"Love In The Mud" Part I - A Camino Love Story

When I told my mother the title for my multi-part Camino love story, "Love In the Mud," she replied back sassily, "Sounds like the less graphic version of The Beatles' Why Don't We Do It In The Road."  Humor, I guess, runs in the family.

But I can't think of a more fitting title.  The day my Camino Love, Hannes, and I met I was sick as a dog.  The Meseta plains of Spain had been drenched in a thunder/hail/lightening storm the night before, and my cousin and I were foot deep in the thickest mud you could possibly image.  In fact, do try to imagine it, and then multiply that by three.  With each step, our boots grew exponentially in size, the sludge clinging 360-degrees around our Lowas, adding much unwanted weight to our already loaded down bodies.  But before I get to the moment I saw my Belgian frolicking through the mud like it was a polyurethane running track, I should give you some back story...

Two nights prior I had experienced my first Camino breakdown (okay, it wasn't my first, but it was the most significant, as I don't count those that involve an inability to log onto wifi or learning there was an extra 3km to walk to get to our gite.)  What I mean by "breakdown" is I cried.  Like a baby.  Or like a blithering idiot depending on your perspective.  Perhaps I had been listening to too much Adele... but I sat in my hotel room, mom already asleep, thinking about my failed long-term relationships and wondering if I simply wasn't special enough to be loved for a lifetime.  I know.  Pathetic.  And sooo un-Blackheart of me.  But the Camino does that to you.  Brings your deepest, darkest thoughts and fears to the surface and forces you to finally schedule a meeting with them face-to-face.  So there I was in the boardroom of my subconscious, and boy did things look bleak.  

The following morning I woke up with eyes bloated to the size of baseballs and my body in the flux of a cold from HELL.  Mom was feeling tired herself and decided to stay in Burgos another day.  Burgos, my favorite and most beloved city thus far on the entire trip (click here to find out why).  She asked me if I wanted to stay behind with her.  Enjoy another night in our 4-star accommodations.  Eat bakery goodies all day in bed.  Watch the BBC.  And try to shake my cold before it got worse.  I was tempted.  Oh man, I really was.  But as I told mom that morning, there was something compelling me to keep walking.  I just had to be on the Camino the next few days.  I thought it was because I needed to work stuff out.  Maybe knock my cold out like a true pilgrim soldier.  But the Camino, in true Camino style, had other more life-changing plans in store.


So with Sactown Rick, Liz and Red as my trail companions, we set off for the village of Hornillos, planning to meet mom in two days time.  As we began to walk, I felt like I could make it.  There were a lot of miles ahead, but my body, even sick, was strong from the months of walking that had come before.  That was my sentiment until the mugginess of the day hit me like a brick.  Then the mist.  Then my inability to breath.  The exhaustion.  The negative thinking.  The lack of pee-estate (real estate to politely excuse yourself to... ahem... pee - i.e. bushes, boulders, thick patch of trees, abandoned sheep shelters.)  I knew that if things kept on this way, I would end up crawling into the fetal position in a patch of tic-infested grass and never get up again.  


That's when I decided to do a mantra, and that I would repeat this mantra of positivity with every step until I got to the albergue.  The mantra?  Well, it's a rather embarrassing one to admit and as cheesy as ballpark nachos, but in the spirit of honesty that is this blog, I will share it with you all and open myself wide up for ridicule.  Here it is... "I am lovable.  I am love.  True love will come."  Simple.  Easy to remember.  Covers all the bases.  It would do.  

Now, up until this point, love hadn't really been on my mind for the most part.  Plenty else had - my career, my future, my screenwriting, where I should move, what person I wanted to be, what person I already was.  I suppose it took walking in the hot mist with a fever and sore throat to make me think of romance.  An odd correlation, true, but that's what happened.  The mantra took hold, lightened my load and soon enough I was in Hornillos, being escorted by a rather unpleasant young woman to the "overflow" albergue (which, turns out, was better than the "overflow-overflow" albergue that consisted of throwing stained, soppy mattresses under the church's stone overhang.)  


I slept 13 hours that night, snuggled in my upper bunk, a bearded French man beneath me snoring away, my skin wreaking of the tea tree oil I has smothered on myself like the finest body cream.  The next morning I felt well-rested, but nowhere near cured, which explains that when a little voice told me upon seeing Hannes at the breakfast table in the albergue's kitchen that "he could be The One," I took it to be a lingering after effect of the very intense Spanish cold medicine I had taken the night before.  Besides, I wasn't a romantic.  I'm Blackheart.  Sure, I love "Under the Tuscan Sun" and "Eat Pray Love" as much as the next woman, but Diane Lane and Julia Roberts I am not (yes, I know these were books first, but I'm a film major, so cut me some slack.)  A fairytale vacation romance sounds lovely, but when you're wearing the same dingy clothes every day and your body is slowly falling apart at the seams, you don't give it much credence.

Besides, I hadn't even said as much as 'hello' to this guy.  Not to mention, he looked waaaay too young for me (turns out we're both '81 babies... good genes that boy has.)  So when he gave me a tired smile and said cheerily, "Buen Camino" I think all I mustered out was a gargled "igualmente" (or "same to you") and a half-ass grin before throwing on the old ball and chain (my Gregory backpack) and walking out the door.  "He could be The One"... ha!  What a Looney Tune my subconscious had become.


Yet, it must have been that same crazy little voice, when an hour later I saw Hannes skipping past Emily and I as we trudged through the mud, that made me take a chance and yell out abrasively to him... "Show off!"


To be continued...