Some Big Questions from a Way Through

On Day 6 of walking on the Way of St James, the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, this October Tess Day of Mindblox and I passed through a tiny hamlet called Preguntono which means Big Question. Here are some:

From the pilgrimage path to the line of trees are strips of farmland. There are plenty of trees but a man can’t always pay to have fenceposts made. So his parcels of land are divided by higgledly piggledy poles cut straight from the forest. None are straight. Who needs straight lines? 

Other farmers’ fenceposts are huge granite menhirs made by some prehistoric man millennia ago and reused. Sometimes they are great flat slabs of slate, unshaped, just split from the hillside. Wouldn’t you learn to not waste what you have had for generations? When ploughing your own furrow why not turn an obstacle to your advantage?

By the end of another day walking pilgrims are very clear what they need: Something to lie down on. Water. To know that once you were loved. To have achieved something. That’s about it. When you have got a bit lost and downhearted the very best meal is bread and sausage with a borrowed knife outside a village supermarket on the highway. Who needs more? Does everything of value have to be glistening?  

An old man at his barn door is overjoyed by maize. He has piles of golden cobs reaching floor to ceiling in every corner. He is delighted in our interest. His maize is his pride and joy. His children and grandchildren are growing strong and doing well at university and in business because of his maize. His wife is healthy and happy and loyal because of his maize. His barn is right beside the motorway into town and he can see the value of many things including maize. Just across the motorway is a city of gold ripped out of South America and adorning the grave of a Moor-slayer. Millions of pilgrims have gone there searching for heaven. Who do you listen to? What brings you true peace and joy?

The astringent scent of eucalyptus waking my tired head, I stop for a drink and find a miniscule caterpillar dangling an inch from my nose on a thread from an oak leaf. Deep in conversation we are alerted to a wrong turn by an acorn falling hard at our feet. Conversation over a broken pin on a jet brooch leads us to heart-wrenching organ recital. A gum tree’s shadow and a poplar’s autumn glitter remind us of childhood. In each we find some form of catharsis. I write my Way Through Art web address into the sand on a beach, a book in a barn, on the back of a menu, passing it to people from Miami, Argentina, Finland and Birmingham, South Korea and Australia, Germany and France.  What precious details are you letting slip unnoticed beneath your tired eyes and feet?

Pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela have for the last 1200 years, like Tess Day and I, carried a pebble representing a burden from home – something to be left behind. We choose its place with care, especially if, like mine, it was made of fused glass in a Shelagh Swanson workshop. Every inch of space in the packs on our backs has to be justified and to carry something 116km and then just toss it away would be nonsensical. My pebble found its place beside an Atlantic rock pool at the end of the earth. What tiny thing do you need to find the right place for? Are you trying to rid yourself or your business of something irksome by doing the same thing in the same way?

I waited 38 years to walk on the Camino because I was scared of dogs. The dog/wolf became my symbol for the fear I felt through a year of cancer. Feeling better I returned on Camino this autumn and the huge hounds slept as I woke by or, in golden fur, brushed gently past me. Now I sign my paintings with a wolf paw and feel indomitable. Who do you know who is labelled patient or victim who could instead, with your help, be labelling their luggage and setting out on their own fearless journey?

I am always happy to talk Camino (and I think Tess Day at Mindblox is too) and a Way Through Art. https://www.waythroughart.com