El Camino: Part 6

The morning of being awoken by dozens of loud, drunk Spanish youth at 7am I was struggling to extricate myself from incredibly plush and comfortable bed.

Days of constant strenuous exercise and sketchy sleep were catching up to me. I slammed the snooze button several times in a haze, diving back into the welcoming warm folds of the mattress and blankets.

Finally the revelers in the streets outweighed my desire for rest. I got up and made my man into the slick, grey streets.

As I slowly put together, it was Nadal, the Christmas season. Consequently, no shops or cafes were open this Friday morning.

I only found this out through wandering sleepily around town for about 20 minutes. Finding it deserted aside from the partiers, I plugged in my route for the days into All Trails and begrudgingly hit the road on an empty, coffee-less stomach.

I did however happen to see in the main square of Ponte Vedra a group of travelers whose acquaintance I had briefly made a few days back on the trail. At first they didn’t recognize me but I stared at them, a bit hurt, then they took a second look and waved in greeting.

I ended up passing them on the other side of the river in the more modern, urbanized section of Ponte Vedra.

But then I quickly chanced upon an open café on that dreary morning and stopped inside for a cappuccino, orange juice and ham & cheese empanada-croissant thing.

Once breakfast was ascertained, on I went, making my way into the ‘suburbs’ of Ponte Vedra that were really medieval stone villages the city had crept out to meet over time. And once again I ran into this group from Mexico.

We had reached a Y in the Camino, one branch going off to the left that was ‘supplemental’ - going off to the coast where one then had to take a ferry back to the main land (as my googling had told me the night before) - and one the traditional way. Here we joined for the rest of the day.

They were 7 people total. Two couples and a pair of lady friends all in their late-50s to mid-60s. And there was a daughter of one of the couples about my age, Isabel, who’s 29.

I really only spoke with Isabel, Gabriel and Leon much. The other ladies spoke mostly Spanish whereas these three all spoke excellent English.

The group had spent the previous two weeks in Portugal and Morocco, celebrating a friends wedding. They were also all brought together on the Camino to honor the memory of their friend. She was in her later 50s, and the year previous had succumbed to liver cancer within three months of being diagnosed.

The year prior to her death she had done the El Camino with her son. She was the first of all her friends to do it. So these six people, brought together by their common friendship, honored the memory of their friend by walking the Camino for her.

Leon was a doctor, Gabriel a professor of Entrepreneurship and Isabel was a former social worker taking a sabbatical and trying to find (like me) what was next in her life. Isabel is the daughter of Gabriel.

Isabel and I talked for a majority of the time. We were faster walkers and she was very grateful (understandably) to have some company aside from several 60-somethings, making a decision on where and when to stop for lunch. She had been a social worker employed by the Mexican government in and around Monterrey for the past three years.

She’d worked with indigenous tribes through cultural entrepreneurship projects, aided Syrian asylum seekers getting into university in Monterrey and a host of other things. She had also done a volunteering gig in Turkey several years previously in a Syrian refugee camp.

We talked of quire a lot of things.

I shared some of my experiences and impressions in Poland. It was really fantastic to find someone who both pursued a career of meaning and helping people to have been employed by a government. We both felt simultaneously very grateful for our experiences but deeply frustrated with the ‘politics’ and bureaucracy of government.

We also talked quite a bit about death. As it was the main purpose for the group to walk the Camino and, as Isabel described to me in great detail, Mexicans typically have a deeper and richer relationship to death and dead loved ones. With Dia de los Muertos being the essential example, they also see a continuous relationship with their dead loved-ones as being part of every day life.

For example, on the trip Leon took a picture of a harbor filled with boats. When they went to inspect the photo a bit closer. Not one, but two boats were named the same name as their friend they were honoring – Lourdes (Lou Lou to them).

Another time, after we had arrived at Caldas de Reis and Gabriel wanted to take a picture of us on the bridge at the center of town, he ‘mistakenly’ called me Tom. Isabel and her mom made a joke about how he even forget his own children’s name and will call them different things. I laughed and shrugged.

But I had also told them earlier about how one of my major reasons for joining the army was to connect to my grandfather (on my moms side) who had died when I was 19. He had served during the Korean war in the Pentagon. I was backpacking for my first time in Europe in June 2016 when he passed away. It’s something I’ve always felt very sad about because he and I have a lot in common.

In addition to serving he had a masters in English literature. He would have our whole family read the bible and poetry every Christmas. He had a wild, dry, pranksterish sense of humor (one time he pretended to be a doctor in a hospital for example). It’s something I’ve always regretted, never being able to have conversations with him man to man, to find out who he was in his life as a younger man.

In moments where I’ve felt most challenged and trying to understand who and what I am in life – I tend to have dreams of my grandfather.

Once, when I went to a childhood trauma retreat and began addressing in earnest all the issues I’d delt with growing up, I had such a dream.

That night I dreamt my grandfather was with me in a burning house. All my family was there laughing, drunk and partying. He and I were the only ones sober. He was dressed to the 9s (as he always was in real life). He was making sure everyone was alright in the house. But I had to get out. He gave me a hug and let me go.

I had told Isabel and Gabriel about my grandfather and his influence on joining the army, but I didn’t tell them his name. His name happened to be Tom. Tom Cooley. I told Isabel and Gabriel that. Isabel gave me a look that said ‘you see’ and Gabriel just shrugged with a knowing look.

I had also told Isabel my other grandfathers name, Peter, in the midst of conversation earlier that day. Later that evening she said she wanted to show me something. She took me to a street sign, right across the bridge from where we staying and pointed it to me. It was Ria Pedro Matteo. Peter-Matthew street. So it seems I had my grandfathers with me on this El Camino.

Gabriel and I also got to talk a long while during this day on the Camino.

He teaches entrepreneurship with purpose. You have to have passion for something (love + ability) then a model for how you solve people's problems through your passion. It was very helpful to have a conversation in such simple terms on a subject that often feels very complicated for me.

I'm passionate about writing. And what Gabriel helped me see is that I do have a very real problem to help solve.

I told him about how I grew up with my brother, his mental illness and the effect it had on our family. The turmoil and strain it put us through and the stress of wrestling with doctors and school officials for my parents and brother.

I told him how I was the first one to address it internally for our family. How I went through years of therapy and reads hundreds of books to try and improve the situation for myself and my family.

He told me I had courage to say something, address the turmoil and take it on. He told me I had a success story. And that I could help someone else in a similar situation in their healing journey from taking something like ten years in my case and distilling what I’d learned. Then maybe their journey would only be two years, or something like that.

I saw that the problem I could help solve would be giving people back time, time to get on with their life as it would have been before the trauma. And how to move forward with what you do have because of your experiences in a healthy way.

This was a really heartening conversation to have. I have often felt overwhelmed with sheer amount of information and issues I have had to encounter and sift through simply because of a random, Black Swan event that was my brother's mental illness. It has often seemed to me that it had come to dominate my life, to my great frustration and resentment at times.

But speaking with Gabriel put everything in to place. Now at 28, I see I’m no longer the frustrated, angry young man that I was. I’m no longer fighting for myself and fueled by anger.

I have dealt with a great majority of the issues that I had to go through successfully enough. I’ve taken detailed, thorough notes the whole way. I’ve honed my skill in writing and research to a high degree.

And I now have approximately two years of university to complete on the GI Bill that will give me ample time to write about my story. I know the problem I’m solving and I know the model to bring it to market. Everything snapped into place.

And so, a magical day on the El Camino passed by. Caldas de Reis is a spa town owing to the natural springs there. There was a hotel/spa with a treatment I was happy to pay 60 euros to receive. We all ate dinner together at an excellent restaurant, sharing our meals and jokes. They applauded the young, bashful chef when the meal was over.

It seems to me, as I wrote about in Aligning with the Signs, when you go about in the world with a mature sense of openness in your heart and mind, fantastic things happen.

What are the odds I’d meet a professor of entrepreneurship and his daughter on sabbatical? They seemed like exactly the people I needed to speak with. So it seems.

In the morning I headed out earlier than the group, needing the solitude to allow everything to sink in.

With that I’ll leave you there. Thanks for reading and much love.