I must have taken a wrong turn soon after, because I found myself on a road that was going down into a generic upper-class suburb. I tried to find a way to go west, but couldn’t find one until I was back on the carretera.
For the entire remainder of the day, in fact, I ambled about trying to find a good walking road that would lead me westwards. I ventured onto field roads and forest roads, but most of the time these led back to the carretera. Others ended up going any direction but westwards, or they ended on someone’s private farm, or dwindled into dirt roads and trails which suddenly ended with thick underbrush or a barbed wire fence. More than once, after backtracking out of a dead-end and landing on the carretera again, I had to suppress my urge to stick out a thumb and hitch a ride.
“No”, I reminded myself. “You’re a pilgrim now, not a hitch hiker. You’re walking. Get used to that.”
Eventually I made Hendaye. It started raining heavily, but I was prepared. I had packed a lot of plastic bags to keep all my things dry, and even two large white bags which were really bicycle coverings. These were to be my surrogate tents and umbrellas along the way. I took out one of these and draped it over myself and my backpack/guitar bag somehow.
As I was crossing the bridge into Spain, I felt that the reactions I was getting from people seemed to indicate that something was odd. On the other side I caught my reflection in a shop window, and I noticed that I looked a lot like a member of the Ku Klux Klan, with a towering white hood formed by a corner of the bicycle covering and the top of my guitar bag.
In downtown Irun I sat down in a café to drink something warm and to write in my journal. It was the first day of a new adventure, and on such days your thoughts are many and jumbled and somewhat inspired. Even in retrospect, the beginning of the trip is much more vivid in my memory than the weeks following.
I finished a coffee and croissant and headed out to the streets again. The people I asked did not seem to know where the Camino de Santiago was. They told me to head out to San Sebastian, but they pointed me towards the carretera. This put me in the uncomfortable position of asking for directions and then not going in the indicated direction.
I followed my instinct instead. The sun was already going down behind the Jaizkibel. I figured that a trail leading westwards would probably go over that mountain, or maybe pass it to the north.
But the road took me to swampy land first. I was wondering about the wisdom of spending the night in a swamp, but I noticed what looked like an information stand. It turns out that I had wandered into a natural preserve. There was a map on the information stand, and it showed some of the trails through the park. Among them was one trail that came from outside the park and led back out again, labelled “Camino de Santiago”.
Hooray, I thought. Finally. Fifteen minutes later I was on the trail, marked by a somewhat worn-out sign with the yellow arrow and the symbolic seashell that I would see so many more times during the next few weeks.
The sun had already gone down, and it was getting dark fast. The trail was well-marked with yellow arrows, and I followed it out of the park, and up past some houses towards a forest. I had to take out the flashlight now.
I had seen a church tower in the distance for about an hour, and it seemed that this path was leading in that direction. Once I was there, I thought, I’d find a place to spend the night. I occasionally saw it through the trees, illuminated by floodlights and looking like it could be a monastery. Who knows, I thought, maybe someone is still up and about and ready to give some hospitality to a pilgrim.
Yeah, right. As if one can just encroach on the hospitality of monasteries. But to tell the truth, this was all very new to me. I’d been a pilgrim for only a day now, and on the actual pilgrim path for only a few minutes. I had done no research. Pilgrimage seemed like such an anachronistic idea, and so did the idea of finding shelter for the night at a monastery, so maybe the two ideas co-existed in this context.
It was very dark. The path became a steep muddy trail into the thick of the woods. This would be impossible without my flashlight, I thought. I was breathing hard, and the load on my back felt heavy. Would this be the kind of walking I would have to do for the next 39 days?
The yellow arrows pointed deeper and deeper into the woods, and the trail got rough. It consisted mostly of large stones, gnarled roots and puddles of mud. I suddenly felt like someone in a horror movie, lost in the woods at night following markings that had been put there by some sociopath who lures innocent pilgrims into his lair in the thickest part of the forest.
I shook that off and even laughed at it. But I still did not feel at ease. As a child I had been pathologically afraid of the dark, and even though I learned over the years to confront the fear, or to act in spite of it, I have never completely conquered it.
I was relieved when the forest finally cleared. Beneath me to the right were the lights of Irun, Hondarribia and Hendaye. To the left was the cathedral, flooded in light.
There was something of a picnic park around the church, and in spite of the late hour there were several cars parked there. People were enjoying the nighttime view or hanging out at what seemed to be a tavern a little further along.
I set about looking for a sheltered place to sleep. Behind the church there was something like a stage, perhaps a remainder of a recent wedding or some other function. I spread out my sleeping bag underneath the stage and tried to go to sleep.
There were trees that looked like giant multiple amputees. I would see these trees again many times during the pilgrimage, but I hadn’t seen them before. I woke up repeatedly during the night, and as I saw the odd trees illuminated by floodlights, and heard the owls calling to one another, I felt a strange eeriness that continued to haunt me into my dreams.
I don't know what kinds of trees they are or even if they look like this by nature or as a result of trimming and pruning, but I saw them again and again on the pilgrimage. At night they could look pretty spooky, and I'd fancy that they were talking to each other.
