After waking up next to a flowing stream I suppose you could call a little river, I reach the much stronger source of the water and am looking down at Salas. I enjoyed the little village and it’s medieval castle turned four-star hotel smack-dab in the middle of town. The style of living was good and it was easy to tell. I sat at a café the previous night writing and drinking coffee and noticed the seemingly perpetually retired lifestyle the people seemed to be living.
As I sipped my cortado, I interrupted the barmaid in the middle of an animated conversation asking for a… a “that,” I stubbornly spit out the Spanish. “Cendrecero…Where are you from?” She asked. Informing the woman and gentleman across from her that I was an American, but having lived in Spain, I was embarrassed about the vocabulary I’d seemingly lost, just like the map and passport that had fallen out of my back pocket. “It’ll come back soon, poco a poco.” She replied. ‘Little, by little’ I thought. A momentary grin flashes across my face. I remembered hearing the saying often whilebeing constantly corrected by my family, friends, and teachers. “Cendrecero;” I repeated, smiling. Yeah, poco a poco, I thought…
The gentleman stands up, says farewell to his barmaid friend, and as he walks towards the door, she calls back. “Stop by later, ok?” He gives her a nod of recognition and saunters out the door. They really do like their coffee breaks, their siestas, and the art of not working in general, I thought. Yet for a country that manages to get in a daily siesta, they manage to clock in some of the highest work hours in all of Europe. Go figure.
Upon my arrival to the top, I have arrived ‘poco a poco’ and decided that on this camino, it is good to make measurable benchmarks to gauge your progress. I make this one of my sort of rituals to write, breathe, to mark the passing of time. Often, the end of the day seems to far away, but usually the next village or the tree up ahead are good points to stop and take a look at where you’ve come from and where you’re going. The periodic high altitude in solitude makes for a good point to usually do this. Bread crumbs cover my lap and the notebook in front of me asI take a quick break to relieve myself at the first marked camino Puente, or bridge. After climbing up the path strewn with leaves and spongy rusks of chestnuts submerged in a natural creek running down the incline, I arrive to the second marked stop, another bridge, that I’m told by the sign was built between the 16th and 17th century. The bocadillo of the day is mortadela, Spain’s bologne, and also the grocery store’s cheapest option. I rise from my crouched position on a roman-built stone bridge and gingerly hoist my bag to it’s previous post on my back and look up at the windmills above me layered against the backdrop of a sun slowly rising into the afternoon. I watch as they begin to pick up pace from their early morning lull and set off on the path again, moving with me to my rhythm of ‘poco a poco’.
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