Rain in buckets large and small coming at us as we peer out from under whatever shelter is handy. There will be some nice days yet this Fall but today is not one of them. But it is My Rebecca’s birthday so that puts a good and different spin on it. I am sure Wiley and Henna will be over later for a piece of birthday pie.

Oh, I am off to town to give Jessika a ride. Will be back to finish this exciting episode. Let’s see where did I put my water wings?

OK, back again. Soggy out there. I am supposed to have an archery lesson today but that might be postponed. This is the nature of life in these up, dogging in and out of the weather.

We have a new reader here at Caminoheads who lives in England and comments often. His comments are very deep, far ranging and entertaining. You can find them in our Comments section under Kevan. I don’t think any of us consider these messages private and you can read other people’s mail there. By the way if you do want to communicate something privately to me put it is an email. Anyway, I discovered that he had read an obscure book that I also had read. It is not a favorite book for me but a very memorable one. It was one of the hardest books that I have ever read. It was about a very grueling pilgrimage.

I may have written about this before and if so it was years ago so I will continue. The Long Walk is by and about Slavonic Rawicz. And according to Kevan he resided in Cornwall, England later in life and has now passed away. The story goes that Rawicz was a Polish Officer that was captured by the Russians during World War Two and sentenced to a gulag in Siberia. At some point in his captivity he and several others escaped by walking all the way to India. They started out in winter by the way with nothing just the rags on their backs. They lived off the land and were befriended by backwoods folks along the way, the providence of God.

But the one story of the many in the book that has always stuck in my head was this one. And it is important because we now live with such abundance of physical commodities. We have to continually jettison stuff to survive. These guys and the folks along the way literally had nothing. But the story goes: one day as they were traveling they found a roll of wire that had dropped off a wagon maybe from the army or a survey crew perhaps. Anyway they decide to carry it as trading stock. One of Rawicz’s fellow travelers wore it around his neck. So one day somewhere they were taken in by a man who lived in a cave. The man owned one thing, a cast iron pot which he cooked in. I picture him being a hunter/gatherer who foraged all day to stuff something in the pot to cook each evening. He takes the walkers in, he who has “nothing” also. But he does have that one thing, the pot. And the pot has a place for a handle but never he had never had one. So Rawicz and his buddies fashioned one from the wire that they carried and it was one of the best things that ever happened to this guy!

Something so simple was something so important! I think about this often actually. Sometimes something so simple can make a huge difference. So, I will put my copy of the Long Walk back on the shelf held together by exactly the right rubber band, nothing to tight that would harm the fragile pages.

some important loves, Felipé.