Day V: Puente la Reine -> Villamayor de Monjardín; 18.5mi.

🛏:Hogar Monjardín, 10€.

🎒:

My mom didn’t let me go on this trip without packing two plastic Easter eggs in my pack. This morning, I scrounged the energy to stage an egg hunt and we each found 5€ and two Hershey’s kisses. It was the best timed encouragement. Thanks, Momma!

Today I woke up and wanted nothing to do with getting out of bed or putting one foot in front of the other. I literally limped through Puente la Reina, with doubts about my abilities for the day plaguing my mind the entire time.

But this next story mostly isn’t about Spain, it’s about a different trip I took at my very worst a few months ago ..

I got off work one morning struck hard by the reality that I didn’t want to be anywhere near my hometown, took a brief nap because I had no idea how far I was about to drive, woke up and ran. I was terrified and thrilled and I wept as I drove down the highway. I had no idea what the next two days of my life would look like, aside from the lodging I had booked and a feeling that I would most likely be spending the following two days entirely alone. I told two people where I was going, mentioned to a few others I “might not have phone service for the next two days” and proceeded to turn my phone on airplane mode.

I walked into my hostel and my eyes welled up as I was given a brief tour. What was I doing? I sat down in the lobby and seriously considered getting back in my car and leaving. Instead, I met a 77 year old man from India who spent the next several hours giving me requests as I played the out of tune hostel piano. I turned my head from the piano when I heard the front door close and watched two boys about my age walk in, both were students at ASU, one an international student from Australia. I started talking with the two of them and somehow pieced together that I’d been in the exact same bar at the exact same time as one of them the week prior .. in Chicago – we shared the photos we’d taken of the same sunset from the same wall of windows with each other. A few minutes later someone walked in with free pizza and I spent the rest of the night on the porch with the two of them and my Kazakhstani roommate drinking bottles of wine, listening to Disney music and exchanging life stories. I wasn’t sleeping well those days, so I crawled out of bed when it was still dark a few hours later and found my 77 year old friend already awake in the lobby. He let me sit and watch America’s Got Talent youtube videos on his iPad with him. I shared a song a friend of mine had recommended to me the night before. He hated it, so we watched more America’s Got Talent until my other friends woke up. The rest of the day was spent driving my ASU friends around, taking them on an all time favorite hike, listening to John Mayer and laughing until my sides hurt. We eventually ended up at a middle of nowhere hot springs on the side of the road and upon hearing the story of our unlikely friendship, the two other people we shared the hot springs with confessed their assumption that the three of us had been life long friends. I was endeared and not surprised at all. We all talked for hours, watched the sunset, exchanged contact information with our hot springs friends, as one of them didn’t live far from me, and we parted ways. The two of them called us half an hour later and offered to treat us to dinner at the local steak house. I’m not sure I’ll ever feel more at home with a group of four strangers than I did at dinner that night. Following the most incredible meal, wine and dessert, we walked down the street to participate in karaoke night at the local bar where we sang the night away, befriended the bar tender and made more new friends over Aladdin duets and John Legend songs. Early the next morning my ASU friends left and I went on a hike with my two hot spring friends, my hostel roommate and the girl I sang John Legend with before returning home myself.

.. I remember driving home overwhelmed about everything that had just transpired, thinking maybe that was a taste of what my life would look like in April.

(On my last morning, my 77 year old friend attempted to give me his only winter jacket as a parting gift .. it was January in a Colorado mountain town. I declined but graciously accepted the dried apples he offered me instead. A week later I ate Christmas lunch with one of my two hot springs friends and her son after dropping my own family off at the airport. She’s been a rock and has looked out for me ever since the day I met her. When I was in Los Angeles in January, I met up with hot springs friend number two. He bought me and my friends drinks and appetizers before we boarded our flight back home. My ASU friends will forever hold a special place in my heart and I would love nothing more than to adventure with them again someday. My hostel roommate will change the world someday, I’m sure. And my John Legend karaoke partner is my soul mate best friend and I wish she didn’t live so far away; I need to do a better job at keeping in touch with her).

Today, as we crossed the bridge out of Puenta la Reine, I looked back at the sunrise and everything began to get a little better from there. Two minutes later we met a man from Maryland who proceeded to help the hours fly by with conversation and the most intentional question-asking; we walked over fifteen miles with him and I didn’t think about my feet once. Later I exchanged reasons for embarking on this trek with an Irish man and did some internal jaw dropping at the parallels between our two stories. I walked up the hardest incline of the day beside a girl from Israel. I enjoyed dinner conversation with an Australian. I drank a beer with a man from Slovenia. And now I’m sharing a bunk bed, in a hostel in Spain, with one of my best friends from Colorado.

Once again, overwhelmed. But mostly just thankful that no really has to do this stuff alone.

🎧:

“The people who love me still ask me, when are you coming back to town? And I answer, quite frankly, when they stop building roads.” — Alison Krauss (Gravity)