Ibili Eta Amets Egin: Dreamwalking El Camino?

For the past twenty years, we have been Groundhog Way walkers along one part of one of the Caminos de Santiago.

Photo Revle Elks, Cirauqui  2009

We walk. We meet other Caminantes and Peregrinos, and share their company, and their stories.

Because we often explore the same sections of track, we also make friends who are locals, along The Way. 

Garazi Sunrise Oct 2015 Photo AB

We go home. We go back to El Camino. We walk again. We make new friends and visit our old ones. We get to know some of their stories, and bits of their language.  As the years go by,  layers are peeled back.

We are not, of course, at this rate, going to arrive in Santiago de Compostella any time soon. 

Perhaps not even at all.

But it is our Camino...

In 2010 we took a rubbing of a brass plaque which is fixed to a rock at the top of Bentarte, half-way between St Jean Pied de Port and Roncesvalles. Most peregrinos, breathless after the hard clamber over the col, and often burdened with backpacks which will lose ballast as the days progress, do not pause at the spot.

The plaque tells a story in French. (click on pic for French text).

Its title is in Euskara (Basque).

It means "Walking and dreaming". 

Sort of.

Keep on reading for a translation. 

We hope that you enjoy it.

At the end of the story, there is another little Camino cameo, from the Antipodes...

Bonne lecture.

AB

August 2016. 

Ibili eta amets egin

The weather is dreary this morning at the town gate of Saint-Jean Pied de Port and Jérôme is walking.

Climbing towards Hontto, the drizzle dissolves the pearls of perspiration on his face. He soon disappears, faded by the fog in this ghostly grotto. Beyond his walking-stick, his shoes and this ribbon of road, there is nothing to disturb his thoughts. The silence of the outer  world make these thoughts almost noisy : in any case, sun or the rain, quiet or clamour, daytime or night-time mean nothing.

The road which leads to Saint-Jacques in Galicia is yet long.

It is soon 9 o’clock on this 25th of July, and Jérôme walks on.

A cross of stone...

He leaves the hard, black tarmac and steps onto the cropped carpet of grass covering the ancient pathway.

Imperceptibly, the fog thins to mist, diffusing and softly caressing the boulders of Leizar Atheka ; it enfolds  them, turning their contours into ghostly apparitions. 

Jérôme the pilgrim catches fleeting glimpses of the watermark circle of sun. In the middle of the path, he places his pack, and it becomes his backrest as he sits down. His eyes slowly shut, and the army of stunted birch-trees, waiting as if in ambush ten paces away, drift from his conscious.

Ten paces away, facing him, Valerius Corvinus, the veteran centurion of Legio III Flavia is smiling. He is returning via these hills to Aquitaine. He recalls the combat and the wound he suffered in Cantabria, the gaze of Consul Octavianus Augustus, and the smile of the beautiful Iberian girl on the bridge at Deobriga...

Just next to the ravine, Bernard-Antoine Carere’s expression is of pain. On this very spot on 25th July 1813 a furious blow from an English sabre took away half of his forearm. So many glorious campaigns with the front-line 50th regiment, and not a scratch, so many victorious battles from Ulm to Salamanca…all to end up growing old like this : a half-amputee on half a pension...

And over there, ten paces further, Emir Abd-al Rahman al Gareki is praying, giving thanks to Allah. Between these boulders and far beyond, the grass has long-since disappeared under the hooves of his invincible army... 

And many leagues away, on the road from Poitiers, Charles Martel, duke of Austrasia, is praying too, imploring the same God to help him...

Just below, a Basque herdsman, Arzain Zahar is deep in thought, the mountain of L’Orny his horizon. His only worldly possession is this little herd which he shepherds over hill and valley. His life and his death are here in this circle of stones. Over that way lie the charred remains of his father’s funeral pyre which burned to cold many moons ago...

 The neighing of a horse. Jérôme stirs, half-waking. Does his throat feel dry, or is he dreaming ?

Not far from where the narrow pathway passes over the col, Ayméri Picaud is drinking. His leather water pouch is almost empty, his stomach also. His bundle of belongings feels heavier with each step, and the leagues separating him from Compostella seem ever longer. Where, he asks himself, is this abbey of Roncevaux, of which he has heard so much; where is its fresh bread, its heart-warming soup, its ruby wine and its soft, yielding straw bedding?

Ten paces further away again : Charles Dihigo is hiding, the Gestapo at his heels. Twenty years old, and a burning desire for the fight. Better to take your chances with Carlos Sanchez, who, at the service of Franco, is keeping a sharp eye open from the observation post above Roncesvalles. Better that, than to risk torture at the Fort du Haz. Cross the border up here at Bentarte, get to the camp at Miranda, over to Gibraltar, then, with luck, to London...

Up higher, a thousand paces away, Loup, Duke of Vasconie lies in wait. From the summit of Xangoa, he sees the entire army of Charlemagne. From the fore, where the Frankish foot-soldiers lead with the Basque and Muslim hostages, to the rear, with its procession of mules laden with riches plundered from the Navarrans in Pamplona. One hour from now, beneath a cataclysm of rock and blows, Roland will know agony and death, and with him Eggihard, Anselme and many others...

Near by, on the track, Jeanne is shivering. The convoy of chariots and carts has been halted by the snow. Her Highness Princess Elizabeth of Valois, whose hand has been promised to Philip, King of all Spain, has a fever. Jeanne gives her the potion prescribed by Sir Gaston Moncade, royal surgeon. She takes a sip,  shows displeasure and casts the potion to the ground ten paces further...

Ten paces, one hundred paces, one thousand paces further...

The fog disappears, the mist has gone. The sun warms Jérôme’s face. His memories fade into The Memory. His story into History. He opens his eyes slowly. He is thirsty. Jeanne’s perfume dances on the southerly breeze. From somewhere, Aymeri’s bell echoes alone. Over towards Elizacha, a horse neighs.

His moment has come. 

It is time to carry on.

If you enjoyed the translation, you can see the 26-kilometre St Jean Pied de Port to Roncesvalles walk through the beautiful photos of Dale Kathryn Grove by clicking on the picture of the lone walker in the rain and the mist at the beginning of ibili et amets egin, above.

In memoriam Chris Gibbs, 1952-2015. 

Our eternal Mate who first introduced us to El Camino.