Sonido del sendero

Dominicanos playing softball on a Saturday afternoon: chatter from the stands, the slap of a ball in a glove. The occasional ping of a bat and rattle of the backstop fence, another foul ball. Either great pitching or bad hitting closes out a scoreless inning, and then rain ends the game and everyone heads to the nearby shelter for beers and rum and laughter.

A street side cafe on a rainy morning in Hue, Vietnam

La Buvette on a snowy Omaha Friday afternoon: a bottle of wine. A plate of cheese. The last 50 pages of a book. People who did not come here together but know each other well enough to stop and chat on their way in or out. A waitress who understands exactly what I’m looking for, ignoring me almost entirely, stopping by my table only once, slowing down just enough to give me a thumbs up, her raised eyebrows serving as the punctuation to her wordless question. Yeah, I’m good.

The coast at Baiona, near where Columbus first touched land back in Spain after his first visit to the Americas. This is just 15 minutes of the ocean.

At the cathedral in Santiago, pilgrims gather with the euphoria of a long hard task completed, or exhaustion, or both. Friends meet after not seeing each other for weeks, and pose together for photographs. In the distance a man plays bagpipes incessantly, confident that that’s what everybody was hoping would be here when they finally made it.

Almost exactly 100 km from the end of the road at Santiago, a peaceful stretch of trail in the Galician countryside. Birds sing, cows low and then later attempt to settle a disagreement with clattering horns. The drama quietly subsides.

The utter chaos of recess at an elementary school is in full swing as kids play soccer, chase each other around the playground, or just chat with friends. Slowly, the noise recedes as kids are pulled in groups back into class, and we are left with the peaceful street.

Triacastela sits on the eastern side of the Ancares mountain range, and just outside of town a stream runs through the valley. Today we’re sitting on the space between the wall in the edge of town and that stream, where some cows are pasturing. The scene is so peaceful that at one point you can even hear a cow grabbing mouthfuls of grass, or another cow’s poop softly plopping onto the grass.

Sitting just inside a peaceful church just after it opened its doors for the morning: outside a chorus of birds chatters constantly until they all suddenly stop and then start again, somehow on cue. Some pilgrims stop by and get a tour of the small space.

Standing just outside the morning’s cafe under an awning: rain falls outside on cars and pedestrians while inside we hear the sounds of cafe making good coffee, as well as washing dishes and setting chairs at tables. Meanwhile a selection of American classic rock songs wafts outside.

The cathedral at León has just opened for visitors, and is slowly filling with people walking in hushed awe, or with their phone playing an audio tour pressed to their ear, or whispering to companions, (or occasionally loudly blowing their nose). Somewhere in the cavernous space a man is singing sacred songs.

A brief break in a little stand of trees: to our left cars and farm equipment motor by, and at one point a concerned motorist honks at me, leaning over to watch through his window for me to wave if I’m ok as he drives away. To the right, pilgrims pass on the Camino, sometimes in conversation, sometimes making only the sound of their feet on the road. All around, a hundred thousand leaves shake and clatter in the wind.

I spent the night in a little hostel that lives inside the ruins of an old church. In the afternoon, pigeons busy about in their homes in the walls, pilgrims come and go, and somewhere nearby a swarm of bees, possibly belonging to the religious order of the old church, buzz in a flowering tree.

It’s week 9 in Spain’s second division, and Burgos is hosting their biggest and closest rival, Valladolid. Chants are chanted, hymns are sung, opponents whistled, and near misses are gutturally groaned about. If your mom asks, “puto” is just a very popular player, that’s why they’re singing so much about him.

It’s 8:30 on a Saturday night and the city of Burgos is out for a stroll before dinner. We stand in the middle of Plaza Mayor awhile and then walk down Calle de San Lorenzo, where all the best bars and restaurants are found.

5pm, a lazy Friday afternoon on a wide restaurant terrace next to a busy road. Waiters clear tables while folks sit and chat under trees that leave their tables dappled in golden hour sunlight. Also that is a nearby fountain, not someone peeing for 15 minutes straight.

At a restaurant in a sleepy corner of a plaza around 4 o’clock in the afternoon, my waitress, who has been caring for her son while working, welcomes her brother and his son. The four of them have lunch inside while a couple mostly silently reads their phones across a table from each other. A flock of sparrows serves as cleanup crew after the lunch crowd clears out.

Just outside of Logroño on the Camino you come to a damn built in 1883. It has created a wetlands area and park which is home for more than 50 species of birds, almost all of which I’m pretty sure you can hear in this recording. Also featured: a very chirpy squirrel who wondered if maybe I hadn’t seen all those “don’t feed the animals” signs.

The only cafe in Viana open before 7:00am slowly fills with regulars, old friends, guys dressed in fluorescent vests and heavy work boots. The equipment behind the bar whirrs and hisses in their effort to make exceptionally bad coffee. Spain’s version of COPS plays loudly on the TV in the corner.

In a grove of olive trees, the wind stirs the leaves (and blows a bit too much on the mics, sorry). Some pilgrims pass, in silence, or chatting, or singing.

I’m cheating here because this was actually yesterday, a few hours later in a different plaza, Plaza Santiago: seemingly the entire town’s population of children gather on all the Friday evenings in October and play games in big groups with adults hired by the city (wearing green bandanas so you can identify them) organizing the activity, or kids sitting down in little circles together playing whatever games, or just two friends talking, small secrets. Meanwhile the parents crowd around tables at the restaurants that surround the plaza, mostly just enjoying the company and not worrying too much about their kids.

The Plaza de los fueros at 3:15 pm is emptying as people head home for lunch. Some folks sit on benches and chat, waiters clear tables, pigeons fly around looking for leftovers.

El Alto del Perdón at sunrise. Windmills larger in size and in number than perhaps even el Quijote’s imagination could have produced chop the air above while below in the distant valley cars and trains roll by, and closer a crew works to maintain the Camino. Some pilgrims walk by without putting too many ripples on some very calm water.

Plaza del Castillo, pre-dawn. A street sweeper drives by, a city worker cleans the square with a leaf blower. Bicycles roll by, a man pushes a cart with heavy boxes. Waiters begin to set up tables, people walk briskly in the cool morning air to their jobs or school or wherever they’re going.

9:30 mass at the Cathedral de Santa María el Real. I wonder if they knew the reverb they were going to have built when they made these cathedrals so enormous and cavernous…

Seated at the only turn on the only road in the basque hamlet of Aquerreta, to the left we hear heavy machinery logging in a nearby forests. To the right are any number of birds, now the only permanent residents of the village; the last couple recently passed in their old age.

At today’s destination, the forest ends where the village of Roncesvalles begins, and there a stream is heard making its way.

The French countryside in the Pyrenees: a sheep’s bell, birdsong, pilgrims walking by.

Pilgrims gather from all over the world at St-Jean-Pied-de-Port, the start of the Camino Frances. Travelers walk along the old town’s street, a dog makes a new friend, and two American women deliberate at length about a crucial purchase of trekking poles.

San Sebastián, La playa de la concha, 2:45pm. Waves roll in while locals take their afternoon stroll along the promenade.

A walk through a Madrid metro station, 2:30 pm. Turnstiles, a man playing flamenco guitar, and the arrival and departure of trains.