Muscle Memory

THE ASCENT ON THIS LEG OF THE Camino de Santiago is steep. The rocky pathway cuts stubbornly through scrub, beech, eucalyptus, and maritime pine. Every step must be measured, for the rocky slabs and slags are either loose or they jut out incongruously. A recent storm has created rivulets that race down the mountainside. And many of the stones now are slippery. (I recall now what a young doctor told me was the secret of a long life. “The key,” he said, “is don’t fall.”) I peer over the edge of the unguarded path and see a ravine below. My hands grip rock and boulder like a toddler still getting used to the mechanics of walking. Just before the trail got steep there was a sign with the phone number for a taxi, which made me laugh. Now I’m not laughing. I’m recalling another sign, one that greets the fictional Dante at the gates of hell in The Divine Comedy as he proceeds on his pilgrimage: “ABANDON EVERY HOPE, WHO ENTER HERE.” But I’m a Holy Cross priest who tries to live every day by our order’s motto, “Ave Crux Spes Unica,” “Hail the Cross Our Only Hope.” So the moment becomes a kind of gritty prayer that my muscles are praying. Hope is what I cling to.

I HAD BEEN THINKING SERIOUSLY about walking the Camino for a few years, ever since I broached the subject with my eldest sister, Sally, the obvious choice for a Camino companion, for she was now retired, a serious walker, and, quite frankly, much holier, much more Catholic than I probably will ever be. She knows all the mysteries of the rosary by heart, for instance, thumbs her beads, as it were, every day.

I’m thinking, then, spending a month with Sally walking the Camino will do me good because, well, she is such a good person. “Men build their heavens as they build their circle of friends,” the poet Patrick Kavanagh once wrote, rightly. I’ve known instinctively for a while now that surrounding myself with the likes of my sister increases the odds of my making it to the Badlands of grace, where heaven and earth happily embrace.

The truth is, I am also trying to outrun what I sense is a growing sadness, the kind of melancholy that descends upon me from time to time when I least expect it, the way a cold announces itself with a tickle in the throat. I have this idea that if I can exhaust my leg muscles—get them to scream for more oxygen, get them to bathe themselves in lactic acid—I will have dissolved the little stone of sorrow that has begun to take form in my gut.

As long as I can remember I’ve been a happy-sad person, not knowing, really, where one ends and the other begins. Befriending my shadow side has, I reckon, given me grit to face the occasional grind. Still, I sometimes think of my sadness as an unwelcome guest, a nimble squatter who has muscled his way in and taken up permanent residence in my brain, and who has decided, for reasons that often elude me, that it’s for my own good.

DURING THE ASCENT, I THINK OF THE moment in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress when the sojourner Christian begins to climb the Hill of Difficulty: “This hill, though high, I covet to ascend; The difficulty will not me offend. For I perceive the way to life lies here. Come, pluck up, heart; lets neither faint nor fear. Better, though difficult, the right way to go, Than wrong, though easy, where the end is woe.” I don’t know; it sounds to me that Christian is trying damned hard to talk himself into not giving up.

I guess that’s why I’m walking the Camino, why I am now slowly making my way up my Hill of Difficulty there in the middle of the Labruja Mountains. My aching muscles are reminding me from minute to minute that I am human, and that is a truth I need not—dare not—run from. I need to remember that I was created from the stuff of the good earth, clay in the potter’s hand, a work in progress. A Pilgrim’s progress: slow, often tentative, but heading nonetheless in the right direction. And somewhere far below my siblings are making their way, too. Today, they, wisely, decided to stop for a cup of tea before the big climb.

SINCE THOSE EARLY DAYS OF OUR talking about the Camino—providing fresh air for our dream to breathe—Sally has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, an early symptom being, among others, a difficulty walking. It strikes me as cruelly ironic to witness Sally’s leg muscles grow recalcitrant, for Sally loves her morning walks, tracking her steps on her Fitbit, listening to her playlist of Catholic songs and top hits of the 1970s through her ear pods, praying the rosary, setting a goal of walking around her town for at least five miles every day.

We have assured her that we will take each day as it comes. If she needs to rest, we will rest. And though her gait is a bit stilted at first, a bit wobbly, she adjusts. She keeps up. Sometimes she leads the way. She, and only she, it seems, will get me to slow down. Sometimes I walk behind her and watch her as she makes her way down the road or the path we are on. Her tanned legs are thin but not gaunt. They have a bit of a swing to them but each foot plant is sure. She keeps me steady as I make my way on the pitch of the planet I am traversing. (Though sometimes, like today, I am nudged away from her and the others by a heart with a faster, impatient beat.)

THE MOMENT YOU STOP, I QUICKLY learn, the leg muscles ever-so-quietly begin to rebel. And God knows, you don’t sit down. Good luck getting back up. Your quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves become stubborn, almost truculent, like cross-armed children facing a well-earned scolding from a teacher or a parent. And don’t get me started on how my back is feeling. I am lugging a heavy backpack up a steep path that hints of no end. I listen closely. I can hear the echoes of cuss words that have bounced off the rocks and cliffs of ancient times, the sharp whispers of Celts and Gallaecians and peasants and later Roman engineers and soldiers and pilgrims, of Muslims, Christians, and Jewish travelers, a glorious chorus of quiet lamentation that tells me here—teetering on a slope big rigs would shudder at having to ascend or descend—I am not alone. Later, in the confines of my office back at the University of Portland, my glutes, shoulders, and back muscles will enjoy the ergonomically designed chair as I sit before my desktop. But for now I climb and climb. My heart swings wildly in its osseous cage, a blue-lit jazz drummer riffing on some ancient sweaty beat.

We have left the valley behind with its orchards of olive trees and Vinho Verde grapes, making our ascent along a disheveled tributary of the Via Romana, the Roman cobblestoned road connecting Bracara Augusta (present day Braga) to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. It will take me to the highest point of the Central Portugal route of the Camino, a tad short of 1,300 feet. From the summit you can see for miles: rolling hills and stands of trees, evidence of tilled soil after a harvest, and an endless blue sky, the soft hue of my mother’s eyes.

A hundred feet or so before I reach the summit. I turn my attention to the stone cross which stands around ten feet tall, anchored to some base which remains now hidden under a mound of rocks and stones—hundreds and hundreds of them—left behind by pilgrims over the years, along with other keepsakes, a scrap of paper with a prayer written on it, a few holy cards. A few rosaries drape the arms of the cross. The stones, though. Stones of sorrow placed gingerly one on top of another. A burden lightened. I search for one a few yards away and find a flat stone about the size of an Oreo. I place it next to a pinecone. I feel light, lightened.

I rest for a moment before I begin the last climb to the summit. I take deep satisfying breaths, take in the warm sun. I imagine my sisters and brother-in-law are twenty minutes behind me by now, rediscovering leg muscles they had long ago forgotten. I see Sally working her way up the jagged path. I see her face. I imagine she is smiling the smile of a long-distance runner: gritty and hope-filled and true. I begin to climb.

PATRICK HANNON, CSC, ’82, teaches writing at University of Portland. His book, From Glory to Glory: A Pilgrim’s Notes from the Badlands of Grace, comes out this November.