June 14 2024
Dear All,
I’m writing from my friend Kim’s beautiful little guest house ‘The Stone Boat’ in Rabanal, northern Spain, looking out from my window on to ramshackle stone walls, poplar and fruit trees, distant green hills and even more distant mountains, some with snow still on their slopes.
To be offered this space to rest and write is truly wonderful. The silence is deep, apart from the regular tap-tap-tap of pilgrims’ sticks on the stone road up the village; I’m reminded of the sound of Blind Pew’s stick in ‘Treasure Island’, although there’s nothing menacing here. Tap-tap-tap. ‘Buen Camino’ and on they go up the hill.
We came here yesterday after 12 days of a writing retreat in Castrillo de los Polvazares, at the Flores del Camino Retreat Center. 12 days of writing, walking, eating, talking, bonding. The theme of my part of the retreat was to connect the idea of pilgrimage with the arc of our own lives and with the narrative movement of memoir and fiction. Eight women came to join me and it was an extraordinarily rich time, so much so that I decided against my earlier decision to walk the Camino again afterwards, to Santiago de Compostela. I did it with my brother and sister-in-law 12 years ago, and remember reaching our destination exhilarated and exhausted, with a real sense of achievement. But I’ve given up on the idea of destination, I realize. I walked some of the Camino towards Foncebadon early this morning, up a wooded track with a couple of white horses dozing nose to tail in the shade, looked out across the valley, and turned back for breakfast and writing. It still felt special, it was still as beautiful. I paused, looked around me and pilgrims passed, ‘Hola. Buen Camino,’ and I thought – this is all I need. I’ll walk some more, while I’m here, on these enchanting paths. The point is no longer to ‘get there’. The point is to be right here.
Swallows swoop before my window. The light changes, blue deepens, shadows darken. Elder and broom are flowering. It’s morning on this one particular day in June.
To get to know one place on this pilgrimage route is enough. This ancient building holds me and gives peace.
Affectionately, Ros
Thresholds
The cold keys heavy in your hand;
one fits the lock in the green door,
you step across the threshold,
light patterns the floor.
Here is the unfolding
inner world of cats and geraniums
Another door, your own,
another key, another opening –
a bed, a desk, a chair;
now all you have to do is step inside,
unpack the things you brought,
breathe out,
find the next threshold, the one
so far inside you did not know
until you came here, what you waited for.
Rosalind Brackenbury, June 2024 at Flores