yesterday i went into some churches, which i haven´t really been doing so far.  i have visited some (most incredible being Eunate, as you may have read) but mostly my church has been nature.  Each morning i start walking while the sun is coming up, and the sky is a huge canvas of light pinks and oranges that stretch from horizon to horizon.  as i walk i feel the gently wind gently moving over my face and moving the leaves just enough to flash their slightly lighter colored undersides as if waving miniature leaf shaped banners in celebration of the new day.  and the bugs.  the bugs!  they are wonderful!  from the midnight black slugs that travel across the path in the early morning to the busy millipedes that traverse it later in the day.  remarkably i see very few bugs that have been trampled.  are all the pilgrims like me, and do they also delight in seeing these little friends, or does st. james watch over them, too, i wonder.  it is said that st. james watches over all pilgrims, and i met some firemen who were riding their bicycles on the camino marking every crossroads with their gps in case a pilgrim can´t reach st. james directly and needs help from them  

and the flowers.  the flowers!  the wildflowers are out and they are as bold as the bright red poppies that line much of the trail and as shy as a small white flower that blooms profusely by the trail, in the fields, everywhere.  it looks like a relative of arugula. for those of you who know what that looks like when it goes to flower.  mustard plants, with their profusion of yellow flowers abound, as do other smaller, more intense yellow flowers that grow close to the ground.  there is a purple and white flowering low bush that has started blooming, and irises are rising up now, with their royal purple plumes happily mixing with all the other colors, including a bright orange wildflower that i have seen more and more of.  there are also fruit trees in bloom, and so many wild flowers it is hard to list them all;  they are all perfection!  and finally, the tamarind.  wow!  it is a flowering tree whose flowers come out before the leaves, so it is just an explosion of pink.  a mauve, bright, crazy pink that seems to make the air around it shimmer with pinkness. 

what i hear most of the time is an absolute opera of birdsong.  the birds sing so loudly, so beautifully, that sometimes i just stop to listen to them.  i have on many occasions tried to find the bird that was singing, sure that when i found him he would be beautfully arrayed with plumes and curlicues because of the extravagance of his song, but inevitably they have been modest, brown, sparrow-like small birds.  humble birds.   birds who know what they are here for and are doing it unabashedly.  beautiful birds. 

when i am walking through the fields, there is either the smell of the earth, or the smell of manure.  fortunately, i like both those smells!  it is wonderful to smell the earth, and smelling manure is like smelling the wonderful smells that waft out of a master chef´s kitchen, except the dinner is being served to the earth, not to us.  coming into the city is when the smells of modern life hit me, and that to me is unpleasant.  i much prefer the manure smells to exhaust smells.

the views are spectacular.  many times i feel my eyes fill with tears from the sheer beauty of what i am seeing.  the clouds have been amazing.  so much of the time, they are moving over the mountains in a way that just makes my heart skip a beat.  at sunrise and sunset they become a gorgeous, moving canvas for long swaths of color.  when i am on a hilltop, they make patterns of shadows in the valleys below me, and when i am in a valley, they offer either warmth or a chance to cool down as they pass over me.  in the forests, the  sun creates beautiful patterns on the earth, and offers wonderful bright spots in meadows perfect for a rest stop.  so much of the time i feel like i am walking in a magnificent postcard, with fields, valleys, mountains all three dimensional as i follow the trail of yellow arrows always encouraging me to keep my eyes open and enjoy the way.

so with all that to take in, it is not surprising that i am usually one of  the last (of whatever group i may have been part of at any given albeurge) to arrive in the next town.  there is just so much to see, to hear, to smell, to admire...it takes me a long time, and it all feels like a gift.