Here are some Meseta pics fresh in from the gals:

The miles roll by. I write you every day as I walk but when we get somewhere with “wee fee” the vino comes out, conversations start, and well, you know how it is. All wonderous. Covered over 200 miles of amazing country and great souls. Good humans and one fine dog. Think of you every day. Buen Camino!
Dana and Catherine

Monday morning here at Phil’s Camino and Raven Ranch. The sky is blue and another day unfolds. Time to blog. I have some great pics stacking up and I thought that I would share them with you. Maybe say a few words in between.

That was nice and will give you a glimpse of life at the ranch with friends and relations. Well, off to walk this morning with Deb. Lots of stuff to do today. Off to Swedish Hospital tomorrow for treatment and “smoking and joking” with docs and nurses. Alperfect gang, love you, Felipe.

Which way to go? So many ideas whirling around in my brain. What to write about? Some of them are too crazy and some not crazy enough. Let’s see.

How about horses as a topic? Our neighbors bring their horses over most days for seven months of the year when our pastures are solid enough to support them. When the ground is too wet they can tear it but now it is good and solid. So they are back today for the first time. And they will only stay for a few hours at a time to start as the fresh grass needs to be gotten used too after a winter of hay.

Oh how they ran and bucked and did horsey screw around this morning. They were so happy to be back. And we are happy that they are here also. The pasture grass in starting to grow fast now with all the rain, light and heat of the spring sun. Paradise all over again.

I was off to church early this morning as usual at the eight o’clock service. Most of my “tractor guys” go to the early service. They need to get church in and get going with there projects on Sunday. They don’t need the high Mass with the fancy music. Nothing fancy about these guys, my guys. One of the reasons I love them because I can drag any question conceivable in there about things mechanical or working dirt or building stuff and one of these guys has done it last week, no problem. Well, this is after church at coffee, kind of a Norman Rockwell sort of deal.

And Sister Joyce was supposed to be here today to have office hours where folks talk to her about things spiritual but she got a stomach bug and won’t make it. She will be missed but back again next month to clarify things for us. If I ever get to be eighty two I want to be that alive and productive and happy to help out. We are so lucky to have her.

Our son Wiley has a wonderful girlfriend, Riley. Yea, Wiley and Riley. We are having a birthday dinner for her this evening. So that will be fun and I am looking forward to that.

My Rebecca and I are busy getting the garden planted and the corn patch ready for planting. Busy busy time of year when we both just fall into bed at night pretty near exhausted. That’s life at the ranch as we know it.

Well, great hanging out with you for a few moments. Nothing major going on but it’s solid good. Smile for the camera, love ou, Felipe.

Hello Dear Ones,

What a journey, what an adventure. Suddenly a 13 mile day seems easy. We must be getting stronger. Our legs and feet are still quite sore and tired at day’s end, but nothing that ibuprofen, arnica gel and a cold water foot soak (when we can get it) can’t seem to help. (I did not say “cure” on purpose). 🙂

After leaving the big city of Burgos behind this morning we entered a whole new countryside. It is as if we were suddenly walking through the Palouse. We have fallen in step with our Camino familiars – we look for them daily and they for us. It is very sweet. We struggle along with our languages, but share the walk, the day and the intention of Santiago in common.

There is still many miles and many hours passed in silence that lends itself to prayer or thoughts of those whom we love. We’ve had mostly good weather with just enough rain and mud to feel like true “pelegrinos.” The way has been mostly rural through small villages where time seems to have stood still. Sometime it feels as if the spirits of the ancients are walking with us. There’s been some stretches, some very ugly miles on asphalt through a littered and impoverished industrial landscape that remind us that we straddle two worlds as we walk, one collapsing beneath the weight of unsustainable and impersonal systems and one more eternal of simplicity and caring cooperation.

Our time here is a blessing as are each of you in our lives. Each of you is truly with us as we go.

Much love and gratitude for your love and support. We miss you.

Xo Catherine (y Dana)

(Isn’t great to hear these reports from the front. These guys are doing it and I am so jealous, well not about the pain part. But it is cool to see our friends and neighbors in the Camino context. These two were so fun to work with on Phil’s Camino and I have to believe that they are going to have a bang up experience in Spain.)

(And more good news, Vashon Island is opening it’s first Mediterranean restaurant! No more corn dogs for me. Here I am searching for some bad news but can’t find any anywhere. OK, I’ll drink to that! Here’s to no bad news, love you, Felipe.)

Hi. Yes, that’s Esther and I Caminoing along barefoot. She thought it would be a good idea so I went along with it. Well, the idea was good but it got a little pokey back in the woods.

Because work on my corn patch is calling me today I am going to not be long winded. I got started last evening raking up after the tilling with the tractor. This is the third year that we have been working this piece of ground and it gets easier.

But the main idea today here is for us to be upbeat and positive. We have a day given to us and we need to figure out a way to use it to the fullest. And not only to our benefit but to those around us.

I want to remind you that there is a jewel of a YouTube video on my December 23rd post back in the archives. You need to check out this version of “Don’t Worry Be Happy”. One of my Camino buddies, Laura, is responsible for the art’s center known as “illa de l’aire” in the beautiful city of Barcelona. What you are going to watch and listen to are her people there at the center putting together this recording for us. They are not professionals but just folks like us who egg each other on and they come up with inspired stuff like this.

So please take a minute to go back in the archives to December 23rd and check this out. You will be rewarded. Remember upbeat and positive gang. Alperfect corny loves, Felipe.

p.s. – Steve-O wrote in to comment on “Funky Donkey” post:
Oh, myyyy. I sure needed – and need – that. Thank you.
Really.

I’ve called Phil’s Camino Repair and Towing to take a look at our blog problem. He’s got his greasy hands all over it as we speak. Somehow all of the comments for the blog have disappeared and new ones can’t be published. Yea, and just at a time when great ones are coming in. I will try and publish things as they come in from now on till we get a handle on it.

Here is some great news in from our dear Mary Margaret: Beautiful, Phil! And the May issue of National Geographic is featuring El Camino. You can read the intro here and it should be on newsstands about now.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/05/the-way/george-text

OK, got that. Now here is some real life stuff from folks that have a long long way to walk before getting to be Caminoheads.
Here we go (thanks Kip):
(hit the WC before you start this, no peeing in your pants)
THESE ARE ACTUAL COMPLAINTS RECEIVED BY “THOMAS COOK VACATIONS” FROM DISSATISFIED CUSTOMERS:

1. “On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don’t like spicy food.”

2. “They should not allow topless sunbathing on the beach. It was very distracting for my husband who just wanted to relax.”

3. “We went on holiday to Spain and had a problem with the taxi drivers as they were all Spanish.”

4. “We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our own swimsuits and towels. We assumed it would be included in the price.”

5. “The beach was too sandy. We had to clean everything when we returned to our room.”

6. “We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as white but it was more yellow.”

7. “It’s lazy of the local shopkeepers in Puerto Vallarta to close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during ‘siesta’ time — this should be banned.”

8. “No-one told us there would be fish in the water. The children were scared.”

9. “Although the brochure said that there was a fully equipped kitchen, there was no egg-slicer in the drawers.”

10. “I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local convenience store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts.”

11. “The roads were uneven and bumpy, so we could not read the local guide book during the bus ride to the resort. Because of this, we were unaware of many things that would have made our holiday more fun.”

12. “It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England. It took the Americans only three hours to get home. This seems unfair.”

13. “I compared the size of our one-bedroom suite to our friends’ three-bedroom and ours was significantly smaller.”

14. “The brochure stated: ‘No hairdressers at the resort.’ We’re trainee hairdressers and we think they knew and made us wait longer for service.”

15. “When we were in Spain, there were too many Spanish people there. The receptionist spoke Spanish, the food was Spanish. No one told us that there would be so many foreigners.”

16. “We had to line up outside to catch the boat and there was no air-conditioning.”

17. “It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel.”

18. “I was bitten by a mosquito. The brochure did not mention mosquitoes.”

19. “My fiancée and I requested twin-beds when we booked, but instead we were placed in a room with a king bed. We now hold you responsible and want to be re-reimbursed for the fact that I became pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked.”

Hehe! Yea, that’s it from this cowboy, have to go walk. What can we make of this day. Sandy beach loves, Felipe.

Annie wrote to say even though I post great material from others she likes my stuff best. Well, that is roughly what she said. Nice, thanks my dear.

We will get to my writing which I described to her as “dragging up something from my funky donkey being.” But I want to dovetail (woodworking term, a strong wellmade piece of joinery) that with what the beautiful Kathleen Hirsh beautifully wrote and I featured yesterday. Here is a piece of it (reread it and tattoo it somewhere for tomorrow and the next day):

It’s God all over again — the good that has been everywhere known through the strange power of the miraculous, a radical change in reality’s rules, in surprise, in bread or disease, in dreams of angels, in burning bushes. It is God teaching the supreme lesson: healing is, first and foremost, a spiritual act.

We are always standing in the gap; we just don’t often see it as clearly as we do today. It is the gap of possibility. To those whose worlds have just been demolished, that insight may feel like a theological nicety. But Easter teaches that nothing is ever truly lost to us. The hard part of the lesson is that what has been lost won’t return in its original form. Healing and growth reside in our accepting this.

Healing is about moving into a new life, not hanging back in the old one. “Home” is not behind us; home is not in front of us. It is in our midst, in the present moment. Here. Now.

Man, I want to loll around in that! Her writing is so beautiful and concise. It is almost too easy just reading it. Somehow I have been privileged to have seen this from the mud of my Camino. Literally I am speaking, somehow I was privileged to see it the hard way. The way that it came to me, with such effort and discomfort, that I just couldn’t miss it, couldn’t possibly miss it! (I’m crying my eyes out).

I tried to explain the state of being “beyond normal” with I don’t know how much success. Those of us “knocked off our horses” can’t spend the time and energy trying to find it and mount it again. That stallion is long gone. Our quest to find a new normal is, well, a pedestrian move. Somehow I skipped this step or it was minimal, amazingly. Somehow in a flash it occured to me to “get beyond” and the phrase and the quest to be “beyond normal” came into being. It is “the gap of possibility”.

And this is why Kathleen words are so powerful for me, right now. They express what came out of the mud for me. They are very refined and pure compared to my funky donkey version but of the same gold. Thank you God, thank you Kathleen, thank you Annie and thank you You. Love, Felipe.

My friend Father Tom just sent this in. I’m lost for words at the moment after reading this beautiful piece. Please read this today when you can get to a quiet place. This is the post for today. Thank you Father Tom. Thank you Kathleen.

http://www.cruxnow.com/faith/2015/04/07/how-the-apostles-dealt-with-grief/

You’re all lovely. Till later, love, Felipe.

There is a yearling deer staring in the kitchen window at me. She is out in the flowers looking for gourmet treats. “Oh dear!”, My Rebecca would say if she were here.

Well, if it isn’t deer it’s cougars. We haven’t seen the big kitty again since last week. They have huge territories and can travel long distances especially at night. But it keeps things interesting.

I talked with Sister Joyce the day after the mountain lion sighting and she thought that it was interesting that it shows up while I am studying the book of Daniel with my Bible Guys. Coincidence? Daniel in the lions den is one of the all time great stories of trusting in God’s protection.

Here I am for three years now staring cancer in the eye and living on under God’s protection. I’m not cured, in the standard sense but it is a victory all the same for I continue to live and enjoy life with you all.

But the thought comes up as to what it would be like to stare down this cougar. Could happen on some lap of Phil’s Camino, it’s possible. Do I trust? Sort of easy to think about as I lie on the Spanish red leather couch in the living room with the deer and the lions outside the glass. Hmmm.

It’s true, yes, I am announcing this with the year barely started. Every once in a while something extraordinary happens and you have to go with it; you have to say yes this is obviously the big one. And although we have a sight bit of confusion as to whose fault, ah, idea it was, the event occurred. Well, both Quick Rick and our beloved Kelly have taken credit for thinking up the concept of a potluck tapas party. But whatever, it happened and was a thing of beauty.

Maybe we will come up with some pics, don’t know we were in the moment. I think we had fourteen participants and some folks made more than one thing. And most of the offerings were recipes that we all enjoyed for the first time. Exemptional event and my words are not doing it justice. But a highly recommended activity for Caminoheads everywhere, none the less.

And early on Sunday, with less fanfare, a man named John came to walk with me and who is going to Spain in August. We fired each other up as we Caminoheads tend to do. Lovely man. He gave me a rosary that he made. It is one made with all knots, no beads, I call them fisherman’s rosaries. Very beautiful but too new and clean. It will reach it’s true beauty with use and the patina that brings. Thanks John. I gave him The shell that both Annie and I carried across. Alperfect.

“Heat Wave” playing! Yea, that’s it gang! Love you, Felipe!