Editor’s note: Rick McKay, Joe Masonick, and Jack Karolewski, have been travel companions for more than 50 years to a variety of sites with many goals. This week’s adventure is the 28th in the series, a 14-day hike in 2005 across northern Spain’s intriguing Camino de Santiago known as the Way of Santiago, for a religious retreat and pilgrimage. Visiting various villages on the journey requires continual hiking and climbing. Previously the trio’s exploits were focused on an 11-week trans-Asia trip in 1977. This week’s journal is Day 13 on the journey from Melide to Arzua, Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2005.
The previous part is at thevoice.us/camino-jewelry-play-recorder
By Rick McKay
Day 13: Melide to Arzua, Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2005.
After desayuno, or breakfast, Jack went on ahead and Joe and I lingered behind, taking our time before departing Melide. Within minutes we were back in the country. Soon, we overtook Leny, a 68-year old grandmother from Holland. We stopped to chat with her. Almost immediately thereafter, a tall blonde-haired man and his girlfriend came up behind us. They appeared to be in their 20s and were Dutch, as well, bringing to five the number of pilgrims we have met from the Netherlands. We nicknamed him Captain Ahab for his tall stature and the graying hair and beard that framed his face, a dead knock-off of Gregory Peck from the movie, Moby Dick! After a short chat, they moved on, and we followed soon thereafter.
Today’s story really revolves around Leny, the grandmama of the Camino. Joe and I ended up walking with her the remainder of the way to Arzua. En route, she shared her story with us.
She has two children and two grandchildren, the latter pair a girl of 18 and a boy of 9. She admitted that whenever she thinks of her 9-year old grandson while on this journey, it brings tears to her eyes because she misses him so.
Leny said she has wanted to walk the Camino for many years now, but her husband never showed an interest. Thinking it might be that the hiking that was daunting, she offered up a solution, saying, “I’ll walk, and you bike.” But he still he refused.
Her husband died in 1999 of an aneurism. Several years after his affairs were settled, at age 68, she determined it was time to fulfill her dream. She started on the French side of the Pyrenees in May 2005. Crossing these daunting mountains was a baptism by fire, one might say, but she was undeterred. She began the ascent, struggling up the ever-steepening path, one day after another. Then one morning the Spring rains began. At first they were light, but soon they turned to driving squalls, battering her protective gear. She tried to persevere in the face of this adversity, but ended up slipping and falling on the steep mountain trail, and breaking her wrist on a small outcrop of rock. She had no choice but to return to Holland to recover.
Despite this setback, she was not discouraged. Two months after her accident, she returned to the Camino to continue the trek from where she left off. And now, nearly a month later, she is just a few days from Santiago. But her intended journey does not end there. For early pilgrims the final destination was not Santiago, but Finisterre, which literally means “end of land.” It is the westernmost point in Spain and continental Europe, for that matter. In ancient times it was thought to be the end of the world, beyond which lay nothing but an endless sea. So Leny will continue on from Santiago for another two-to-three days before her journey is complete.
As we continued strolling along the path, she told us about the World War II years. She was four and in nursery school when the Germans marched into the Hague, her hometown. She was frightened by the clapping of the boots on the cobbled streets. To this day remembers it with dread. Shortly after the Nazi occupation, there was a rapping at the door of her house. Soldiers burst in and took her father, a carpenter, and transported him to Germany to work in a factory. She never saw him again.
The man who would become her stepfather after the War survived Blechhammer, a work camp in Poland. He came out weighing a mere 88 pounds when the Russians liberated the camp. He, along with a group of other freed prisoners, eventually reached Odessa on the Black Sea and were transported from there by Red Cross ships to liberated ports in Western Europe. The man’s brother and the rest of the family, however, were not so fortunate. Having been separated from him early on, they all ended up dying in the gas chambers of Mauthausen concentration camp in Germany.
Leny stopped for a moment in thought and said, “There are some who say that it never happened, that it is all propaganda.” She shook her head and paused in silence for a short while. Then we commenced to walk again, and she related fonder memories from that era.
She remembered the Allied bombers passing over Holland to attack targets in Germany. She remembered seeing the paratroopers dotting the sky during the liberation of Holland and bemoaned the loss of so many brave young men. She remembered the first time she saw an American soldier up close, a net over his helmet with twigs and leaves entwined for camouflage. The soldier gave her a chocolate bar. Her eyes teared up in the telling of that special moment. She was so grateful for our part in liberating her country.
After the War, when her mother remarried, no one of their generation wanted to talk about what had happened. So she is left with many questions that haunt her to this day, especially questions about what happened to her father.
And now her son, too, is interested in learning about what happened to him and others during the Nazi occupation. When she finishes the Camino, she hopes to find some answers via the internet and through searching the archives of the Red Cross, for whom she is a volunteer nurse.
We arrived in Arzua at 1:10 p.m., and there was a queue at the Albergue, the first time we have experienced that. The facility is much nicer than the one in Melide with a real washing machine and a dryer. Truly clean clothes at last!
All for now.
Continued at thevoice.us/journey-through-spain-to-santiago-humility-spiritual