OK, so yea, I didn’t get anyone lined up to do the guest feature today. So, here I am with you. Could be worse, you could be in the turmoil in Paris. Wait, isn’t Emily there? Mary Margaret knows her geography, maybe she can help us out. We will have to contact Emily for her thoughts. A few weeks ago I was worried about Angela in Sydney and now this.

Really since Spain I have not paid much attention to the news the way I used to. Just haven’t given that level of reality so much importance. Not that I don’t think that current events aren’t important but only so important I guess. Find myself drifting toward the bigger picture mostly.

Have a great weekend and maybe check in with us at the blog here. Now that the holidays are winding down you will have more time. I will email Emily. Stay safe, love,

I know that I am late today. Too many things going on I guess. This morning I was over to Tacoma for a meeting of American Pilgrims. Always good to be around Camino people, Caminoheads.

But, yesterday Henry came out to see us, a Caminohead for sure. He is one of the sons of a minister that used to be out here on Vashon in the little community church that Rebecca and I attended. The dear man passed away from cancer four years ago. So, the whole family is dear to us.

Henry, two years after his father’s death decided to go and do the Camino Frances. This was 2013, in September/October. He did the complete walk and then on to the coast.

So, we had lunch out here at the ranch and walked on the trail here and gabbed about things Camino. What could be more fun. It would take a couple more posts to cover all the ground that our conversation covered in a few hours here. And you know stuff gets personal so quickly but I will mention a few things.

One, was Henry received a challenge from a fellow pilgrim to put the whole Camino into one word. Wow, there is a challenge. Henry chose the word “generous”. I like that a lot. What would your word be? I’ve got to think a while.

I was really impressed by Henry’s “the Camino will provide” attitude. Maybe it’s me but I am sort of fed up with people’s tendency to over plan. Maybe I have been hanging out with older folks who tend to be that way. Just refreshing to have someone who is not interested in over insulating himself from the experience. Yea.

Well, there is a parallel going on with the American Pilgrim’s meetings that I have been attending. Newcomers show up to get questions answered and learn. I was the same way I guess. But they generally have a whole set of questions that just sort of miss the whole point of the Camino. What I see are three categories of questions. One, since it is an athletic event what kind of gear do I need to perform well? Two, since it is away from cities how do I insulate myself from those realities? Three, since I can’t seem to exist without all my e-gadgemts, how can I get all this stuff to work over there?

There’s that and then there are the veterans at the meeting. They just seem to have a certain twinkle in their eye and a certain casualness and a certain confidence. They generally tell the newbies to relax and enjoy the ride. Love you as always, Felipe.

Rebecca treated me to a wonderful movie last evening with that title, “The Hundred Foot Journey”. It’s all about cooking, food, culture clashes, tradition/innovation and personal development. Lots of stuff going on and beautiful visuals too.

Then with my personal reading I finally got through with “For Whom The Bell Tolls” the classic by Hemingway. I had started reading it to put me in the mood to write about the Spanish Civil War back at the end of October. So, I finaally finished that up. Beautifully written book but hard to read. Hard to read about such a brutal period of Spanish history. Anyway, what I want to say is that I got started on “Eat This Book” by Eugene Peterson. Another eating thing. It was gifted to me by one of the guys in my men’s bible study group.

Eugene Peterson has published a translation of the bible, both Old and New Testaments. Called “The Message” it is a wonderful book to read as it is a paraphrase of the texts rather than a word for word translation. It strives to make the thoughts and ideas vital and available to us as twenty first century believers and not so concerned about the small stuff. It is the version of the bible that I use almost exclusively now.

So, back to his “Eat This Book” which is subtitled, “a conversation in the art of spiritual reading”. So, his “Way” is the attempt to discover the truths and internalize them, to eat them. Not just read, study, analyze but actually read to get them inside. And not that it is secret knowledge but rediscovering the personal side of it all, as we have a personal God, an available God, an eatable God even.

It’s just getting light outside. Henry is supposed to come today to walk and talk with me. He is in his twenties and did the Camino in the summer of ’13. His mother told me that it changed his life and I said to her that it changed mine too. It will be fun to catch up with him as we haven’t had time to do that. I will make lunch for him, speaking of eating.

Well, it looks like I have rambled sufficiently for one day. Time to get on to the next thing. Time to maybe wonder about our personal God. Time to “eat” stuff. Yup, love, Felipe.

Time to check in with you, wherever you are. Word Press my blog guys came up with a year end report on facts regarding my bloging career. Stuff like people in 37 different countries have checked in to read something over our six plus months now. USA, was first, followed by Spain and then Brazil was next. We even had some readers in Equador and Egypt. Wonder who they were?

Well, today I have a couple of links for you to some interesting stuff. Things that I have bumped into in the last few days. So, OK, here we go:

Then Rebecca rolled in with this link which is very fun (20 reasons for you to drop everything and go to Spain):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/minube/-20-reasons-to-drop-every_b_4601059.html?utm_hp_ref=travel&utm_content=buffer4bd9d&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

OK,and finally as if you weren’t having enough fun, there is this in from Mary Margaret about the benefits of long distance walking:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/11323460/Go-wild-take-life-in-your-stride.html

So, there are some things to keep you occupied and out of trouble for the time being. Just trying to get through the winter can be a major endeavor so glad to help you out with that. We here are looking forward to a four day visit from Mary Margaret next week. Maybe we will do something special for the blog. Yea, stay tuned, love, Felipe.

Just listening to some oldies. That one, I Wanna Walk You Home is Fats Domino. Some Arethia, some Ray Charles. Dark winter night here. Otis Redding. Tomorrow the Christmas decorations are coming down for another year. Garnet Mimms. Got the chimney cleaned today which marks the half way point of the winter, the wood burning season. Tab Benoit with Bring It On Home To Me.

I got to get up here in a minute and add the veggies and barley to the oxtail soup. I have been building a soup a week now for a while. This is one of my favorites. But they are all good and will warm you up quickly. I fell the same way about this music, all good and will warm you up quickly. Just some low keyed loves for you, Felipe.

January fourth today. It started out pretty slow but it is picking up speed. I was pretty convinced that I would not be able to come up with a topic today on my own. So, I thought a Camino thought and I went with it. Knowing that everyone that you meet brings you a message I said that I will blog on the next person that I meet. Sounds like a plan.

So, my good buddy Stephen calls to say that he is over in Tacoma picking up some gear and he is going to swing by on his way home. There you go, Stephen it is. Stephen is a guy trained to be a chef and loves stuff outdoors. He is fun to take on hunting trips because he knows his way around a Dutch oven and a campfire. He also cooks big meals for events for our island sportmen’s club for hundreds of eager eaters. I learned a lot about cooking helping him with those events. Being around people that know what they are doing is an education.

So along comes Stephen today and he is bearing gifts. He knows that I have been passionate about cooking after being in Spain so he has cooking gifts. He brings some very nice olive oil and balsamic vinegar for me to play with. What a guy.

Back when I first got back home I expressed to Stephen why I came back with this passion for cooking. I said that I had a new appreciation for my friends and I wanted to show that. I wanted to show what we had felt on the trail. We were all passionate about each other and we were all passionate about our food, our calories, our fuel. And he looked at me and said, “Why do you think that I have been doing this for thirty five years?” OK, there it is.

Soupy love to you, Felipe.

January third it is. Not a day with a special name but still rich in leftovers and other benefits of the holidays. Rebecca and I are fighting with colds and a particular nasty type this year. So, here I am trying to dig around for something upbeat and inspirational and all I got so far is leftovers. Hmmm.

I’ll just have to dig deeper, hey? What do I have in my bag of tricks? One quote that will make due always is the old Jewish one, “This too shall pass.” But I could say, “Yea, well when?” Which brings up the idea that Laura brought up of the fact that we should practice Patience with a capital P. There is something vital to be learned through the practice of Patience.

My mind brings up the vision of the Coke machine along the foggy trail that we talked about recently. The Coke machine that we were talking about kicking because it wasn’t working fast enough. How do we get some perspective on the big picture so that we can develop a Patience that really has a calital P?
A Patience that will really serve us well.

Yea, all days aren’t ones of glory. What about these Janurary thirds that I spend with a bad cold? Can I learn something important here? Hmmm. Love, Felipe.

Well yea, I’m not that old but I feel like it today. I think that this cold is ganging up with my chemo side effects to produce the perfect storm. I’ll survive but am a mess today.

Maryka sent this lovely poem which I will put here for your enjoyment and call it good for today:

Let other mornings honor the miraculous.
Eternity has festivals enough.
This is the feast of our mortality,
The most mundane and human holiday…
The new year always brings us what we want
Simply by bringing us along—to see
A calendar with every day uncrossed,
A field of snow without a single footprint.

(Dana Gioia, 1950 – )

I am going to keep walking even though it will be one of those short days. See you tomorrow, love you, Felipe.

Hey, we made it gang! A milestone, a touchstone, a reason to celebrate it is. Time to turn over a new leaf or to continue on a good course that is already going or some of both maybe. Here we are. Guys made any resolutions?

How about, “Getting off the schnide (sp?)”. It is a baseball term that comes from something before it in the card game gin rummy and then from something before that in German/Yiddish. Needs more research. But in baseball it means getting off a scoreless streak or a hitless streak. Getting going to where you are supposed to be.

Last year was an incredible year for me and I feel like I got off the schnide big time. So I want to keep that going. I talked with Annie and Sister Joyce to ask, is it greedy of me to ask for a better year for 2015? They both said, no way, go for it. So, that is my resolution to make 2015 better than 2014!

I’m at the hospital today to get part of my treatment. This place never closes except Christmas Day. So I have to go in to get that accomplished. So let’s all get off the schnide or some reasonable facsimile if you haven’t got some resolution cooking already. Love you, Felipe.

First of all I have to apologize to Queenie because she is not fat but has her feathers all puffed up because of the cold conditions. Sorry Queenie it was just my first impression. And then Rebecca said those are the Anna’s Hummingbirds that do winter over. OK.

I broke out my two trusty bird books and checked on what was written about the Anna. The Peterson said it was basically an Oregon, California, Mexico bird and casual (means marginal) up to southern Vancouver Island, Canada. And the Audubon guide said it stays year around near Victoria which is at the south end of Vancouver Island which is a little north of us here in Seattle. OK, so it seems given the right micro environment and some food source which I suspect has to be human provided would suffice to hold them over this far north. So, Queenie’s color, size and markings lined up with the Anna also, not that she knows that word. For habitat the Peterson said chaparral, broken woodlands, gardens. Maybe add hospitals, don’t you think?

Why is this even remotely important I had to ask myself? Did I just need something to blog about? Am I boring my readers with random baloney? I really had to think about this last evening. And what I came up with was that one of the lessons of the Camino was that everything and everyone that we come into contact with on our daily walk has a message for us. First we have to recognize that fact and then second we have to learn how to decode it and then to interpret it. Somethings are easy as getting handed an orange by a smiling pilgrim that you don’t know. Or have the tip of the perfect pyramidal rock come up though your boot sole and line up perfectly with your perfectly painful blister. Yike isn’t really the word that you scream. Or maybe it something more subtle like coming across a perfect little patch of shade or the perfect or imperfect wildflower.

Maryka, the dear, reminded me of the heart rocks that would appear as you walked and especially on a tough uphill stretches would they be welcomed. They were saying that you have the heart to do this, keep going. Thanks Maryka.

So, what does Queenie say? Here I am stuck at the hospital on a beautiful day getting a gallon chemo cocktail pumped into me and feeling pretty marginal. And just out the window is this little fat hummingbird living her life on her species margins and doing her very best. Aren’t we kind of “birds of a feather” as they say? I like it, can you tell?

Hey, it’s New Year’s Eve here but Brisbane and Sydney are about three and a half hours into New Years Day. Yea! Looks like Sherif is next in Cairo. OK, it looks like we should just give a big global Happy New Year at this point. Love you all wherever you find yourself now, Felipe.