The Pilgrimage

"So why would you think that I might be worried about a half-dozen projects that I left behind in order to be here with you?"

Petrus looked around him, and I followed his eyes. On the uplands of one of the peaks, some goats were grazing. One of them, more daring than the others, stood on an outcropping of a high boulder, and I could not figure out how he had reached that spot or how he would get down. But as I was thinking this, the goat leapt and, alighting in a place I couldn't even see, rejoined his companions. Everything in our surroundings reflected an uneasy peace, the peace of a world that was still in the process of growing and being created--a world that seemed to know that, in order to grow, it had to continue moving along, always moving along. Great earthquakes and killer storms might make nature seem cruel, but I could see that these were just the vicissitudes of being on the road. Nature itself journeyed, seeking illumination.

"I am very glad to be here," said Petrus, "because the work I did not finish is not important and the work I will be able to do after I get back will be so much better."

When I had read the works of Carlos Castaneda, I had wanted very much to meet the old medicine man, Don Juan. Watching Petrus look at the mountains, I felt that I was with someone very much like him.

On the afternoon of the seventh day, after having passed through some pine woods, we reached the top of a mountain. There, Charlemagne had said his prayers for the first time on Spanish soil, and now an ancient monument urged in Latin that all who passed by should say a Salve Regina. We both did as the monument asked. Then Petrus had me do the Seed Exercise for the last time.

There was a strong wind, and it was cold. I argued that it was still early--at the latest, it was only three in the afternoon--but he told me not to talk about it, just do exactly as he ordered.

I knelt on the ground and began to perform the exercise. Everything went as usual until the moment when I extended my arms and began to imagine the sun. When I reached that point, with the gigantic sun shining there in front of me, I felt myself entering into a state of ecstasy. My memories of human life began slowly to dim, and I was no longer doing an exercise: I had become a tree. I was happy about this. The sun shone and revolved, which had never happened before. I remained there, my branches extended, my leaves trembling in the wind, not wanting ever to change my position--until something touched me, and everything went dark for a fraction of a second.

I immediately opened my eyes. Petrus had slapped me across the face and was holding me by the shoulders.

"Don't lose sight of your objective!" he said, enraged. "Don't forget that you still have a great deal to learn before you find your sword!"

I sat down on the ground, shivering in the cold wind.

"Does that always happen?" I asked.

"Almost always," he said. "Mainly with people like you, who are fascinated by details and forget what they are after."

Petrus took a sweater from his knapsack and put it on. I put my overshirt on, covering my "I LOVE NY" T-shirt. I would never have imagined that in "the hottest summer of the decade," according to the newspapers, it could be so cold. The two shirts helped to cut the wind, but I asked Petrus if we couldn't move along more quickly so that I could warm up.

The Road now made for an easy descent. I thought that the ext

reme cold I had experienced was due to the fact that we had eaten very frugally, just fish and the fruits of the forest.2

Petrus said that it wasn't the lack of food and explained that it was cold because we had reached the highest point in that range of mountains.

We had not gone more than five hundred meters when, at a curve in the Road, the scene changed completely. A tremendous, rolling plain extended into the distance. And to the left, on the Road down, less than two hundred meters away, a beautiful little village awaited us with its chimneys smoking.

I began to walk faster, but Petrus held me back.

"I think that this is a good time to teach you the second RAM practice," he said, sitting down on the ground and indicating that I should do the same.

I was irritated, but I did as he asked. The sight of the small village with its inviting chimney smoke had really upset me. Suddenly I realized that we had been out in the woods for a week; we had seen no one and had been either sleeping on the ground or walking throughout the day. I had run out of cigarettes, so I had been smoking the horrible roller tobacco that Petrus used. Sleeping in a sleeping bag and eating unseasoned fish were things that I had loved when I was twenty, but here on the Road to Santiago, they were sacrifices. I waited impatiently for Petrus to finish rolling his cigarette, while I thought about the warmth of a glass of wine in the bar I could see less than five minutes down the Road.

Petrus, bundled up in his sweater, was relaxed and looked out over the immense plain.

"What do you think about this crossing of the Pyrenees?" he asked, after a while.

"Very nice," I answered, not wanting to prolong the conversation.

"It must have been nice, because it took us six days to go a distance we could have gone in one."

I could not believe what he was saying. He pulled out the map and showed me the distance: seventeen kilometers. Even walking at a slow pace because of the ups and downs, the Road could have been hiked in six hours.

"You are so concerned about finding your sword that you forgot the most important thing: you have to get there. Looking only for Santiago--which you can't see from here, in any case--you didn't see that we passed by certain places four or five times, approaching them from different angles."

Now that Petrus mentioned it, I began to realize that Mount Itchasheguy--the highest peak in the region had sometimes been to my right and sometimes to my left. Although I had noticed this, I had not drawn the only possible conclusion: that we had gone back and forth many times.

"All I did was to follow different routes, using the paths made through the woods by the smugglers. But it was your responsibility to have seen that. This happened because the process of moving along did not exist for you. The only thing that existed was your desire to arrive at your goal."

"Well, what if I had noticed?"

"We would have taken seven days anyway, because that is what the RAM practices call for. But at least you would have approached the Pyrenees in a different way."