog through suburban Valença. We stop at a roadside diner, pricey but filling, a pitstop for a bunch of local blue-collar men on their lunch breaks. After two days of pastoral Portuguese countryside Valença is a bit jarring, as we walk up sidewalks with backpacks while city life moves on, the once ubiquitous yellow arrows to guide our path now few and far between, dwarfed by the urban landscape.

A push up a long incline, however, takes us into a new world entirely: the walled medieval compound of old Valença, a fortress town for thousands of years, guarded by great earthen bulwarks below thick stone walls, all from a perch commanding the Minho valley, the bridges to Spain within reach of a good cannon volley. Inside the town are a bunch of narrow streets and a lot of shops, all of which seem to sell towels. Towels, sheets, comforters, pillowcases: this is indeed the historical craft of Valença, and they carry it forward now, selling them all by the kilo. (If you were to ask “who could possibly need a kilo of new towels,” my response might be “most lodging options on the Camino de Santiago.”) We find its 11th century church, groaning with history, and get to know São Teotónio, a native son and Portugal’s first saint. We eat pizza at a trendy little shop staffed by a woman who responds to Portuguese speakers in Spanish.

After a rest at the hotel we head out for a drink on the town, but we quickly learn the drawback of turning one’s town into a medieval theme park by day: by night, it achieves zombie apocalypse levels of deadness. No one is out, save for the tame cats by the church. We retreat to the room. My blisters have started to bloom, and I am in a blah mood. Valença is all very lovely, but it is a museum now, the pilgrims as unwitting accoutrements, and while it is perhaps the appropriate use of an old fortress atop a hill, one should not mistake it for Europe’s present. Take this night of quiet retreat, I suppose, and move on to Spain.

Day 3: Spanish Hibbing

After the torrents of day one and a vaguely ominous day two, day three dawns brilliantly, scattered sun and clouds but no hint of rain. An older northern European couple exits our hotel at the same time we do, but otherwise, Valença is as dead as it was the night before. We trudge down out of its dark gates and cross the Minho (or, now, the Miño) into Spain, past an austere Franco era guard station and on into Tui.

Spain is clearly wealthier than its peninsular partner. Fewer homes lie in ruin; there are real drainage systems. The pedestrian infrastructure is significantly better, and drivers actually stop for people. Every drink order comes with a snack. We are in a refined, thoughtful culture. There are trade-offs: gone are the blue tiles and garlic domes of Portugal. Rigid, solid stone now reigns supreme, especially in the locally mined granite, a building block to stand the test of time.

The seeming wealth is all relative, of course. Galicia is a poor corner of Spain, and like much of the country, its rural areas are emptying at such a rate that the moniker España vacía, or Empty Spain, has been slapped upon it. Next to well-tended homes are picturesque ruins, the slow decay of centuries-old structures no longer necessary to house the population here. Rural Europe in general is re-wilding at an unprecedented rate, with more and more greenery and the return of once-failing species such as the Iberian wolf. Of course this rush for the cities is happening in the United States as well, albeit blunted by immigration and somewhat higher birth rates. But immersion in a place where construction is very old gives a sense of just how complicated it can be to live among structures that predate modern technology, and just how much the run to the cities is reshaping the countryside. There is an eternal tension here between preservation and keeping things livable and letting them fade, a blurry spectrum for each small community we visit on this walk.

We rise up to the old city of Tui, a fortress to counter an invasion of towel-wielding Valençans, broad stone cathedral on top. As snake through the streets, we pass herds of pilgrims emerging to blink at the sunlight. At just over 100 kilometers from Santiago, this is the most common starting place on the Camino Portugués, and for the first few miles out of Tui it shows. We are caught up in a clump of 10 Spaniards plus a British expat named Alan, an Aussie herd, and a clump of British girls with unfortunate laughs who cackle at everything. These and other groups begin to leapfrog each other, with Alan and the Spaniards brimming with energy on day one but stopping to photograph everything. We pass another Roman bridge, ford a stream by a cross to a sainted pilgrim who fell fatally ill here, and enjoy placid, leafy lanes. The lack of breakfast in Valença has my dad growing hangry, but we’re delighted to find a snack break at a new establishment in A Magdalena, which manages to space out the pilgrim crew a bit and leave us in tandem with Marcia and Michelle, two American sisters who are good company.

We come to the massive granite works of O Porriño, complete with signs protesting its growth and a bevy of large houses from that very stone built to withstand the millennia. The debate here is familiar to anyone who comes from a place where people pull things out of the ground. There are more gentle lanes up and down wooded hills, a bunch of lazy dogs, a hobbled German pilgrim with a wounded knee, and our Taiwanese friends from night one. Porriño is not the most enchanting place on the Camino, but a river walk into town does some good in crowding out the factories on the opposite bank and the freeway on the near one, and the historic center, while not large, teems with life. Our lodging is basic but well-appointed, its view down over a busy bus stop. After Valença, I appreciate just watching humanity go about its business.

It strikes me, after a couple of beverages at the Underground craft beer bar, that Porriño is just a Spanish Hibbing, the equivalent of a blue-collar Minnesota mining town I know well. It has 17,000 people, a handful of historic buildings in its downtown, and is near enough to some pretty landscapes, but is itself otherwise forgettable in its urban form. And yet there is wonderful food, top notch wine, good craft beer even though that scene here has nothing on America’s, and it teems with life and bustles with families late into the evening, long after any American town of the same size goes dead outside of a couple nondescript bars.

I come away with a soft spot for Porriño, even if it has few clear charms. Here there is none of the museumification that consumes the centers of many small European towns. It is here where Galicia lives in its present, striving, dreaming like our enthusiastic craft beer convert behind the bar at the Underground, caught up in a debate over saving the verdant forests or mining the stone that has built this region’s wealth and newer homes. Kids pour out of a nearby school, bum around squares, settle into social circles even as they dream of a life beyond the bland apartment blocks that surround the old city core. In some deep sense, people in places like this will always be my people, the steady believers in a land that is anything but empty to them.

Day 4: Galifornia

Day four dawns grey and misty. Breakfast is jamón and tomato atop a large slice of bread from a harried woman as Alan and the Spaniards dine a few tables over for the third meal in a row. Porriño departs slowly, long damp streets before a winding road and the 100 kilometer marker to Santiago. The next few kilometers stroll through the town of Mos, a sleepy place that welcomes its pilgrims brightly and then turns them loose on a series of steady ups into the Galician hills. We trudge up with groups of Spaniards, including one jolly older man with a deliberate pace, though we lose him when we turn aside for lunch near the hill’s summit, a sandwich with a killer view. From there we go down, first on gentle slopes with the loud Brits behind us. We escape them at a churrascaria, however, and are alone for the plunge down into the outskirts of Redondela.

This walk down the hill is both incredibly steep and incredibly beautiful, rich green hills dotted with farms and cottages, fruit and flowers, resplendent in sudden sun, a snippet of a Ría Baixa, an inlet off the Atlantic, visible in the distance. Our hostel-keeper for the night calls this region of Galicia Galifornia, and I understand why. Everything is resplendent and lush, all that rain now showing its gifts. Closer to the mouth of the strait sits Vigo, one of the largest cities in Galicia, but our destination is Redondela, a city of 20,000 known for its towering train viaducts and old town on a hill, close to the sea but removed from it.

After a short urban trek we find the old town, and we’ve lucked out with our lodging. A Casa de Herba stands on a small square the middle of narrow stone streets, and our second floor room has a long balcony from which we can survey a small square and the narrow lane the Camino traces through town. The smell of cooking seafood wafts over us, and I sit on the balcony and write as we wait out a slow laundry load. We wander about, meet Julie and Susan from Saskatchewan at a sidewalk table, eat fish, stumble on a place with a craft beer fridge and retire to the balcony. The city life of old town Redondela flits by below us, pilgrims wandering in, locals heading out, kids chasing each other about, even some nuns.

We are halfway to Santiago, at the peak of the walking experience, all the buildup to this point now beginning its release, an exhale as we settle into this way of being, a pace set for the rest of the walk. I have little to write today. I am one with it.

Part 3 is here.

Camino 2024, Part I: Tremors

Lisbon, 1755: the world shakes. An earthquake and subsequent fire destroy the great Portuguese capital, thousands killed, palaces and churches thrown into ruin. For a Europe at the dawn of the Enlightenment, it is a jarring reminder of powerlessness; Voltaire, surveying the wreckage, decides he needs a better way to make sense of a senseless world. Rousseau and Kant follow suit, questioning both modes of living and the mysteries of nature. The earth has shaken, and nothing is quite the same ever again.

It is with no such pretention that I arrive in Lisbon on Easter Sunday, 2024. I do not expect, nor do I necessarily need, seismic changes in thinking. But I am open to the possibility, perhaps never more so than on this venture that begins in a small European capital with a great heritage, from the Age of Discovery to the catastrophe that weighed on the West’s foremost minds of the time. I have the privilege of a mini sabbatical to traverse different continents, to open my mind to whatever may come. It may be nothing, and that would be fine. But it may be more.

Lisbon undulates over a series of low hills north of the estuary of the Tagus River. In a nook between two of them is Baixa, the core of the city grid laid out by the Marqués de Pombal, the post-earthquake Robert Moses and Oliver Cromwell figure who rebuilt the capital in a style that now bears his name. For my one night in Lisbon at the start of a great Iberian adventure, I settle into a quaint hotel on a pedestrian street in the heart of Baixa. The rains that have swamped Portugal for the past two weeks have temporarily lifted, and both tourists and locals tentatively venture out to restaurants on terraces, to sample tapas and what passes for good craft beer in Portugal.

At the end of my street, beneath a triumphant arch, sits the Praça do Comércio, a waterfront square dominated by a statue of King José I atop a horse. A short way down the Tagus from here was the launch point for some of Europe’s greatest voyages of discovery, as this tucked-away kingdom on the edge of the continent unleashed the first tremors in a movement that would eventually upend world history. I content myself with my own morning of discoveries, a hurried push up to the Castelo de São Jorge and then along Avenida da Libertade, the great artery appended to Pombaline Baixa in the late 19th century European tradition of grand, monument-strewn avenues. This little taste will have to do. I have a train to catch and a path to walk.

The Camino de Santiago, literally translated as the Way of St. James, is the collective name given to a network of Catholic pilgrimage routes that lead to Santiago de Compostela, a city in the northwest corner of Spain. It emerged in medieval times as a route to visit the tomb and relics of St. James, who, according to tradition, moved here to preach the gospel after Christ’s crucifixion. The Camino receded in later centuries but has steadily grown in popularity over the past 40 years, including a burst of interest since the 2010 Martin Sheen film The Way. By far the best-known route is the Camino Francés, which begins just across the French border in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port and winds 769 kilometers across northern Spain. But there are myriad other routes, some wandering in from very far afield. One emerging path that now accounts for one quarter of all pilgrims is the Camino Portugués, which begins in Lisbon and works its way north to Santiago. It is this route that my dad, on a six-week post-retirement tour of the Iberian Peninsula, has chosen to walk. I go with him.

For official certification, a Camino requires that the pilgrim walk 100 kilometers (or bike or ride a horse 200 kilometers) to Santiago and collect at least two stamps (sellos) per day from businesses, churches, or other points of interest along the way. Given my timeframe, we choose to start in Ponte de Lima, some 160 kilometers south of Santiago and a two-day walk through Portugal before six more through Spain. We will follow a series of yellow arrows and scallop shell images that mark the way up into Galicia, the lush, green autonomous Spanish region noted for its distinct language and fine seafood.

Traditionally, pilgrims stayed in albergues, which offer basic dormitory lodging, and many restaurants along the route offer a menú peregrino for basic, filling fare at a discount. Of course one can also stay in cozy hotel rooms and eat fine meals if one wants, and the Camino draws a wide spectrum of walkers, from purists to people cabbing from place to place, from devout Catholics to leisurely folk who treat it as the world’s most deliberate pub crawl. A Camino is a physical feat for many who achieve it, and even those of us for whom these distances are in no way intimidating contend with new challenges, such as the change in surfaces from paved roads to rough lanes to dirt paths to mountainside trails to those evil, evil cobblestones. I am almost never sore, but the blisters blossom daily.

The Camino’s explosion in popularity suggests a people in search of their own tremors, their own meaning in the face of senselessness. Pilgrims are often searching for something, sometimes within the faith that founded this path but also often not, spiritual seekers with less patience for liturgy or tradition but who cannot shed its trappings, the power of enduring monuments of medieval faith and a shared human ritual, a path both literal and metaphorical. Students of the Camino will tell you everyone has two reasons to walk it: the reason they share with everyone at the start and the real reason hidden beneath, one that may not even be obvious to the pilgrim until some point mid-path or even some months after the return from Santiago.

Pilgrimage is an invitation to strip out all the noise in a life and do one thing: walk. Yes, there are now perks like swanky hotels and luggage transport, but a good Camino invites non-judgment: we are all finding ways to do the thing. The Camino lacks the survival skills of a backpacking trip, and it is inherently social with its albergues and everyone’s steady progress in the same direction. People from all over the world come together on a collective journey, form temporary bonds on a walk, and forever share a path, one whose history and trappings just mean more than, say, a shared trek on the Appalachian Trail. It is a human celebration in a way a wilderness venture is not. We walk together with chosen or random fellow travelers, sharing only the title of pilgrim as we go.

I take a train north to Porto meet my dad, and I swiftly learn the breadth of the gap between Spanish high-speed AVEs and this rickety Portuguese thing, which sits on a lovely bridge outside Coimbra for a spell and gets me to Porto with nearly no time to spare before a bus connection onward. This is part of the package, though: Portugal sits somewhere on the middle of a spectrum between Latin American fun and European comfort. It throws its share of parties, its culture is rich, and it is dirt cheap compared to the rest of the western half of the continent. And yet it has nice things, no serious safety concerns, and the Portuguese try to run things on time, even if they don’t always exactly get there. It is no wonder there is a surge of Americans exploring it and even retiring here.

From Porto we promptly continue by bus to Ponte de Lima, an ancient town now home to about 20,000 residents. This town is named for a bridge, built by the Romans and restored by the medievals, over the Lima River, and that old span is still the center of attention. The town center is a charming little knot of narrow streets around a couple of classic castle turrets, though we have chosen to spend the night in an absolute marvel of peak brutalism just down the river from the center. For any extended time I would die in this youth hostel with a not-particularly-youthful clientele, but for one night I will giggle at this mass of concrete and right angles and slowly shed layers as the heater clanks away all night.

We spend our pre-pilgrimage night wandering Ponte de Lima’s streets, eating at a bustling gem of the Portuguese microbrew scene named Letraria, and appraising the weather forecast with worry. After a few weeks of near-constant rain the Lima has hopped its normal banks, and a mock Roman army marching northward now stands knee-deep in the drink. This, we hope, is not an omen for our hike. But whatever the weather brings, we are set to walk.

Part 2 is here.

That’s Baseball, Suzyn

While I have a lot of writing forthcoming on my recent travels, I would be remiss if I did not pause to acknowledge the great John Sterling, the New York Yankees’ radio play-by-play man for the past 36 years, who sailed into retirement this past week. His abrupt departure is the end of an era. His voice was the background to countless childhood summer nights, his easy cadence and soothing baritone carrying a Yankee fan kid through the ups and downs, a nightly retreat from any school drama or other weighty affairs. After my parents and perhaps Garrison Keillor, no one was heard more in my childhood home.

Sterling was bombastic, a welcome burst of scattershot energy in a franchise that, especially in the Hal Steinbrenner era, has tended toward corporate PR-speak in all other aspects of its managed public image. His personalized home run calls and lengthy “Theeeeeeeee Yankees win” exclamations were both delightful and nutty, sometimes bringing forth an eye roll but always a grin, and the best of them became associated with players long after they left the Yankees. In Sterling’s telling it started with a spontaneous “Bern baby Bern” for Bernie Williams, and it simply took on a life of its own from there. Whether it was an A-Bomb from A-Rod or Jorgie juicing one, a thrilla by Godzilla or Shane Spencer the home run dispenser, the Grandyman showing he can or whatever it was he sang in Italian when Giancarlo Stanton launched one, Sterling calls were an essential part of the Yankee experience.

Sterling brought a relentless exuberance to the job. Blessed with a sterling silver voice box, he seemed ageless, smoothly bringing us the action night after night, including a Gehrig-esque iron man streak of 5,060 games without missing one over a 20-year stretch. He was a professional, and while he clearly wanted the Yankees to win, he had no reservations in calling out failures, and he would give other teams their due when they deserved it. Not once did I ever get the impression he was not enjoying himself immensely. He found the job he was meant to do, and he did it with panache. There was a hint of pretense, as he dressed himself up in fancy suits for the radio and took the Yankee tradition he loved very seriously. But always did his job with the respect and the humility to recognize, even after all those years, what a fortunate man he was to be able to do what he did for so long.

Yes, details were never his strong suit. When I spent chunks of my free time in online Yankee fan spaces back in high school and college, I created a statistic, the FSHRC (Fake Sterling Home Run Call), to track the number of times he drove us all insane by launching into his home run call before ultimately being wrong. (“It is high! It is far! It is…caught at the wall.”) He had little patience for modern analytics, and his pop culture references were, charmingly, stuck on 1950s Broadway. Sterling was a true original, doing it his way and no one else’s, and that was that.

Over the past two decades Sterling developed a brilliant rapport with Suzyn Waldman, the groundbreaking color commentator who shared many of Sterling’s loves and frustrations, able to insert her insights and gently needle him while still maintaining the ethos of the broadcast. They became an indelible pair, to the point where I just sort of assumed that, 30 years from now, if I were to dial up a Yankee broadcast I would hear the two of them, either sighing and philosophizing their way through a tough game or brimming with pride if the team were to win. His sudden departure a few weeks into this season was a surprise, especially since he looked and sounded the same he always had, even a couple months short of 86. But 64 years of broadcasting and 36 years of Yankee baseball meant Sterling knew that nothing was ever predictable, always ready with his line to explain the absurdities before him: “That’s baseball, Suzyn. You just can’t predict baseball.” Nor, indeed, life.

A marathon baseball season carries on, and after the requisite Yankee Stadium pomp and celebration, Sterling will fade into the background. But some people are not replaceable, or at least not with the same style, the same delight, the same firm, confident voice. As I read various homages to Sterling came out this week, a line from The Grand Budapest Hotel came to mind: “His world was gone long before he entered it. But he sustained the illusion with a marvelous grace.”

Big Easy

The trope of the Midwestern kid heading to an East Coast seat of power has typically been one of innocence lost, of bright-eyed illusions dimmed by closed networks and sordid affairs. This story, saddled on succeeding generations of Midwestern boys heading east by F. Scott Fitzgerald, has a certain glamour. It is flattering to imagine oneself the wounded noble soul in a greater story, and wounded noble souls do not usually realize they are doing themselves no good until a few years have drifted by in aimless emoting.

One who has navigated this road with remarkable aplomb, however, is my Georgetown roommate Trent, whose wedding I attended in New Orleans this past weekend. Trent and I first came together in New South 205 as freshmen at Georgetown, two rare Hoyas who did not hail from large metropolitan areas and in the thralls of what Washington had to offer them. We were avid pursuers of the DC political scene and Hoya basketball loyalists, and while our social circles ebbed and flowed as he dove deeper into campus communities from the start than I did, we remained an ideal pairing, drama-free and easygoing. We lived together for all four years of our undergrad experience, New South to Copley to 3731 R Street, though we were abroad in Mexico in opposite semesters of our junior years. By senior year our house, with Phil and Tim added to the mix, crystallized into a cohesive unit.

The journeys since have been long. Trent left DC after graduation, first to teach in Houston and then on to NOLA, where his new wife, Kelly, attended medical school at Tulane. No doubt there have been moments of trouble and deep frustration, especially in those Teach for America years, a crucible that formed many of my Georgetown friends. But for no one did it show outwardly less than for Trent. In the hours before he tied the knot, a group of us sat in his hotel suite and shared stories of Midwest childhoods and Georgetown escapades and teaching travails, and there was no trouble believing these tales all wove their way through the same guy who sat before us. At the core, nothing has changed a bit.

Trent retains a slight Ohio twang, even as he travels higher in professional circles and eyes an impending return to DC. He is relentlessly competent and organized but stays preternaturally upbeat, his work rate nonstop but still grounded in the people around him, whatever their station. It was no secret where those lines about social justice in the prayer of the faithful during the ceremony came from, and he has the art of making such lines feel heartfelt. He has perfected the blend of roots and ambition that has always been my ideal, and he has the magnetic personality to make it all work. And in the meantime, he will have a lot of fun.

I will save a longer discourse on New Orleans for a second visit in May, but this venture was a dive into Trent’s life in the city. And, of course, no trip to the Crescent City can be complete without eating up the rich local culture and the nonstop revelry that make it unlike any other American city. Friday night takes us to the Mid City Yacht Club, a local joint with no pretentions of hosting people who enjoy yachting, tucked in among classic NOLA houses and across from a well-lit ballfield in the neighborhood where Trent and Kelly live. I’d assumed the name was ironic.

The rookie Jesuit presiding over the ceremony, however, tells us the truth: during Katrina this little bar, flooded along with the rest of the neighborhood, acquired the moniker in jest, and a few friends nursed it back, rebuilding it from the detritus of the hurricane. In the homily, the mention of the Yacht Club was a metaphor for love and commitment, but it was also a simple summation of Trent: there for the party often enough to be a regular, but using that tie to make a deeper connection and lift up a story of triumph and rebirth. Trent brings together great people, two new friends and I observe as we stroll up Canal Street toward the church with our roadie martinis in plastic cups.

Since this is a Hoya wedding, the ceremony takes place in a Jesuit church tucked just west of the French Quarter, its grandeur shadowed by the towers around it but resplendent in the Company of Jesus’ quest for the Greater Glory of God on the inside. It is as snappy a Catholic ceremony as one will hear, with no communion to separate out the devout from the apostates, and in time we bus over to the Ogden Museum of Southern Art for the reception. Beneath a cavernous ceiling we mill around and eat a steady stream of hors d’oeuvres, with no formal dining time or seating chart and only the briefest of wedding speeches. The party must go on—unless one goes on the bathroom odyssey, down a staircase and through a gallery and up an elevator past some distracting sensory art.

Photo credit: Vail K.

The DJ lords over the hall at one end, and while the dance floor takes some time to warm up, it eventually explodes with light and flashy light sticks for everyone, and we after we have all swayed in a circle as the lights come up the brass band marches in and the second line begins. We parade down the streets of NOLA, Trent and Kelly waving parasols in front of the procession, the band right behind and the rest of us in tow, waving towels and dancing along, the less mobile of our number rolling along in rickshaws. We are the attraction, filmed by passersby and watched from those classic wrought iron balconies above, and in time we get one of our own atop a bar near the hotels. The good times do indeed roll, onward late into a cool New Orleans night, though a dream of brunch looms in the morning. Even if New Orleans is not in Trent and Kelly’s longer-term plans, it is the ideal city for a group of friends to come together, dispense with the dithering, and commit to making the most of a moment.

On a personal note, Trent’s wedding is an appetizer for what I am calling my sabbatical, a stretch in which I will be away from Duluth for five of six weeks. This stretch starts and ends in New Orleans, with Europe and South America sandwiched in between. It seems right to start it with the people with whom I set out into the adult world, though they will reappear in it on an estancia outside Buenos Aires. If I am going to take a radical break from my day-to-day routines, who better to be with than the people who most revel in this life?

Keeping Hope on Ice

This was a hard season of Duluth East hockey to assess, and I deliberately took my time in penning this annual postmortem. Let’s not pretend otherwise: it was a tough year. In a season that began with high hopes after the last one’s rise from the ashes, the Hounds’ 10-16-1 record was not pretty. While the schedule was one of the toughest out there, not all the frustrating results could be chalked up to superior opponents. It was the sort of season that made it very easy to lapse into frustration or resignation that whatever could go wrong probably would, and staying positive took serious effort. 

Nonetheless, there were some regular season achievements: these Hounds opened well, playing very competitive hockey against quality teams like White Bear Lake and Shakopee, and it seemed like they could contend. Those early good results against the state’s best dried up as the season went along, with the possible exception of a surprisingly competitive showing against superpower Minnetonka. They did, however, play reasonably good hockey within the section and secured a 3-seed with some tight wins against many 7AA rivals, to say nothing of some very close calls with their great rival who went on to become a State Tourney semifinalist. A different break in overtime in the first meeting with Grand Rapids or a held 3-0 third period lead in the second and East might have had a bit more swagger come sections. But what-ifs remain just that.  

This team also deserves some credit for not completely going to pieces. They saved perhaps their best game for the playoffs, when they took apart Duluth Denfeld in the quarterfinals. Thanks to Kole Kronstedt’s acrobatics in goal they stuck around with Andover in the section semis, and if they had ever stopped parading to the box, they might have had a few more chances to bust through that Husky defense and make things interesting. (While this season was a far cry from the debacle of 2021-2022, it never seemed like this group was fully in control, either.) As it was, they seemed to find a level, better than the chase pack but not quite in with the contenders in 7AA, to say nothing of the state powers who left them licking wounds ever so often.  

Thank you to our seniors: Jude Edgerton, Oscar Lundell, Garrett Olek, Stratton Maas, Drew Raukar (whose goalie assist may have been the most entertaining moment of the season); Christian Houser, stepping into a role on defense; Luke Rose, working hard defensively every game. Luke Anderson, who helped shore up a defense that needed it. Kole Kronstedt, the goaltender who found a home at East and stole a few games in two years as a starter. Wyatt Peterson, a four-year reliable workhorse; Noah Teng, a sparkplug and a leader; and Thomas Gunderson, a flashy scorer throughout his time at East who now has a chance to build a strong post-high school career. This class was a major contributor to the thrilling season of East hockey in their junior years, and they carried the bulk of the load this season, salvaging some quality results and offering the occasional glimmer of something more. And thank you to these parents, many of whom have become friends over beers at the bar and over late-night road trips across Minnesota, my fellows in celebration and commiseration and making the most of this wild, all-consuming ride. 

This offseason marks an uncertain place for Duluth East hockey, perhaps even more uncertain than after the last coaching change or the weirdness of 2021-2022; in those cases, it was at least clear who would need to step up to be a contender again. There are useful pieces at hand, of course: Caden Cole and Ian Christian could, with enough development, be very productive seniors, and some younger defensemen showed some promise. There are some other interesting parts making their way toward varsity hockey. One hopes the schedule will be right-sized for the current talent level next season, not to avoid all top-end comers, but simply to give the team a fighting chance in most of the games it plays. Confidence is a valuable thing, and it can’t be willed out of nothing. 

Some things need to change. I do not expect the impossible from what is on hand; all I ask is that a team works hard, adapts to its strengths and weaknesses, and shows improvement over the course of a season. It is not fun to observe that most of a team’s best games were its first few of the season. There are kids on this team who clearly need help, to be put in situations where they can succeed instead of thrown to the wolves for failure, again and again. There are others who need some other method of communication to keep them from the same mistakes over and over; as someone who is not in the locker room and does not know what has been tried, I cannot claim to know what those can be, but there have to be other ways. In general, the community around East hockey felt much more frayed, less in it all together, scattered into small clumps here and there instead of the unified force we saw last winter. 

There needs to be accountability at all levels. From players to parents to coaches to the school itself, actions must match words to show there is an institutional belief that this program can return to greatness, and a willingness to work at it since it won’t happen overnight. It begins this offseason, in those little steps that put in the extra effort, lift kids to better development opportunities, build stronger bonds, and show this team comes first even as some explore what comes next. As any parting senior family will tell you, it is gone all too soon. What do we do with this time we have? 

My annual State Tournament essay is available here on Youth Hockey Hub.

The Sweetening of the Gift

It was the nature of his profession that his experience with death should be greater than for most and he said that while it was true that time heals bereavement it does so only at the cost of the slow extinction of those loved ones from the heart’s memory which is the sole place of their abode then or now. Faces fade, voices dim. Seize them back, whispered the sepulturero. Speak with them. Call their names. Do this and do not let sorrow die for it is the sweetening of every gift. 

-Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing 

One year later, after Andy, certain moments are burdened with memory now. Of course there is a void at family gatherings, the occasional twinge when I glance at a few of his old possessions that have come my way. The weekend before the anniversary of his death is another such reminder of a past era. He visited me this weekend the past two years, the best fit for his Lutsen alpine adventures even though it is also the weekend of Book Across the Bay, the Ashland, Wisconsin Nordic ski race that has become a staple of my winters. After the race the past two years I came home to him, the first year to a lively party with many friends, the second to just him and my mom, chatting away a quiet midwinter night. Now, just quiet. 

This year it is hardly even winter, the ski race reduced to a saunter on foot along shorefront ice and a bare paved path along the beach. Most people make it a casual stroll, but I elect to push, running as fast as I can on a thin layer of snow atop ice, sweat caking beneath layers. I run free, alone along the luminarias. I double back at the fire-breathing dragon that marks halfway point and I part the walkers moving in the other direction, their rippling wave of encouragement carrying me the whole way. I finish well enough to earn a shoutout from the emcee and a handmade mug as a prize at the afterparty. I don’t consciously make any dedications, don’t linger on any specifics, but I do know why I ran harder tonight. 

The next day I trek along Hawk Ridge with a weight-laden pack, a preparation for a venture, now just six weeks out, on what may be the most self-conscious trekking route on earth. I reread a passage from Conor Knighton on those moments that marks shifts in life, quoted by me after a trip to Utah two years ago. Layers in time are not always obvious; jarring moments like Andy’s do not always immediately change a life. But they do, perhaps, have the power to take beliefs out of the theoretical realm where they marinate and encourage one to think about what it really means to live out beliefs, to make the most of precious time. 

If I write little these days, this is why: the urgency of the present consumes me, and while writing remains here as a tool for discernment of the new or the unknown, the capstone on the adventure, a delight when it comes freely, it no longer need be a frustration when it does not. Life is not lived on paper, and even less so in the virtual spaces where I type out words. Here is to now, the sweet, sweet gift of McCarthy’s gravedigger, whose nectar I seek with more thirst than ever before. 

Is There More?

A Duluth East hockey season plods along. It has not been one of joy and great excitement like last season or the decade of the 2010s, but it has also lacked the can’t-turn-away chaos and palace intrigue of 2020-2022. A few wins appear when the schedule eases up, but a signature victory remains elusive, a steady string of more-or-less competitive games that nonetheless result in losses, the offense outgunned and the back end unable to hold up against steady assaults from opponents. Losing games is one thing, but I look for signs of progress, signs of young players stepping up or improved chemistry or lower lines coming together to at least keep opponents off the board even if they are not scoring much themselves. And I find myself frustrated, trying to escape resignation that this is just what this team is. 

It’s not that this team lacks assets. Thomas Gunderson, Noah Teng, and Wyatt Peterson are probably the best line on offer in 7AA. Caden Cole at his best is a second line anchor and a real offensive force. The power play has started to show some real potential. The depth, while a far cry from East teams of previous decades, still features some perfectly capable hockey players who have some strengths in certain roles. If East played the same schedule as Duluth Marshall or Duluth Denfeld or Rock Ridge, the narrative would be very different, a 20-win season probably within reach, and I would rather be associated with a program that reaches for more than that, even if it results in more disappointment. In theory a tough schedule should build resilience, give opportunities for growth, cure bad habits and make those subsequent games with lesser opponents feel easier. There are occasional glimmers, encouraging signs of some heart in overtime wins against the second tier of section opponents, a few pretty goals and solid clears, flashes of steady discipline instead of teetering on the edge. But this team has yet to take that next step into serious contention. 

The glaring culprit to date has been the inexperienced defense. With the noble exception of Luke Anderson, so often running about cleaning up others’ messes, shoddy breakouts and blown coverage have been the norm, too many initial saves left lying there, juicy and ripe for the picking. There is promise in some of the youth here, with Landon Pearce and Henrik Spenningsby playing more and more, but the rebuild has proven a monumental task, and there has been no great adjustment to cover for those shortcomings, which does no one’s confidence any good. If a team cannot break out crisply, it will never be able to hold up in a back-and-forth track meet; they are quite fortunate that 7AA doesn’t include any teams like Champlin Park and Coon Rapids, even if those squads aren’t all that different ranking-wise from 7AA’s crowded middle tier. 

The Hounds have certainly been unlucky at times; an early break against White Bear Lake or Shakopee or in one of the two Grand Rapids games and my tone would lighter. A serious injury to Ian Christian saps the depth and robs them of a second real scorer on a depth line. But luck can also be a byproduct of design. At the risk of hurting some feelings, this program simply does not have the depth to run four lines, even with some double-shifting involved. Either it can continue to play 11 forwards and six D and make everyone happy with playing time, or it can shorten the bench down the stretch and aim to win. This doesn’t mean abusing the top line—I remain a loyal adherent to short shifts and quick changes—but it does mean locking everyone into a very clear role and recognizing those roles will not be equal, and holding the top players accountable if they fail to backcheck or repeatedly try to dangle through four defenders. 

It is of course easy to sit in the stands and gripe and hope a team can add up to more than the sum of its parts; doing it is hard, takes real leadership from players and coaches alike. But it is doable. An example isn’t too far off: two games with Grand Rapids have shown the Thunderhawks are hardly on some different talent level from Duluth East. If this team got a third crack at the presumptive top seed in 7AA, I wouldn’t hate the Hounds’ chances. But the boys in orange are clearly building toward something, playing intense, physical hockey, their belief growing as they play off their strengths and start to collect top-10 wins no one would expect from their talent level. Everyone seems to be rowing in the same direction on Grant Clafton’s very tight ship, but at East I just do not sense that total buy-in at all times. 

For all the lumps, this team is in position to be the 3-seed in 7AA. They will face a hungry opponent in the 7AA quarters, likely either Marshall or Denfeld, and they will need to keep their heads about them. After that, there is a window of opportunity in a down year for the section, and it would be a shame to waste it. We’ve already covered Rapids, whom the Hounds led 3-0 in the third period on the road before the roof caved in. Andover, while deep and a proven winner, has hit some road bumps lately, and is hardly invincible. Neither of those teams has game-breaking scorers, and an East team that can just hold up in its own zone would be well-positioned to poach a couple of goals and steal a playoff win or two at Amsoil. Enough pieces of the formula seem to be there. Is the belief necessary to pull it all together there also? 

The Harbour Mind

The rush from Thanksgiving to Christmas has been its usual series of frenetic weeks, twice to Chicago and once to DC and twice consumed by hockey. It is only Christmas weekend that I finally have time to pause, a reversion to a few days of quiet family time and remote work, a peaceful time only once I look past this embarrassing excuse for a Duluth winter and shrug off the unwelcome reminder of Covid pandemic solitude in the work week that follows. Most people are off but I plug away, either in an empty office or an empty house, no ski trails to escape to, just driving rain outside, achieving in bursts before lapsing into boredom. This inaction suits me less and less as I age.

I manage to finish the one book I set out to read over this month, Adam Nicholson’s How to Be: Life Lessons from the Early Greeks. It traces the emergence of philosophy with the emergence of the trading city-states of ancient Greece, from the god-determined fates of the heroes of the Iliad through Odysseus’ radical agency, from the first interrogations of existence in Miletus to the sense of self emerging in Sappho and her contemporaries in the Aegean basin. Symposiums take place; leisure and thought intertwine. Life emerges as a fire in Heraclitus, an eternal soul in Pythagoras and the Orphic cult, a single reality in Parmenides before Empedocles unites it all, these final thinkers acting as forerunners to Plato and Aristotle, the foundations for basically all Western thought since.

How to Be is more than just pop philosophy, though: it weaves in a journey to the cities that formed these early thinkers. Nicholson wanders these acropolises atop harbors, the temples built to gods who match the questions of their particular age: Athena as city-states form, Demeter as they grow to flourish, Aphrodite as questions of love grow more profound, Persephone as thinkers dig deeper into the meaning of eternity. He parses the relics they have left behind to show how these communities were interconnected with their neighbors, how ideas born on the Aegean coast of Turkey interacted with Ionian Ithaca or colonial Sicily and beyond. All of this flourishing thought, he contends, is the result of a “harbour mind,” a life of commerce and exploration and incipient leisure that was fundamental to making the Greeks the thinkers they were.

These past two years have been a time of deep harbour mind, with many mundane days at sea broken by arrivals in thrilling ports. In 2023 I found literal harbors on a trip up the California coast and an unforgettable family venture to the Mediterranean, and metaphorical ones in treks near and far and as I pushed my body further and relished the results. I also found harbors in times of grief, this sense never more immediate than this past February, and though that scar is still raw it is also a reminder of just what kind of a harbor I can build, both for myself and for other people. It is a strange feeling, to be supremely self-assured in grief; one that requires delicate words to avoid sounding callous. But as I sat through my cousin’s funeral I found myself not burdened by agony but instead consumed by a fire I’d known was there but only rarely let out. It was a fire I tended numerous times in the following months, through late-night euchre vigils and over beers at hockey games, on a wind-blasted deck on a rocking cruise ship and on the slopes of Cloud Peak, on the dance floor at weddings until the last song played and all my muscles ached, only then believing my work was done. These are the moments I feel most myself.

In between the surges I do not lead a bad existence, and I have no trouble listing off the ways in which life has improved in the span since I started this burst outward with a venture to the Virgin Islands deep in the pandemic. But the mundane everydayness gnaws at me, and while it has its small triumphs and defeats, it never brings major change. When I do have events worthy of words they are among the best I’ve ever written, but the act itself does not come often enough, and too often I go to bed without even consulting my writing, plagued by a nagging annoyance that I am not using my greatest gift to its fullest extent. For too long I have been too frozen in routines to unleash it, too frozen by convention or belief in how I had to be, lip service alone to the pursuit I preach.

I will always owe a deep debt to the Greeks. They have framed my life over the past decade-plus now, a necessary port on a stormy sea, and I will never forget that debt, will someday go to pay homage at the sites Nicholson visits, when the time is right. (The time is not yet right. I will know when it is.) The Greeks’ basic insights still form the channel in which I sail. But this holiday season, I find myself drawn to the burning paradoxes of Heraclitus and the love inherent in Empedocles, fueled by that radical turn, and reach once again for Hannah Arendt’s verdict on Greek thought at the end of her chapter on Action in The Human Condition, something I saw in a snippet atop Zion last spring but did not fully process:

The miracle that saves the world, the realm of human affairs, from its normal, “natural” ruin is ultimately the fact of natality, in which the faculty of action is ontologically rooted. It is, in other words, the birth of new men and the new beginning, the action they are capable of by virtue of being born. Only the full experience of this capacity can bestow upon human affairs faith and hope, those two essential characteristics of human existence which Greek antiquity ignored all together, discounting the keeping of faith as a very uncommon and not too important virtue and counting hope among the evils of illusion in Pandora’s box. It is this faith in and hope for the world that found perhaps its most glorious and most succinct expression in the few words with which the Gospels announced their “glad tidings”: “A child has been born unto us.”

If human action is founded on reason and faith, on Athens and Jerusalem, it is time to grapple with Jerusalem again. This is hardly some announcement of bold conversion or spiritual quest; it is merely an acknowledgment of another journey that awaits. In my year-end post last year I said I craved a Renaissance, and while a Renaissance means a rebirth of the Classical it is still rooted profoundly in a faith. In its most obvious form this will come as a pilgrimage, a concept I will grapple with as I head for Santiago de Compostela this April, to say nothing of a subsequent adventure to southern latitudes. The opportunity to rethink things is before me.

I look ahead to the deeper truth-seeking afforded by this sabbatical of sorts in spring, but the true process must begin now, the harbour mind unleashed. It is time to set sail, whether on steely Superior or on the South Atlantic, and find faith in daily routines yet again. Maybe this will lead me to change my life in more significant ways than I have in recent years; maybe it will instead be a stripping away of false desires and a focus on a simpler core that is already right in front of me. But I am ready for a journey once again.