NE 14 Sea 14. Excellent!

NE 0 Sea 0 Teams settling in.

I am currently on the couch with my trusty computer Gracie and ready to blog. Just finally done with two hours of cleaning, dishes and generally clearing the deck for the party. Wiley and friends and girlfriends all converting on our place for Super Bowl viewing fun! My Rebecca and I love these guys and this is the perfect deal to have them here with us.

Two hours to the game. I just have a rememberance of our first child being born on Super Bowl day 1979. There were only women on duty as all the males had figured out how to be gone for the game and festivities.

My Rebecca and I went out to friends for dinner and a movie last evening. Chicken cooked in cherries, yea. We watched “Brother Sun, Sister Moon” about St Francis and St Clara of Assisi. It is an oldie but goodie being done in the 1970’s with Donovan doing the sound track. This is an introduction to me to these saints and we are slated to watch anyother about these two soon, an Italian one.

There is a wonderful lady that I walked with for day in Spain named Clara from Assisi who I just found a pic of yesterday. She was the most interesting person just as all the Camino people are. Perhaps she will find her way to this blog and check in.

Well, OK, my mind is elsewhere today and maybe I will take a little nap before the gang shows up to throw me off the couch. Oh, here they come now, so much for the nap. Go Hawks loves, Felipe.

Monday 0900-1000
Wednesday 1600-1700
Friday 0900-1000
Sunday 1000-1100

Just show up during these times and we will walk and talk. It would be great

to see you again. It is a little muddy in spots so boots are advised.

The headline of our local newspaper, the Beachcomber, this week was “Vashon siblings share a trek of a lifetime”. Early this year I grabbed the headlines with my own trek of a lifetime and it is now Josh and Lizzy’s turn. Josh is a good friend of our son Wiley’s, both fishermen, adventurous guys. Lizzy’s is the younger than Josh by a few years and a force in her own right.

Thursday evening the bro and sis had a talk/slide show at a local book store. Rebecca and I made sure to go. So, the talk was about their experience hiking the Pacific Crest Trail here in the western USA. This is commonly known as the PCT and generally follows the crest of the Rocky Mountains from The Mexican border to the Canadian border. Yea, 2620 miles.

Of course, my mind was busy comparing and contrasting with the Camino Frances. What struck me first was the immense physicality of the PCT. 2620 miles translates to 4216 kms of mountains and desert and forest with little or no facilities and lots of middle of nowhere beauty. I was exhausted just watching the slides and thinking this is a young person’s deal for sure.

Most people hike this from south to north to start as early as possible in the South. And generally they have to average twenty miles a day to get to the North before serious snow. Sort of has a definite serious edge to it.

Another serious part to this that we became involved with first hand was the logistics. Wiley did 750 miles of the trail with Josh and Lizzy and company and had his own provisions to worry about. Mailing packages of dried and freeze dried foods to advanced localities was the method employed. So every couple of weeks we would bring another prepacked parcel to the post office for shipment.

So, in some ways Caminoheads we had it easy. They carried the 2 liters of water like we did but also real food, stoves, cooking utensils, tents and other serious gear, heavy gear. We had albergues, cafes and churches to cater to us.

But there were serious similarities that were fun to discover and contemplate. One was the throwing off of gear and learning the blessing of simplicity. Two was the sort of unworriedness that tends to develop where the Camino will take care of me is the thought. And the best thing is the same bonding that happened to us happened to them also and maybe even more so.

It also became apparent that the PCT seemed to fit young people’s mentality and interests better than our Camino. They are the bulletproof ones who can do any thing or almost. It is glorious to have that youthfulness and the will to challenge. Our Camino seems to fit people of more years who for one reason or another have been knocked off their horse as seems to happen to every one of us and seems to be just a matter of time. Loss, divorce, sickness, death, loneliness catch up to us and we need a place to sort things out and maybe learn new ways of seeing the world and relating to it. We have our own personal burdens that we bring to the Camino that are our challenges.

Thanks, I am over 500 words. Time to go, long distance loves, Felipe.

Hola Felipe!

I always seem to have either too much to say or too much to feel that can’t be expressed but thought this attachment would spark some thoughts on the Camino Experience. I remember sitting at a cafe about 10 km before Belorado after a very long, tough climb and descent and then many miles of hot, dusty trail and thinking that as soon as I finish this Coke (served in a Johnny Walker just-keep-walking glass) I’m going to call a taxi. My feet are on fire, I’m drenched in sweat and every muscle aches. In my notes on my iPhone, I wrote: ‘taxi = 10 minutes; walking = 1.5 hours. What to do?’ A couple of kind French women convinced me to rest another 5 minutes and then walk it, which I did. Our pension, Quatro Cantones, was perfect and the town itself was like a jewel box.

Love,

Mary Margaret

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The realist adjusts the sails.

(OK, lovely, another great TGIF. Thanks MM. See you all tomorrow. Seattle is coming unglued with the anticipation of the big game on Sunday. Go Hawks! Hawkish loves, Felipe)

Well, I am convinced that there is nothing that my good buddy Steve and I can’t figure out in an hour. He was over yesterday to help me out of my winter doldrums which was personified by Mabel my trusty tractor. Just would not start and would not start and I spent all my free time for two weeks sweet talking her, like some kind of mechanical CPR. The whole thing was getting me depressed but the addition of Steve to the mix was IT. Mucho gracias my beloved amigo!

Off the Seattle and the hospital today to get my portable chemo pump disconnected and see my beloved Dr Zucker who is my rehab guy and general soul mate. We always have a good time trying to make positives out of negatives. Mucho gracias my beloved amigo!

Wow, just peeked outside and the sky is a pleasant ratio of blue and puffy little clouds. Nice. And Mabel is parked in a new spot from where she was from before Spain, over her jealousy. Nice. Yea so, off to a good start.

I was just trying to sweet talk Angela in Sydney to come up with a last minute blog post for tomorrow’s TGIF. I know it is late but some folks work better like that. So also, if you have anything to contribute you are perfectly welcome to add your Camino thoughts to YOUR Caminoheads blog. Short and juicy is better than long and dry is the only rule.

Time to get today moving. So juicy loves, Felipe.

Today promises to be a good one. I am going to have two visitors, a new friend who is three years old and has a book on swords that he wants to show me and Steve my old buddy who has his sourdough rye Viking bread that he wants to share. And in between all that my dear tractor Mabel will start. But first I have time to be with you.

I was up for a time in the wee hours sleepless and this is some of the best time that I spend these days. It’s quite and there is nothing to distract me and it is just my thoughts and perhaps a visit by the Holy Spirit to hope for. But for sure it is a situation that I am over trying to fight thinking that I am “missing” sleep.

But the topic du jour is the longing for love. The three types of love that the Greeks identified with three different names. Agape, Eros and Phileo are them I think. Maybe we as people need them divided and it keeps us out of trouble but they have to do with each other closely.

Agape, or unconditional love is our love for God (and he for us) so one would think that it would be a fairly easy proposition to connect with him. But sometimes it feels like trying to get a glass of water from the bottom of Hoover Dam. Or, my image last night in the wee hours was God as a gale. Standing in a strong wind has always been a cleansing experience for me. It buffets me so strongly that I have to forget everything else for as long as I can stand it. When I want to start forgetting I can start to forget in that space. God can be found in that emptiness for me. Maybe the only thing that creeps in is fear which is perhaps the idea of “God fearing”.

Or there is Eros, which is the erotic version. This joining with a beloved feels as intense as a gale for sure and can cause major longing when absent as the world of love songs can attest.

Or there is Phileo love which is brotherly love which we got a serious dose of on the Camino. This is the predominant feature of the Camino in most people’s minds. In every way possible this happened continually and was impossible to ignore. It may have started as a breeze but it got to be a gale later as we all got the hang of it. And then I think that this was the major longing during our rocky reentry.

All these kinds of love are related and may have to be divided up for our benefit. We are like kindergarteners and need help to keep on task and out of trouble, me included at sixty seven years of age. God is the root though as we experience any love anywhere at any time.

YupanyperfectloveFelipe.