A Year Ago Today by John E. Morelock
I must have looked at my watch a hundred times as Saturday afternoon
slowly
passed into evening. We went running on the trails overlooking
the Straits of Juan
de Fuca, perhaps its Spanish sounding name caused me to pause more times
than
usual. Kathy asked a time or two if something was bothering me.
I said no. We ran
on.
Evening came and we watched another wonderful sunset. We are given
good
sunsets up here in the Pacific Northwest (Washington state, USA).
In Spain it had
been the sunrises that drove us out of the albergues into the predawn
darkness. We
walked with furtive glances over our shoulders, not wanting to miss
the first rays of
light, finally pausing to wait; to watch as someone set up the easel
and painted our
morning's dawn. That was long ago. An eternity ago it seems
now.
There was a coincidence with darkness coming this Saturday evening.
I had not
thought of it being so nearly perfectly timed. We are several
time zones west of St.
Jean-Pied-de-Port in France, but only a few degrees north. Things
have a way of
working out in the mind's eye. I looked at my watch again, smiled,
both sadly and
happily, and said, "A year ago at this time we were standing on
that arched bridge
over the river Nive looking at the wisps of fog and wondering what we
were doing."
We had looked at the waters flowing slowly beneath us, hugged and walked
out of
the still sleeping town and started up and into the Pyrenees.
Our pilgrimage had begun.
Darkness folded over my announcement and all its beckoned memories with
as
much silence and deepness as that first sunrise above St. Jean had brought.
We
had stood on that Pyrenees hillside just above town watching the sun
give light to the
birth to our camino. Now I watched a sun setting and turning loose
the flood of
memories we hide from so often.
We don't know which memories we are to cherish, which ones we are to
etch with
deeper lines so they will stay fresh when we call them time and time
again. We
walked by each day's offerings and never knew if we saw the 'important'
things, the
'right' things, the things the pilgrimage was to show us. Now
we pause during a run
or a walk and ask, "Do you remember...?"
Yes. Yes, I remember.
We went outside and looked up at the Milky Way, our night sky thread
to a year ago
gone by, our eyes and hearts following it eastward to Spain.
¡¡Ultreia y Buen Camino Siempre!!
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