Tag Archives: dad

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 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.

Longer Trails

“The absurdity of a life that may well end before one understands it does not relieve one of the duty (to that self which is inseparable from others) to live it through as bravely and as generously as possible.”

-Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard

The last time I backpacked the Superior Hiking Trail, I found myself rather done with it. I’d reached the point where I’d knocked out the entire trail between Gooseberry Falls and Judge Magney State Parks, save for a nondescript inland portion north and west of Grand Marais. Every campsite featured a crowd of tents, solitude elusive and prospective companions a complete roll of the dice. (The current leaders in the clubhouse are the crew of twelve on the Beaver River who brought their volleyball along.) I will always have a soft spot for the SHT and will revisit many of its high points again and again, but there are many trails to hike, and I have gotten most of what I needed out of the SHT, excepting perhaps a through-hike that will likely have to wait for retirement.

Retirement, you say? Along comes my dad, happily sailing forth in that era of life, and he has indeed set out to hike the norther half of the SHT this fall. I am pressed into shuttle duty, and on a weekend in late September help maneuver the logistics of a several-week expedition. We head for the far northern end off the Arrowhead Trail and stroll the short distance to the trail’s terminus at 270 Degree Overlook above the Pigeon River and the Canadian border. We have nailed peak fall colors here in the far northeast corner of Minnesota, and the weather this weekend, though grey and at times ominous, never unleashes the sort of rainfall that would bog down a hiker. The bugs are few and far between, though of course the lone mosquito at our site on the second night finds its way into my tent.

I am here as support. We perform a series of maneuvers, with me backtracking and moving my car to allow my dad to proceed with a lightened load through certain stretches on his steady march south. We plow through the forest between trail’s end and Andy Lake Road, its renaissance under way after logging some fifteen years ago. We push up Rosebush Ridge, host to the highest point on the entire SHT; the view is nondescript, but the maple forest in peak fall form is its own front-line attraction. Further south, the Hellacious Overlook, though much further inland than most SHT vistas, gazes down upon across beaver ponds and golden fall trees toward Lake Superior, and we squint at the lumpy blobs on the horizon, unsure if one of those clouds is Isle Royale. Even inland from its usual lake-lining ridges, the trail offers up its customary beauty.

These less traveled portions of the trail still feature a steady stream of people, and sometimes that companionship leaves something to be desired, as in the case of the young man who occupies the Hellacious Overlook to fly his drone, the name of these aerial intrusions never feeling more apt than it does when it intrudes on the final push up this mount. But for the most part, fellow SHT venturers are good company. Further along the dome at Hellacious we meet two Asian-Americans from the Twin Cities, out on their first hiking venture and gushing at the opportunity this new experience creates. At Andy Creek we share a campsite with Andy, a cousin of my seventh-grade science teacher; his frenetic pace up and down the trail matches his scattershot conversation and bear vault packing efforts. After a week on the trail said vault somehow still overflows with every backpacking food imaginable. At Caribou Pond we meet Ben and Hadey, a couple around my age on their first backcountry venture together, though both know a thing or two about the outdoors. They come to the rescue when my bourbon flask suffers an unfortunate incident and adds distinct new flavors to the contents of my bear vault.

Still, the SHT is wilder here than at points further south. In places the brush grows thick along the trail and the infrastructure could use some Biden bucks, with a profusion of tippy bridges and misaligned boardwalks. Less use means this stretch is spared the man-eating mud patches encountered at points further south, in spite of recent rains; aside from the obvious overlooks, my favorite stretch is a boardwalk-covered cedar swamp where I spend a good 20 minutes in contemplative silence as I await my dad’s arrival from the opposite direction. I realize how little time I’ve taken to do this lately.

The deep breaths beneath the cedars are a valuable reminder to maintain my pace on my own terms. This fall and winter will be a pause between an adventure-filled summer and a spring of 2024 that may put all previous travel to shame. I am that eager adventurer, yes, but I am also someone with defined Duluth winter cycles, a steady rhythm that can be my self-assured answer when life is more than a rattled-off list of the places I’ve been. Over these past few years I’ve achieved a new speed more in line with my ambitions, and yet I value this time to modulate, reined in and able to sit and read and write and think, and set a pace that matches the moment.

At Cariou Pond after the second night on the trail, I turn my dad loose. He heads south while I pick my way back across a beaver dam, back past a cloud-shrouded Hellacious Overlook to my car on Jackson Lake Road. The ride south on 61 is a slog through increasing traffic and fog, but any delay is inconsequential. This is what an autumn should look like: brilliant and yet portentous, darkness coming early but moderated by stark moonlight, a few final warm nights before the heavier sleeping bags come out.

Unlike me, my dad does not hike with pen and paper (or their digital analogues) with which to make sense of everything he sees; he simply brings a copy of The Snow Leopard, his guide on this and many other journeys. I have, through him, come to adore this little book as well. I could here unspool my thoughts on that bench in the cedar swamp into some greater personal meditation, but that might, I think, miss the lesson of the book. In the story of this weekend I am the supporting cast, grand plans on hold as a man sets off purposefully down a trail to the next phase of life. It is a role I am happy to play, and one all of us should from time to time, our authorship intact but bounded by our reality as social beings. My own next surge awaits. For now, my dad walks south, and I simply admire his freedom.