Officially, there are 281 recognized Camino de Santiago routes, encompassing over 51,500 miles through 29 countries. Some are the best known and traveled, like the Camino Francés, Camino del Norte, and Camino Portugués; others are more obscure or recently restored. Technically, you can start your Camino from anywhere along this vast network, trekking as many miles as you like, for however many days you choose, and even return to the walk year after year after year – as many pilgrims do – in order to complete your personally curated “Way.” Start in Lisbon or start in Sevilla or start in Le Puy-en-Velay. You can even start from the comfort of your own condo, for, as Santiago de Compostela tradition holds, “the Camino begins at home.” Each Camino, in other words, is as unique as the walker upon it; the Way also is as individual as the runner or cyclist or equestrian who chooses to hie themselves to the cathedral in Santiago that way – on bike or horseback or by marathon.
Kitty and I were discussing this concept from the new, undeniable comfort of the ninth-floor Biarritz studio we moved to after a week in the dank underground room on the beach. This glorious apartment tower also was on the beach, but here, sun beamed through the wall of windows and the dazzling view of red Basque-style rooftops on buildings of bleached-white stucco saw me not just grateful, but giddy. The bath was a spa, the kitchen deluxe, and my gracious French hostess, Anne-Marie, understood towels: large, white, and cloud-like, they were stacked in a tall, seductive pile.
“Are you comfy, Camino?” The kitten lay in a puddle of sunbeam, bathing. “Shall we stay here forever?” He paused mid-lick to meet my eyes in that strange, unsettling way of his, like he was not just four weeks old – still a formula-fed baby – but rather an old, old soul who knew things. What things, I couldn’t imagine, but I had the strong, eerie sense his essential Camino spirit, his real kitty self, would assert itself any day now, and I had better be ready to meet him. Meanwhile, my phone was ding-ding-dinging.
“What? You are in France for four months??” My best friend Karen in LA got word. “I am coming to see you for my birthday!” In October.
“What? You will still be in France in November??” My sister Camille heard the news, too. “I am booking my flights today.”
“What? You are staying in Europe through Christmas??” My other sister Candice already had the holidays planned. “We are going skiing. I will bring all your stuff.”
“My” Camino was beginning – rather, continuing – not from the comfort of my own condo, but instead from the wild, crazy place of the utterly unexpected. It was the place of surprise, of delight; it was that magical, miraculous spot where the unplanned and unforeseen and unimagined (out of the blue) arrive. I was in awe. Suddenly, my birthday walk with Gina would be instead…well, something else. I didn’t dare try to define the shape of things to come. It was too much fun living the surprises arriving.
___________________________________
Ow!!!
One minute a sunbathing kitten and the next, Camino was on me; he had sprung from his bath to slash my hand bloody in a joust I did not see coming. His baby claws were as good as a lance; his baby bite attached his body to my forearm, where he hung while his back legs scratched. Slash, slash, slash: fine red wounds appeared, and pain.
“Oh, I see.” I pried him off and set him down, but he watched me like a snake in waiting, poised to pounce and slash again. “You’re a little Zorro, are you?” He seemed to consider this. He held my gaze in his eerie way – quite in the manner of the bold and mysterious masked rider who “uses his sword and his whip to stand up to the forces of evil that stalk the countryside.” Long ago I had read of this look in The Mark of Zorro, Johnston McCulley’s legendary tale. Yes, Camino wore no mask, but if he had, his eyes through it “seemed to be laughing,” in McCulley’s words. And then, in an instant “they narrowed and seemed to send forth darts of fire.”
On guard, Señorita.
The kitty again sprang and slashed. The tip of his blade – that is, his claws – “seemed to be a serpent’s head with a thousand tongues,” as I had read.
Fight, Señorita!
Camino attacked, take that, and that! My hands, my arms – all were vulnerable to the serpent’s thousand scratches, and as I fought to unstick the kitten from his merciless tooth-holds on my flesh, I hoped not to fall into the story, where Zorro “flashes a pretty blade,” and uses the point of it “to carve his hated letter Z on the cheek of his foe! Ha!” McCulley warns of the horror. “The mark of Zorro they are calling it!”
“A C carved into my cheek, is that it, my kitten?” At last, I detached him and, with new respect for his “sword” skills, settled Camino on his blankie, in his travel house, for a brief time out. Wow. What a wild little wildling his was! I worried that, without his mother or littermates during these crucial infant months, he might have problems. Taking home to Gina a My Cat From Hell was not the happy ending I imagined, but as quickly as Camino then fell asleep, looking like an angelic orange ball of lovable fluff, I let go of his evident Zorro likening. For the moment.
Recent Comments