Steve-O and his trusty puppy Rasmus took off for points south earlier this morning. I have a little time here before James shows up with a supply of bulk herbs for today sausage making session. Just a half hour maybe to be with you.

I am trying to encourage Steve-O to do some writing for our benefit when he gets a chance. He has had some major time consuming projects lately which he is just surfacing from. Now he needs to find some space to regroup and reflect on what he saw and give us some good words.

So we had a few hours together to catch up on the major details of the past six months. It would be nice if I could have that kind of a meeting with all of our Bureau Chiefs. And we will work on having more face to face meetings somehow, some way in the future.

Oh, I see Annie has a new offering for Christmas Advent. I signed up as soon as I saw it. She will have daily posts for us on the forty days leading to Christmas built on her forty essays from her book Everyday Camino with Annie. What a opportunity to cover this great material for the first time or as a review. I believe this is available both on FaceBook and in email. So get a hold of Annie O’Neil and make this happen for yourself.

Christmas, wow really already? It is always a surprise to me somehow. Why is that? Hello Felipé wake up.

Well, let’s think about Thanksgiving first and give it it’s due before we get any further. It is such a great holiday and another opportunity to express our gratitude. Alperfect in this one!

OK, I need to get moving and set up for today’s sausage making fest. Maybe we can wrap this project up today. We are doing Italian sausage this time, twenty six pounds worth.

Here we go loves, Felipé.

The barometer remains high for us and that means colder weather. But it is perfect sausage making ambience. James one of my hunting partners and I are knee deep in it at the moment. When abundance shows up, which isn’t always often or guaranteed, work is required. And that is what we are up to.

Also, Steve-O our NW Bureau Chief showed up last evening to make a personal appearance here. He was just in time for a venison burger. But we had a chance to get in a campfire talk after supper. We miss each other these days and needed a catch up. He will be back to us here at a Caminoheads soon as much has happened for him recently and I have given him a bye. But he is a very good writer and I am looking forward to some words of wisdom from him in the near future.

We all learn as we walk our walk and these realizations are important to share and not just squirrel away somewhere. Everything is important or at least has the potential to be important for someone next to us on the trail. When one of us learns we all should learn, right?

Well, time for me to set up the meat grinder who we have nicknamed Sparky. This is the biggest job that we have ever asked of him so it will be a miracle for him to make it through. He was free to start with so I am rooting for him as he sputters and sparks. The batch this morning will become, hopefully, country breakfast sausage in a few hours.

We are walking this afternoon here at Phil’s Camino and getting close to León. See you soon. Grateful loves, Felipé.

We would call it a light frost that showed up overnight, most everything will survive it. Yup, autumn is getting serious with us. Our good neighbor Chris has passed away, another sort of an autumn thing. I said a rosary for him yesterday on the walk. We are all just here for a while we are continually reminded.

Life at the ranch goes on with autumn chores. We butchered three deer over the weekend. All the big cuts are in the freezer and today we start on sausage making. Yum yum and all that. Next big chore is to make the corn meal from our dried summer corn as it is ready to go. All very Little House on the Prairie.

Walking in a few moments. That goes on whatever is going on of course, although we have been light on visitors lately so I am more solo. And we are starting to feed the birds along the trail as the weather has gotten colder.

Thanks for stopping by. Remember our afternoon walks are starting at 1530 on our winter schedule. Shivering loves, Felipé.x

I have a couple that show up for the Thursday morning walk and then do an archery lesson afterward. They are getting the full meal deal Phil’s Camino experience. Yesterday I had to skip the lesson because of my serious lack of sleep. Anyway they brought a present for me:

I am always amazed with all the great books that show up at the doorstep of my consciousness. Sometimes it seems like two a day but that can’t actually be true, can it? Anyway thanks Jim and Jen for your gift yesterday.

I am still wading through the last few chapters of the Thomas Merton book though. It has been very worthwhile despite my failure to grasp every single notion. He like Donahue give us a glimpse of the great big Camino. If the Camino de Santiago is a training ground for the Way to live in the here and now on this earth then these guys take the next beautiful step.

Sara was here from Seattle yesterday, a lovely young personality. It is fun to introduce new souls to the camino here and the salon of ideas that it springs forth. I always have great conversations with Jim and Jen and Sara was here for that confab yesterday.

Just briefly what we started talking about was the concept of guilt. This is something that I have been gnawing on for a while and the best thing that I have ever heard was this explanation in how it fits into our world historically. This is how it goes: In the preChristian era the big fear was death. That is evident to us by all the energy that went into death ceremonies, artifacts and the building of monuments all the way up to the pyramids. The Christian era ushered in the notion of enteral life given to us through God’s grace thus shattering death. We, the earthlings that we are, interpreted that in such a way that it required endless good works on our part. So, the failure or partial failure to live up to that brought guilt to our thinking. Now in this post modern world where we have thought that all medieval and largely abandoned it we have traded that fear of guilt for the fear of meaninglessness.

I have no idea where I came across that but it has served me well for a few years now. Sister Joyce my spiritual advisor said that I was good at finding useful things that I saw as I “walked”. This is an example.

So yea, the camino salon provides. I’m excited about reading the material in the new book and will report on it in the weeks ahead. Well, off to the big city for me to do my half day at the hospital. See you soon, Felipé.x

My Rebecca was so amazed by the way back of that scene that I tried to paint in the post yesterday. I said, “medieval?” and she agreed. Yea, Buffalo isn’t New York City by a long shot ever if they are in the same State. Just to add to the medieval ambience the election people surrounded the voting shacks with kerosene torches for special effects. I’ll have to get my old buddy Jim’s backing on all this as he grew up with these shenanigans also.

So, Esther from Monterrey, CA showed up Monday with her family in tow. Check the pic. These folks are so fun and accomplished makes you want to get stuck on a deserted island with them sometime. I think that they enjoyed themselves here and will be back to the neighborhood soon.

What else is on our plates today? I guess I can’t quite sneak past the election yet. Maybe we can come up with some related topics to lighten the atmosphere and get some new ambience going.

I have a walk in a few moments. Got two parties coming that I know about. So fun to have this walk to motivate me on a continuing basis. And the conversation is always stimulating, why is that? That could be a blog topic. Just like the Camino in Spain we here at Phil’s Camino we attract the same set of interesting folks I guess. Never a dull moment.

Well, let me go for now. Things to do to get my day going. Miss you. Always a thank you for stopping by, love, Felipé.

At the hospital today to get my share of chemicals. I was talking to one of my nurses about voting days past and it was kind of fun trying to remember the details. Thought that I would continue the thread here at Caminoheads.

It would be November in Buffalo, New York and you went with your parents to vote, a kind of a Ralphy pilgrimage. You walked because each neighborhood had a place. It was cold and dark but not quite snowy yet. But maybe you didn’t have your new Sears and Roebuck winter coat yet so staying warm was a little dicey in the coat that you had outgrown.

The city had these little wooden structures all painted green that they would deliver to all the neighborhoods maybe a week before the big day. I could guess and say they were something like 10 by 16 feet in plan. Not a lot of room in there for more than one family at a time.

So there must have been a table for check in although I don’t remember that as there were other things more important. The white painted interior of the building was lit with a couple of light bulbs which was such a contrast to the darkness outside.
In the corner was a potbelly stove burning coal which was pretty exciting. But the main event was actually going into the voting machine. Yea you sort of entered it and there was this lever that swung and caused the heavy curtain to close behind you for the privacy required. Of course, only the adults voted and we would just peek in as they entered and exited. All very mysterious for us short people.

My parents never ever talked politics at home and people in general out and around did a good job avoiding it too. Our neighborhood was probably 90% Democrats I would guess, blue collar guys for the most part. My Mother probably voted on the Democratic side most often reflecting the neighborhood while my
Dad was more involved with the Republican side of the ballot having more country influence. But again they never talked about it and it didn’t seem like it ever caused a problem between them. You just voted and then walked home and set the table and ate meat and potatoes like always.

I remember registering to vote when I was eighteen and choosing Independent to describe myself, seemed like a balanced thing to do. Yup, and those were the days of 15 cent hamburgers but that is another story for another day.

Thanks, love, Felipé.

Is that phrase still in use? I think it came out of the aeronautical world where test pilots would fly a little faster or fly a little higher or in some way go beyond previous ideas of the capability of their aircraft. Then the phrase got out in the general public and it got applied to all sorts of things and situations and we all used it. But that was ages ago I suppose.

In yesterday’s blogpost I was getting at that idea. It seems the thing to do now, for me, to take what I’ve been given and expand it pushing it’s boundaries outward. If I can’t escape from this confinement in the box of having cancer I can certainly beat against it’s walls stretching them to create more space to maneuver.

Is that my new way to look at myself and a new way for me to operate, this test pilot guy? I guess I took Felipé the bomb disposal technician guy to it’s conclusion by successfully disarmed my own personal cancer bomb where it is no longer a spiritual bother for me. Well done Felipé! I guess I should celebrate that now that I realize it.

A new era has arrived. I’m liking this. Thank you my God for keeping me around to live into this new challenge. I’d better clip these tags off of my flight suit so I don’t quite look like such a new guy. There, that’s better.

There, that’s better loves, Felipé.

St. Paul wasn’t always a saint. At his early worst he helped out in the stoning of Steven considered the Church’s first martyr. Steven after his death was seen as St Steven. But back to Paul or actually Saul who met the risen Christ while on the road to Damascus. Life changing that was and Saul’s name was changed to Paul to commerate the event, Anyway the upshot is that Paul turned out to be the chief carrier of the Christian banner to the Greek world and thus to us.

But this was not easy on him personally. One he had a physical ailment that plagued him. And he was continuously running from and hiding from the critics. He suffered beatings and imprisonment finally being beheaded in Rome for causing so many waves in the empire.

All this hardship makes a brighter point all the more bright though. And what has been inspiring me is the tale of him being in prison somewhere and being chained to a series of guards, his time there being closely supervised. And Paul never missing an opportunity even in there he was converting these guards left and right. He could probably do it in his sleep but still. They definitely had “a tiger by the tail it is plain to see”, as the old song goes. Who has who?

We are so used to hearing, “He or she has cancer”, “I have cancer”, “What if I get cancer?”, “Living with cancer”, “Dealing with cancer” or “My cancer”. Those are all the same in that they start with we are the ones that HAVE cancer. What if all of a sudden we said screw that, what if cancer HAS us. It obviously doesn’t know who it is dealing with here anymore. Who has who? That is where we should head toward and get to!
Can you see it?

Monday loves, Felipé.

The trail is beautiful now. The air is a little chilly but the ground is dry. Note that the afternoon walks are a half hour earlier now on our winter schedule.

Monday 0900-1000
Tuesday 1530-1630
Thursday 0900-1000
Sunday 1530-1630

Thursday Nov 29 there is no walk. Thanks, Felipé.

Here are some Caminoheads sporting their red hats from the Mazama Store in Mazama, Washington. Steve-O our NW Bureau Chief gave me that original red hat way back when and that is the one I wore on the Camino in 2014. He started this whole hat thing.

Being out on the cutting edge of fashion does have it’s dangers though as I will relate. My Rebecca and I had landed in Indianapolis and after collecting our luggage we were out on the curb waiting for our ride. Some idiot that just got off our same plane from Seattle got mouthy with me thinking that he discovered a local with a Trump hat. I ignored him and he finally got bored and went away. So be careful out there.

So, I’ll get back to watching Norte Dame football. Love you guys, Felipé.