Update: Letter 3 from the Camino

Image source: http://www.thespainscoop.com/camino-de-santiago-tips-spain

Tuesday 9/11/12

I haven’t mentioned our experience of the Spaniards so far in these shares because I/we are still kind of scratching our heads striving to make some worthy observations about them.

I think we would all agree though that Spain is a man’s world and the women simply seem to just be their appendages. Of course that is infuriating to us all here because we all come from a country that is so revolutionized in this regard. It seems like the women and the dogs that can physically wander free, seem sad.  The women seem to almost be too sad to be angry.  Of course, I want to underline the word seem because these are just my first observations.

I realize how much the beauty and presence of women uplifts the overall vibration of a place. I believe, when the men respectfully and admiringly hold the heart of the spirit of the women - then any place is full of everything that Light represents.

The synergistic dance between the masculine and feminine is still where the secrets of magic and enchantment are found...what we all embodied to find and become, I believe! That is sorely missing here. The relief is Mother Earth here. She is nakedly feminine and masculine in such a raw and wild way. 

There are many magical forests hiding in and out of the rolling pastures that are divided off by the old Irish tradition of fences which are of stone...and many of the villages we walk through reek of cow and horse dung, of fresh hay, of growing corn and a giant broccoli like plant they feed the pigs. I wonder sometimes if anyone lives in these villages because they seem to have been built so long ago. In my walking trance I have half expected peasant-like people to peek out at us.

I don’t know if I ever have experienced the kind of masculine energy that pervades here. The men often gather in the bars together and talk loudly and in a rowdy way. There’s still a lot of smoking happening here, so there is that smell we basically rarely smell in our country now, given how we have stopped smoking. The old men sit around mostly and seem to argue in the local dialect which is called Gallego.

This country seems to be very well run.  Hotels, motels, etc tend to be almost nicer than ours. They still have the individual stores instead of supermarkets which I love and they all take snoozes in the afternoon and come back to work around 4 pm and stay open until dinner time which is 9pm.

Because we eat earlier in the day, we are the first people in the restaurants at 9pm

and by the time we leave the restaurants are all filled up! We were impressed by their food at first, but now we are struggling because our stomachs are used to more varieties of food. They eat a lot of red meat, very little chicken, and very little vegetables except iceberg lettuce salad.  Sometimes we sound like little rabbits in a garden chopping away at the lettuce!

Pilgrims pausing on the Camino.

 Left to right: Pierre Rouzaud, Jane Barthelemy, Nancy Morin, Susie Baron, Phaeryn Sheehan, Catherine Henderson. Behind the camera: Marshall Estner.

Next Update: Letter 4 from the Camino

Previous: Letter 2 from the Camino