“Surrender means the surrender of your ego.” Radhanath Swami

Home to Rome for One Girl Update:

Stage Four: Veirlingsbeek to Meerlo – 20kms.

Total kms: 155 kms (of about 2000kms to Rome in a dress).

Total Raised this trek: $135

In response to last week’s post a few songs were sung … my friends Paula and Nicole sang:

“Hey Fran – Nijmegen to Veirlingsbeek – 50kms … we all have a song to sing … and so do our sisters … so one day we can all sing as one … “

Thank you for enchanting my life you two wild women.

And Lizzy was singing her favourite tune along the Murray River in Corowa with her favourite song  … ‘road trips, new vistas, campfires’!

Hope we get to camp together one day Lizzy!

It took a while for me to get stated this morning. Yesterday knackered me. Lucky the B & B served up a euro breakfast. I could drag my ‘getting started’ out just a bit longer.

Not that I am complaining I like to push myself to the edge sometimes … it makes me know I’m alive. I am hungry to know I am alive. Perhaps that is why I find comfort in the extremes. This is something I thought a lot about today, my desire to sit in the extremes, the all or the nothing’ness.

Sleep wasn’t easy to come by last night. It seems staying in a B&B is worse for zz’s than lying amongst the snorers in the Albergue’s. There was the bar fight down below at about 10pm that ended with a car screeching off into the night. And there were the 1am party goers who arrived back and acted like they were the only people on the planet!

For the first time in a long time I didn’t wake desperate to get hiking. Along the camino lights out was generally 10pm and it’s only said snoring that will wake you. Don’t get me wrong that is a massive challenge in itself but at least it is not consciously inconsiderate. I am considering taking a tent on my next over nighter, especially now that the weather is warmer.

You never know who you will meet along a camino, a walk. These are the moments I love. The chance meeting, conversation, serendipitous moment. As I set out I missed a turn off and as a result I had to find my way back onto The Pieterpad.

I walked a way with this local. Everyone in this town had a camino story to tell. The publican told me of two locals who had walked from here (Veirlingsbeek) to Santiago de Compostela. I haven’t done the maths here but I think that is possibly a far longer journey than my one towards Rome. This local, he also had a story. The story of his neighbour.

His neighbours (husband and wife) had planned to walk the camino together. Then one day she died. So what do you think his 65 year old neighbour, let’s call him Kees (a good Dutch name) did? After the funeral Kees packed his back pack and left for Santiago. He left from his front door and he walked for three months until he reached Santiago. I’m guessing Kees walked through his grief and towards the next phase of his life. This story reminded me of why I’m here. It reminded me why I am a long way from home and it reminded me that this is home.

I am here because I don’t want to wait for an opportunity that might not come. I live in the extremes because I am hungry to feel life and to explore, seek, create meaning – whatever it is that you like to call it. I chase the is’ness, the feeling of being amongst something that is alive, the feeling that everything has meaning. And the people I meet along the way … they remind me of this. They are my way markers.

And this is why I am forever walking forward, open to what lays ahead.  Every now and then I get a little trapped in my thinking but usually that is because I’m walking backwards or am caught in the immediateness of those who situationally surround my life.

Today as I walked tiredly on I did something I don’t usually do. I stopped half way. I ordered a coffee and I looked up the bus timetable. And then I took the three hour journey home, 25kms short of my planned destination. I decided I would go a little more gently on myself. I would listen to my body. I have a long way to walk with this body of mine and perhaps in challenging my extremeness I could reframe said extremeness.

I would begin to go extremely gentle on myself moving forwards. I would be ok with all the things I don’t get done when I’m in stop mode. I would, perhaps, try to capture the ‘is’ness’ of escaping onto the trail without the physicality. I think this has been alluding me.

I would seek to only live in the currency of what feels right to ensure the path I take is the one for me.

What would that look like? And what would that create space for? Ok, I can tell you that would look like physically … a women with crappy toenails because man I walked hard yesterday. It would also, I imagine, be about finding firmer ground and questioning the ego I stop with and the ego I walk with.

Buen Camino friends,

Fran xx