Frankfurt airport

Who knew that Erstellen was Posting in German? The whole blog page is in German, damnit, and the keyboard is scrambled.

At Gate B12, plastic trays hold remnants of pre-boarding snacks--plastic cups rimmed with beer foam, mustard smears on real plates. It´s 1 pm here on May 31. At home it´s around 5 am, I think. It was 58 degrees when I let SFO and when I landed here it was 57 degrees. I kill time reading the International Herald Tribune and sampling skin care products at the Duty Free.

At SFO my pack weighed in at a bouncing 18 pounds, 8 ounces. Want to pare down but what is inessential?

I´m so tired I don´t know what nationality I am. On to Bilbao in about an hour.

In transit

Notes on my gear list

A friend wanted to know about my crushable skirt and about the pants and shorts I decided to take along. And I wanted to say more about books and toiletries.

The skirt is an old Weston Wear find, fitted, brown with big flowers and made of thin stretchable nylon. If you let the elasticized waist ride your hips, it’s knee-length, respectable enough (I hope) for cathedral-hopping.

The pants (I tried on dozens of pairs) are Columbia Adventure Stretch Capris made of a variety of man-made materials (I’d tell you what they were but I cut out the labels to save weight; that’s how weight-obsessed I am. I also cut off the buttoned tabs hanging from the inside lower legs, meant to keep the rolled-up pants from unrolling.) They’re pretty lightweight, stretchable, and they even look kind of elegant, good enough to wear to the Guggenheim in Bilbao and maybe out to a celebratory dinner or two. I’m on the fence about these miracle manmade fabrics that supposedly wick moisture away from the skin (it doesn’t work in yoga clothing), but I’m giving these pants a try.

My shorts are men’s North Face cargo shorts, nylon, army green, almost to the knee, replete with most excellent pockets. The equivalent women’s shorts had half the pocketage—go figure. Do clothing manufacturers think women have less to carry? If anything we have more—see my treatise on toiletries below.

On ripping books apart
I’m a reader, writer, editor, and lover of books for what they convey and for how they feel in the hands and look on the shelf. Still, I love to rip them apart when the occasion calls for it—like when weight is an issue. There’s nothing quite so satisfying as getting a clean rip—right from the spine. The secret is to rip small sections at a time--don't try the Schwarzeneggar entire-phone book approach.

So I have the León-Santiago de Compostela sections of the Confraternity of St. James’ Pilgrim Guide to the Camino Frances and a cultural guide to the Camino by Gitlitz and Davidson, with hyper-detailed info on all the cathedrals and Roman ruins along the way. For airplane/layover reading I have The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, the story of an antiquarian book dealer in Barcelona in 1945 (thanks for the recommendation, Susan), and Alexander McCall Smith’s The Kalahari Typing School for Men (part of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, set in Botswana). Don’t worry, Derek, I’m not taking the copy you loaned me—I found another in Green Apple Book’s bargain bin. I’ll leave both books behind when I start walking.

Letting go of gel, mousse, and leave-in conditioner
When trying to keep my load light, toiletries were the hardest to cut down on. I’m with the woman who, when asked about her favorite hair products, replied, “Do you want A to M, or N to Z?” I try to resist the lures of this consumerist society, but I’m a sucker for anything that promises to control my wild hair. On guard against snake oil salesmen, I’ll follow the purveyor of anti-frizz serum anywhere. But I got my hair cut short (my nun ‘do, as I call it, although it also looks a little like Liza Minelli in rehab), so it won’t need as much goo. And my Dr. Bronner’s multipurpose peppermint liquid castile soap will be doing triple or quadruple duty: soap, shampoo and laundry. Some people also use it as toothpaste, but I splurged and am bringing a tiny tube of Crest.

Carrying other people's stuff

Not far from Astorga, I'll be passing by the Cruz de Ferro (Iron Cross), where pilgrims traditionally add a stone they've brought from home to the pile at the base of the cross. I'll be adding to that pile a small stone from an inlet in British Columbia for my older brother, and for myself a shell from Costa Rica and the old "E" key from my iBook. I wore the letter off writing Living Abroad in Costa Rica. I painted the E in with blue fingernail polish, but that too faded after thousands more keystrokes. I don't why I want to carry that key but maybe it'll come to me when I'm the Camino. At least it has the virtue of being very light.

It's been interesting, telling people I'm willing to carry something for them along the Camino. The idea came when I read about medieval pilgrims walking for their town, petitioning St. James for rain for crops or relief from the plague. I liked the idea of walking for more than myself.

But when you make an offer, you've got to be ready to have it declined. One friend couldn't think of anything, tangible or intangible, for me to carry for her. "I guess I don't get all that spiritual stuff," she said, which made me realize that just because you see something "spiritual" in someone doesn't mean they see it in themselves or that they call it by that name. That friend joked I could carry her new dog for her, which I'd kind of like to do but it would take too long to stop by Brooklyn to pick up Rita (see bat-dog in the photo, weighing in at 7 or 8 pounds). Another friend tried to give me the same runaround but I wouldn't let her. I held her down until she told me what she wanted me to carry. Her plea doesn't weigh anything, thank god, though I am collecting an interesting assortment of objects to carry, including (from my boyfriend) a small piece of the Great Pyramid.

So some people can't accept the offer but most can. They rise to the occasion (or I hold them down) and we get to talk on a deeper level for a few moments. Extending such an offer and then accepting it takes you out of the everyday and into the mythic. It makes you think about what a pilgrimage is and what it means to carry something of significance along it -- or to charge another to carry it for you. And I know that carrying other people's objects or prayers -- or simply helping them bear a slice of their confusion for a little while -- will enrich my own trip exponentially, and will make me feel less alone with my own, uh, stuff.

More detailed route map

I'll fly into Bilbao (on the northeast coast), take a train to León (at the intersection of where the yellow route comes down vertically to meet the blue, which is the Camino Frances), a bus to Astorga, then start walking. I've decided to take on 260 rather than 200 km because I don't want to miss the mountain pass just west of Astorga. Even the bare-bones Confraternity of St. James’ Pilgrim Guide to the Camino Frances, which basically sticks to mileage and a listing of pilgrim hostals, cautions, "it is a long and hard 50km across the mountains of León from Astorga to Ponferrada. The route goes up over 1500 meters [almost 5000 feet] and as in all mountains the weather can be uncertain at any time." There's no place to stay or buy food on the highest section; the guide advises you to carry food and get an early start. But it also says that "the stretch between Astorga and Ponferrada is one of the most interesting and beautiful of the whole camino."

This sounds like the closest thing to backpacking you probably get on the Camino, and I'm really looking forward to it.

Along that stretch is another famous Camino landmark, the Cruz de Ferro (Iron Cross). Traditionally each pilgrim adds a stone, brought from home, to the pile of rocks below the cross, which has grown predictably enormous over the centuries.

Gear list

Finally stuffed everything in my pack today and slipped it on fully loaded. Though I don’t have a scale, I would estimate that the pack weighs between 15 – 18 pounds, just about what I was aiming for.

Gear List:
¸ pack—Gregory Deva 60 (just under 5 lbs)
¸ lightweight down/fiberfill sleeping bag
¸ plastic rain poncho
¸ travel towel (never tried one of these, but regular towels are heavy and slow to dry)
¸ small flashlight
¸ swiss army knife
¸ 1 pair lightweight non-leather hiking boots – Merrell’s Mesa Ventilator II
¸ very lightweight running/walking shoes – New Balance 790s (6.6 ounces the pair)
¸ lightweight flip-flops
¸ crushable hat
¸ water bottle
¸ 1 pair shorts
¸ 1 pair pants
¸ Long underwear bottoms
¸ 2 t-shirts, 2 longed-sleeve shirts
¸ 1 skirt (I could ball it in my fist and it still wouldn’t wrinkle)
¸ 2 pair sock liners
¸ 5 pair socks
¸ underwear
¸ tiny MP3 player/tape recorder to record my thoughts and to interview people along the way
¸ notebook and two pens
¸ digital camera (decided to take this after seeing pics of the amazing paintings on the walls of the pilgrim hostal at Samos monastery; see photo above)
¸ very small quantities of almonds, raisins, turkey jerky, and instant coffee, for emergencies
¸ plastic cup
¸ plastic spoon
¸ sunscreen
¸ eyeglasses
¸ sun glasses
¸ extra contact lenses
¸ travel alarm
¸ appropriate sections of guidebooks, ripped out of the bigger book (more on guidebooks later)
¸ first aid kit and toiletries (lots of stuff for blisters, some sleeping pills, and earplugs)
¸ lightweight duffle bag to put backpack in when I have to check it (I’ll mail this from Bilboa or Leon to general delivery in Santiago de Compostela)
¸ blonde pageboy wig (not really--just wanted to see if anyone reads this far)

Strange news – conclusion

In previous episodes of Strange News, Big Bro told me his once-a-week East Bay healer wanted to see me before I left to walk the Camino. She said I needed to work through seven generations of static, and she could help.

With trepidation, I went. I lay down on her table; New Age music and incense wafted through the air. An hour later I emerged, blowing my nose and daubing my eyes, feeling like I'd run some Class V rapids without a raft, but also feeling lighter and clearer than when I’d arrived.

Neither a fortune teller nor a masseuse, she nevertheless did lay hands on me, percussing and prodding and chanting me into scenes from an imagined past. Imagined in that my memory is poor and when asked about the past, my answers are as much invented as remembered. And imagined in that sometimes I seemed to be remembering a mythic past—shared by many and just now accessed by me.

At one point she had me picture myself at two years old. That girl and I were supposed to commune and embrace, which was hard since the tot was one-dimensional, coming from my memory of a family photo album rather than from remembered experience.

The healer told me to imagine that younger self hovering above me. “She can be a big as she needs to be,” said the healer.

Picturing a toddler the size of a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade float, I stifled a laugh. But when the big little girl drifted down to fit herself in to the body of the adult woman—like a doubled TV image brought into focus—the laugh caught in my throat and turned to tears.

A lot more happened, too much to describe. I’m not sure what it’s all about but I can say with conviction that it’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

The things I'll carry

In Tim O’Brien’s 1987 short story, The Things They Carried, a group of soldiers slogs through the jungles of Vietnam. They’re burdened with everything from flak jackets (6.7 pounds each) to M16s (7.5 pounds unloaded; 8.2 pounds with a full 20-round magazine) to a guy named Kiowa carrying “his grandmother’s distrust of the white man.” Essentially a poeticized gear list, the story takes a sideways glance at the horrors of war. I first read the much-anthologized tale aloud with Gianna and Gwyneth at Jug Handle Ranch, and it brought all of us to tears.

I won’t be carrying a gun or flak jacket on my walk but I will be carrying a St. Benedict medal for my friend William, the only kind sanctified by the Catholic church for use in exorcisms. William wants me to leave the medal at the feet of the statue of St. James, but I’ll also be happy to have the medal’s protection as I walk the Camino. William said I could say that much about what I’ll be carrying for him; I’m hoping he wants to elaborate and will do so in a comment. It’s a very interesting story, but all he'll say about it at present is, "I confess to having suffered from periods of excessive religiosity in my life."

So I’m narrowing down my equipment list and I’ve started to receive the prayers and messages and medals friends and family would like me to carry on the Camino and deliver to Saint James at pilgrimage’s end.

Most people I’ve made the offer to (‘Is there anything you want me to carry for you?’) are taken aback, responding, “Hmmm. Interesting. I’ll definitely have to think about that.” I understand not having an immediate answer—I wonder, too, what prayers I’m carrying for myself along the route.

Two people I made the offer to had immediate responses, and I think that one's first impulse is probably the best and most honest. If I don’t ovethink the question, what comes up for me is that I’ll be carrying my unbelief. Or the patchwork of suspicion and superstition I label unbelief. I may be an unbeliever, strictly speaking, in the Catholic faith, but what I’m more concerned with is a general lack of faith—in the world, in the people around me, but most of all, in myself.

That’s one reason I want to do this walk alone—to prove to myself than I can. And to trust the world and my fellow pigrims to help me along my way.

For those to whom I’ve made the offer: I don’t make it lightly, and there’s still time for you to tell me what you’d like me to carry. Your entrusting me with something of yours that you value—an idea, a message—shows that you have faith in me, which pushes me to have more faith in myself. Even after I’m on the road you can get to me through this blog or email. And if anyone who asks me to carry something for them along the way wants to elaborate on what it is, you could post a comment. And thanks to HP for the photos of the St. Benedict medal.

William's painting

This is from William's Ethiopian series. It's a 'mudra' (sacred hand gesture) common to Buddhism, Christianity, & Hinduism - signifying peace. He tells me that the work he did for that series (one painting was titled "Pilgrim') was based on traditional Ethiopian magical scrolls, used in the healing rituals of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Such scrolls are painted on the hides of sacrificed lambs; the person in need of healing is wrapped head to foot in these scrolls. After the ritual, the scrolls are buried. I imagine there will be items I wear or carry on this ritualized walk and then jettison once they've done their job. Shucking off skins when they're no longer needed.

Spain’s regions and languages

Spain has 17 independent regions (comunidades autónomas)


Caution: teacherly tone & historical minutia ahead

Have you ever wondered why the Spanish language (español) is sometimes called Castilian (castellano)? Of the many languages of Spain, the dialect called Castilian won out as the national language, by decree of Philip V in 1714. In a country that had a shifting terrain of tongues, Castilian became the common gound on which all Spaniards could stand.

Of the 17 regions of Spain, I’ll be traveling through three: Basque country, Castilla y León, and Galicia, where the pilgrimage terminus of Santigao de Compostela is.

In the Basque region they speak a non-romance language, Basque, aka Euskera, thought to have been brought to Spain by immigrants from Aisa Minor around 2000 bc. In Castilla y León they speak castellano, or regular old Spanish. In Galicia the traditional language is Galician, akin to Portuguese. While Castilian articles are el, la, los, and las, Galician has o, as, os, and as. Thus the Las Artes Hotel becomes the As Artes Hotel.

The rivers of many different languages have flowed and still flow through Spain. In the 6th century bc the first Iberians mingled with Celts from central Europe, becoming the Celtibarians, who spoke a form of Celtic. Romans invaded in the 1st century, and locals learned Latin from Roman traders and soldiers, mixing it with their local dialects to form Vulgar Latin.

Latin was the official language of Spain until around 700 ad, when Arabic-speaking Islamic groups from Northern Africa called Moors conquered most of Spain. Arabic and the Mozarabic dialect then dominated. When Christian kingdoms reconquered Moorish Spain, Latin dialects came back, especially a dialect of the Northern Central plains called Castilian, which would end up becoming the official language of Spain.

The lure of the ultralight

Caution: late-night web surfing can rock your world. At midnight, when I should be climbing into bed, I flip open my laptop to google “Camino de Santiago gear list.” The query catches the usual net of fish, some dead, some wriggling with life.

Backpack45 has a good site covering the Camino and other less urban backpacks. Drill down to their gear section and you see that they’re proponents of ultralight packs, packs that can weigh less than a pound! Check out Gossamer Gear or Golite if you want to have your structured pack world turned upside down. Gossamer's G5, pictured, weighs about 8 ounces. I’ve never seen packs like these—as unstructured as nightgowns, as light as airmail letters.

Well, not quite. But learning there are packs that weigh a fifth of the pack I’m taking along makes me question all my choices, just as unhappily marrieds might feel when they see that new billboard in Chicago, the one with buff unclad men and women and the message, “Life is short; get a divorce.”

I’m not convinced I want to divorce my Deva 60, but the Ultralights do lure me a little with their lovely insubstantiality. Again there’s that paradox of buying more so that you end up with less. More and more money for smaller and lighter gear—that’s what the computer world is all about, too.

I may look into those packs when I have more time, but I imagine what they lack is structure. The shoulder straps and waist belts (when they have the latter) are empty wisps of nylon that you can stuff with socks or spare clothes. Needless to say, there’s no internal frame, though supposedly you can use a sleeping pad to create some structure. For now this girl with back issues will stick with her well-structured Deva (see the well-padded waistband in the photo of a Deva 60). Maybe next time I’ll try ultralight.

And as wm commented on my last post, “Getting the weight you'll be carrying down to the bare minimum is symbolic of reducing excess mental baggage.” True enough. And in the end, the heaviest thing I’ll be carrying is most likely myself. I’m the lug I have to lug along, no matter how light my pack and gear.

Camera or binocs?

Since I'll be carrying everything on my back for over 200 kilometers, weight is a real issue on the Camino. No back-up vans or donkeys for me; I am the beast of burden on this trip. And so I'm considering what for some would be unthinkable: leaving my camera behind.

Yes, I want to document the walk, but I've also been on lots of trips sans camera and have never really regretted it. I'm not much of a photographer, and my snaps of places never do them justice anyway. Also, I'll be lucky if I find internet cafes where I can post on this blog. How much harder will it be to find a place to download my photos and then post them? Will I need the little card reader too, or will the USB cable be sufficient? Sure, it'd be nice to have photos even if I can't post them along the way. But still...

I'm thinking of bringing a lightweight pair of binoculars instead. My painter friend Andrea, who recently got a Masters of Fine Arts at Rutgers, writes, "I am excited for you to see all the portals that I so diligently memorized only two years ago. Beautiful carvings to be seen. Notice how the religious message gets less threatening and condemning as the cathedrals get younger."

I'm excited too. But some of those portals soar pretty high and my eyesight is poor. With a pair of binocs, I'd get to see just what sort of torment those saint are enduring.

My old Nikon Coolpix 775 weighs 6.5 ounces without the battery, but the battery doubles the weight, plus I'll need an extra battery, compact flash cards, a cable, and maybe the card reader. That's over a pound total and maybe more like a pound and a half. And remember, I'm trying to keep my total load under 15 pounds (my pack itself weighs 5 lbs.).

My REI 8 x 25mm binoculars feel like they weigh about as much as the camera with its battery.

Maybe I should forgo both tools? Some may say the solution is easy--just buy newer, better, lighter equipment. But I've got a list of new gadgets I need to get first, starting with a job.

Strange news, part III

I love the smell of misapprehensions apprehended in the morning.

My brother set me straight about the healer. First, he didn’t tell her much about me, so her analysis of my jarring life rhythm and the 7 generations of static I need to overcome before walking the Camino were just her “doing what she does," says Big Bro. “Sometimes she gets it right, sometimes she doesn’t. Primarily she’s a body worker, and a good one. That other stuff is just…other stuff.”

Ah. Well. My body could use some work. I'll keep an open mind about the Other Stuff.

Strange news, part II

The healer’s message on my phone machine spoke of logistics—when and where we’d meet—but ended with her saying, I think your trip is really great, and when you call me I’ll tell you why. Talk about building psychic suspense.

A few hours later we spoke. She was between patients, so had only a few minutes to schedule our session and explain to me why she’d asked my brother to have me call her.

She told me I was blocked in my relationship with my parents. That I seemed to be taking 3 steps back for every 1 step forward. She sensed a jarring motion in my life but also a sort of static-y energy. I needed to let go. It was something that went back 6 or 7 generations on my mom’s side. I needed to release all that, she said, so I could be free to really enjoy this trip, to experience all the epiphanies that this pilgrimage might offer me.

Does that resonate with you? She asked.

It had all poured in so hard and fast there was no space for resonance. And there’s not much time before I leave. It seems a tall order to work through 6 or 7 generations of static before I get on that plane.

Maybe, I replied. It’s kind of a lot to take in.

Duh
Later (I’m a slow study) it occurred to me that everything this woman knows about me comes from my brother. Which means that this is probably more about how he sees me than about how she does. So I left a message for my brother saying, We need to talk.

(Painting at top of post is Howard Finster's Planet Kerlein, City of Lebial.)

Strange news from another star

Phone conversation between my older brother and me two weeks before I leave to walk the Camino:

Bro: Remember that woman I told you I sometimes see?

Me: The, uh, healer?

Bro: The “energy worker,” yeah.
(I can hear quotes around the term. Because although he respects this woman and thinks she’s helped him, he can’t say things like Energy Worker or Healer with a straight face. I’m the same.)

Me. Yeah, I remember.

Bro: Well, I saw her this morning. Your name came up. I told her about your trip, and she was very interested. In fact, she said she thought she needed to see you.

Me: Really?

Bro: She thinks you might have issues you need to resolve before you go.

Me:

Bro: Is that weird?

Me: A little. But it’s intriguing, too.

Even though it sounded a little like a high-level chain letter threat (Send this letter to six people or your karma will suffer), and on second thought how could she know about my issues, resolved or un, unless my brother had been spilling my private beans, even so, I called her. The Energy Worker. The Healer. Left a message. More to follow if I hear back from that world.

(The photo above is of the spiral galaxy called the Milky Way. The Camino de Santiago is sometimes called the Milky Way, because pilgrims navigated by that cluster of heavenly bodies. Luis Buñuel's film about Camino pilgrims past and present (mentioned by a commenter on this blog) is called La Via Lactea, or The Milky Way.)

Pre-trip jitters

Querido Santiago, Please get me on the damned Camino.

I like new places and I’m no stranger to travel. I’ve lived outside of the U.S. for extended periods more than once or twice. I’ve even made some pocket change reporting on such antics.

But I must confess that no matter how many times I’ve taken off for a new adventure, I still have trouble right before departure. A week or two before takeoff I fall into a melancholy edged with panic, lying awake at night wondering What in the hell were you thinking?

Sometimes I think it’s a physiological response—my body is saying, Please, no. Don’t make me go up to 60,000 feet and be slingshot halfway across the world. Stay home. Be Safe. And sometimes I think it’s just fear, plain and simple. I often travel alone, which I almost always end up loving, but the idea of being out in the big bad world with no one to talk to or help me if I go down kind of makes me crazy.

I always make it through these pre-trip jitters but it amazes me that I still have them, after decades of roaming the world.

Maybe it happens when the trip finally starts to seem real. This time I followed my usual practice: I said yes to the vague outline of an idea, then forget about it until I got close to the departure date. Now the idea is rushing towards me in all its thorny specificity.

Vague idea: Most of the Camino de Santiago is flat.
Reality: There are mountain ranges you have to walk over. One pass is closed from September to May because of snow. Snow in Spain? Who knew.

Vague idea: Depending on where my finances were at the time of the trip, I’d splurge now and then on a nice hotel (when the cheap and crowded pilgrim hostels got me down).
Reality: My finances are, as usual, in the toilet. So most nights I’ll be in those bunk-beddy sweaty-sock sleepover-camp hostels.

The up side of all this, I guess, is that I’ve never let fear or poverty keep me from going where I want to go. The 64 million euro question is, Why do I want to go? Maybe it doesn’t matter. Something compels me. It pushes me along the Camino and gets me to the next albergue. Where, Santiago willing, I’ll get the top bunk.

Why I want to walk

Yesterday I went the easy route, citing another source as to why other people walk. What’s harder to talk about it why I want to walk. People ask, and I mouth something about wanting to join the millions of people who’ve walked the same path. But it can’t just be the numbers—millions of people get cancer, and I don’t want to walk that road.

I’ve vowed to keep my posts short, so I’ll cut to the chase: I don’t know. I don’t really know why I’m doing this. I like to walk, yes. And it’s a cheap way of seeing Spain. But even more, I suspect that there’s something in me that likes the idea of penance.

I’m not sure what I’m guilty of, but I must have done something wrong. I won’t be wearing a hair shirt but I probably will be in some pain schlepping that 200k. I was baptized Catholic. And though I was raised in a secular household, somehow I’ve always been drawn to the rather punishing faith of my Dutch and Irish ancestors.

There’s something in me that likes an ordeal. Especially an ordeal on foreign soil.

Why people walk

The following quote is from the book, The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago: The Complete Cultural Handbook, by David Gitlitz and Linda Kay Davidson, who started walking the Camino in the 1970s and have led many student groups along the pilgrimage route. (The painting is by Margot Hutcheson.)

"You are part of a corpus of literally millions of pilgrims who have been drawn to this shrine. Some were moved by the spirit. Some by politics. Some came to enrich themselves on the pilgrim trade. Some came to be healed in the body. Some were sentenced to walk to Compostela in lieu of serving time in prison. Some had their expenses underwritten by their villages to go to pray for rain or relief from plague. Since the Middle Ages did not recognize the legitimacy of tourism or vacations, but did endorse pilgrimage, some came for the pleasure of travel, or to get away form the wife or the farm, or for the mere adventure of it. Often pilgrims left home for one set of reasons and discovered quite another set along the Road."

Just say no to convertible pants

In preparing for my walk, I have to quell a perverse desire to do it all wrong. To ignore the good advice about sturdy boots, sun protection, and packing light.

Why not hike the route in green suede wedgies, dragging a wheeled suitcase, a Chinese rice paper parasol over my shoulder, lugging a hardcover copy of Christopher Hitchen’s God is Not Great? I dream of being belligerently unprepared, but still walking circles around the geared-up masses.

And masses there will be. Since the pilgrimage started to come back into its own in the late 1970s (after centuries of few pilgrims walking the route), each year brings more walkers. Two thousand four hundred and ninety-one pilgrims officially completed the Camino in 1985, requesting the Compostela (the certificate that says you walked the route). In 1995, 19,821 pilgrims did the same, and in 2005, the number was 93,921.

Of course, if I gave in to my anti-gear urge I wouldn’t add my number to the burgeoning holy hordes. I’d last less than a day on the trail. So I’m getting serious, making the effort to find the right tools for the job. I have a good pack (I hope—I’ll report on how it treats me on the trail), and two pair of good and well-worn-in boots to choose from (I’ll only bring one, of course—boots are heavy). My boyfriend is an avid backpacker so I can borrow a few key items from him, including a lightweight sleeping bag for the pilgrim hostels, which will probably prove to be the real challenge of the trip.

The pilgrim hostels, known as refugios or albergues, require a pilgrim ID (a credencial) for admittance. They’re ridiculously cheap at around 5 euros a night, but it’s been a long time since I slept in communal quarters, with bunk beds and shared bathrooms. Other Camino blogs warn of loud groups keeping you awake at night and early-rising bag rustlers who wake you up before dawn. I’ll bring earplugs, of course, but it may be like trying to change the course of a river with a hat.

The amazing thing about these hostels is that some have served pilgrims since the 9th century, like the one in O Cebreiro, a few days’ walk from León. During the height of the pilgrimage traffic, in the 11th and 12th centuries, some small towns along the Camino had half a dozen hostels (where now there is one or none). Often the hostels were geared toward a specific nationality—one refugio for French pilgrims, another for the Germans, etc.

But back to gear. Though I’m trying to find the right equipment for this walk (as few things as possible, and as light in weight as can be achieved), I have to draw the line at convertible pants. You know the ones I mean—a zipper at mid-thigh lets you—presto! —transform an ugly pair of pants into an ugly pair of shorts. When they’re pants you’ve got a zipper weighing down the thigh region and poofing it out; when they’re shorts you’ve got an odd half-zipper hem that makes them hang weird.

Now I like multifunctionality as much as the next girl—witness my Swiss Army Knife and my love of sporks. But convertible pants, though deceptively useful, are All Wrong, like the teletubbies. My heart sinks when I think of this neither-nor conflagration of two important items than in a perfect world would have maintained their separation.

It’s not just that they’re nerdy. I favor stretched-out long underwear bottoms under hiking shorts. This droopy-drawers over baggy shorts look is neither flattering nor fashionable, and it embarrassed my mother when we hiked together near Sea Ranch in Northern California. But convertible pants are beyond nerdy; they signal that something is not quite right. The horizontal seams make me think of a seam in a human limb—suddenly we’re in Frankenstein or crash test dummy territory.

Which is all a long way of saying, I suppose, that I’ll be taking both pants and shorts on this trip. Ask me how I feel about convertible pants once I have blisters on both feet, chafed shoulders, and am jettisoning every unnecessary ounce.

Trial run in San Francisco

Just a few weeks until this mostly secular pilgrim flies to Spain to walk part of the Camino de Santiago (the Way of Saint James), the medieval pilgrimage route across northern Spain. It ends at the Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, where the bones of Saint James are said to be buried. Pilgrims walk to be absolved of their sins; in holy years (when Santiago’s saint day, July 25, falls on a Sunday) you get super-charged absolution. 2007 isn’t a holy year, and I’m only walking a third of the route, so I’ll have to pick and choose which sins I want forgiven. Even so, it’ll be a physiological purgatorial experience, as my friend William the former Benedictine monk points out.

I took my new pack on a test run today. I’m no gearhead but I’m kind of in love with my Deva 60. It’s made by Gregory, weighs just under 5 pounds (2.26 kg), has a smallish capacity at 3500 cubic inches (57 liters). It took me a while to get acquainted with all the pack’s straps and bells and whistles—I think if I looked hard enough I’d find a trash fiction pocket and a special pouch for pet ferrets. I’ll be keeping such baggage to a minimum, however. I read in the Pilgrim Guide to the Camino Frances (the best-known route), put out by the British Confraternity of St. James, than you should carry no more than 10 percent of your body weight. In my case that’s about 13 pounds, and my pack already accounts for more than a third of that weight. I doubt if I’ll be able to keep to the suggested limit, but I’ll try to keep my load under 20 pounds.

Medieval pilgrims in Europe didn’t fly to a starting point; they just walked out their front door and heading for Santiago de Compostela. A faint network of trails linked up with larger tracks and, as pilgrims got closer to their destination, they joined up with others walking well-worn roads—some built by the Romans—that felt the footsteps of everyone from kings to criminals hoping to atone for their offenses. Sometimes criminals were tried and sentenced to walk the Camino, getting their Pilgrim’s passport (their credencial), stamped along the way to prove they’d made the journey.

In the spirit of those early pilgrims I walked out my front door this afternoon with my loaded pack strapped to my back. Ignoring the elevator, I walked down 6 flights of stairs and out into the cool of a San Francisco day. I’ll have to fly to get to my starting point, but in a way I feel as if the pilgrimage starts today, the day I strap on my pack and walk out into the world.

Backpacking through urban areas makes people think you’re homeless. I got some looks, especially in the upscale Seacliff neighborhood, where Robin Williams and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have homes. But you’ve got to walk the city streets to get to the trailhead at Lands End.

I walked to Mile Beach, ate an apple and drank all my water so I wouldn’t have to carry it back. At the top of the stairway down to the beach I saw a shifty looking guy take stock of me and then disappear into the undergrowth. This place is pretty wild for being in the middle of the city; a year ago they found the skeleton of a guy who’d died in his hidden tree house here many years ago. No camping is allowed but there’s no way any ranger could patrol the overgrown network of paths and tracks. As I watched to see if the dude would reappear I wondered what it was going to be like walking solo on the Camino. I pictured lonely stretches of back roads and thought about what I would do if menaced. Yelling and brandishing my Swiss Army knife will be a start. If things heat up I’ll channel Uma Thurmond’s character from Kill Bill.