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 24th 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. This week continues Day 9 on the journey, Triacastela to Sarria, Saturday, Sept. 24, 2005.
The previous article is at thevoice.us/sense-of-freedom-cows-curious-encounter
By Rick McKay
Day 9: Triacastela to Sarria, Saturday, Sept. 24, 2005
Rose before 7 a.m. this morning after a dream-filled sleep, but when Jack flipped on the room light, it popped a breaker switch, to throw the whole floor into darkness. So we were compelled to pack by headlamp.
After breakfast we stopped to visit the small church of Triacastela, whose bell tower bears an image of the three castles after which the town was named and is the only visible evidence that the castles ever existed. The church was still dark and once inside, only three small flickering candles encroached upon the blackness. Another metaphor perhaps, for a time when ignorance, superstition, uncertainty, and fear of conquest and subjugation was the perpetual condition of these village people. The Church represented the only light against this overwhelming darkness under which they were helpless to endure.
One might see in it the gradual weakening power of the Church to combat the ever-growing materialism and hedonism of our modern world. Perhaps they are equally valid.
Indeed I see metaphors at almost every turn, related to the human condition and the journey through this earthly existence. Perhaps at a later time I will attempt to put it all together.
As for today, we began by climbing out of the valley of Triacastela, rising through mist-shrouded hills in the gray early morning light. I had thought we were done climbing, but not so. After an hour or so, upon reaching the crest of a hill, the sun suddenly cut through the mist into the valley below and bathed the dark gray hillside in brilliant colors of reds, yellows, and orange. I was literally stunned by the sight and had to call Jack quickly to the summit to share in the spectacle.
Not long after, on the top of a stone wall that followed the path, I spotted an orb-weaver’s spider web, the early morning dew clinging to and illuminating each strand such that they appeared as silver threads. Then suddenly not one, but tens of them came into view when the meadow opened. And not just orbed webs, but those which resembled stretched gauze as well, all hung with dew.
Continued at thevoice.us/nature-in-spain-spider-web-one-inch-frog-shetland-pony