Maintaining a complicated life
is a great way
to avoid changing it.

Elaine St. James

Artwork by Lorraine Blasor

EL CAMINO DE SANTIAGO      

Photography by Billy Ramirez

A true journey is a leap into the unknown (or the less
known), hardly one that accommodates every personal comfort
and ties every minute of the day to a tour guide operator's tight
schedule.

Its motivations can range from the prosaic to the sublime.  One
thing is certain: any long voyage, especially if undertaken alone,
is bound to lead to some sort of reckoning with one's self.

Thus, even the most prosaic journey can end in self-awareness, a
spiritual revelation, an epiphany.

This certainly rings true to people who, in the custom of Middle
Age pilgrims seeking indulgence for their sins, walk the Camino
de Santiago, the evocative Spanish name for St. James' Trail, a
pilgrimage route leading to the shrine ofSt. James in the Cathedral
of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia (Northern Spain) where,
according to tradition, the apostle was buried.

San Juan Architect Billy Ramirez Castellano is one of these people.
Spurred by a weariness with the ordinary, he recently devoted a
month to walk the trail.

"I needed to break my daily routine of many years. Break it in a
significant way. I realized this as I was walking and it helped
me a lot to place things into perspective," said Ramirez, the
author of the photography book, "Mirando Pa' Arriba," which
invites visitors to Old San Juan to look up and discover the
marvels of the old city that are not at eye level.

Actually, there are many different trails leading to the shrine but
Ramirez chose the French trail (leaving from Pamplona, Spain),
because it is popular and offers more lodging options along the way.
These include rooms in private homes or cafes, hostels, hotels and
paradors.

"You don't have to make reservations though you can for private
hotels. If you know of a good place you make a reservation and
there is no need to hurry. " Depending on the time of year, hotels
fill up and you have to keep looking until you find one that's
available, he said.

The pictures that Ramirez took as he walked along the way
show bucolic scenes of agricultural fields and thickets of trees,
charming old villages, antique bridges.

El Camino is wonderful and it is tough, Ramirez said.

"For me the hardest part were the descents from the mountains
because I had a bad knee. But aside from that, the monotonous
zones are hard because they are boring but there were few of them."

At one point, his bad knee forced him to take a few days off
to heal but he never gave up. If he were to do it again, he said, he
would take fewer, lighter clothes. "But I would add a pair of
light shoes in addition to walking boots. There are zones with
a lot of loose rocks where boots come in handy and there are
paved zones where lighter shoes serve you better."

He also recommends carrying vaseline to rub on your feet,
china-jell for pain relief, socks with no stitching (for comfort),
two folding hiking poles, a sweater, a lightweight raincoat,
and a towel.

In return for all his effort, Ramirez found the answers he
sought.

"I learned that I am a very lucky person and that I have
everything I need. I can live with little.

"I learned to know my body, my mind and my heart."

Along the way he met a lot of people from all over the globe,
including fellow Puerto Ricans.  By the end of the trail,
he ended up with four "very good Spanish friends."

The four agreed to meet up at a point ahead of Santiago so
they could arrive to the cathedral together.

Once there, "we hugged, cried and reflected for a while. After
the mass we sat at a bar on the street and said hello to other
pilgrims arriving in Santiago with whom we might had shared
a look or a coffee or part of the way.

"You greet them as if they had been lifetime friends. With hugs
and kisses."

Cathedral and the town ©UNESCO

El Camino de Santiago is one of UNESCO's World Heritage 
Sights. For more information, read an up-to-date copy of 
John Brierley's "A Pilgrim's Guide to the Camino de
Santiago."

You might also enjoy watching "The Way," a film by
Emilio Estevez in which he shares the screen with his
father, Martin Sheen, in a moving story about loss,
community and faith.

Artwork by Lorraine Blasor


More than at any time in history,
mankind faces a crossroad.
One path leads to despair and
utter hopelessness, the other
to total extinction.
Let us pray that we have the wisdom
to choose correctly.

Woody Allen

A SIMPLE TIP : The Handy Crate

Wine crates make excellent storage space for music CDs. You
can line up your CDs in two straight columns and keep things
neat and easily accessible. And you can probably get the crates
for free at your friendly neighborhood wine store.

Nothing is hopeless;
we must hope for everything.

Euripides 

COPYRIGHT © 2015 LORRAINE BLASOR all rights reserved☂