Category: Ruminations

This might be the flattest part of the flat plateau known as the Meseta. Here’s the truth of it: everyone who walks the Meseta walks alone in their thoughts, which naturally turn to the infinite, to the divine. Eventually, you may find yourself speaking aloud in a land where a hemisphere of blue sky meets a hemisphere of green grass. […]

Once you descend from the Colina de Mostalares, the Meseta opens wide before you. This photo of Eamon is, to me, one of the most iconic photos from our first Camino. It captures the lonely vista of the Meseta, where you walk alone with God, often with no other human being in sight. Many pilgrims take similar photos, and I […]

While I’ve posted photos like this before (though I can’t for the life of me find the links at the moment), this is certainly one of my favourites. This short section of wall very much captures the “make do” spirit of Spain, and the combination of textures is simply lovely. I suppose that’s why I’m posting this image on my […]

This. This is the Meseta. Or a great deal of it, anyway. For a couple of weeks, the Camino crosses this great central Spanish plateau, home of endless fields of grain. Many pilgrims these days choose to skip some or all of the Meseta, but I think this is a mistake. It’s flat. It’s boring. It’s empty. It’s lonely. Yes, […]

Well. Posting has been erratic for the last week or so, and as a result we’ve been stuck in the weird little town of Cirueña for entirely too long. I don’t know when the posting frequency will return to the traditional daily photo. Hopefully soon. Life has been in an uproar, what with our home parish closing, new windows being […]

The isolation of quarantine has been wearing on me the past few days, particularly since Easter, and particularly when I see photos like this from the Camino. As a result, my posting has been sporadic. How I long to return to Navarra and La Rioja! To walk the long kilometers of the meseta. To bask in the friendship of those […]

Yesterday I was sick, so here are two photos for today! First breakfast, then to the Cathedral for Mass. The Mass didn’t start until 9:30, so we had a very late start on the day, the day I would categorize in my journal as “the day my pilgrimage actually began”. The cathedral is a wonder. The photo doesn’t begin to […]

This wooded area of Navarra has signs indicating that in the Middle Ages, it was known as a “witch wood”. To me, though, it seemed some sort of otherworldly faerie forest, perhaps in the western reaches of Middle Earth. Walking here, with its brilliant green mosses and dull brown fallen leaves, you could almost imagine yourself walking in Harlindon in […]