Day 31 on the Camino Way

Walled In

We walked by miles of walls that looked like this. I am enamored with them. There is no mortar or cement in them anywhere. The genius in this is that water can pass through the tiny openings and this keeps the walls from collapsing. Over at least a thousand years, maybe more, craftsmen, and maybe women too, constructed these walls.

And many of the homes in the farm villages are constructed in the same way.

As I said, I am enamored with this way of building. I think it’s amazing. Don’t you?

How and Who?

Here’s the who. There were three men working on fixing a collapse in the top part of a section of the wall. They are father and son and friend/farmer/neighbor. The son, you can just see him, spoke English. Dad is the craftsman, the master builder. The wall has been there for a long time—hundreds of years, the son said. The land on the other side of the wall belongs to the farmer/friend/neighbor. It’s pasture land. Most of the land we saw walking through this region was like that. And stone fences like this wall divided one pasture from another. Amazing to me, just amazing—the workmanship, the longevity, the common sense in using these slate rocks like this.

I wonder who thought of this? How long ago? We do know that building with stone goes back to prehistoric times, so really old. But in Spain we’re talking slate use for homes and walls and fences going back to the 1500s as an industry. But guys like the guy in this photo, guys like him have been doing this for a lot longer then that.

Dad’s the Town Maker

The son simply told me that his family has been doing this for as long as it’s been done in this part of the country. “It’s what we do?”

”So it’s you job?”

”No, it’s what we do.”

”So he,” pointing to the farmer/neighbor/friend, ”is paying you to fix this wall.”

”No,” he said. That’s all he said. No further explanation. And I somehow knew not to go further because the Dad was giving me the look—you know the ”look-here-buddy-we’re-busy” look. Take you frickin photo and move the frick on—look. I did.

There’s no deep point here, at least not one that I can see. This is small town life, village life, rural living. The wall needed fixing. It’s probably needed it for a while now. The thinking goes something like this: Today I’ve got some time to get it done so let’s get it done. The wall is not just part of the neighbor/farmer/friend’s fence, it’s part of the town’s heritage. People pass by every day. The wall needs fixing and the craftsman does what his family has been doing for a long time—fix the breach in the wall.

Wouldn’t you like to be part of a family that has a job like that?

A Walking Miracle

Today we also met two women on the road. They were Dutch living in Germany. Together they own and operate two restaurants. They’ve been married for twenty-nine years. Isabelle and Tanya have a daughter in high school who, according to Tanya, was just starting to study about Nazi Germany. ”They wait a little too long, I think. But maybe they should too.”

Isabelle had a bad car accident and was severely injured. She spent five years in a wheelchair. ”The doctors said I would never walk again, but here I am.” They started at the 100 kilometer mark and hope to get to Santiago in six days. And like Sally and me, they are doing it together.

Congratulations are in order, don’t you think?

Oh, by the way, we found out today from one of the Brits that we are known on the trail as the ”hat couple.” Works for us—not everyone can pull off this look.

Buen Camino!