Walking wounded/ walking healed

We were hiking up the final ascent of the day, a long, brutal climb on hard pavement to a small village. The three of us—me and my Camino companions, two Spanish men who had been friends for thirty years—had reserved beds in an albergue in the hilltop village. It was another long day, as so many of these were along the Norte, and the sun was at its full mid-afternoon strength. I was walking wounded, an inflamed tendon that needed and was not getting a rest, but I kept that to myself. On the Camino we all walked wounded, some of us in body, others in spirit or soul or some deep place that called for the attention of a long journey like this.

 I kept the brim of my hat low. I kept the poles, mi bastones, moving rhythmically. We all kept moving. We had talked so much during the past days that our silence up this hill was a comfortable one. I knew about their lives: One, the father of a sweet five-year-old, was raw from the end of the relationship he had thought would be the foundation for the family he so wanted to build. I knew about his aging parents, about the specter of dementia, about his stressful job. The other had a complicated, entangled family life that both comforted and smothered, and a marriage that had lost its fire.

 When you make friends like these along the Camino, no one plays the long game. No one holds back or pretends. There is so little artifice to these white-hot relationships that it makes you realize how much artifice is in embedded in your non-Camino life. Is it possible to walk through life with such an open and exposed heart?

 I glance up from under the brim of my hat to see the steep climb ahead. Mi mochila is not heavy, only 15 pounds, but it is heavy enough. I lean forward, putting weight on the poles, hoping to relieve the pain in my knee. One my my friends is by my side, sweating. He sweats a lot, the subject of many jokes in three languages.

 Suddenly—it seems like magic to me in that moment--my burden lightens. For a moment, I think it is my imagination. Then I glance over my shoulder. The other man is walking right behind me, holding up the bottom of my backpack with his hands.