Pilgrims, and why we keep going to the dump

I am neglecting you, blogsters, I know. But I´ve been been busy, mostly in good ways. Honest.

We still are waiting on all the doors for the house, and the counter-top granite, and the finishing-off crew. We need to be out of the Sahagun apartment May 7, so we decided not to wait around. We have started moving in! It´s a bigger job than it first appears.

We´ve made several trips to the dump in the last few days. It´s hard to believe, after more than a year we still are sifting through the decades of accumulated "oh, I´ll hang onto this, it might be handy someday" junk the last family left behind: unidentifiable rusted lumps of former farm machinery and furniture, file cabinets that were at some point run over by tractors, busted bricks, sacks of concrete that got wet and turned to stone, the hateful acres of dirty plastic that sheathed the house when we had no roof. Oh, and a shiny black lacquer and gold-chrome mirrored bar that glowed in the corner of the salon for a while after we moved in. It was a marvel of pimp aesthetic, but somehow it didn´t fit into our plans for the place. We couldn´t find a home for it, so it ended up at the dump. The magpies, hawks, storks, and goldfinches are even now admiring their reflections in its many mirrors. (We find the dump is an amazing place for bird-watching.)

Mixed in with the dirty junk in our house is a truckload of stuff, mostly books, we had shipped over from USA last year. A lot of that was crap, too, but important crap. (I only wish I´d shipped my rocking chair, but the shippers would likely have smashed it like they smashed the other furniture.) All of the above is liberally dusted with dust or dirt or adobe, from spending at least the past year in the barn or garage or despensa.

The things we want to use must be cleaned, carried inside, and assembled. The rest needs to have a place made for it. And meantime I am studying my Drivers Test lessons, and potting and planting the summer flowers. I busted my hump putting in two rows of different types of sunflowers along the ugly wall out back, and the next morning I found the chickens had dug them all up and eaten every one. Greedy old things.

It´s not all forced labor, no matter what Patrick says. We´ve taken a day off here and there. On Saturday we discovered a great hike just south of here, 10 kilometers that pass through three villages. It includes a holy well, a stone sarcophagus (Roman? Visigothic?) now being used as a watering trough, the brutal three-dog slaying of a foot-long hissing green lizard, a Via Crucis, two very fabulous and huge churches towering over their tiny neighborhoods, and a bodega village that´s reminiscent of a surreal spaghetti western. It was a great day´s walk, and it left us all beat... even the dogs were doggin´ it by the end. Excellent. (Here´s a pic taken at the hermitage at the end of the two-mile Way of the Cross... there´s a concrete cross every few hundred yards all along the dirt road leading to the church, which stands out in a wheat field on its own. It´s the second such phenomenon we´ve found within a 10-kilometer radius. Weird and wonderful.)

We are wearing ourselves out every day, and sleeping very well at night. But the best thing about the last few days has been the pilgrims.

Pilgrims are a "given" here in Moratinos. Their numbers vary as the seasons change, but if you glance out over the fields there´s a good chance you´ll see at least one or two of them any time of the year. They come from all over the world, and march through our village at almost exactly the halfway point on the Camino de Santiago.

There´s no good reason for them to stop in town. We have no bar or store or accommodation for them, a rather rare thing for a town on the trail.

But the Peaceable is here, and we are, too... more and more these days. And as we begin to furnish the house to welcome pilgrims, more pilgrims are finding their way to us.

Sunday, for instance, we started out actually looking for a specific pilgrim. His name is Willy from Köln, and he walked with me last June when I did the Camino Aragonese. He emailed and said he´d be through here about 9 a.m. Paddy took the dogs out that morning, found Willy from Köln on the trail, and brought him home for coffee and leinsahmen schwartzbrot. We had a nice visit, and I walked him back through town to where the Camino commences. We said goodbye, Willy thanked me for the Moratinos "sello" stamp we´d added to his pilgrim credential. He went on his way. A young man named Jürgen heard us speaking in German, and introduced himself, and said he´d like a stamp, too. So I took him home as well, and he came with us to church.

Afterward a little English lady came looking for us. Her name was Jocelyn Ricks, and she saw our listing in the Confraternity of St. James trail guide -- this is how lots of English pilgrims know we are here. We belong to the ever-growing group, and we´ve been hospitaleros at both of the pilgrim hostels they sponsor. Jocelyn was special in many ways. First, she is walking the Camino backward, from west to east. She hopes to make it all the way to Rome this year.

Jocelyn is a Camino pioneer. She did the big hike for the first time in 1982, when no one but scholars and historians had ever heard of the Camino de Santiago. She walked from Le Puy de Velay in France all the way to Santiago de Compostela in tennis shoes, with only two road maps and an art history book to guide her. She made it just fine. (Stick that in your GPS units, folks.)

And after she got back to Wolverhampton she and three other Camino scholars founded the Confraternity of St. James. Impresionante! And so we have hosted yet another camino celebrity in our humble abode! As I saw her out of town, on the eastern side this time, yet another pilgrim stopped to ask about the bodegas. He was from Australia, he said, and his name was Xavier Francis. I had my keys with me, so I showed him what a bodega looks like inside. He took dozens of photos, asked a hundred questions, and was a load of fun to chat with.

These are the people who drew us to this place. When you´re already giving them tea and first aid and route advice, it´s an easy next step to ask the really interesting or nice or injured ones if they want to stay for dinner, or for the night even.

And so we have put beds in the guest rooms. We cleared all the junk out of the despensa and put a bed in there, so a pilgrim traveling with a dog will have a place to sleep, or someone who just wants a nap in a cool place can have a lie-down. (Pilgs with dogs have a hard time finding places to stay.)

We have a nice place right here in a Camino town. And soon we can have pilgrims stay here with us, as well as family and friends. It´s like a dream come true, no?

The Romance of Ticks

A kind Irish lady writes to me. She longs for a simpler life, and apparently Spain is calling her name.

Having been in the same situation for a very long time, her feelings resonate with me. I appreciate her candor, and the fact that this longing for faraway places is widespread enough to support a growing genre of travel/expat non-fiction.

What struck me most was this line: "I long for simplicity and the joys that you mention... reveling in the sky, clouds, birdsong and the sheer joy of living of your dogs. It makes this world of mine seem so shallow and meaningless."

Gott in Himmel! Can I live up to this? So, it is to her, and all the similar people I hear from, that I dedicate today´s blog entry. It is a description of this morning: a particularly romantic, deep, and meaningful morning.

It really started last night, when a Dutch pilgrim showed up in town with yet another stray dog picked up outside Carrion de los Condes. This pup is evidently half German Shepherd and half something smaller. It seemed quite healthy and happy and energetic, even after hiking 25 kilometers.

We fed both man and beast, and kept the dog overnight at the Peaceable. Today we´ll take her (for she is a she) in to the vet to look for the ID microchip required of all EU canines. From there we will take her home, as three dogs is demasiado.

And so when we rolled in this morning, three happy hysterical leaping creatures greeted us at the gate. Una and Tim didn´t slay her overnight, which is good. And she didn´t do too much damage we could see... Although someone made a mess in the kitchen-to-be. A bigger dog, apparently. A little message for us.

We took a walk. Celestino is working on his bodega, and asked us to come back about noon to sample the olives and cheese he cured in there last year. Woah! A lunch date!

Back at the Peaceable I settled onto the porch with a saucer-ful of paint thinner and a fine-tooth comb and the puppy, who I am calling Mimi. I put a mask over my nose and mouth, as I am allergic to dogs up close. Then, with Paddy holding her close, I removed the dozens of lumpy brown and gray blood-sucking ticks attached to her ears, face, head, muzzle, arms, stomach, back, and tail. Ticks are really bad here in the spring, and we spend a good bit of time feeling-up our dogs. We often find disgusting blood-sucking creatures tucked into their coats, despite flea collars and anti-bug baths.

I am particularly good at this feeling-up. Last year, the neighbors brought their infested curs over here for a going-over. This is not something I have bragged to my mother about. I don´t think there is a prize committee out there searching for tick-pickers. But I have always had good hands, and dogs and cats, horses and sheep, chickens and ferrets always love it when I touch them. Ticks, no. The ticks go into the paint thinner, where I hope they DIE.

After her de-ticking I decided to give Mimi a bath. Bob sang, Paddy chopped up potatoes for an omelette to bring along to Celestino´s. I put the dog into the little bathtub. She didn´t like it. And I realized I didn´t have a cup or a bowl or anything to pour the water over her. She started trying to jump out. I yelled for Paddy, who was listening to Modern Jazz Quartet just then, turned WAY up. I had to yell and yell, which made the pup even more scared, so I had to hold onto her even harder.

That´s when the electricians came through the gate. They stepped over the dish of dead ticks in the entryway, pushed aside the leaping, barking Tim and Una, and put their heads into the bathroom long enough to say they needed me to tell them where to put everything. Paddy took over the dog. I went into the house with the men.

The omelette was still cooking on the stove.

I really do like the flavor of a very well-browned onion. The tortilla is still perfectly edible, but not company-worthy.

Things calmed down a little after that. I decided to plant the trumpet vine next to the well, so it can climb up over the well structure and bloom gloriously in August. For this I needed a shovel. And the shovels are out back by the chicken coop. I headed out. Una and Tim went with me. And the pup slipped through the door, too.

She was instantly plunged into the atavistic joy of making chickens run, the thrill of hearing a woman shout "Nononono!", the excitement of seeing if she could outrun Una AND grab a mouthful of hen at the same time. Paddy came pounding outside, and by then Blodwin was cornered in the sloebush, screaming horrible hen screams I hope I never hear again. Paddy gave me a look that would wither a Mongol, then hauled the puppy back through the house.

I pulled Blodwin out of the hedge, fearing the worst, feeling through her feathers for broken skin or bone or blood. I held her against me with both hands and spoke quietly to her. I couldn´t feel anything obviously out of order, except her little heart pattering along like a wristwatch. I looked into her gleaming dinosaur eye. And she pecked me.

I put her and her mates into the chicken hut and closed the door. They all are walking and squawking normally, aside from a few literally ruffled feathers. Blodwin is one lucky chicken. So far.

I never did get that shovel, dammit.

The needy electricians are still here, so Paddy went on his own to Celestino´s bodega. He took Mimi with him. Tim and Una decided not to be jealous. They are asleep on the sidewalk outside, where the bright sun bounces off the house and nicely toasts their hides. The laundry dries on the line. Bob exchanges jazz phrases with the sparrows and grackles, right up to the moment Paddy comes back. He´s got a pair of pilgrims with him. "They´re from Seattle," he says, "I thought you might want a look at them."

Dierdre, you´re right. It might be just as shallow and meaningless here as anywhere else, and probably much more gruesome and disgusting. But there´s an awful lot of added sweetness, too.

Wonderful International Weirdness!

This is the kind of wonderful international of weirdness that makes me glad to be part of the world right now, and very glad we have the Internet, even way out here on the perimeter!

Just FYI: Leningrad Cowboys are from Finland. The Red Army Choir was a famous Cold War Commie chorus whose big hit "Song of the Volga Boatmen" is touched-on. Kinda. And "Sweet Home Alabama" is pure southern-fried Americana. Pull up a Stoli martini (or maybe Absolut? Or Wild Turkey?) and enjoy!

Memento Mori and Kitchen Installers

Jose Antonio promises the house (or at least his part of it) will be done at the end of the week. Woohoo!

There´s a wall-eyed man in there right now, installing the kitchen. And upstairs, now that we can walk on the shiny shellacked floors, the bathroom awaits the plumber, who awaits the carpenter, who awaits the doors, which are in that never-neverland called Asturias!

The details are happening. The details, I am told by Casa y Campo and the glossy "decor porn" magazines, make all the difference. And that´s what makes me so nervous!
It looks like the bathroom furniture - the sink base, the cupboard, etc., arrived in the same color we ordered for the downstairs bathroom. Down there they look great. Upstairs, though, in the blue and white and pine-colored sunlight, they just look black. I can only hope they can whisk them back to the warehouse and get them switched out. I can only hope that bathroom fittings don´t also come from Asturias.

I know this is all terribly dull, especially if you´re here looking for uplifting inspiration about the pilgrimage to Santiago. I tell myself we are doing all this, at least in part, for the pilgrims who will eventually fetch up here.

And when I think of these things I remember Fuente de Hospitalejo, a place along the lonely camino outside Carrion de los Condes. Way back about a thousand years ago, when the Camino was even bigger than it is now, when thousands of medieval pilgrims toiled for months to make the trip, Hospitalejo was a booming little place. It had at least one innkeeper and his family, a farmhand or two, and a constant stream of pilgrims -- some of whom stayed for days or weeks, or even the rest of their lives. ("Hospital" didn´t mean "medical center" per se... it was something more like "hostel," or "hotel.") Some of the pilgrims died there, along with the innkeeper and his family and farmhands. This went on for generations, for centuries, until the pilgrim stream eventually dried up. The innkeeper´s heirs found better ways and places to make their living. The inn and barns and outbuildings fell down. The cemetery disappeared beneath somebody´s plow. Hospitalejo, after all those years and generations of human labor and effort, heartbreak and death and maybe even decor, vanished.

Now there´s only a spring there, and a stone marker.

Someday, maybe sooner than later, the Peaceable will vanish, too, maybe gone back to earth, maybe paved-over and replaced by a shiny subdivision or factory or airport. The paint colors and matching wood and flowers and rosebushes will be just as forgotten as Patrick O´Gara and Rebekah Scott and Bob the Canary... and the anonymous, long-dead innkeepers of Fuente de Hospitalejo.

I need to remember that.

Dripping

It rains, rains, and rains.
I like rain. It makes everything around us turn green, and green is my favorite color. I can hear it tapping on the roof and windows, and that makes me feel cozy and warm. I think about the poppy and sunflower seeds we planted last week, and I imagine them germinating away out there around the bodega door and the back gate, out on the N120.

Heavy rain makes the Peaceable into a sticky, golden-brown mess. Our shoes, paws, jackets, floors, and walkways are coated in mud, and will remain that way until the world dries out again. I hope no one comes to visit. Una and Tim can´t seem to dry out their coats, and our single-room living space reeks of wet dog.

The barn roof, which we spent major money on fixing last fall, has three leaks. Antonio the Roofer said he´ll come and fix them, but somehow we need to pinpoint where the leaks are exactly. The roof timbers are a good 15 feet over our heads, and the vast space is lit by a single bulb. I think we might´ve been better-off replacing the whole business: timbers, tiles, and tubes, but regret is a waste of time.

The chicken house roof still leaks, too, but I periodically go out and do what I can to minimize the damage. The chicken girls, meantime, have taken up daytime hours in the window well that looks into our new living room. It´s relatively dry there, they can see some of what´s going on... they want to be where the action is. If you open the back door into their yard they are there, man... streaking past your ankles, down the hallway, and into the inner patio. (nothing is more funny than a running chicken.) They love the patio. It´s got greenery to peck at (including all the new plants we are starting or resurrecting), lots of other birds to cluck at, people moving around. And dogs.

The dogs aren´t crazy about the chickens, but they are under strict orders to leave them in peace. The chickens, meantime, love the dogs´ food bowls. Small as their beaks are, the chickens can swallow kibbles whole. They´ll clear out a dog dish in just a few minutes, their beaks banging out a rhythm on the stainless steel. They leave behind the big soft bits, which the dogs don´t much care for, either. Our chickens are pigs, really. Una hates that.

Poor Una. She has those hens to deal with out back, and now there´s a canary in the kitchen. She very deeply longs to eat them all. Bob is way up atop the fridge, but Una is clever enough to find a way to him, I know. Tim the "bird dog" stares up at him, but is otherwise nonplussed.

As for Bob, he very much enjoys musical accompaniment. We noticed this morning he sang extra loud when an Edith Piaf song came on the box. He must know they called Piaf "the Little Sparrow."

Work has slowed on the Peaceable, as one craftsman waits on another to do some needed job before he can finish up. The kitchen installers are due Monday. The bathroom "furniture" arrived in the wrong color, but it looks like we´ll just get on with it, as will take a month to get the problem put right. I went out in a howling gale yesterday and did the hateful job of shopping for furniture. I bought a bed and side tables and a dresser, in a style called "Zen." It took for-bloody-ever to find it among the god-awful clunky ´rustico´stuff and the garish laquered chrome disco lounge suites. Even then I had to order it. A month, they said again. Good thing we already have mattresses and a couple of beds here.

Good things, among the mud and gray skies. Right as rain.

Knockabout Headway Day

The dogs are asleep in the sun, and I think Paddy may be nodding off, too, out in his lawn chair. It has been an exhausting and eventful and knockabout few days at The Peaceable. 

The first big news is I broke my thumb, just a little, two days ago. A tiny piece of bone on the first knuckle snapped off and is now floating around in there. But lucky for me, my spankin´ new Spanish national health system ID card showed up the very same day! So I saw two doctors (a sort of sister act, really), got my right hand X-rayed, had it all taped-up and medicated, and was sent home without having a cast or splint. (If I have one of those I can´t drive the car, and splints often don´t offer much help in a case like this, when the joint is not broken. Or so I am told.) They let me keep my X-ray, which is truly cool. I put it in with my mammogram. I am starting a collection of photos of my insides. 

The break is not that painful unless I use it to push or pull or lift or grasp something. Which I kinda do a lot, seeing as I am right-handed. I have lovely drugs to take at night, so I can sleep. The best thing is, it was free.  Socialism is a beautiful thing! 

The next big thing is the newest addition to our Peaceable Kingdom: a canary bird named Bob. He is gray and rather nondescript to look at... that´s kinda why I chose him, really, from a cage full of his yellow and orange and white brethren at a pet shop in Palencia. He had all his feathers, his eyes were bright, and he was the only gray, sparrow-like canary there. So I brought him home. He made little peeping sounds in the box on the passenger seat, nothing like singing. But he came with a guarantee. I didn´t worry. 

And I didn´t need to. Within a half-hour of arriving in his shiny white cage on the porch, Bob was trilling, tweeting, chattering, and twittering his little heart out, letting the local bird life know that he was on the scene. It´s fun to watch the sparrows watching him. They tweet at him, and he answers back with an aria!  I´ve always wanted a singing canary, and this one already has brought so much joy to the house. (I think Una wants to ´play´ with him, though. She is not fond of birds in general.)

And speaking of dogs: This morning, out on the plaza, was the big showdown between Tim and Pants Dog, a big canine thug known to chase cars and kill chickens. Pants Dog (we call him that ´cause he is white up front, but his behind is black. He looks like he´s wearing trousers) sometimes gets out of his yard when Edu opens up the gate to get his tractor out. He´s confronted Tim before, but one time Una intervened, and the other was broken-up by Edu, his owner, who swings a mean stick. 

Often during their morning walks Una will jump on Tim, snarling and snapping, and roll him right off his feet. He fights back half-heartedly. I always figured this was just her way to reinforcing her role as Queen Bitch and his as Backup Auxiliary Dog, but now I see it differently. I think she was shaping him up for the inevitable, teaching him a few of her vicious street-cur moves.  

This morning, Tim was ready. Long story short, Pants Dog made the first move, and Tim didn´t hesitate. He grabbed ahold of Pants Dog´s ear and face with his teeth, and simply didn´t let go, not even when the bigger dog pulled and snapped and dragged him hither and yon and Edu set about both dogs with a broomstick, and I grabbed onto Tim´s scruff to try and pull him free. When he finally let go, Pants Dogs´ face was bloody and punctured. He ran back into his yard.  Edu was very sad and apologetic, and told me Tim is "tan valiente!"  

"Tim" was originally short for "Timid," but no more. I can find no mark or injury on him. I am not in favor of my dogs fighting with other dogs, but Tim was provoked. And he kicked ass. 

The other knockabout stuff came about as a result of a phone call: the carpenter is coming tomorrow to hang the doors in the house, so we were advised to get whatever large furniture we have inside the house today. 

So I taped up my hand, we girded our loins, and waded into the garage and barn and despensa, in search of box springs, mattresses, and bedrails -- most of them buried behind boxes and wardrobes, sofas and storm doors. In order to start one thing, a couple of other things had to be done first. It was hard to stay focused. We had to stop and rest a lot.  And in between we passed a huge, heavy work table through one window, and an old comfy sofa through another.  We shlepped a monster wardrobe out the front gate, up the back yard, and in through the new door. (Then two of the legs fell off it anyway. Good thing we have all these extra bricks lying around!)  We put the washing machine on a dolley and rolled it up and into the house.  We put together two beds, and brought mattresses from the garage... so there are two sleep-able beds now in the house, and a wardrobe, and a dresser, and a sofa, and a kitchen work table.  Paddy only fell down twice -- both times were probably my fault.  (He says he´s fine, really. So I gotta stop asking him if he´s alright.) 

There´s also a working toilet in the house, and toilet paper on the roll. There´s a basket full of clean laundry, the dishes are done and dog food bowls filled-up for the night, and Bob the singin´ fool is even now being tucked away for the night.  We must get back to Sahagun, where painkillers and a championship football match await. 

We´re on the final month of the Sahagun rental. Soon we won´t have to do the back-and-forth commute any more. We are making headway. The work is hard, but it feels good.  

 

Big Fun Makes Headlines!

Moratinos made the newspaper today, and Big Fun blog was also part of the action. You can (maybe) check it out here:

http://www.nortecastilla.es/20080412/palencia/entra-opina-20080412.html
and work out your Spanish!

They didn´t spell my name right, but those damn reporters can never get anything perfect, can they?

here it is in simple print-out form:
MORATINOS
Entra y opina en la red

Una pareja de anglosajones se ha asentado en Moratinos y ha creado un blog en torno a este municipio
12.04.08 -
EDUARDO PLAZA

"Los soportales de la iglesia de Moratinos acogen más de un día a los peregrinos que paran a descansar y a reponer fuerzas. Después retoman el pulso al Camino de Santiago y llegan hasta San Nicolás del Real Camino, el otro pueblo perteneciente a este municipio en el que sí repercute más, al menos desde el punto de vista económico, el paso de la ruta jacobea. Y es que en San Nicolás hay un restaurante que cuenta con mucha aceptación, especialmente los fines de semana, y un albergue de peregrinos que regenta desde hace unos años un matrimonio afincado en Sahagún. Esta cercana localidad leonesa es la de mayor población de la comarca, por lo que los vecinos de Moratinos suelen desplazarse hasta allí con asiduidad para beneficiarse de los servicios que ofrece.

Acento anglosajón

Algo parecido quería promover en Moratinos una pareja de ingleses que compró una casa en este pueblo con la intención de arreglarla y abrir un albergue. Sin embargo, dejaron la vivienda que estaban acondicionando y se marcharon asegurando que no tardarían en volver. Pero de eso aún no se sabe nada.

Los que sí se han establecido en Moratinos son otra pareja también extranjera, en este caso compuesta por un inglés y una americana. «Habían hecho el Camino de Santiago y les gustó el pueblo cuando pasaron por aquí. Además, son gente muy agradable y están muy identificados con el mundo de los peregrinos», explica el alcalde de Moratinos, Esteban Velasco. Tan identificados se encuentran con este pequeño municipio palentino, Patrick y Rebeka -así se llaman-, que hasta han apostado por crear un blog en internet: www.moratinoslife.blogspot.com.

Una original forma, sin duda, de abrirse al inmenso mundo exterior que navega por la red y dar a conocer la vida de gente sencilla que lucha para que su pueblo no desaparezca del mapa."