Camino de Santiago Part 4: Walking, Writing, and Life

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A little blind bear breaking corns

Walking, Writing, and Life

On our third day on the sacred trail, our fellow pilgrims and others began to maintain more space among ourselves, as we had all started at different times and traveled at various paces. I felt more comfortable with our Camino routines -- from breakfast in the morning (the phrase "breakfast is the most important meal of the day" has a special meaning here), to the items needed in the backpack (the process of packing has become an art now), and then from checking in luggage for transportation to familiarizing oneself with trail's signs and its terrain...As a result, I didn't need to follow others as closely or at all as I did on the first two days.

After spending some time in entirely new, surreal surroundings on the trail by myself, it felt like time stopped. Looking around with no one else in sight, I felt as if I were alone in the entire universe, walking along the stone-sand path beneath my boots, making a rhythmic, hypnotic sound. It was truly mesmerizing for the first time—early morning quietude, damp air filled with strong, mixed scents of various plants, earth, and farm animals, plus an occasional rooster crowing to mark the start of the day.  

Trekking through beautiful farmland, forests, and expansive open fields on the Camino

I was surrounded by the surreal tranquility and simplicity, which brought me back to my childhood in China in the early 1970s, when our family lived in the countryside for three years.

I wonder what has led me to become this way—from being a “send-down Educated Youth” during Mao’s era in China to becoming a Western Economist in the U.S., then a principal engineer, and ultimately a published author. With so many different starting points, my thoughts drift back to my childhood memories.

My father, a playwright, saw me squandering time (because schools were mainly closed during the Cultural Revolution), so he told me a story when I was around 12. It has stayed with me since. It's a fable about a little blind bear picking corn.

Bears love corn. So, one day, a little blind bear goes to the cornfield to pick corn. When the bear breaks the corn by grasping the ear and pulling downward, he twists and snaps the corn off the stalk. Then, the bear clamps the corn under his armpit. He then reaches for another ear of corn, snapping it off the stalk and clamping it under the same armpit. That bear does not realize that when he raises his arm to clamp the second corn, the first corn falls. So, no matter how many pieces of corn he thinks he has collected, only one is left under the armpit. So, the name of the story is "The little blind bear breaks corn -- gets one, loses one."

In the end, my father emphasized that this story described someone learning new things but forgetting the old, and therefore constantly struggling to grow. At that moment, my father handed me a book—a collection of Chinese classics—and asked me to memorize it, word for word, one chapter a day. He would test me on it in the evenings. As I recall, I understood very little of those passages, but I gradually came to appreciate the tones and rhymes as I read them aloud. Over time, I fell in love with those yellow, creased pages. I can still recite many parts of those classics to this day—not quite like getting one, losing another—thanks to my father’s strict teaching method.

And then, the picture of "The Tortoise Races the Hare" came to my view. The fable my elementary teacher once told us in class about a fast hare who is so overconfident in his speed that he naps during a race, allowing the slow-and-steady tortoise to win. The moral of the story is that "slow and steady wins the race."

The Race of Tortoise and the Hare

Walking the Camino, as most agree, is a journey that is much more spiritual than physical. It touches something deeper within us, giving new meaning to our lives in ways that can vary significantly from person to person. For me, it’s a way to decipher my inner quests and pursuits and to connect with my personal divinity through long hours of contemplation while trekking through beautiful forests and expansive open land. Fragments of life and stories from the past kept surfacing.

For me, only by turning the paths I've walked into words can I truly possess them—rather than picking one and dropping another.

"Perseverance and consistency—rather than sporadic bursts of energy—are more critical for walking the Camino, as well as in writing and in life." -- Author, Cheng Wang

ino djjjleSan4: Walking, Writing, and Life