“Hi Phil,
Made it to Santiago today. An amazing experience! Your poles went every step of the way- thanks. Going to Finisterre on Friday. Blessings to you brother. Art”

Two more pilgrimages go done in history.  That sounds so final and actually is not accurate.  Their  pilgrimage has just started as the Camino starts in Santiago as has been said.    I can’t wait to talk to Art back here in Seattle.

Those are my walking sticks in the pic.  The second time across Spain!  That is so cool.  It will be nice to touch them again.

Off to the hospital with my chemo buddy Jennifer.  She bought a hammock so she can recover from her treatment fatigue on her lovely porch now that it is summer.  We are going to take a half hour and get it rigged up before we blast off this morning.

Cloudy right now but I am predicting that it will clear soon.  Praying for rain, seriously.  Thinking about my little corns.  Standing in front of the cathedral loves, Felipe.

Just a little drama here at Phil’s Camino.  Can Felipe keep the deer out of the corn long enough so that it can be big enough where it won’t be tender enough for them any more?   😳😳😳😳  How can Felipe have his corn and sunflowers, to remind walkers of Spain, if it’s all chewed down to the dang ground.  😁😁😁😁!   But it’s been four nights now that there is no damage due to deployment of Felipe the Scarecrow, Felipe thinks.  😃😃😃😃.   Check out the pic.  Felipe’s Rebecca thinks this is dang silly.  ☺️☺️☺️☺️.

I was out in the early morning cool wandering through the environs still high from yesterday’s walk.  And there they were, the old little miracles, just hanging around waiting to be discovered.  So, I captured a few for you.  Thanks, Felipe.

This weekend there is a huge fundraising event for Phil’s Camino Documentary in Breckenridge.  Yea, check out the poster.  Numerous events all around town.  There’s the theater, the Speakeasy  Movie Theater.  There’s the cafe right next door,  Yellow Arrow (sound familiar) Coffee.    There’s  a venue, the Breck Grand Vacations  Community Center.  A church, St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church.  All kinds of Caminohead stuff going on.

I have been in contact with a lady named Gwen who is the owner of Yellow Arrow Coffee.  She has Phil’s Pilrim Brew Coffee on sale there.  And also, check this out,  my favorite Camino breakfast sardines and chocolate on the menu.  Bless her heart.

So, this is all happening right now as I write.  Annie has just called twice with groups of folks that wanted to talk with me.  They just got done with the Pilgrim’s Mass at the church.

Hot day in Seattle.  We are such weenies here, it gets over 80 degrees and we start whining.  But my corn and sunflowers are practically jumping out of the ground.  Bless you Annie and Breckenridge.  What the most we can make out of this day, love you, Felipe.

Had an email and this pic come in from my friend Jody that she made it to the end of the trail in Spain.  She was recently walking here and has been walking the Camino with her husband Ken.  So great to have them have the experience!

Sorry that I don’t get my blog in yesterday.  We are having some really beautiful warm days here and I have been trying to get as much water as possible to my corn.   Have been busy with that and that’s my excuse.

Well, maybe I have another excuse.  We here in the Northwest have a special relationship with summer.  Finally when summer does arrive after endless months of rain we just don’t know what to do.  We are like kids in Candyland.  I’m getting hung up on every flower, patch of light or the one thing that is the most beautiful in my view at this particular moment.  Here’s a pic (the rose), love, Felipe.

What could happen at tapas, right?  It’s pretty organized and ritualized.  Yesterday we had some randomness come in.  And thank goodness for randomness because we can be pretty smug thinking that we have things under control and organized all the time.

It was just My Rebecca and myself sitting inside at the coffee table in  our pretty organized living room.  We’ve been outside for tapas a lot lately but it was chilly and we were in a little bit of a time crunch as she had a singing engagement that we were both going to.   We were clicking glasses and having a great time when this crow swoops in to land on top of a trellis just outside the window right exactly in front of us.  This is odd because crows haven’t been around since the ravens moved in to the neighborhood.  That was my first thought.

But the bird dives off its perch and a few seconds later reappears with a adult garder snake in its beak and the thing is wriggling and trying to get away.  The crow finally subdues the snake and it looks like we could get back to celebrating our day’s successes but no.  Without getting too graphic the hungey victor starts pulling apart the vanquished and devouring it just a few feet from our tapas table.  This turns out to be a little too much for My Rebecca, a little too Wild Kingdom.  This really wasn’t on our menu but so much for planning.

So, then there are two crows, then they disappear and then finally I get the bright idea to get a pic of the situation and I finally took that shot as one of the crows in sitting on the gate post a further distance from us.  Anyway so much for the the gentle, the bucolic, the settled.  We’re talking fresh meat here which is strangely linked to the Tiger book which I am currently reading and blogged about recently.

OK, I am going to water a few rows of plants before walkers show up in a few moments.  A beautiful morning here, love, Felipe.

My good friend Father Tom emailed some material that I just got to this morning with first coffee.  I’ve been calling his forwards “Tom bombs”, as they are heavy, on target and ultimately chock full of good stuff.  Yea, this one I was working on this morning was partially about what should be Catholicism’s view of the other religions that surround us.  Pope Francis had a great quote, “We must never forget we are pilgrims journeying along side one another.”

We can relate to that, right?   And the Camino works like that.  We all not only journeyed along side but we actively helped each other along in all sorts of ways.  We popped blisters, bandaged blisters, soothed, encouraged, intoxicated, inspired, bothered, iratated, underwrote, watched out for, made time for, pushed, pulled and moved each  other along down the dusty trail.  We kept each other going so that we could reveal our personal witness to each other, partially.   Right?

I can tell that I am in good territory when I blog with my vision blurred with tears.  Yes, here we are.  So my take on the Pope’s quote is to encourage, to befriend, to keep judgements to a dull roar and to keep moving.   Thanks, love, Felipe.

I am reading a book that a friend laid on me that has really affected me.  The book is entitled Tiger and is by John Viallant.  Besides loosing sleep because I can’t put it down it’s content has whipsawed me with an upwelling of primordial fears on one hand and energized me with new ideas on the other.  Well, needless to say I am going to take a pass today on writing but I did take some nice pix of My Rebecca’s flowers and random flora.   So excuse me while I do some serious sorting out in my brain area.  Love, Felipe.

New walking schedule:

Monday 0900-1000

Tuesday 1600-1700

Thursday 0900-1000

Sunday 1600-1700

We really need this rain that is watering the corn and sunflowers as I write.  I’m semi soaked as I was trying to walk but retreated.   Wet and blogging reminds me of one evening on the Camino.  Gracie and I retreated to the albergue after the picnic in Viana that the Angels organized.  We were full of wine, bread, cheese and sardines.  The picnic was one of the high points for me, my vision of heaven.  But as we are subject to in this realm the sky opened up, it started to pour and we scattered.   Matthew from the Netherlands guided me back to our sleeping place.

But as luck would have it there was leftover wine and Gracie and I took up the duty of dealing with it.  Blogging, wet and silly in  Viana.   It’s heck being us, love, Felipe.