My friends and I are still walking virtually through northern Spain. Here are some photos from our walk in 2013.
Looking back at the photos I took, I wish I had taken more, and more of the people I was walking with. Some days, it seems, the camera didn’t leave its case. And that photo Geoff Travers took of my backpack! What was I thinking, carrying all that extra stuff? Live and learn, I suppose. Walking is like anything else: you learn how to do it by doing it, by making mistakes, and in Spain, I seem to have made a lot of mistakes. I would do things differently now.
One last thing—I was motivated while walking one sunny day after a week of rain to write a poem, and I thought I would share it here:
Picking my muddy way
Along the Rio Ucieza
I pass another field of sunflowers,
Their black and heavy heads
Bowed as if in silent prayer.
Why might a sunflower pray?
To give thanks for the season’s rain and sun?
Or to ask for courage against the
Whirling combine, the oil press?