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After a simple but ample diner, with lots of red wine, the 100 assembled pilgrims were asked to tell their names, where they came from and why they were doing the camino. Only one said for spiritual reasons one man’s wife had died three months ago, he had sold everything he owned and this was his start clearly he hoped to heal. The rest had either done it before or liked the idea like me.

I ask the question why do so many religions have pilgrimages? What is there essance, you walk all day mostly alone, you meet people from all over and they come in and out of your life, sometimes often sometimes not. You listen to their stories and tell your own. You live in close quarters with strangers, you wait on slow lines for everything because there are many of you. You eat communal dinners you work at being patient, generous and nice. What better way to learn to love your fellow man and realize that life is ephemeral and we are all just passing through. Tonight I am staying in a monestery staffed by volunteers. I holds 250 pilgrims, it very well organized, institutional if you will, but clean with a modern interior, and you can’t help but appreciate that it welcomed pilgrims many years ago, it looked different inside but its essance was the same.

• Today I walked over a high pass very stenuous day. Also my pack became very painful. Tommorrow I will send it ahead. Alas I feel sick, I hardly ate dinner. Hopefully it was just exhaustion and I will feel better tommorow.

The white trees arent blossoms they are ice. Haven’t learned yet how to put captions on pictures especially with a painfully slow network. Just like the lines for everything- Patience, humility can i learn?

What an experiance walking through the mountains with all these other wonderfull people. Tonight we went around the table 50 people introducing themselves. I expect to see many of them again as we travel through spain

Finally meeting the rest of the pilgrams, the Bayone train was mostly us going up to st-jean where we start. St-Pied-du-Port, to be complete, is a gorgeous medieval town. Spending time talking to people, a lot of other old arts like me. The flowers were growing on a wall. Every time I look at a flower I think of Ellen because she taught me to look at the flowers as I move through life. One thing about this pilgrimage is that you can window shop but you can’t buy. I wish I had a smell camera for this spice shop.

Todays the big day, off to France on the first leg. Spent Monday coding, I need six weeks of no computer to break that addiction

took a training hike on massachusettts own camino the bay circuit trail. While I walked through the woods I thought about going into walpole, I decided i would try to look at walpole as if it were a foreign land. found a gem, redwing diner, the interior is a real diner, it was originally railway car. best clam chowder I ever had. Ended with beer at the ravens nest.

 

All good plans aren’t followed so I expected to have gone on a great number of training hikes by now and I’ve only gotten two though I did one in the pouring rain so I did learn how my rain gear worked. I am now testing whether I can do my blog on the iPhone. The picture is of my gear piled in the corner all carefully weighed designed to be less than 15 pounds,

There are 10 days until the start of my trip.  All my plans for training hikes were for nought. I only took one eight mile hike. It went well but not the 12 miles I planned.  I have bought all the equipment and I am psyched but nervous.  I can’t wait to begin. The first step was to retire! Here is the cake I got from the PETAL network, my largest project. Looks official!