Some days are longer than others. Today was a long, long day.

It’s amazing how the Camino allows you to focus on the simplicity of life. Each moment becomes a part of the tapestry of each day. As I walked I tried to capture the moments in photographs. An old church. A sign painted on a village street. A spray of vibrant roses. And yet as I look at the pictures now, they don’t do the experience justice. The beauty of simplicity is hard to capture.

We walked 6 miles before our morning café con leche. Coffee is one of those things that Gary and I look forward to each morning. Kristen is not a coffee drinker. She’s lucky. Me and Gary? We’re full blown addicts, especially when it comes to the rich creamy café con leche. 6 miles is a long way to walk before a morning fix. I don’t recommend it.

The close quarters in the albergues makes it almost impossible to keep things to yourself. I have given Kristen my cold. She’s a trooper however. She marched on without complaints. Not a peep. In a sorry effort to assuage my guilt, I shared my cold medicine with her.

The walk was long. Did I mention that already? Not too hilly but long. After that initial café stop we were on our feet for a long, long time. My feet were really starting to throb. We walked through forests dense with eucalyptus, pine and fern. The ground was muddy in places as we wound our way around the worst spots. After so many kilometers, desperate for a place to stop and rest my feet, I found a large flat rock that served as a place to take a break. We snacked on clementines and raisins (thank you Gary) and waited for the throbbing to stop.

We made it to Lugo around 5. Lugo is a big city with an intact wall that wraps around the old town. I met up with Mark, someone I’ve known but hadn’t seen since we were in high school together more than 40 years ago. Mark was friends with my younger brother Michael and we’d reconnected when he saw that I’d walked the Camino Frances. Mark wanted to walk a Camino too and decided on the Primitivo. He’d begun a day earlier than me and we’d tentatively agreed to meet in Santiago, but as luck would have it, he’d made a few different stops - taking the lower route to Pola de Allende instead of Hospitales. That allowed us to catch up with each other earlier.

That’s one of the things that is so interesting about the Camino. It’s all so random. The day you start. How fast or slow you walk. Where you stay. Each decision you make affects what comes next. I remember walking across the Pyrenees on that first Camino. The weather was clear. The scenery spectacular. A day or two later fog blocked the view. Rain and wind made the crossing difficult. What if I’d started a different day? I wouldn’t have seen the sparkling mountain vistas. Wouldn’t have met the people who became my Camino family, the people who now mean so much to me. Choices matter. We are always in choice.

Before dinner the four of us took a long walk together along the city wall. It was so much fun to catch up with Mark, to learn where our lives had taken us since we’d last seen one another, and to introduce and add him to my Camino family.