“Okay, kitty, it’s just you and me now. What do you want to do?” I stared at little Camino lying in my lap paws up, staring back. His big milk-plump tummy taunted him, sleep, sleep, sleep, but instead he fixed his eyes on mine, defiant. He didn’t speak, yet I clearly heard him.
Do? What do I want to do? Why, you silly Señora, I want to terrorize this room!
I looked around our tiny AirB&B on the beach of Biarritz. The beautiful French resort town is where Gina and I had landed from San Francisco to start our walk following a quick train ride to Saint Jean, so after she had flown home, here we were, kitty and I. There wasn’t much to terrorize. The studio was below-ground and dank, with squeaky bunkbeds and an Argentinian host who believed a single, skimpy kitchen towel could cover a guest’s week of showers, too. Camino challenged me with his stare: a nap now? He dared. Never! And he shot off my lap to zoom around in exploration. Safe in our locked studio, he didn’t notice when I slipped out to do the same.
Bonjour Biarritz! I walked and walked. Here was the beautiful Basque coast 22 miles from the Spanish border where, in the 1800s, European royalty made it their it beach retreat. Since then, the seaside splendor has been wooing visitors with elegant, grand hotels, popular surfing beaches, and classic French-resort joie de vivre. A walking path peopled with promenading Europeans curved for miles beside the Bay of Biscay’s wildly surging surf, which crashed up close against dramatic outcroppings of rock; Rocher de la Vierge, a pure white statue of the Virgin Mary, stood in the sea upon one such natural wonder and serenely surveyed her domain. Worshipping seabirds swooped and sang. Wind in my hair, face in the sun, I walked and walked. And I wondered: what are the Camino pilgrims up to? Gina and I had been only three official days on the Way, so certainly those walkers we started with in Saint Jean would be having the best time ever by now, moving across Spain in happy packs of people getting acquainted with their marvelous inner selves, and laughing with new international friends over alber-goo lunches of pickles and ham.
After miles and miles my promenade started to sag and slow – Europeans definitely put in the meters a pied that we Americans do in the cars we prefer – so I wilted onto an ocean-view bench to breathe-in the sights: the imposing and gilded Hôtel du Palais built for the Empress Eugenie; the strutting, muscular, 20-something surfers; the café culture clinking glasses of Champagne under striped umbrellas, their lazy, leisurely day of celebration (a Tuesday!) looking oh-so-wonderful to me. I wanted to check in with Scottish empty-nester Carolyn Gillespie, whose Camino memoir, Pilgrim, made for quite interesting reading. She was on the Napoleon route; she would let me know how the gang was doing.
“In the afternoon thyme, rosemary and lavender scented our way,” she reported: “The butterflies were out for the first time, as were the bees and the strange Spanish ladybirds. But, although the landscape was more gently rolling, the three peaks had been a challenge and the last 8.5 km a hard slog.”
Oh, dear.
“The path went on forever, conversation stopped, and with every footfall I willed it to be over.”
Willed it to be over? And then, as her reward that night:
I say ‘bed,’ but I am actually sleeping on two benches that have been pushed together, under a giant mural of St. James. I am surrounded by snoring men and the noise is so loud that I have got the giggles a couple of times and have taken a recording on my phone. I will have to fumble some more to get my earplugs.
Jeez, Carolyn was not having that much fun, it seemed, as I fumbled only to find the euros in my wallet with which to pay for the luxurious café crème and pain au chocolat – total decadence – I soon enjoyed under a striped umbrella of my own. There, the snap of salt air and smile of the sun lulled me into a state of snoozy well-being. However, completing the Camino was still in my spirit, so I felt guilty being so, well, soft, while Carolyn and the pilgrims I should have been among suffered in the tradition of those medieval walkers who did the Way in chains, or who walked in penance for their sins, or who were attacked by bandits, or who were felled by disease like Black Death. The Camino was supposed to be challenging, no? As one tour company put it: “Uneven terrain, climbs, descents, type of surface, high temperatures, lack of training…Many factors can turn the Camino de Santiago into a nightmare.” Yikes. Still, that’s the entire point of walking perhaps 20 miles per day through France or Portugal and Spain! It’s the triumph of burning through exhaustion or loneliness or tedium or pain that makes arrival at the bones of Saint James the Great, as housed in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, so amazing. If it’s all about as miserable as climbing Everest, due to snoring men and whatever hell else, well then: I’m in.
So, returning to my underground room came as a bit of a shock, as you can imagine. I opened the door and there was tiny Camino, saying hola with a stretch-and-roll at my feet. I have a kitten! I realized with some alarm. I can’t walk the Camino with a kitten! What can I even do with a kitten? I sensed in the room a change. The single kitchen/shower towel was crumpled up and stuck under the sofa; mini pee puddles glistened in two corners; a petite little poop lay on the toe of my shoe; and the sheer shower curtain showed signs of claws, and a climb. The little Spanish gato had made it known that si, Señora, he was here, and whatever it was we’d do over the next four months – together walk more of the Camino or not – he was to be included, litter box, litter bag, toy mice, special food, extra meds, little dishes, important blankie, and don’t forget the essential, his beloved collection of twirly-birds on a stick, to start. I feared all that was a foreboding amount to carry on top of my big-ass suitcase, already a burden, as well as the weighty, overstuffed in-flight carryon I had brought to Europe. And that wasn’t even counting Camino himself in his handled travel house! I told tiny michi-michi he might actually be a lot of trouble, but he cooly looked up from his stretch at my feet, his unflinching gaze boring into my eyes, into my soul, and said without saying: You’re my mami now. Deal with it.
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