Tag Archives: faith and spirituality

Prayers, Angels and Candles…

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As I was waiting these many weeks for a surgery date, many people were waiting with me. In various corners of the world. There’s my family (what’s left of it) in Germany and Switzerland. With e-mails, Skyping and phone, they kept in touch. There are my FB friends who inquire daily. Everyone wishes me well, supportive with words, deeds and prayers. There’s my good friend, Ingrid in Csakany, Hungary. The rest sprinkled across the United States.

My sister and niece, drove to Heroldsbach, Germany. A place in the countryside purported to have had a sighting of St. Mary in 1949-1952 by several children. The spot, where St. Mary was said to have hovered, had supposedly brought forth a spring. She told the children that this would be sacred water. To heal. This sighting miracle was not supported by Rome. But, this did not keep people from coming to this small village, by foot, by car and later, by bus from all over Europe. I had never heard of it, until about ten or so years ago. I was in Germany when my sister asked if I wanted to come with them. I was curious and agreed.

The place is beautiful. Set on a large, sloping meadow, fenced in with a discreet, unobtrusive, wooden fence and a well trimmed hedge. There are the 14 stages of the cross with altars placed in between. There are flowers everywhere.  There are also a lot of wooden crosses, in various sizes and weights, for serious pilgrims to carry, depending on what their self-imposed penance may be. In the middle is a small pavilion with several steps going down on 2 sides to the origin of the spring. You can see the small body of water underneath a polished, ornate brass grill.

I was having these undiagnosed, abdominal pains at that time and I placed my hand over this spring and said a silent, little prayer. A little further is a Glass Chapel with the statue of Mary inside. In front of her, huge profusion of flowers. Mostly roses.  A large book, on a stand is right by the entrance, where people can write their concerns for prayer intervention, into the book. All that St. Mary required for her help is that everyone would then give written notice of any healing they received. There are plaques all over the place, running up to the ceiling, all 4 walls. Mostly with grateful, short sentences. Mary has helped. Or, with heartfelt gratitude for our miracle.

Since we finally had a date for the surgery, my sister had called with the promise of driving to Heroldsbach and placing my name into the big book. As well as spending 5 Euros for a candle to be lit on the day of surgery while the good nuns would pray for a successful outcome. I was touched.

Then Julio wrote a very nice e-mail, that he too, would go to the cathedral in Bilbao, Spain, on the day of surgery to light a candle on my behalf.

My friend Carla and her husband pray for me daily. The cashier at the Natural Market also offers prayers. As do many friends and acquaintances.  I am sent Angels by e-mail, promising to keep watch over me. I should be well covered in Prayer Insurance.

BUT. There’s a bit more drama. Yesterday, I had just finished a nice, surprise call from Julio and Marianne with their happy news that they are booking their flight to the U.S. in mid April.  First they’ll fly to New York, where they will spend a few days, then take the train to come West, ending in Grand Junction. We made great plans and I told them we would have a fiesta with friends to welcome them to Colorado.

Cameron was getting ready to go skiing in Powderhorn, which had just received about 2 feet of new snow. Sort of a last hurrah before the medical route with me.

I was scurrying around, letting my friends know that we have a pre-op date and went on last-minute errands.

When I came home, the light was blinking on the answering machine. Without much of any thought, I pressed the button. It was Dr. D. from Denver. She said that she and the Oncologist/Surgeon were looking at the latest CT scan. (She thanked me for getting it done as it gave them a different view and perspective of this lymph node that had gone beserk.) Then, continuing, she said that they had grave concerns as the tumor had intertwined with the veins in such a way that there would be great risks in removal. She would call me this morning to discuss this in person.

Needless to say I was stunned. I felt like I had been running and someone put a stick out to knock me off my balance in mid run. I just stood there and couldn’t even manage to produce a thought. The next thing, CRAP. What NOW? If there are grave concerns, should I even go ahead? Of course, I don’t know the detail of these concerns but I don’t like the sound of that AT ALL!!  Next thought: Well. Maybe back to Cyberknife. Also. Write the Professor in Germany, ask him if he had received copy of CT scan and what did he think?

Then. Must do more research. Maybe alternate is my other only option? How do I get this damn blood-sucker out??? De ja vu!  I was in this spot months ago when I agonized over the decision to even have surgery. It took such great, inner force to wrap my brain around being cut (“fileted”). Now, I have to again entertain different course of action? Should I have chemo first? To shrink this tumor and then surgery? Should I check into Proton Therapy? How is this different from Cyberknife? There’s one in Loma Linda, they’ve done this procedure longer than anyone else. As I understand it, the machine is 3 stories tall and cost EIGHT Million dollars. But is painfree. I filled out their online intake form. Someone will call Monday and explain it to me.

I’ve also drafted an e-mail to Cyberknife Oncologist. There are still all these alternate centers. GEEEZ! Nothing easy about me and my stuff. More prayers. More angels and more candles are needed.

Video of Mom at the Cathedral of Santiago

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Inge – Rabanal to Mercadoiro and the Iron Cross

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ORDINARY MAGIC

I was married, briefly.  The nature channels tell me there are penguins with longer relationships.

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The ultimate Camino de Santiago Journey

By the time a judge brought down the curtain, my mother and I were six thousand miles away, standing at a waystation on a yellow-arrowed path, like characters in some 21st century update to the Wizard of Oz.  My mother wanted a cure for her cancer, or at least a break from “all the cutting and poison”, as she put it.  I hadn’t believed there were any answers for my uncertainties high on the wild-dog-infested and wind-swept spine of a mountain range in northern Spain, so I had sort of convinced myself I wanted nothing.

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Inge in Bilbao, Spain, days before starting the Camino de Santiago

NEW ADVENTURE

I stood at the foot of a high rubbled mound. I was holding my new Nikon SLR, which I’d just bought from Costco via the rationale of this very trip. The video was on: Mom had talked about this moment for months, and I am nothing if not a catcher, or perhaps I mean a chaser, of moments. She was picking her way up the mound, through the powdery gray and white rocks. My fifteen-year-old second-cousin, Carrie, had abandoned her massive backpack and was watching the scene from my left. In a field to my right an older man, very tall, sturdy boots, backpack, was weeping.

Camino de Santiago Cruz de Ferro
Offerings left behind at the Camino de Santiago’s Cruz de Ferro

The mound was pierced at its summit by a thirty-foot-tall oak post, about as big around as a telephone pole. The very top of the post was fitted with an iron cap, like the sort of hat an English bulldog might wear, if an English bulldog had scored an audience with the Queen. For a structure with the grand appellation of El Cruz de Ferro, an old Spanish-Latin term that means Cross of Iron, the cap supported an almost comically tiny iron cross whose three free arms ended in fleurs-de-lis. For thousands of years, some version of the Cruz de Ferro had spied on countless pilgrims – first Pagan, later Catholic, now mostly Pagan again – as they formed meaning out of this very waystation.

For thousands of years a mound of rocks marked the summit of this mountain range. A million pilgrims before us had built up the mound with hand-placed relics from their own private rituals of letting go: of anger, of grief, of resentment, of illness – letting go even of the fear of death. Because that is what people do on pilgrimages, of any kind, whether they mean to or not. They let go. That’s what the verb to forgive means. To forgive others, and, harder yet, to forgive oneself. Jesus was telling us what he knew about forgiveness, but the bastards killed him before he could show us how to forgive ourselves.

Sign up – or watch the new Camino movies on OrdinaryMagicBook.com!

An ancient tradition held that pilgrims should bring to the Cruz, from their own homes, a small stone and a more personal item, and to leave them behind at the Cross. My mother was now placing, among the rocks, a small stone she’d carried from an ancient canyon near her house in Colorado. Previous pilgrims had also brought and left behind other, more telling things. A tube of lipstick. A postcard of Bruges, scrawled in a woman’s hand. Folded pieces of paper and fragments of words in Spanish and English, German and Dutch, Korean and Basque. Underwear that raised certain questions. A Matchbox car that looked to my inner-nine-year-old’s eye like a ’68 Corvette, give or take two years. A toy soldier – missing a leg, poor bastard – and the half-eaten cookie on which he’d been subsisting among the pebbles.

On the wooden pole itself I could make out a tacked-up orange baseball cap and a clip-less biking pedal, a gourd on a string, a black-and-white photo of a European peasant family, circa 1930s, a 1970s photo of a boy, in a shirt with blue stripes, holding a Bible, a pre-printed fortune cookie’s fortune: Do not throw the butts into the urinal, for they are subtle, and quick to anger. I saw a Prada label, an AC Milan futbol jersey, and a broken pair of cheap sunglasses. A German pilgrim had erected a small German flag among the rocks. Not to be outdone, so had a Belgian. Or vice versa, let’s not start another war.

My mother, still with her back to my cousin and me, had reached the top of the mound. The Iron Cross now loomed over her, standing stoutly in the wind. She bowed her head and pulled her second, more personal offering from a pocket in her field jacket. She cupped it with both hands and held it over her head, a modest proposal to the cosmos about what she should be allowed to let go of. When I saw her shoulders start to shake I began to cry, too, but quietly, because I was the expedition videographer, not to mention its chief biographer, photographer, legal counsel, and practicing podiatrist.

I handed the camera to Carrie and went to join my mother.
And now the book, Ordinary Magic: Promises I Made to My Mother Through Life, Illness, and a Very Long Walk is finally here!

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The Cross of Chemo

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ORDINARY MAGIC

I was married, briefly.  The nature channels tell me there are penguins with longer relationships.

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The ultimate Camino de Santiago Journey

I was married, briefly.  The nature channels tell me there are penguins with longer relationships.

By the time a judge brought down the curtain, my mother and I were six thousand miles away, standing at a waystation on a yellow-arrowed path, like characters in some 21st century update to the Wizard of Oz.  My mother wanted a cure for her cancer, or at least a break from “all the cutting and poison”, as she put it.  I hadn’t believed there were any answers for my uncertainties high on the wild-dog-infested and wind-swept spine of a mountain range in northern Spain, so I had sort of convinced myself I wanted nothing.

I stood at the foot of a high rubbled mound.  I was holding my new

THE WORLD

IS YOUR HOME

blockuote-white.png
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt.
andre gide

NEW ADVENTURE

I stood at the foot of a high rubbled mound. I was holding my new

Camino de Santiago start
Inge in Bilbao, Spain, days before starting the Camino de Santiago

Nikon SLR, which I’d just bought from Costco via the rationale of this very trip. The video was on: Mom had talked about this moment for months, and I am nothing if not a catcher, or perhaps I mean a chaser, of moments. She was picking her way up the mound, through the powdery gray and white rocks. My fifteen-year-old second-cousin, Carrie, had abandoned her massive backpack and was watching the scene from my left. In a field to my right an older man, very tall, sturdy boots, backpack, was weeping.

Camino de Santiago Cruz de Ferro
Offerings left behind at the Camino de Santiago’s Cruz de Ferro

The mound was pierced at its summit by a thirty-foot-tall oak post, about as big around as a telephone pole. The very top of the post was fitted with an iron cap, like the sort of hat an English bulldog might wear, if an English bulldog had scored an audience with the Queen. For a structure with the grand appellation of El Cruz de Ferro, an old Spanish-Latin term that means Cross of Iron, the cap supported an almost comically tiny iron cross whose three free arms ended in fleurs-de-lis. For thousands of years, some version of the Cruz de Ferro had spied on countless pilgrims – first Pagan, later Catholic, now mostly Pagan again – as they formed meaning out of this very waystation.

For thousands of years a mound of rocks marked the summit of this mountain range. A million pilgrims before us had built up the mound with hand-placed relics from their own private rituals of letting go: of anger, of grief, of resentment, of illness – letting go even of the fear of death. Because that is what people do on pilgrimages, of any kind, whether they mean to or not. They let go. That’s what the verb to forgive means. To forgive others, and, harder yet, to forgive oneself. Jesus was telling us what he knew about forgiveness, but the bastards killed him before he could show us how to forgive ourselves.

An ancient tradition held that pilgrims should bring to the Cruz, from their own homes, a small stone and a more personal item, and to leave them behind at the Cross. My mother was now placing, among the rocks, a small stone she’d carried from an ancient canyon near her house in Colorado. Previous pilgrims had also brought and left behind other, more telling things. A tube of lipstick. A postcard of Bruges, scrawled in a woman’s hand. Folded pieces of paper and fragments of words in Spanish and English, German and Dutch, Korean and Basque. Underwear that raised certain questions. A Matchbox car that looked to my inner-nine-year-old’s eye like a ’68 Corvette, give or take two years. A toy soldier – missing a leg, poor bastard – and the half-eaten cookie on which he’d been subsisting among the pebbles.

On the wooden pole itself I could make out a tacked-up orange baseball cap and a clip-less biking pedal, a gourd on a string, a black-and-white photo of a European peasant family, circa 1930s, a 1970s photo of a boy, in a shirt with blue stripes, holding a Bible, a pre-printed fortune cookie’s fortune: Do not throw the butts into the urinal, for they are subtle, and quick to anger. I saw a Prada label, an AC Milan futbol jersey, and a broken pair of cheap sunglasses. A German pilgrim had erected a small German flag among the rocks. Not to be outdone, so had a Belgian. Or vice versa, let’s not start another war.

My mother, still with her back to my cousin and me, had reached the top of the mound. The Iron Cross now loomed over her, standing stoutly in the wind. She bowed her head and pulled her second, more personal offering from a pocket in her field jacket. She cupped it with both hands and held it over her head, a modest proposal to the cosmos about what she should be allowed to let go of. When I saw her shoulders start to shake I began to cry, too, but quietly, because I was the expedition videographer, not to mention its chief biographer, photographer, legal counsel, and practicing podiatrist.

I handed the camera to Carrie and went to join my mother.

100_1652
SAM_1968
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Mom Approaches El Cruz de Ferro — the Iron Cross of Letting Go

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ORDINARY MAGIC

I was married, briefly.  The nature channels tell me there are penguins with longer relationships.

Read Our Story

The ultimate Camino de Santiago Journey

I was married, briefly.  The nature channels tell me there are penguins with longer relationships.

By the time a judge brought down the curtain, my mother and I were six thousand miles away, standing at a waystation on a yellow-arrowed path, like characters in some 21st century update to the Wizard of Oz.  My mother wanted a cure for her cancer, or at least a break from “all the cutting and poison”, as she put it.  I hadn’t believed there were any answers for my uncertainties high on the wild-dog-infested and wind-swept spine of a mountain range in northern Spain, so I had sort of convinced myself I wanted nothing.

I stood at the foot of a high rubbled mound.  I was holding my new

THE WORLD

IS YOUR HOME

blockuote-white.png
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt.
andre gide

NEW ADVENTURE

I stood at the foot of a high rubbled mound. I was holding my new

Camino de Santiago start
Inge in Bilbao, Spain, days before starting the Camino de Santiago

Nikon SLR, which I’d just bought from Costco via the rationale of this very trip. The video was on: Mom had talked about this moment for months, and I am nothing if not a catcher, or perhaps I mean a chaser, of moments. She was picking her way up the mound, through the powdery gray and white rocks. My fifteen-year-old second-cousin, Carrie, had abandoned her massive backpack and was watching the scene from my left. In a field to my right an older man, very tall, sturdy boots, backpack, was weeping.

Camino de Santiago Cruz de Ferro
Offerings left behind at the Camino de Santiago’s Cruz de Ferro

The mound was pierced at its summit by a thirty-foot-tall oak post, about as big around as a telephone pole. The very top of the post was fitted with an iron cap, like the sort of hat an English bulldog might wear, if an English bulldog had scored an audience with the Queen. For a structure with the grand appellation of El Cruz de Ferro, an old Spanish-Latin term that means Cross of Iron, the cap supported an almost comically tiny iron cross whose three free arms ended in fleurs-de-lis. For thousands of years, some version of the Cruz de Ferro had spied on countless pilgrims – first Pagan, later Catholic, now mostly Pagan again – as they formed meaning out of this very waystation.

For thousands of years a mound of rocks marked the summit of this mountain range. A million pilgrims before us had built up the mound with hand-placed relics from their own private rituals of letting go: of anger, of grief, of resentment, of illness – letting go even of the fear of death. Because that is what people do on pilgrimages, of any kind, whether they mean to or not. They let go. That’s what the verb to forgive means. To forgive others, and, harder yet, to forgive oneself. Jesus was telling us what he knew about forgiveness, but the bastards killed him before he could show us how to forgive ourselves.

An ancient tradition held that pilgrims should bring to the Cruz, from their own homes, a small stone and a more personal item, and to leave them behind at the Cross. My mother was now placing, among the rocks, a small stone she’d carried from an ancient canyon near her house in Colorado. Previous pilgrims had also brought and left behind other, more telling things. A tube of lipstick. A postcard of Bruges, scrawled in a woman’s hand. Folded pieces of paper and fragments of words in Spanish and English, German and Dutch, Korean and Basque. Underwear that raised certain questions. A Matchbox car that looked to my inner-nine-year-old’s eye like a ’68 Corvette, give or take two years. A toy soldier – missing a leg, poor bastard – and the half-eaten cookie on which he’d been subsisting among the pebbles.

On the wooden pole itself I could make out a tacked-up orange baseball cap and a clip-less biking pedal, a gourd on a string, a black-and-white photo of a European peasant family, circa 1930s, a 1970s photo of a boy, in a shirt with blue stripes, holding a Bible, a pre-printed fortune cookie’s fortune: Do not throw the butts into the urinal, for they are subtle, and quick to anger. I saw a Prada label, an AC Milan futbol jersey, and a broken pair of cheap sunglasses. A German pilgrim had erected a small German flag among the rocks. Not to be outdone, so had a Belgian. Or vice versa, let’s not start another war.

My mother, still with her back to my cousin and me, had reached the top of the mound. The Iron Cross now loomed over her, standing stoutly in the wind. She bowed her head and pulled her second, more personal offering from a pocket in her field jacket. She cupped it with both hands and held it over her head, a modest proposal to the cosmos about what she should be allowed to let go of. When I saw her shoulders start to shake I began to cry, too, but quietly, because I was the expedition videographer, not to mention its chief biographer, photographer, legal counsel, and practicing podiatrist.

I handed the camera to Carrie and went to join my mother.

100_1652
SAM_1968
READ MORE ABOUT US

“I Want to Go to that Cross and Leave My Cancer Behind”

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The Energy Meridians of Mother Earth

I had heard people say that the Camino runs along on one of earth’s energy meridians, also called ley lines. I’d heard that in pre-Roman times, people of the Pagan religions, and, later, Christian mystics, walked the Camino route from Santiago to Leon, and which in its entirety, as it covers seven sacred sites corresponding to the seven chakras of the human body, is called the Celtic Camino.

The ley lines of the earth are said to correspond to the energy meridians of the human body, as in Chinese medicine. Throughout the world, indigenous peoples have viewed the earth as a holographic representation of the human form. The great travel writer Bruce Chatwin described the connection between the Australian Aboriginal people and the land they walked, and sang out loud — in a wonderful book called The Songlines. Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, speaking of the Aborigines, said “The land is a living book in which the myths are inscribed . . . A legend is captured in the very outlines of the landscape.”

The Camino is also said to perfectly parallel the Milky Way, and some people believe that by following a path so powerfully charged with energy, a person is more likely to have intensely spiritual or religious experiences. One etymology of the name “Compostela” argues that it comes from Latin campus stellae, “field of the stars”.

Does this refer to the Milky Way, or to the belief that the bones of St. James made their way to Santiago from Israel (in a boat, in seven days) and were found when a shepherd spotted a star and somehow deduced that the star, billions of light years away, hung in the sky over a specific spot — the spot where the bones were interred and where the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela now stands?  If you are able to replicate this feat at home, please leave a comment in the Comments section.*

I picture a line of druids solemnly walking the same path, oak staffs in hand, white-haired and regal like Gandalf in “The Lord of the Rings”, to Finisterre, literally “end of land”, or what was then believed to be the end of the known world.  But the Celtic Camino actually runs from west to east and back again: it stretches from Santiago – its start, in the first chakra – to Leon, Spain and Toulouse, France, and finally to Rosslyn, Scotland. Even today, some people walk this route, which has them walking against the current of the Camino de Santiago pilgrims.

Some people believe that the tomb that allegedly contains St. James’ bones (again, a dubious claim) does not, in fact, house the remains of Saint James, but of a pagan priestess, and that the Catholic Church, as it so often did with Pagan churches, symbolism (e.g., the fish symbol, Christmas in place of the winter solstice, the god-man born of a virgin and a god) and rituals, took advantage of the pre-existing meaning assigned to the Camino to spread Christianity as far and wide as possible. Yet another theory holds that if there are any remains on the spot, they belong to Priscillian, an ascetic from Avila who was beheaded by the Church as a heretic in Treves, France, in 385 CE, but who was venerated as a martyr in Galicia and other parts of northern Spain.

Here’s what I found on a website discussing the matter of energy:

As we walk and travel along this sacred path, we offer a healing to heal the split for Mother Earth, as we simultaneously heal our own split. We walk up Her chakras, and as we do, we offer our healing, our light and love to ourselves, and to the Earth along this powerful meridian of energy.

And this author quotes another, one Peter Dawkins, who says:

A certain pilgrim's footprint

A true pilgrim who pilgrimages in love leaves footprints of light. Many pilgrims leave many such footprints, and a well-walked pilgrims’ way can become a path of light. There are multitudes of pilgrimage routes crossing the earth, with thousands of people pilgrimaging them every year.

On the other hand, “Some of these meridians are polluted with . . . negative vibrational toxins such as battles, massacres, and the like. These vibrations are stored in the records of the land itself” – much as illness may be viewed as the storage of negative emotional energy – “reflecting back to its inhabitants and causing serious illness . . .”

If the history of the Camino tells us anything, it is that war was nearly continuous along it. Christians fought Christians, Moors and Saracens fought Christians, Christians persecuted Jews, and so on, ad nauseam. For most of the history of Spain, these wars were more about land and strategic advantage than religion. The Camino runs through an energetic wasteland of battles and massacres.

“Fortunately,” according to the same source, “these currents respond positively to spiritual impression.” And here we come back to the pilgrims, who walk it with prayers, mantras, and good faith in their hearts and minds. Once again, a practice that was originally Pagan has been superseded by Christian symbolism. Instead of walking along one of the great planet’s lines of energy, pilgrims redefined their seeking in a new narrative, a new storyline: We are seeking the legendary bones of St. James the Apostle.

The Human Scale

Mom said she’s been visualizing the energy blasting through her tumor. I’ve been told by more than a few people that my energy is palpable and can be felt in whatever part of a person’s body I direct it. I don’t know what to think of this, but I make a Cartesian wager when I place my hand on Mom’s lower back and visualize blocked energy getting unblocked, or see light and love flowing into her: there’s no penalty for being wrong, but what if it works?

Like the Catholics who would come later, Pagans often placed altars and other symbolism on the tops of mountains. Thus was the current site of the Cruz de Ferro, the Iron Cross, originally the site of a Pagan monument. It sits on the highest (or second-highest) point on the Camino.

The Cruz de Ferro, by tradition, is the place where pilgrims leave something behind. The place where they agree to let go of something. For months now, Mom has said, “I’m going to leave my cancer behind!” She has duly brought a stone, from home, and a paper copy of her PET scan with the third and last tumor circled in red.

And all of this has me worried.

 

 

* Another etymology is compositum, “the well founded”, or composita tella, meaning “burial ground”.

Shutting Up My Boss

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I was married, briefly.  The nature channels tell me there are penguins with longer relationships.

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Read Our Story

The ultimate Camino de Santiago Journey

I was married, briefly.  The nature channels tell me there are penguins with longer relationships.

By the time a judge brought down the curtain, my mother and I were six thousand miles away, standing at a waystation on a yellow-arrowed path, like characters in some 21st century update to the Wizard of Oz.  My mother wanted a cure for her cancer, or at least a break from “all the cutting and poison”, as she put it.  I hadn’t believed there were any answers for my uncertainties high on the wild-dog-infested and wind-swept spine of a mountain range in northern Spain, so I had sort of convinced myself I wanted nothing.

I stood at the foot of a high rubbled mound.  I was holding my new

THE WORLD

IS YOUR HOME

blockuote-white.png
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt.
andre gide

NEW ADVENTURE

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
Ut enim ad minim veniam, exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
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Letting Go of the Life We Have Planned

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ORDINARY MAGIC

I was married, briefly.  The nature channels tell me there are penguins with longer relationships.

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Exotic Routes
Ulllamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
calendar.png
Weekend Trips
Minim veniam, quis nostrud ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip
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Great Shots
Lorem ipsum dolor ad minim veniam, quis elit nostrud
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Friendly Guides
Minim veniam, quis nostrud ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip

Read Our Story

The ultimate Camino de Santiago Journey

I was married, briefly.  The nature channels tell me there are penguins with longer relationships.

By the time a judge brought down the curtain, my mother and I were six thousand miles away, standing at a waystation on a yellow-arrowed path, like characters in some 21st century update to the Wizard of Oz.  My mother wanted a cure for her cancer, or at least a break from “all the cutting and poison”, as she put it.  I hadn’t believed there were any answers for my uncertainties high on the wild-dog-infested and wind-swept spine of a mountain range in northern Spain, so I had sort of convinced myself I wanted nothing.

I stood at the foot of a high rubbled mound.  I was holding my new

THE WORLD

IS YOUR HOME

blockuote-white.png
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt.
andre gide

NEW ADVENTURE

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
Ut enim ad minim veniam, exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
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Choose Hope

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The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.
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THE WORLD

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Synergy,Tandem and invisible companions.

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Alone today at the canyon at 6:30 A.M with back pack, water and a sandwich. Beautiful, cool and peaceful.  Thoughts coming through and I wonder at their source. First, I was thinking of my daughter, who lost her job, with 10 other co-workers, by their company’s downsizing. My granddaughter who has no job either. Then I had to let that go. After awhile, I became aware of the click-clack sound my poles were making. Everything moving in tandem. Step-clack-step-click, inhaling well, heart pumping, lung expelling without any pain from previous surgery. Feet moving in comfy boots. ( I LOVE those hiking socks!!)

I thought of ‘Quasimodo’ the handicapped bell ringer of Notre Dame and the beautiful Esmeralda. They became my invisible companions. He had a weight on his back, which he couldn’t take off.  ‘ Mochila’ means back pack in Spanish but I will name my lumpy weight pack ‘Quasimodo’. Almost like a Siamese twin for the whole way. I could feel my hip bones under this added weight. A few years ago, I had a bone density test and was told that I had the ‘hips of a twenty year old’. So. Thank you ancestors and parents for my functional hips.

I was shaken out of my reverie by the piercing cry of a falcon? I started singing old Folk songs. I was feeling my kidneys a bit too. But to think that  a mere 2 years ago I had kidney stones and a whole assortement of other problems, I revel in feeling so well.

Then I thought of my parents. Hard working, honest laborers. Giving me the gift of tenacity, perserverance and courage and a good dose of ‘optimism from Mom, who sang even when she was despairing, although some of those ballads sure had us bawling.). Gifts more worth than money. I hope I passed them on to my son and daughter.

And thus, I walked 5.5 miles or nearly 9 Kilometers, in two hours at 9000 feet altitude. Not too bad for an old broad. When I got home and took ‘Quasimodo’ off, the sudden liberation unbalanced me for a few steps  and I zig-zagged like a drunken bee. (Bumble bee before I’d lost the weight.)

Filled with anticipation and committment

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Yesterday, middle of the night, I’d woken from another message send by a worried brain. It  seems that every time I am stressed, I dream that I have to move into a trailer. (Having lived in a couple of them, it’s not an insult to folks who still do.) This one was a double wide but still had dark paneling and I was trying to find cubbyholes where I could hide my few, inherited treasures. I had a sign outside the tiny yard which stated : Villas Miseras American Style.’ A phrase I’d coined after I was in Brazil, may years ago and saw their ‘Villas’ like bird’s nests, poorest of the poor, nestled atop this mountainous prime real estate.

I was stressing about the camino, again. How to book a multiple city flight, how to be able to afford this venture. Instead of staying in bed fretting, I got up and went on the camino forum, wrote a short request and then went back to bed. I had 2 answers in the morning. One, from a 72yr old lady, who has walked the camino six times and is going once again, in October. To her I posted questions this morning about what ‘things’ I would really need and what type of boots to buy. (The ones I got on ebay are hurtin my right foot.)

Later, my ‘girls’ came from Grand Junction and we all went to the Black Canyon to show them the Beauty. Took a hike. Carrie (15) great young lady, and I managed 5 miles in 90F and that was a bit rough so short a time after surgery. Altitude made my lung burn. We talked about the possibility of her coming along on the camino. Lifetime experience. I told her, before you get married, you go on that hike with your ‘prospective hubby’ because you will really get to know him, his quirks, etc. in those six weeks. When I showed her some clips of the camino on ‘you tube’ I got re-inspired, excited and totally committed no matter what. I am not going to listen to my own objections nor will I give in to my fears and doubts. I went by myself on a train when I was five, to the next town because I wanted to travel. I went to Nuernberg by myself, on the bus, with nothing but my doll in a shopping net, to visit my aunt. (Mother didn’t know and I was punished when I was brought home.) I went to Munich by myself when I was fifteen and to England when I was seventeen. I can do this!!

Had a good conversation with Adam who put me in touch with a friend of his, who lives in Leon and I could ask him more questions. Cameron called as well and we’re trying to figure out the length of time he could go.

Synthetic nightmare is over

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Upon waking this morning and hearing the birds, right outside my window, I felt peaceful. Breathing in the cleansed, moist mountain air from the great rains, once more I buoyed (is that even a word?). There are no discernible aftershocks from the emotional lava. I did come to the conclusion, that even though I have genuine feelings about this whole cancer trip, yesterday was mostly due to the side effects of the painkiller. I would rather feel the pain than go through another crappy day like yesterday, if I can avoid it. (Makes me wonder how many people take meds that alter their emotions and thinking? Then take more to deal with that.)

I will learn a little more after my Doc’s appointment today. Meanwhile, I will order some items for our hike. I also noticed, how I missed going up to the early morning sun-lit black walls of the canyon. Maybe this weekend.

The Other Great Pilgrimage, Locus of Many Darwin Awards: The Running of the Bulls in Pamplona

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Mom notes on Facebook today that Pamplona “is on our way of the Camino. Glad this will Pamplona Bacchanalbe over.”

She’s referring here to the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona. Hemingway was much in love with bullfighting and Pamplona itself, but today’s Running of the Bulls is the sort of bacchanal usually associated with drunken college students on southern American beaches. The Running of the Bulls is also a frequent subject of the Darwin Awards, won each year by people who, through breathtaking acts of stupidity, remove themselves from the gene pool.

PamplonaFrom ABC News today:

For those keeping track, the count stands at 113.

Injuries, that is, as the annual “Running of the Bulls” continued in Pamplona, Spain this weekend. Sixteen people have been hospitalized with serious injuries in four days.

The cobblestone streets of this northern Spanish town were slippery with dew, alcohol and trash from parties that rage during the eight-day San Fermín Festival.

Overcrowding has been a major problem, increasing the danger to the runners on the 900-yard course. About 1.6 million people are expected to visit during the festival.

If you were attending the Running of the Bulls, your to-do list might look like this:

1. Fly to Spain

2. Get blindingly drunk

2a.  Show breasts (if female)

2b. Crowd-surf (usually males)

3. Run into street with bulls

4. Get impaled, gored, OR (extra credit) trampled

So, just to review.

This:

Drinking

inevitably leads to this:

Goring

Musings of The Son as the Mother Lies in Hospital

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An attitude of gratitude. That’s what I am trying to cultivate today. Generally speaking, I 2010-10-13 14.38.10am nothing but annoyed – an attitude of ingratitude, I might point out – by nifty-sounding phrases like “attitude of gratitude”. But the rhyme clothes an important and skillful way of being, one often overlooked by people who wonder, as a result, why they’re not happy. More on that later . . . For now, I am simply cultivating these positive, grateful, appreciative thoughts that, by definition, crowd negative thoughts off the stage:

I’m grateful that Mom came out of the surgery without incident. (As I write this, I still haven’t heard from her personally, so she’s probably still woozy; I know what I know from Monica, one of the members of the Montrose Deutscher Posse).

and

She’s such an inspiration to so many people.

There’s no one with an attitude of gratitude like a cancer survivor. We ignore at our peril the elixir of life with which they emerge from their hero’s journey, telling us, in so many words: This matters. That does not.Guess what “this” and “that” are.

A Cancer Survivor (yes, first caps) is what Mom is, about ten years strong. But cancer is something that’s never entirely gone from a survivor’s life. For a decade now, she’s lived with the tests and the doubt and, more happily, the new and healthy ways of thinking and eating.

In fact, it’s ways of thinking and eating that work that are among our interests here, in this blog.

She had cancer in three places a year ago: pelvis, stomach, lung. (It is the measure of the power of a son’s denial that I cannot call up these locations with any confidence). She put herself on a gourmet cancer-killing diet (and if that sounds like an oxymoron, then my mother has a new definition of ”gourmet” for you), lost over fifty pounds, saw one cancer spot disappear, another get smaller, and the third stay the same. We cheered her success.

Over half a year later, it appeared that one of the spots might be getting bigger – it was hard to tell. Cancer tests, especially after one has had cancer and the resulting floaties – a technical term – remain in the blood, are notoriously unreliable. She was disappointed, bowed, but unbroken. And she still had no desire to put toxic chemicals in her body ever again.

So one spot was operated on today, in a pretty routine procedure. “It’s not the surgery I’m worried about,” she told me on the phone this morning, “it’s what they tell me afterward.”

Camino versus Chemo

I’m hoping they will tell her she can do the Camino. That’s the Camino de Santiago, a thousand-year-old path that stretches from western France across northern Spain, and that’s the Way she wants to travel this September, in lieu of the dread chemotherapy. The Camino, or Way, is said to lead to the bones of St. James, apostle of Jesus, who, like other friends and family of Jesus, is claimed to have left Israel and made his way into European lands more convenient to Catholic churches. In any event, the legend is a minor detail; neither of us is religious.  Mom, after an upbringing that prominently featured violent Catholic nuns, hasn’t any Catholicity left in her.  So it’s not a religious journey. But it is one in which people can, and do, find their own meaning, and I’ve read that it quite often becomes a spiritual journey, as anything does when we do it mindfully.

I know the last thing in the world she wants to hear is that she needs chemotherapy. I’m hearing of more and more people who have endured the horrors of chemo and who refuse ever to do it again – the horror! I hear Kurtz saying, in “Apocalypse Now,” a movie about the Vietnam war that prominently features chemicals that kill. The horror!

Over the last year, whenever Mom has tried to talk about chemotherapy, she’s begun to cry. It’s one of the freshest ten-year-old wounds you’ll ever see.  “I can’t do it again,” she says. “I just can’t.” So she has turned the power of that emotion into the passion with which she exercises and disciplines herself to a super-healthy, natural diet in a world of fake food and other gustatory gimcrackery.

The Purpose of the Camino

About two months ago she got the idea of the Camino from a documentary, and that idea burgeoned into her new purpose. (Researchers into all manner of illness, and even longevity, will assure you that it’s a sense of purpose that separates the happy from the less so, and the healthy or long-lived from the sick and early-dying.)

So she bought herself some hiking shoes and began to “train” for her pilgrimage through Spain on the trails around Colorado’s Black Canyon – at nearly 7800 feet high, that’s more than enough altitude for the 5000-foot Pyrenees.

“Instead of doing chemo,” she reported thinking a few weeks ago, while she hiked near the Canyon, “I’m walking the Camino.” Now you know why this site is called what it is, or at least the limits of my imagination.

What will the doctors tell her after the biopsy on the removed mass? Will they say “Chemo”?

And if they do, will Mom respond, with a shake of her head, “Camino!”?