Yesterday Rory suggested that I take the bigger piece of soap and that as I use it up it will get lighter day by day. That thought seems kind of comforting, doesn't it? Kind of a metaphore for life, too, right? How things that weigh heavy on us can get lighter day by day? I think I'm going to go with the smaller piece of soap anywyay, a quarter of a bar, just one ounce. Then when that ounce of soap is used up I'll swing by a farmacia and buy another bar then cut that bar into four ounces, keep one for myself, one for my mate, and then dispose of the other two ounces, hopefully give them away to a fellow pilgrim who needs some soap, maybe to a mendicant pilgrim. The medicants are pilgriims who walk the Camino with nothing but the clothes on their backs - they carry no money, no backpacks. They live on the charity of fellow pilgrims and are expected to be given free shelter at the albergues. The rest of us will pay something for our food and shelter. Those of us walking the Camino are referred to as pilgrims, or peregrinos in Spanish. We will be given a "pilgrim passport" when we start at St. Jean and we'll have this passport stamped at each albergue we stay at along the way. The albergues are hostels just for the pilgrims where for a few euros we'll be given a mattress on a bunk bed in a large barracks-style space and maybe a "pilgrim meal", usually soup and bread, I hear. (I just hope it's a humongous bowl of soup and a whopping big hunk of bread!). Sometimes the albergues are in church basements or could even be in an area in a three-star hotel set aside for the pilgrims. And some restaurants will also offer pilgrim meals. We'll sleep and eat and walk this way until we reach the cathedral at Santiago, where opur pilgrimage will end. Some pilgrims continue on another 50 miles to the sea. (Not this pilgrim, I'm predicting, but who knows?). Of course, pilgrims are free to eat in regular restaurants and check into hotels along the way if they want (That could well happen a time or two. Or three.). But we'll be expected to be in the spirit of the Camino and share communal meals and walk in community, helping each other along the way. A couple of times when I've been lugging around my loaded-for-bear backpack the thought of going as a mendicant pilgrim has actually flittered across my mind -ah, freedom, the thought whispers. But then it's blown away by a big-muscled leather and chains hell's angel who zooms into my brain shouting, "You! Get outta here! I gotta have clean socks! I gotta have my pillow! I gotta eat whenever I want, as much as I want!"
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