It all began on a rainy Friday in Traverse City sometime in May. I was taking my lunch break to wander around the backpacking store downtown, mostly to lighten my mood and give me something to be excited about. I decided I would go back another day to buy the shoes. A few days and two hundred dollars later, I was the proud owner of a great pair of Merrells that were specifically designed to help women walk long distances without too much strain on their hips, and a pair of the fugliest sandals I had ever seen, AKA Chacos.
The Chacos were easy to break in-- I just wore them for a week while working on my feet at the Cherry Festival. Ugly as they were, they were ridiculously comfortable and supportive. The Merrells, on the other hand, proved a trickier pair to find the time for. Our relationship was rocky from the start. I loved them; I loved looking at them and trying them on over and over again, but I just didn't have the time for them. If I was going to walk 500 miles across Spain, I needed to spend my time working, not practicing walking. I've been walking since 1990, I thought to myself, how hard could it be? So my shoes sat, dejected and lonely, waiting for me to notice them. But they were always on my mind.
I promise I spent a few hours breaking them in. Like, at least eight. Maybe my boots were more needy than that. Maybe they just got jealous that I spent so much time wearing my cute ballet flats at the office, or my clunky black clogs at the restaurant. We spent some quality time together on the airplane and the Merrells hugged my feet; I could almost feel them smiling.
Whatever the case may be, about halfway up the Pyranees on day one I started to feel "hot spots" on my heels. Like a good pilgrim, doing what I had been told constantly for the last twenty-four hours, I stopped and took my shoes off and applied Compeed, the European version of Second-Skin. I put the boots back on and proceeded up the mountain into the mist. When it started to rain I briefly considered my shoes, remembering that I used to dunk my soccer cleats in a bucket of water before wearing them for the first time. Maybe it'll be like that, I thought. When it started to hail and lightning started flashing, my shoes were the furthest thing from my mind.
Realistically, the blisters on the sides of both heels probably happened for multiple reasons. The shoes were not broken in sufficiently, I was walking down a very steep mountain with water halfway up my shins, and they were not the right shape for my foot. Through the pain, infection, and everyone and their grandma (literally, sometimes) trying to tell me what was the best remedy for blisters, I carried the Merrells faithfully on my pack. I untied them every night and placed them with the other pilgrims' boots. After the infection cleared, I tried to wear them again and ended up with blisters on top of the raw skin from the previous blisters.
So it was back to the Chaco's. My boots hung off my pack every single day, adding weight to my shoulders. I tried one more time to wear them, but ended up angrily chucking them at the ground. Looking back, it was the perfect metaphor. The boots were painful and continued to hurt me, and yet here I was, carrying them around even though I knew I would never wear them again. I was done with the boots, but I couldn't let them go.
I always hold onto pain, thinking that maybe someday it will be useful, but it never is and all it does it add weight to my shoulders. I think that maybe the pain represents a lesson, that I need to carry it around in order to remember it. Maybe it will prevent me from making the same mistakes in the future, or maybe it will ward off any future pain.
Camino lesson # 1: Don't hold onto unnecessary weight.
This is how I ended up leaving my boots in the tiny Pilgrim village of Hornillos del Camino. I laid them gently outside the door of the Monastery and put on my backpack, feeling a thousand different emotions all at once. Before turning to leave, I bent down to tighten the strap of my sandal and my Nalgene water bottle (read: hard plastic with one liter of water in it) fell onto my foot, right onto those thin little foot bones and nerves and tendons. White stars flashing before my eyes, tears building yet again in my eyes, I put the water bottle back in my bag and picked up my shoe and hurled it at the wall as hard as I could. The wall was actually a medieval church, I realized. I just threw a shoe at a church. Before I knew it, I was chucking the other shoe at the church, my water falling out of my bag again in the process.
Camino lesson #2312312382194134927328741023981312: Don't throw your shoes at a church.
But with each step, I felt lighter. I let go of the self-loathing for letting myself get blisters. I let go of the frustration for not knowing where I was going. I let go of the anger I felt towards the liars, the cheaters, and the cowards. I let go of the crushed dreams, the failed attempts, and the times I was blindsided. As I walked into the darkness, my world erupted with light.
I learned how to let go of the shoes.
K
Calzadilla de los Hermanillos, Spain
I think I will use this in one of my yoga classes. ;)
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