Hi, there! I'm back...

...from walking across Spain, where I dragged a chair from a café/bar at O Cebreiro (elevation about 1300 meters/4000 feet) to the edge of the road to wave at Manfred, who said he would stand on a chair in Paris and wave at me (did you?)...
but I am pressing it into double duty, to serve as a general hello!


I've felt overwhelmed, even thinking about trying to start to write about the trip.
Here.
I'll just jump in, with some pictures (from bink, who had a camera--I regret I didn't bring mine):

It was 7 weeks.
Here's bink at the beginning, at Roncesvalles.


It rained some. Not too badly or too long, but enough to make a muddy road.

I got some blisters, also not too badly.
I figured out the best way to deal with them was TO NOT STOP WALKING.
Not stopping seems to be very important in many realms.

On the meseta (plateau), week 3, my brain finally unfurled.
I realized that what I want in myself is SPACIOUSNESS. (I can get very crowded inside.)

People were great. Kindness won out even over snoring and a diet of white bread.
Here I am with Fred (from Holland) and Audrey (South Africa).

Remember I'd invited Marz, of smoothable, to come along, even tho we'd never met f2f?
She was even better in person.

Here we are dancing on the road, the night before we walked into Santiago. (I miss her. But she's coming to visit--or relocate?--in a couple weeks.)

We walked all the way up to the edge of the continent, until we couldn't walk any further unless we could walk on water.
There, beyond the lighthouse at Finisterre, I got out the baggie of words some of you sent along with me.
I read the words out loud (unless they were private), then I set them on fire.
I took the ashes and handed them to the wind blowing out over the Atlantic.

Barrett had sent along her dream. She is living with the final stages of lung cancer.
I superimposed her words onto Eeva's photo of the sunset at Finisterre.

[click to embiggen]