Full House

I thought I achieved a whole day's work on Thursday morning: a terrifying Spanish tutoring session, bright red tomatoes in the garden, seven eggs from the hens, and new alternator and timing belts for the car. I bought a six-pack of beer at the supermarket, because Daniel was coming on the 1:30 train from France, and Daniel might like a beer on a sunny day like this one.
While I was out, the long-awaited wine delivery arrived. I was feeling mighty efficient when Daniel's train pulled up at the station right as I did. It was great to see him. I'd finished up my chores, and could enjoy a nice relaxing visit.
Back at The Peaceable Paddy had lunch already made up. Two pilgrims were settling into the salon -- a couple from France. They did not want food, Paddy said. They spoke no English, but Daniel speaks French.
Daniel is a surfer dude and wilderness medicine expert from northern California. He trains hospitaleros for American Pilgrims on the Camino, and sometimes volunteers at pilgrim albergues here on the camino. We met years ago in Toronto, but he's never managed to visit us in Moratinos.
He put his things in the upstairs bedroom.
The doorbell rang. A third pilgrim, a bedraggled young man from Poland. Bruno's albergue is full, he said. He had no money, but would happily sleep in his tent out back, he would work for his keep, he said. I brought him inside, shook his hand. He had a fever.
"You're not well," I told him.
"It is true what you say," he said.
His name was Pavel. He had walked all the way from Posnan.
I put him in the third bed in the salon, the last one. The couple did not seem so happy to see him, but too bad.
I gave a beer to Pavel, to get his electrolytes back into balance. He didn't want anything to eat.
We sat down to our lunch. We had some of the new vino, which is very good indeed. We cleared up. The sun was hot and high. I went out to the patio to put some laundry on the line. The doorbell rang again.
Two young Germans, looking for a place to stay. They'd come 32 kilometers, every bed at every hostelry was full, could they sleep on our floor maybe? I told them we were at capacity, too. I could give them a ride in Sahagun, where they'd have more options. Meantime, they should come inside and take a break out of the sun. They doffed their boots at the door.
Daniel poured cold water for them. Paddy rescued their boots from the dogs. They asked if they could make some calls to the albergues on the trail ahead -- It looked like they were in for a 40-kilometer day.
I remembered the mattress stowed under Daniel's bed upstairs. The spare. One of them could sleep on the sofa, and one on that mattress. They were delighted at the idea. We hauled the mattress down the stairs and into the living room.
Daniel volunteered to make Piperade for dinner -- a Basque recipe he learned on the road last week. It would use up a lot of our tomato and egg backlog, and with some rice would stretch to feed all eight of us, even the one who couldn't do gluten.
We never had eight people in here before. This was a real stretch. I could see that wild look in Paddy's eye, even as he quietly set the table. He told dog stories to the girl from Hamburg, who set to work on chopping tomatoes.
Out back, Eduardo delivered a fragrant tractor-load of cow dung.
Dogs were fed. Blistered feet were patched up. The Polish boy was dosed with minerals and Ibuprofen and went immediately to sleep. Again the doorbell. 
A man called Jean, from Quebec. Could he stay? He was old, and had just walked all the way from Carrion de los Condes.
"Come in and sit down," Paddy told the man. (Behind his back Paddy made his best imitation of Edvard Munch's "The Scream.")
"Jesus," I said quietly.
The boy from Darmstadt switched on when he heard me say that. "That man could be Jesus, you know. If he needs a place to sleep he can have my mattress. I have a mat with me. He is an old man, and I am young. Please let him stay."
We did. He spoke French with the French, which seemed to please them. He chose very well from Paddy's records. We ate to the Modern Jazz Quartet.  
Dinner was huge and filling. Some people had three servings. The evening was soft, the company sunburned and sleepy, but good-spirited. Daniel passed round a chunk of Camembert. Jean washed the dishes. By 9:30 p.m. the mattresses and sleeping mats were sorted out, and the pilgrims folded in on themselves.
Tim, Rosie and Moe curled up with me in my office, where we would not disturb anyone. I opened the final beer, which I had selfishly hidden for myself in the back of the fridge. I sat back in my comfy chair and sighed.
Daniel stuck his head in the door. He looked exhausted, but he smiled.
"Thank you, Rebekah. What an opportunity," he said. "I'm loving this."
He went to bed. Within five minutes, through the wall I could hear him gently snoring.
The moon lit up the world outside. The owl shrieked.
From the next room, from down the hall, from the salon below came soft sounds of sleep.    

Not My Beeswax

Paddy & Dogs in front of the Beehive House: 2011

The Beehive house stood facing onto Calle Ontanon. It wasn´t much to look at, but it was the last of its kind, old-fashioned adobe, its front door opened right onto the street. It had no foundation or electricity or plumbing. It was not built to house people, so no one bothered with extras -- it was a dry barn, meant for storing seed corn and animal feed. Pilar´s old aunt managed to live in it anyway, right up til she died. It´s stood empty for the last 25 years or so, collecting junk inside and slowly melting back to earth outside. Two sets of "for sale" signs went up and faded away in the last five years. Nobody was interested.

Nobody but me. In the spring of 2011 I had a bit of extra money, so I got a bee in my bonnet. I started looking around at empty places in the neighborhood.
 
I looked at the Beehive House. I walked around it, I peered in the keyholes. Pilar finally showed it to me. There were almost no windows, so it was always dark inside. The ceilings were low, the rooms long and cool, the stairs narrow and steep. The little pocket-patio out back had a well. And set into the wall of the tractor-barn, up high, was a wicker basket that hummed and dripped with a hive of honey bees. The wall beneath it was streaked dark with generations of pollen and honey and bee poo.

I love bees. I loved that little house. It spoke to me. I dreamed of what it could become, given a great dose of design and respect and labor. A little apartment, a studio, a place where friends could stay, a rental house, a long-term experiment in organic building materials. I imagined an expanse of glass out back, the great cottonwood trees roaring overhead. Skylights to bring the sun inside, pavement on the patio, the existing stone floors indoors cleaned and preserved.  Keep the timbers holding up the second floor, raise the roof a few feet, electrify, but keep it very simple, keep it consistent with what´s always faced the street, make it modern inside, but keep the rough simplicity and charm. 

A shower-stall, a woodstove for heating, a galley kitchen, tiny and efficient, with a window out over the patio. A patio with lots of flowers, maybe a greenhouse, comfy chairs, an awning in the summer, a view out over the fields to the west. Keep the naíf painting of the sun and stars on the ceiling of the main room, keep the hooks in the timbers where years ago flowers and herbs and hams were hung to dry. Keep the bees, somehow. Ask them, please, to stay. 

But then and there it was a derelict mess. A money pit.

The house I have now is too big for just two people, what would I do with two houses? I already rebuilt one semi-abandoned house in Moratinos, and know well the horrors of rehabbing an agricutural structure made of mud and straw into a functional dwelling for humans. I do not have the skills or energy to do the work myself.

New plumbing and wiring, sewer lines and roofing, windows, paving, carpentry... all the digging and shoring-up required would drive the price through the ceiling and out the roof. And the months of wrangling and waiting and running to the builders´ merchant, I have not forgotten that awfulness. I promised myself to never do that again!  

I had enough money to buy it the place, and probably enough to do a basic rehab. I could get it enclosed and "onto the grid," but I´d have to do the finishing work myself, I would have to furnish it over time. It would empty out my savings.

I do not have earned income any more. It would be foolish to use my "nest egg," my "rainy day" money, on something I don´t need.

I could have a Beehive House, or I could have Security. I chose.

Moratinos is enjoying a building boom, at least among a couple of the resident extended families. Grandchildren are now putting up holiday dwellings on the little slices of land left to them. They don´t want to live here year-round, but they want a stake in the future of their pueblo. Three new little flats went up last winter alongside the plaza mayor, hidden from view inside a former barnyard. This summer their cousins from the Canary Islands spent July erecting a prefab wooden "chalet" on the empty lot next to the albergue.

And somebody, another faraway cousin, bought the Beehive House.

Someone said the cousin planned to restore the place. But when the heavy machines arrived and the adjacent barn was pulled down, I started to wonder. It was too easy.
A day later the space where the Beehive House stood is flat and empty, pristine.

It is cheaper this way. Sensible, really. No hassle with lintels and un-plumb floors, no wires or pipes to run through crumbling adobe. No bees, no pigeons, no woodworm-raddled beams. Smash it down and start from scratch, with everything new and shiny and modern.

It was not my house, not my decision. It´s none of my business. (Or none of my bees-wax?) 

Calle Ontanon´s raggedy jaw just lost another tooth.

If I´d had the courage and the cash, I could have made it smile.  

Americans Abound

Americans came last week, they came in pairs and threes. It is refreshing, having people from the Real Outside World come here, people who are not hikers, not breathing the rarified, self-absorbed air of Planet Pilgrim.

You can tell American guests from everyone else. They always bring a gift, or some kind of food to share. They have good teeth, and sporty shoes, and nice hair. They usually offer to help cook, or clean up. They want to see the place, even the pepper plants out back, the woodpile, the shocking old sofa in the barn where the galgos sleep.

The first to arrive were Maddy and her two girls, from Massachusetts. All three were attractive in an apple-cheek, healthy, tanned way. They were polite and funny and vegetarian. Paddy made tortilla for them. (I made gazpacho, but we had to throw it away. The missing transparent plastic knob that fits on top the blender, a useless doodad, was found suspended in the soup, ground to pellets. Damn. Never store transparent things inside the blender jar, unless you want to eat them later.)

Maddy and I talked about the Massachusetts Bar examination, a test my son Philip will undergo within the next few months. Maddy is a lawyer. She knows all about lawyering in Massachusetts. She and Philip will Be In Touch.

The lasses brought us flowers – a great bouquet of lilies that lit up the room all week on the end of the kitchen table. They make us sneeze, but we do not care, they are beautiful.

In the evening I talked on the telephone to Khalida, the woman who will, as of December, become  my son’s mother in law. We have never met. She lives in Toledo Ohio, but was born and raised in Pakistan. She is planning a huge blowout Pakistani wedding for her daughter and my son – even as her daughter and my son are planning a small, simple ceremony. A clash of expectations looms on the horizon. I am happy I now live half a world away from Toledo.

(I have never before been Mother of the Groom, and I haven’t a thing to wear! I look at beautiful embroidered silk formal Pakistani dresses on internet sites. At first I thought I would represent the Western aspect of this marriage alliance by wearing something sensible, but it seems American Mothers of Grooms are expected to dress like Easter Eggs. Here is an opportunity to wear a beautiful, princess-worthy gown, the kind of dresses worn by women called Khalida. I almost never let my Inner Princess out of her jeans and t-shirt prison. Here is her opportunity.)

I took our Moorish fiesta costumes back to dear Lucia in Carrion. I was supposed to meet an American lady who lives in Extremadura and rescues riding horses from the butcher’s van, but she did not show up. I take that as a sign: it is still not time for me to get a horse. (It may never be time for me to get a horse.) Paddy and I went in the evening to Fromista, where a Dutch and Turkish guitar duo played a world premiere duet called “Recuerdos del Camino” to a packed house. Afterward, a deluxe dinner with the artists and Fred, the pride of Green Bay, Wisconsin. We ate gazpacho ice cream. No plastic pellets.

The following day we had church duty. California arrived on the 11:45 from Madrid. Grant Spangler, an old Camino head from Ojai, arrived with Rosalie, his lady friend from L.A. They brought us a fully-loaded, rebuilt and fab laptop computer (Grant’s hobby is rebuilding computers and writing code), as well as cheese and wine, bread and fruit, and assorted packets of organic vitamins and minerals. We visited for two days, they saw the Roman villa. We drove at sundown to Palencia for another guitar concert, this one in the patio of the bishop’s palace. Enno the Dutchman brought down the house again, there was a magnificent flyover by a dozen storks, and afterward we all repaired to Bar Javi for braised octopus and calimari.  In an overlit formica bar in the heart of Castile, we chattered into the night.

Summer nights are wonderful here, out on the perimeter.   

The same night Laurie, my friend and co-author from Illinois, sent the manuscript for the updated Camino San Salvador guide. I kicked it into shape and shipped it off to London to be published. (They will duly remove any American-isms.)

And on Sunday afternoon, two more Americans rolled up from Madrid in a tiny SmartCar. Gil is a reporter for Radio Nacional Espana, and head of Democrats Abroad Spain. She is a retired ABC news Spain correspondent. They both are hardcore expats, they’ve lived in Spain since the 1970s, so where they’re from in America doesn’t really count for much any more. They said they’d heard enough about us to want to see the Peaceable for themselves. They’ve never spent much time up here (nobody has!) but I think they liked it. 

There was money left over from last weekend’s fiesta, so the Neighborhood Association threw one last big feast at the bodega restaurant. Gil and Martha arrived just in time for the prawns. We toured the town, sat in the patio and took in the cool breeze, and spoke fluent Media.      

(In the middle of it all, Portuguese Antonio, the wheedling drifter, made his semi-annual appearance. He gave me a fridge magnet with “Rebeca” on it. We gave him a glass of wine and some cheese, and slices from tomatoes plucked from the flowerbed. While he caught us up on his adventures of the past months, Harry Dog stole two loaves of bread from his backpack.)

The American guests brought gifts, too: Everything needed to make a fine sangria punch. Shandy and beer.. and a beautiful antique inkwell for my desk!  It was great fun “talking shop” and politics, religion, news and architecture. No one misbehaved or over-indulged, and all the dishes were done-up before we went to bed. I gave them a copy of the novel, and a breakfast of eggs from our chicks. And so we have two new friends in Madrid! 

No Americans arrived today. Nobody came at all. Using American recipes, I pickled cucumbers and baked brown bread. The house smells wonderful. All is well.

We both got naps. Spanish naps. Siestas. 

Hermits Prevail!

So we hauled ourselves once again down the street, and what did we see in the plaza?

 A gypsy caravan with dancing girls and dogs and babies, pulled by a tractor, driven by a spiv in a pinstripe suit (who is really Segundino the carpenter)

 A troupe of Sanfermines, the lunatics in white and red who run with bulls through the streets of Pamplona each summer. This bull was a lissom lady holding a pair of horns, and the Sanfermines were all members of the extended Milagros family

Assorted ninjas, rabbits, Moors, Templar Knights, and mermaids.

Templar Bruno

Family unity was upheld, dances were danced, drinks were drunk, and a good time was had by all.  

Moorish hermits crash and burn

It´s hard being foreigners in a tight-knit town. No matter how friendly everyone is, we will always be outsiders. Add to that our location: we live at the top of the pueblo, the finca farthest from the plaza, and information doesn´t tend to flow uphill. This time of year, when everyone´s relatives are visiting for the  fiesta, we miss out sometimes.  

In a town totally centered on family, we are not related to anyone. We don´t have anything they need or want. We are no longer a novelty, so no one makes special efforts to include us. That´s normal, that is
Castilian, and that is OK by us. One thing we appreciate most about our village is their respect for privacy.

Because even though yes, we open the house to almost anyone who wants to come in, and yes, we host a lot of strangers and friends and acquaintances here, still, fundamentally, Paddy and I are both introvert. We are hermits.

When no one else is here, we spend our days in quiet, individual pursuits. We potter around the house, we paint pictures, we read and write and edit books and blogs. We do not talk to anyone. We hardly talk to one another. We are loners. To a lot of people, we are probably pretty boring. But we love our lives.

How & where I spend my summer

Still, for us the hours are long during the fiesta. At Vitoriana´s house on the plaza, 28 people are crammed into ten rooms, eating and drinking and catching up -- at least four other houses are similarly brimming. Children, dressed to the nines, chase balls and balloons through the flowerbeds. Cousins hold hands in church, and pass their cranky baby brothers hand to hand. Old ladies air-kiss one another´s cheeks outside the church. I see them, and I miss my cousins, aunts and uncles, I miss my big family back in Pittsburgh, its weenie-roasts and potato salad, lightning bugs and fireworks.  

So, maybe making up for that lack, at the Moratinos fiesta I throw myself into the community fun and drag Paddy along with me. I sing the songs and snap photos of the processions, we fill our pew at Mass, we sidle up to the makeshift bar on the church porch. And since they reintroduced the annual costume contest to the lineup, I figure a way to dress up for the big Saturday evening dance.

Last year we turned a couple of cardboard boxes into wearable dice. Paddy happily filled that role. But this year, Lucía my Spanish tutor lent us some exotic Moroccan robes and an headpieces. We can dress up like Mozarabs, the people who lived in Moratinos a thousand years back -- how cool is that?

So this evening, in time for the 8 p.m. costume judging (as listed on the church door) we donned our burnooses and pinned up Paddy´s hem, and headed up the street. Paddy groaned and mumbled that the other men in town don´t dress up. I reminded him of last year´s cave men and pirates and Che Guevarras, and told him "You don´t get old and stop playing. You stop playing and get old." 

We looked great, I thought. Good as two foreigners can look, dressed up like another kind of foreigner. Julia and a little group of relatives smiled and waved as we passed, and we saw they were wearing the clothes they´d worn to Mass earlier. But not everyone participates in the costume thing. We kept going.

I wondered. Last year, the costume contest happened after sundown, after the mobile disco music started up, after everyone had a glass of wine or a beer. Now, at 8, the sun was still high and white. Paddy´s sunglasses made him look like an OPEC oil sheik.

Gillen, a child I´ve pretty much watched grow up in the last seven years, spotted us from down the street. He pointed and laughed at us. We turned the corner into the plaza. The card tables were set up in the shade, the Brisca and Mus tournament in full swing. The games stopped, the faces turned to the two strange beings. Smiles. Incomprehension. Realization.

Victor, always a quick wit, bowed three times and said "salaam." 
A cousin stood up and touched his watch with his finger. "The contest is not til 11 o´clock," he said.
I´d got the schedule wrong.
Yes, we are foreigners, yes, we live up in the Barrio Arriba. And yes, we are morons: me for getting the time wrong, and Paddy for not even bothering to look. 

We came dressed up like Moors, but suddenly we were clowns instead.

"I have ruined my grand entrance!" I mumbled.
  
We foreigners scuttled home. The dogs snarled at us at first.

Eleven o´clock is two hours distant. The house is very quiet. I don´t know if we will make that long, long walk downtown again. I will have to re-do my makeup, and struggle back into that robe, and hear Paddy groan and grouse from inside his.

Next year Paddy says he will be out of town for the fiesta. If he lives that long. 
 

Funeral for a Friend

We went to London to say goodbye to Paddy´s old friend Derek.

Derek and his wife Jean were with us here last summer, right when Bella Dog arrived. He was one of only two of Paddy´s old friends to ever visit the Peaceable, far as it is from civilization. He was the only one to ever come back twice! Paddy knew Derek since they both were 15 years old, for more than 50 years.

It was sad and interesting, attending a funeral at a London crematory. The service happened in a 1930´s-era chapel-like room, but everything was carefully engineered to avoid reference to Jesus, God, Allah, or Church. The attendants scuttling round in top hats and Edwardian morning coats made me wonder what all the formality was about. The attendees were advised in advance that this was an informal funeral, that Derek played pretty fast-and-loose, sartorially speaking, and we could too. But the women stuck with conventional black dresses. The men, black suit-coats, if not ties. The few who came in jeans and jerseys were dissed outside their hearing.

A humanist minister spoke. Paddy gave a short eulogy. They played Erik Satie´s Gymnopedies 1. At the end, an electric curtain closed around the coffin up front. It was no secret a belt carried the box into a flaming oven on the other side of the white-paneled wall, but that particular truth was discreetly hidden from view. A man in a morning jacket several times stopped and bowed gravely before the bier, the same way a Catholic bows before the holy Eucharist in the front of a church. I wondered if it was Derek he was honoring, or the altar-like bier and curtain, or the firey furnace beyond. In that setting it was vestigial behavior, truly meaningless ritual. 

At the end almost everyone repaired to a pub along the Thames riverbank, where drink was taken in quantities and Derek´s memory was toasted and roasted and recalled.

The people who came to Derek´s do are a fascinating and fruity lot. Except for his children and grandchildren, most of Derek´s friends -- like him -- are over 60 and white and suburban. Many went to school with him, or worked with him at the London daily tabloids where he was an artist and layout man. They are intelligent people, and after a glass of white wine or two, they are loud and fun and funny. They´ve all known one another for decades.

One lady wore a lavender blouse with matching handbag, shoes, and hair. She joined a sprightly, slim companion, the sight of whose amply cantilevered bosom even now brings joy to the hearts of men much too mature for that sort of thing. (I know because one of them said so, out in the driveway, after asking my pardon.) Paddy´s second wife was there, looking trim and healthy, as was Derek´s first. Another well-upholstered woman arrived, wielding a vast handbag, a sharp young man in tow. Her curly mane and Scotch whisky voice were unmistakeable -- We´ve met before. She´s one of Paddy´s old girlfriends, and she knew everyone in the most elaborate and dramatic way.

A clutch of ladies watched from a table nearby. They wore costly haircuts and pressed linen. Their nails were manicured, their eyes and smiles took us all in. They looked at each of us, then at one another, and glittered like gorgeously patterned reptiles.

Some were newspaper veterans, others wives of newspaper veterans, others were neighbors in Ealing, the pricey Peyton Place suburb where Derek lived most of his life. Paddy and Ray, Gloria, Jilly, Alisdair, Sue, Chedgey (in fabulous leopardskin sneakers), Brian and Molloy told stories of their art school days together, the nights in the newsroom and later at the pub -- Fisticuffs, love affairs, betrayals, shameful behavior and last-minute triumphs.

I kept to one side, out of the way. Paddy´s life has been very full, with lots of friends, heartbreak, booze,  laughter, and women. The people at that pub know more about those years than I ever will. Now that retirement has scattered them from Brighton to Norfolk, it´s funerals that bring them together again. With their future hanging heavy ahead, they smile and laugh and talk about the past, the years when the paper sold 3 million copies a day and they had nothing but time. 

They lived the best of times, and they know that very well. They have a healthy view of life and death. They go to a friend´s wake, and laugh afterward. They are characters -- still here, still very much alive. 
I am lucky to see even the last chapter of some of their stories.





  

Dignity, Options, and James

St. James of Bristol

A saint stopped here last night. His name was James, he walked here from Bristol, England. He was ill and ragged and really religious.
James has no money, no job, but lots of time and tons of zeal.

James writes each day in a little pocket diary, in teeny, tiny letters. He is writing a book, he says, and this is the book, right here. He says he doesn´t need much, long as he can write. I can dig it.

The Gospel of James

James appeared at the end of a long and costly month. I had a health problem, Paddy lost a good old friend to cancer. We paid taxes and lawyer bills and insurance premiums, we took a long weekend in the mountains to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary. We had enough resources to cover it all. There are different kinds of "cost," and lots of different ways to pay them.  

During our anniversary spa holiday I lay up to my neck in swirling hot spring water in a garden of Japanese maples. The magnesium prickled the skin on my legs. A fine drizzle prickled the skin on my upturned face, and I thought about what all this must cost. I thought of the people whose faces were being peppered with the same rain because they were sleeping out in the open, and I saw the only difference between us was money. I have some  money, so I have options. I can lay down on the park bench, too. And I can also relax at home, or in a hotel, or once in a while, in a whirlpool under a maple tree.

I am not just talking about millionaires. Buy an airline ticket. You can pay more and get a seat that lets you lie down. That money buys you, essentially, a few inches of leg-room, a few hours of sleep. The poor folks in coach are packed in like red-eyed sardines.

Likewise, the guy with little money can eat fast food, or make his own lunch, or go hungry. The guy with a fat wallet can choose those any of those things, and a zillion more.

The Gospel reading a couple of weeks ago talked about the rich man who had a dozen lambs, and the poor man next door who had one, a beloved pet. And when an important visitor came to visit the rich guy, did he kill one of his flock for a fine dinner? No. He took the poor man´s lamb and slaughtered it. The rich guy had all those options, and he opted to take away the only one his poor neighbor had.
(I think this is a perfect illustration of why well-off pilgrims should pay for their rooms, rather than take up spaces in the dwindling number of donation-only albergues and refuges. They are slumming, stealing the only option meant for truly poor pilgrims, putting the poor into the street. Jesus does not like that.)

Here at the Peaceable we see a lot of Divine Providence, even though we are not poor. Providence sends us people like James, people in a jam, poor people who are stripped of their dignity and out of options. If they are not drunk or crazy or obnoxious (we have options, see) we slip them into the household routine -- We do these things anyway, and another person or two makes little difference to our little economy or rhythm. Like everybody else in the world, James likes to sit in a soft chair and hear some good music. He deserves a nice glass of wine, a cloth napkin, a table properly set.

Entertainment options abound, if you´re lucky

When you put his clothes in the washer and give him a bed with clean sheets and blankets to sleep in, when you show him a little dignity, he feels like a wealthy man. He is refreshed and restored.

We have options. We can choose. Compared to most of this world, we are wealthy people, and we owe it in part to the Jameses. When they leave here, I always ask them to pray for us. They continue down the trail to Santiago, and while they walk, consciously or not, they pray. Superstitious as that might sound, I think pilgrim prayers are powerful. Pilgrim prayers keep the divine providence flowing into the Peaceable. They keep our options open. They make our "unique lifestyle" a viable one.

And they give me things to contemplate, and stories to write. And long as I can write, I am alright.   

On holiday: Paddy encounters the natives

NOTE: I realize this post is not the most coherant thing I have ever written. I am trying to distill what we do into a "mission statement," and this is one of several attempts. Hopefully clarity will break through all the fuzzy thinking and Gospel readings one of these days... Meantime, enjoy a few random pictures of summertime.

Bella, in the garden

holiday: walking the Ruta de Cares in the Picos de Europa