Evergreen Editing

September 15, 2017

On the 15th day of walking, I walked to Burgos with Jon and Martin of fly-killing fame. We parted ways because they wanted to walk on and I wanted to see the city.

I saw the Burgos Cathedral, which I heard is second in size only to Seville’s–in the world. I also saw the Museum of Human Evolution, which was fascinating, especially in conjunction with the trip to the church.

I always go into the churches on the Camino, and often, standing under the vaults and domes and windows, I realize, Humans made this. You can get intimidated by the grandeur and the distance of the tradition from yours, perhaps, but still: every chalice, every sacristy, every vestment, every hermitage, every gargoyle, clock, and sconce? Some guys made it.

That makes those great structures all the more divine, and all the more silly and flawed. And when I went to the museum (which is here because Atapeurca, which I passed through yesterday, is the site of cave systems which contain the oldest human fossil records in Europe), I saw how beautiful brains are, how beautiful it is that we evolve and create as we are created. I saw sculptures of more hominid species than I knew existed, and maps of our migration, and the geological unfolding that allowed the cave systems in Atapuera to harbor our ancestors’ remains for so long, and I thought of the cathedral and its many iterations over the centuries, and how all of it exists in the same ever-changing world.

But when I was at the museum, I was exhausted. My feet hurt, not from blisters or any trauma, but just from walking 300 kilometers. I was dehydrated and my brain was in no condition to be a proper witness to the majesty of others’. 

And that frustration with my tiredness and lack of interest led to the best realization: I’m a human and I’m doing something amazing too. My feet ache so much because for 15 days, they have been my only transportation. No cars, no trains, no elevators: for 15 days, all my travel has been powered by this human body I’m in.

My human body is fascinating to me these days. I mean, I was confident enough with it before this walk, but now I’m also in awe of it. It craves profound motion and profound stillness. It is always ravenous and there hasn’t been a meal set in front of me that I have not finished. It knows when to want beer and when to want water. It knows when to eat bread and when to eat a packet of sugar and when to eat a plate of blood sausage. It always hurts and yet is always getting stronger. It suffers if I go too long without moving or too long without stopping.

Tomorrow, I walk out of Burgos and onto the Meseta, marking, in my mind at least, the middle of this pilgrimage. The Meseta is the massive, ancient interior plateau of central Spain. It is considered the hardest part of the Camino not because of the terrain, which is flat and high, but because of the mind-numbing monotony of it. Towns are farther apart, it’s quieter, and there’s generally less natural beauty to draw the eye. Pilgrims begin crossing it after Burgos and go until they reach Leon.

They say it’s boring. They say it’s like Kansas or some state in the middle of America you don’t visit unless you have family there. The walk across the Meseta from Burgos to Leon takes about 10 days. Pilgrims who are short on time or patience take the bus to skip this part entirely.