Good news:  “The Way”,   a movie about the Camino de Santiago, directed by Emilio Estevez and starring his father Martin Sheen, is coming to Ottawa!  Special preview showings are scheduled for 3 November and 11 November at 7 PM at the Colisuem on Carling Avenue. If this interests you, make an effort to be there. I heard Sheen interviewed on CBC Radio and he said that this was his best work in 30 years, so it will be instructive to see what he makes of the Camino. I am going on the 11th of November.

 In the soon-to-be-released movie, The Way, Martin Sheen’s character goes to Spain to retrieve his only son’s ashes after his son, in his 40s, is killed in a storm in the Pyrenees on the first day of his pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago. Then in a change of heart, he decides to walk the Camino himself, carrying his son’s ashes with him. That’s the fiction, the story-line in the movie.

 Here are some facts: When I was on the Camino myself, a British pilgrim, about 50, died on the first day of his pilgrimage … in a snow storm in thePyrenees.

After I finished the walk, a Dutch pilgrim in Santiago told me about a couple he had met. They were “a middle-aged couple whom he meets about fifty kilometres short of Santiago, who are each struggling with what is obviously an exceptionally heavy pack. When he asks them why, this story unfolds. Their only son had decided to walk the camino and had planned and prepared. He had walked a great deal, he had collected his gear, and was all ready to go when he was struck down with cancer, and was dead within three months. The parents decided to walk the camino in his memory . . . and to carry all of his gear between them, as well as their own. They will walk to Santiago, then to Finisterre and will give their son’s gear to the ocean.” (excerpted from A Journey of Days).

Finisterre is where, in the movie, Sheen’s character intends to leave some of his son’s ashes.

I haven’t seen the whole movie yet, only the trailer, but the path that Sheen walks is the genuine thing and I recognize many of the locations. I am thinking that The Way will be well worth seeing. I know that it will be showing in Canada in Vancouver and in Toronto starting in November.  I recommend that you find a location near you and plan to see it.

I spent a long day yesterday (from 8 AM to 9 PM) working as part of the polling staff at a polling station for the Ontario provincial election. I watched as hundreds of people, mostly healthy and mostly over 30, came to exercise the enormous privilege of voting in a democratic country. Some were not physically able and came with varying degrees of difficulty to cast their ballots. As each person left, I thanked them for casting their ballot. Most said; “You’re welcome”, a few said; “Thank you” and a very few said; “Thank you for doing what you’re doing”. Some said that it was their duty (correct); some said that it was a privilege (also correct) and one (a black immigrant) said that he was glad to be in a country where such a thing could happen. As I watched this happen over the course of the day, I began to understand the power of this rather mundane exercise. Here are ordinary people determining the makeup and course of the government for the next four years. No war-lords, no family compact, no secret deals with the military to select the ruler, just ordinary people exercising a hard-won right. This is the same right that thousands of people, mostly young people, are dying for, as I write this, in the northern tier of African countries in the on-going “Arab spring”.

What I cannot figure out is why half the eligible population does not even bother to vote. Only 49 % of the voters bothered to come and vote. It is not as if the choices aren’t clear. One side is pursuing an alternate energy policy which is patterned on the German model, perhaps the most advanced in the world. Another side promises to kill this policy if it gets into office. Seems clear enough to me. Yet less than half the eligible voters turn up. I wonder if it is because the young do not yet have enough world experience to understand that the rights they take for granted were fought for, for a great many years. And, as I write this in the fall of 2011, some of those rights are being quietly eroded in the first-world countries like Great Britain,Canada and theUnited States of America. When I read about Dick Cheney saying that Obama should apologize over his condemnation of using torture such as water-boarding, it makes my skin crawl.

As always, there is some security threat used as an excuse to enact draconian legislation to give the police more rights. This time, it is the threat of terrorism. And the people who enact and use that legislation always feel justified at the time. Those rights come, of course, from us. More police rights, fewer individual rights. Don’t want to bother voting? Be prepared for you or your children to have to fight to win back the rights you so blithely take for granted.

I have been really lazy about keeping this blog up to date. You have probably noticed that the last entry was four months ago, on 1 June. At that time I said that the medical picture was clear. It turns out not to have been the full story. Over the summer the medical folks wanted a couple more tests, including a nuclear perfusion test of the heart.

This is a test that provides the same data as the stress test on a walking machine, but without the physical effort. A small amount of a radioactive substance was injected into a vein. The radioactive substance distributed itself throughout my heart muscle in proportion to the blood flow received by that muscle. If there were problems with any coronary arteries, there would be little radioactivity at that point.

I was very concerned about the test, since I thought that it would be a repeat of the high heart rate, shortness of breath and other symptoms that I experienced in France on the Massif Central. It turned out to be a non-event; no high heart rate, no shortness of breath. When I saw the cardiologists late in the summer, they reported no indication of any kind of coronary artery problems and they encouraged me to keep on doing whatever it was I was doing to keep fit.

About a week later – about a month ago, Carroll suggested that I might want to go back and complete the walk that was aborted back in April. It took me only a few minutes to realize that this was exactly what I wanted to do. To make it easier, I went and purchased two keys pieces of gear: a new pair of Lowa light hikers, one size larger than the pair of Lowas that I have, and a new pack, an Osprey Aether 70. This particular pack has a heat-moldable belt, so that when tightened, it conforms exactly to my hip bones. It makes carrying the load exceptionally easy, since the weight – all of it – is carried by the pelvis.

The boots are a size 13, which I find ridiculous, except that they are very comfortable and do not cramp my toes at all, even going down hill.  I used to wear size 9.5 or 10 boots.  I am only 5’10”, so I feel that I am slowly turning under. No wonder old people get shorter.

The other thing that I am doing is losing enough weight so that my weight with my loaded pack when I leave for France will be no more than my weight without the pack as of a month ago. I have already lost ten pounds and have 15 more to go. I feel better, too. 

I have just returned from an hour’s walk with my boots and with my loaded pack. Boots are fine, pack seems very light and easy to carry. Oh yes, I got a 3-litre internal water bladder for the pack, so dehydration will be much less of an issue next time. Marina told me how to care for these bladders, since contamination can be a problem. Buy the tablets that you use to drop in the glass in which you keep your dentures overnight (I don’t have dentures, but that doesn’t matter). Once  a week, use the tablets as directed in your water bladder overnight. Presto, no water problems, provided that the water is good when you put it in the bladder.

I am older and a little wiser – I hope – for my next go at this next April. I will travel from Ottawa via Paris then by train and bus to Aumont-Aubrac and on to Saint Chely d’Aubrac. That was where I ended my attempt this year, and where I will start next year. Altitude should not be an issue, since the last day at the end of April, I walked down 600 metres. The first day next April, I will descend another 600 metres to start across the enormous plain that ends at the Pyrenees. That should take about five weeks. By the time I reach Saint Jean Pied-de-Port, I should be fit enough to tackle the climb over the mountain pass to Roncevalles, then on to Pamplona.

Of course, a lot can happen between now and next April. So we will see how the future unfolds.

I have been given a clean bill of health. I had the last test yesterday – a nuclear perfusion cardiac stress test – and the doctors have now checked out my lungs, my blood and my heart. As far as they can tell, I am in good health for a person of my age. That means that my difficulty in the Auvergne in France on the Massif Central was a combination of altitude and physical stress, nothing more. To say I am pleased would be a serious understatement. I am extremely grateful for the messages of concern about my physical and psychological health from so many of my friends, and also for the state of health care in Canada that has allowed me to get so thoroughly checked out at no direct cost to me. If this is socialized medicine, I am all for it!

Interested in details of the stress test?

Have a look at: http://www.cpmc.org/learning/documents/cardiacstress-ws.html

People make their journey on the camino for a very wide variety of reasons and in a very wide variety of ways. Most walk, some cycle, a few ride horses or donkeys (I saw horses on the camino in Spain, a donkey on the Chemin de Saint Jacques in France). Some of them are pilgrims, travelling the route for religious or spiritual reasons. Others walk the camino for sport, for culture, for architecture or for the history of the region. Most carry a backpack with whatever they think they will need en route. For those who cannot or choose not to carry their pack all day, there are companies set up which will transport your backpack from point to point on the camino for a modest fee. They will also carry you, if you are tired or bored or pressed for time.

The camino is also a popular active tourism route, in which travel companies set up an itinerary, often a week or ten days, for a small group of travelers who travel by bus, walk a portion of the camino each day, carrying only a daypack, then retire to a comfortable hotel for the night. I don’t think that these folks see themselves as pilgrims, more as tourists or travelers, but they seem to enjoy the experience. And if they do see themselves as pilgrims, so what? It is their camino. I DO object if these same folks fill up the albergues, leaving no room for the walkers or cyclist who arrive later.

In recent years there has started to be a disturbing trend, fostered by a few – a very few, I think – of the dedicated walkers about how the camino is “supposed” to be travelled. Here are the rules: First of all “real” pilgrims start in Saint Jean Pied de Port (or farther away), in order to traverse the Pyrenees on their first days of walking. They must carry their own gear, they must not accept a ride or allow their gear to be carried for them, they must stay in albergues, they must stay on the trail, above all they mustn’t cycle. It is the cult of authenticity. I am a little surprised that they don’t require that you flagellate yourself as you walk.

I heard about one American pilgrim cyclist who was told, by someone who had walked the camino, that he had only had a “shallow” experience because he had cycled. I also talked to a Canadian pilgrim who had cycled the route, but was reluctant to tell others how she had done it, because of her expectation that the walkers would look down on her experience. It seems to me that if these dedicated “real” pilgrims thought about it, they would not be so disparaging of others.

First of all, the trail we walk today is generally not the trail that the early pilgrims walked. They walked on what was then the road and is now the path of heavily travelled highways. If they really want to be authentic, they should walk on the highways … and take their lumps.

Secondly, one of the things that I re-learned on the camino was not to judge others. Who knows why someone has their pack carried for them or why they accept a ride? My recent experience in France taught me that when you hit your personal physical limits, which I did on several days, it would be foolhardy and perhaps risky to continue walking. If there had been a place available to stop overnight, perhaps I would have, but there wasn’t. I sought out a ride to my planned destination and I don’t feel any the less of a pilgrim for it.

Thirdly, if  the church authorities who dispense the formal document at the end of the journey in Santiago accept cyclists, why wouldn’t other pilgrims? I thought that completing the pilgrimage would teach tolerance and compassion, not closed-mindedness and bigotry.

People have to make their own camino and if that includes having your pack carried or yourself carried or staying in hotels rather than albergues, well, it’s your camino, not theirs. I find nothing wrong with people wanting to have the most authentic experience possible for themselves, based on their perception of what is authentic, but that does not give them the right to denigrate the experiences of others. Pride is not a good pilgrim emotion.

So the next time you hear someone extolling their “authentic” experience, congratulate them. But if they continue on to point out the shallow or false experience of others, because they didn’t do the authentic camino, stop them gently and remind them that each person has to experience his or her own camino, just as each one of us has to experience our own life.

Looking back at my unsuccessful attempt to walk the Chemin de St. Jacques from Le Puy, I can now see clearly that I made two big mistakes.

 The first was in Le Puy. I walked up to the cathedral area from the lower town three times on the day that I was there waiting for Karsten. The second and third times, I had real problems with my breathing. I had to rest a couple of times on the way up. I did not twig to the obvious fact that the altitude was a lot higher than that of Ottawa and that my breathing problem was a matter of less air density and therefore less oxygen in the air. Had I realized that, I could have stayed in Le Puy for a couple more days and acclimatized or I could have made my first few days on the Chemin really short hauls, 10 or 12 kms only. Either solution would have prevented my later problems.

 The second mistake was that I allowed myself to be diverted from my aim which was, as you will recall, to walk across France then over the Pyrenees toPamplona. Instead I got diverted by the lovely group of people with whom I was walking after the second day and I accepted their decision of where we would aim for each day. This required me to walk farther than I wanted to each day, thus contributing to my fatigue and general sense of not feeling well. My option would have been to simply say goodbye to them all, including Karsten and to have stopped each day when I had had enough.

Actually, my aim was not simply to walk across France. It to walk across France and to see what experiences unfolded and what lessons could be learned. So in that sense I did not betray myself. The lesson that I learned about how to deal with not being able to do something that I had planned for so long was a powerful one, so perhaps I achieved my aim after all. I could not have done both, it turns out.

And I learned more about relationships. We formed an uncommon level of trust in the group within a day or two. A couple of people in the little group were having some difficulties with their sense of person, and I think that I helped them by a little talking, some gentle suggestions and a lot of listening.

I went to visit my family doctor on Friday. He was quite concerned about the array of symptoms that I told him had occurred on the Chemin de St. Jacques. He has ordered a bunch of blood work, a chest Xray, a resting ECG and an ECG under stress. He said that it is possible that all the symptoms were a result of excessive effort at altitude, but he wants to rule out anything else. I have not a recurrence of the symptoms since leaving France. I will keep you posted.

 We humans live on the thin skin of a small planet which circles a sun in an arm of what we refer to as the Milky Way galaxy. That thin skin, which includes the oceans, the surface of the continents and the air above us, supports all life as we understand it. We have a name for that skin. It is called the biosphere. The biosphere is that part of a planet’s terrestrial system – including air, land and water – in which life develops, and which life processes in turn transform. It is the collective creation of a variety of organisms and species which form the diversity of the ecosystem (from WordIQ.com).

We humans have, over the past millennia, been able to force ourselves into a position of dominance over other species, and we sometimes act as if we are not part of the biosphere, that we are somehow “above” it, and that we can afford to ignore it. The more “primitive” tribes in North America when we “advanced” Europeans arrived were much more aware of their link with the biosphere (although they didn’t call it that) and generally acted prudently with what they correctly saw as finite resources.

Our technological superiority and our resistance to diseases common in Europe combined to allow us to overwhelm the existing civilization and replace it with one of our own. In the past, there were not so many of us and our collective actions did not seem to have a major impact on the health of the biosphere.

The situation is different now. As we move into this new millennium, there are about 7 billion of us, And the growth in human population has been exponential in the past century. Whenever any other species has had a pattern of exponential growth like ours, it has been followed by an equally dramatic collapse in the numbers of the species. They overwhelm their available food resources and the numbers plummet. We too are overwhelming the resources of the planet in which we live and polluting our environment at an unprecedented rate. The only difference between us and other species is that we know what we are doing … and we are doing it anyway, because we act as though we are not part of the biosphere. We are wrong. 

We continue to act as though the economy, an artificial construct, is more important than the ecology of the biosphere. Greed, once again, has trumped reason. In Canada, we have just completed a federal election. The party campaigning on a strong economy has now a majority in Parliament. The party campaigning on a strong and healthy biosphere, the Green party, has elected one member to that Parliament.

I wonder how we will explain to our children’s children … and to their children … that we knew all about the problem, but chose to do nothing about it.

 I am a Canadian citizen and am fully aware of both my right and my responsibility to vote. I take both of these seriously.  I am always startled and a little dismayed when I see that in the last federal election, only 37.4 percent of the voters aged 18 to 24 actually voted, just a little over one in three. I can only speculate as to why most young adults think it unnecessary to vote. My thought is that they find Canada so safe, so uninspiring that they cannot be bothered to learn about the issues and to take the few minutes required to make their choice. If it does not make any difference, why bother?

 They need to understand that the right to vote was not always a given … and need not be in the future. If they choose not to exercise their right to vote now, there is no guarantee that they will always continue to have that right. Don’t believe me?

 The citizens and voters in Germany in 1932 never thought that they could possibly lose their rights. Hitler and his National Socialists, a nice innocuous name unless you contracted it to be NAZI, used parliamentary rules to co-opt the German parliament, then promptly starting removing human rights from the population. They started with Jewish rights, and we all know what happened to most German Jews. The forms of government and of law and order continued to exist, but they were perverted, a piece at a time, until they all became part of the NAZI machinery. It took a long and bloody war to overthrow that particular government.

But you don’t think that it could happen here? Take a look at the current government’s contemptuous attitude towards parliament. Look at Harper’s view of a coalition government as undemocratic. If you don’t think that this is possibly the beginning of a long slow descent into a totalitarian state, please have a look at history.

 Democracy is NOT a given and it is not a natural state of affairs. Ask the Canadian women who had to fight as far as the British Privy Council to get recognized as persons in October of 1929, after the Canadian Supreme Court had unanimously denied that right.

 The right to vote was bought at an enormous cost and we have it now. The responsibility to vote … and to vote responsibly … is yours, but you must exercise this right or face the potential of losing it. Your vote DOES make a difference.