September 18th

Now it is the 18th - time and kilometers have flown by!

I'm sitting in the courtyard of an alberque in Redecilla de Camino, just over the border into Castilla y Leon, well west of the Basque Country I loved, but still a lovely landscape.  The fields here are much bigger, potatoes, wheat, hay and sunflowers.  Stilly he people live in the village sand go out daily to their fields, in contrast to the US where everyone seems to want to live in a separate house in the middle of their own lands.  (Once again, the American devotion to ownership and its consequent "pursuit of loneliness).

Last night I was in a small private alberque run by a serious, experimental painter, a large, little bit intersection man named Petrus.  His great love is Mexico, hence the name of the place, de lavirgen de Guadalupe.  Good food, a simple dinner and petite breakfast.

Monday and Tuesday I treated myself to a hotel with bathtub!  In a beautiful mountain valley, and the hotel actually in one wing of a 10th century on big monastery.  Photo to follow (I hope).

The town and both monasteries there are named after San Millan (accent on the second syllable). He was a shepherdwho left his flock sometime in the sixth c. To live in a cave high on the mountain as a hermit.  He was a healer, though, so soon more men than the caves could accommodate joined him, so the first monastery was built - with many Mozarabic elements since this was during the  Moorish occupation of Spain.  

Millan died at age 101.  Three centuries later a Bishop wanted to move his remains to a nearby larger town, Najera.  But when the oxen pulling the wagon with the casket refused to leave the valley, everyone understood they were expressing the will of the saint.  So on the site of their refusal to budge was built the larger monastery.

It was here that some anonymous wrote the first ever recorded the first words of Castillian which became the Spanish language -all writing before this time was in either Latin or Greek.

Anyway, San Millan is one oft favorite laces on earth now,  well worth the two extra days of walking.

My spirits are good, but my body is protesting even more.  Now wearing a bandage on my right foot and as of today, another supporting one on my left knee.  The pharmacist said that often when there is a favoring of one side, this stresses the other side.  

Hope all are well.  Much love,  mary