Caminoheads

Don Quixote, on page 794.

It’s early yet and getting ready to get to the airport.  I talked My Rebecca into driving me over which is nice.  Thought that I would check in with you now just briefly.

Maybe give you the next Pilgrims Beautitude so we keep the flow.

BLESSED ARE YOU PILGRIM, IF YOU DISCOVER THAT ONE STEP BACK TO HELP ANOTHER IS MORE VALUABLE THAN A HUNDRED FORWARD WITHOUT SEEING WHAT IS AT YOUR SIDE.

It isn’t an athletic event.   It is meant to be walked with others,  maybe not every step but as a whole.  This so reminds me of being on the Meseta in August and no one would leave anyone out there alone exposed to that sun.

OK, off to San Diego and folks down there.  Alperfect, love, Felipe.

Official patch.

Hi.  Just catching my breath.  It has been an extremely busy two days.  ‘Today I am going to goof off as much as possible.  And tomorrow off again this time to San Diego.

These days have so many moving parts that they are hard to remember and describe.  Saturday was the boat trip from Seattle to Victoria with My Rebecca, Carol and Annie.  That was a three hour ride each way.  Then in Victoria we had a showing with the local chapter of the Canadian Company of Pilgrims.  This is the equivalent of our APOC.  It was in a real theater with Phil’s Camino on the big screen with great sound.  The Q and A was really exceptional.   Then we had a party at the home of one of the group.  Very nice and lots of good conversation and connections made.  Fabulous folks.

Then Sunday Annie went to Mass with Catherine and me.  Father David is back from his vacation.  Then we had a whole day of filming with my Bible Guys and here at the trail and around the environs.  That is a lot harder than it sounds but we all survived.  Then the film crew headed back to Seattle and Annie was off to the airport.

But I will see her again in San Diego for two showings at the SD Cinema Society.  They have a website with all the vital details.   So, will have more opportunities to touch base with folks out there.

Just feel like I have been chasing my tail for two days.   It is hard to come down from all that and get back to anything in the heavy duty blog department.  I will just have to report to you till things get back to normal.

You may have noticed that the blog is looking different these days.   A little different now maybe but we have more changes planned.  I had a donation come in to help out with the trail and the blog,  so we are catching  up on  maintenance.   Hanna is helping me out with the blog some each week.  I realized that if I wanted a better blog I would need concentrated help.  I am so focused on content and so unsavvy with the tech stuff that this seemed appropriate and will make a lot of difference for you and me.

The trail needs help with some of the areas that get hazardous in wet weather.  So we are going to haul in crushed rock to help the inclines and wet areas in the woods.  And hauling in wood chips to cover areas where the tree roots are exposed.   Trying to get to a safer surface.   Speaking of the trail I need to get Carol  up as we are walking in half an hour.  Jump up pilgrim!

Bye for now.  As always lovin your stuff, Felipe.

The nun at the doors of the church in the grove.

Altarpiece inside the church in the grove.

I got today to run around and get things ready for the weekend. Five days of fun with Annie and Carol with a trip to Victoria and a trip to San Diego. Flying back from SD on Wednesday morning and treatment at the hospital that afternoon. I’m getting tired just thinking about it. Anyway I have today to scurry around and prepare. Don’t forget the passports Felipe!

Will try and keep you supplied with pix of events. Mostly all this is about capturing some more footage for use with the new hour long version of Phil’s Camino. It is being prepared for European TV which has hour long programming. But we will see it too, somehow. The details are not worked out yet or I don’t know them anyway. Just a pretty face.

Barometer is way up and I’m seeing blue sky out. We have two long boat rides tomorrow to Canada. The weather should be good. It’s three hours each way so we will have plenty of time for catching up.

Now, we have time to look at Pilgrim Beatitude number five. But first maybe I could describe the locale of the little church where these came from. Kelly and I walked off the Camino to get to this hill. It was no more than five kilometers. And the church was on top of this hill nestled in a forest of hardwood trees. The trees weren’t close together but maybe 20-30 feet apart. It was shady but not crowded. One could imagine groups of people conversing or horses tied up here and there. There was not road up there nor was there a parking lot. Just a beautiful church in a grove of trees.

Now when I am visiting places like the old missions in California I try to envision the grounds without the cars and parking. What if you just filtered through the shady trees to get there? It is a totally different feel.

BLESSED ARE YOU PILGRIM, IF YOUR KNAPSACK IS EMPTYING OF THINGS AND YOUR HEART DOES NOT KNOW WHERE TO HANG UP SO MANY FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS.

This is a good one isn’t it? Part of you emptied out and part was so full that you could barely function. I remember laughing and crying at the same time unable to let things out fast enough. I remember so much beauty and not knowing where to put it all. I was overwhelmed frequently, often and usually.
Ahh! Are we going back? Just a thought.

OK, I am going to take a minute and see if I can find some pix of that Knights Templar church and the nun sweeping. Mary Margaret remembers the name of the place. Sometimes names and places just disappear and the event is carried in the mist of the overall experience. That happened to me a lot.

OK, we are golden! Time to go. Maybe they have wifi on the boat and I can write from there tomorrow. Love you guys, Felipe.

My trusty catalog., seeds for the Pacific Northwest climate.

OK, maybe I’ll change my nomenclature and start calling them mountain lions. That sounds a little scarier than it is. But it might alleviate the giggles when I use the innocent word cougar. See?

I am seriously looking at the 2017 seed catalog. When I first get it I throw it in the corner, phase one, then at some point I start peeking in, phase two, but now phase three is here. What a great activity! Planning ahead for when the soil temp finally will get above 70 degrees and we will be able to stretch out our hunkered down bodies, minds and spirits. OK, no whining.

Annie and Carol are coming this weekend to play with us. We have a one day trip to Victoria, British Columbia on Saturday to show the film to Canadian Pilgrims on the Camino. Then Sunday we will be doing some more filming. The work for the one hour version of Phil’s Camino has started!

I’ll have to tell you one of my favorite stories of Annie. On March 2nd, 2014 Annie first came to Phil’s Camino the trail. For several days previous to that memoriable date I scurried around cleaning things up. One of the items on my list was to put down five flat rocks to bridge the water flowing through Raven Creek. When Annie first saw them she said, “Oh, how Camino!”. Then I said, Oh be careful, they are a little shakey. And she quickly said, “Oh, how Camino!”. It was at that point that I knew I was on the right track, a blessing from Annie.

So back to our look at the Pilgrim Beatitudes which were carefully handed down to us by the Knights Templar. I have to dig in the archives for September 2014 when I was in my glorious reentry period. Here we go, number four:

BLESSED ARE YOU PILGRIM, BECAUSE YOU HAVE DISCOVERED THAT THE AUTHENTIC “CAMINO” BEGINS WHEN IT IS COMPLETED.

That is so delicious! But what the heck does it mean? I have written a thousand blog posts on that topic and still it looms out ahead of me. I guess if I put it in a nutshell today Janurary 26th, 2017 I would say, “You have been trained now go do something with it.” Yes, that is a pretty good look at it from one particular angle. What do you think?

Off I go, walking this AM, fill the bird feeders, check for lion tracks, look at my corn patch, say a rosary. Yea, looks like my Camino to me, obvious Camino loves, Felipe.

Sunrise on a clear day, not this one.

It’s 0830, past dawn and the outdoors is foggy with very limited visibility, good blogging weather. I’ve listened to the same Pink Martini CD twice, coffeed up and am ready to blast off to be with you. So how are you? Summer where you are? Half of our friends are up and off to Mexico or New Mexico, somewhere south. Not us though, someone has to hold the fort.

Today we are going to cover the third of the Pilgrim Beatitudes. These little jewels don’t always reveal themselves on first glance. They can be slightly veiled, which this one is. Number three:

BLESSED ARE YOU PILGRIM, WHEN YOU CONTEMPLATE THE “CAMINO” AND YOU DISCOVER IT IS FULL OF NAMES AND DAWNS.

We’ve been contemplating the “Camino” for almost three years here at Caminoheads and that’s a lot of dawns. Always seems to be some new angle or detail or revelation. And it is definitely full of names. New folks show up all the time to add to the conversation. Folks that have been here a long time come up with new ways to look at things. If any of you want to ever write a paragraph or more for us on your Camino thoughts you are always welcome.

Time for me to hit my trail. The day calls with chores and opportunities. Hope that things go well for you. Love dawns, Felipe.

What talent!

My buddies, Catherine y Dana, brought eggs over from their hens. They are so beautiful, well, and tasty too. Last year at the end of the laying season I think there were only two colors. Now beside the brown there are two different greens. Yea. We had some for breakfast a few moments ago and I think I might have used all the one green. Let me check. Yes, I have all three and have a pic for you, how exciting. I have heard of Vashon being described as an artist’s colony and look even our chickens are freakin talented.

There is some of the big news from my neighborhood. The excitement continues so please “stay tuned” as they used to say. But back to where we left off yesterday with our review of the Pilgrim Beatitudes. These are so great and I am excited to share them with you. Number two from the Knights Templar:

BLESSED ARE YOU PILGRIM, IF WHAT CONCERNS YOU MOST IS NOT TO ARRIVE, AS TO ARRIVE WITH OTHERS.

Yes, we learned this one hopefully. A pilgrimage is not an athletic event. It is not a competition. If you are happy arriving before someone else you are missing the point. Competing with others or against the task itself is not being present to either. And being present is the zone we want to learn to hang out in as much as possible, then and as it turns out now.

Oh, this is a pleasantly short post. Nothing worse than people that go on and on. Who has the time to read it all? Arriving with you loves, Felipe.x

Along the trail.

Here at Raven Ranch on Phil’s Camino we are past the city of Melide and have about 50 km to go to Santiago and the Cathedral.

Our general schedule these daze:
Monday 0900-1000
Tuesday 1530-1630
Thursday 0900-1000
Sunday 1530-1630

The next disruption in that is Tuesday the 31st of Janurary when I will be out of town.

Lots of standing water on th trail so wear your rubber boots. Felipe.x

Most of the heat of a fire comes from between the logs. It is hard to keep one piece of wood burning on it’s own. A fire has to be a team effort.

Monday morning and I have an hour to get things done before the walk at 0900. Foggy and still outside right now, sometimes we live for days in the clouds. Here at Caminoheads I have been wanting to revisit something that we covered way back in the Fall of 2014 that was powerful then and I want to recapture that to keep us centered in these fragmented times.

Kelly and I left the Camino trail one day to visit a church that was part of a string of churches built by the Knights Templar way back when. It wasn’t terribly far off the beaten track in kilometers but it was far off in time. It was very beautiful in a way that only old cherished places can be that perhaps have fallen on hard times recently. It was manned (?) by a women, I think of her as a nun in sweatpants. And she was sweeping up and she gives me a half a page of print. This artifact proved extremely helpful to me and formed the groundwork of this blog in the aftermath of my pilgrimage.

There were ten items on both sides of the half sheet and they were termed the Pilgrim Beatitudes. These are so vivid and succinct. And they are plain spoken and mysterious at the same time. I carried these with me in my fanny pack and read them often on the Camino. This is what I searched for. Here is the first one just for today:

BLESSED ARE YOU PILGRIM, IF YOU DISCOVER THAT THE CAMINO OPENS YOUR EYES TO WHAT IS NOT SEEN.

OK said I, let’s start looking for what is not seen. Let’s walk and think about that. Let’s talk and think about that. Let’s shower and sleep and think about that. Let’s eat and drink and think about that.

That was my Camino in 2014. And this is our Camino, right here and right now. What are we going to make of it? Blessed are you pilgrim, love, Felipe.

Blue Heron hunkered down in the sunrise. By Karen Fuller.

I was out of it yesterday and the blog post got started but never finished. There are other times during my Pyrenees weekends (low point in my chemo cycle) when the blog hasn’t gotten out. I don’t feel right when the post doesn’t go out, I’m not doing my metronome thing. Sorry about that.

And I have to be sorry about yesterday in another way. I just couldn’t get excited about the big march “everywhere”. I’m just not a protester at heart I guess. It’s not that I don’t feel for people but it just isn’t moving me. Sorry about that again. The pic that Karen Fuller took of the blue heron in the sunrise looks exactly like how I feel. It’s me in the pic really, here on Vashon. Karen is a Caminohead from way back, from before I ever knew about it. Thank you Karen for the great shot. I owe you a glass of wine.

Well as long as we are talking art by lovely ladies let’s include this painting of the passion flower that Jane Valencia just completed. I think the right term is illustration really, anyway it is beautiful. And down right meaningful as Jane is an herbalist amongst other things and she uses passion flower in that work. I’m recruiting her to be a member of the Hildegard Sisters whenever I figure out exactly what that means.

The illustration Passion Flower by Jane Valencia popping off the page.

I love illustrations and illustrators. Norman Rockwell and John James Audubon the bird guy were illustrators. Somehow in my mind the art is similiar to documentary in the film world. It’s very attached to reality.

Anyway, OK, there are two Vashon ladies that I am featuring today. OK, let’s go for three. Here is a pic of My Rebecca’s latest critter:

Quincy by Rebecca Graves.

Rebecca creates with needle felting portraits of people’s pets that have passed away. They provide photos and she recreates the creature in three dimensions. People love them.

So, OK, have I made up a little bit for my lack of enthusiasm yesterday? I hope so. If so I am going to celebrate with a little wine for breakfast. There, that’s a first. Well, there it is for today. Always thinking of you and praying for you and yours, you’re beautiful, love, Felipe.

These boots were made for walking.

Really, how did I loose an hour? It just escaped so easily that I never noticed but fortunately I wasn’t too majorly late for my hospital appointment. Traffic was light so that made up for most of it. But where did that hour go? Did FaceBook steal it?

Well, I have to admit that is bothering me. But one side of me is totally happy. Wouldn’t it be great to be done with time, to be totally outside of it. As when we loose ourselves in our hobbies or favorite things to do. Just dilly dally the whole thing away. Ah, yes.

The other side of me is horrified. What are you getting old, how could you just loose an hour? One too many chemo treatments buddy? Hmm.

As I worry about that My Rebecca is grappling with her biggest fear, sinkholes. Yea, sinkholes. You’re here one moment and next the ground opens up and off you go, never to be seen again. The ground is supposed to be solid right? Solid ground is more than a phrase. Well, out on the road right where our driveway enters it is a rough patch of pavement that is disintegrating before our eyes. Everyday it is getting bigger in diameter and deeper in depth. The county’s got the orange pylons out and the signs. Looks like some kind of disaster in progress. Yikes, sinkhole?

We all have our private little fears don’t we? Except when it’s your fear then it’s not so small. Oh well, we will muddle onward as always.

I sense a certain amount of fear in the folks around me to the arrival of the new president. Personally I am not going to give it more importance than it deserves. We will survive, we will grow.

We are reaching the half way point in winter. That to me is important. Starting to plan for this year’s corn planting. When will the soil be dry enough to till? When will the soil be warm enough to plant? Do I till up more ground than last year? What varieties do I want to do this year? How am I going to to fertilize without introducing a new weed problem? Electric fence to foil the deer and raccoons? Will I have enough water in July and August? Roadside stand?

I remember asking one of my mentors whether he ever goes to Las Vegas to gamble? That was Robert the main man at Wax Orchards here down the road. He looked at me and said when you farm you don’t need to go anywhere to gamble. Yea, I get that.

OK, time to read Don Quixote. I got another 45 minutes of hydration and I’ll be free to go. Alperfect, even today, love you, Felipe.