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She was traveling with three burros and her husband. She wore a head scarf, Lawrence of Arabia style, white above the safari-type outfit that most of us pellegrinos wore on the Camino de Santiago. They caught up with me in Leon Province—I was nearly done with heat exhaustion and my knee was clicking; we shared a few words of greeting, her husband urging her on. She asked where I was from—Australia—but she meant where had I started the Camino, and I admitted I could only find time to do the final 300 kilometers, my husband having left me, for the usual reasons and for the usual younger, thinner woman. They had come over 2400 kilometers from their home in Belgium, to fulfill a dream she’d had in which she saw herself traveling to Santiago de Compostela with a donkey. She said her husband had laughed at her and her mad idea, but in time realized that he’d have no peace till she had made her pilgrimage. Unable to separate the baby burro from its mother and father, they ended up traveling with three donkeys. I rested in the shade, gazing at fields of wheat and oats mixed with red poppies and chamomile. My knee was stiffening so I pressed on, but by mid-afternoon I was dizzy and tottering, as a Frenchman strode silently past me, dressed as one of the apostles in a sort of caftan and staff—but with sensible heavy walking boots, not sandals. After a night listening to the most amazing snoring I’d ever heard, I set off slowly, but at the first bridge caught the couple with their three donkeys. The baby was noisily refusing to cross the bridge, his legs locked solid, despite his dad towing and the man pushing. “He’s been like this from the start,” the woman told me, as her husband struggled down the bank with it. “Won’t cross bridges; we have to wade through with him. It takes forever.” With both parents braying encouragement from the far bank, the little borrico was dragged into the shallows and across. Climbing the bank took time, and I could see the mud-splattered husband had had enough. “One more bridge,” he threatened. “One more bridge.” But there were three more bridges, and they arrived at the inn long after dark. Next morning the woman’s face was streaked with tears. It seems the |
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