Flores del Camino

One of my characteristics is the ability to not build 'maps' of places in my head.  

For example, back in 1970 when I was in the Air Force in Oklahoma I decided I wanted to learn to fly and not just any aircraft but an old fashioned 'taildragger' like a Piper Cub.  The 'real' place to take lessons was at the base flight club but they used Cessna 150 which has a tricycle landing gear.

Don't fret if you aren't getting the meaning of all this, keep reading.

Piper Cub J3

Anyway, I inquired around and found an old guy who did crop dusting and had several very old taildraggers in his fleet.  I went to talk to him and it turned out he was a licensed flight instructor and would take me on, but only at 6 am when the winds were calm.  So 6 am it was.  After about 5 or 6 30-minute flight lessons he turned to me after the landing and said slowly "This is your last lesson.  I will never let you solo 'cause you will never get back here with my plane.  Never.  You have no idea at all of where you are up there."

My flying career was over.

Fast-forward to 2018.  I had been reading posts by people doing interesting things in Spain with the intent of getting to know them when we moved there.  One of the very interesting people was Basia of Flores del Camino, a retreat center someplace along the Camino that offered weeklong retreats including stone carving, one of Ann's passions.  My initial intent was to give Ann the stone carving retreat as a birthday present.  Their retreats are located in a town called Castrillo de Los Polvazares, and the pictures I saw online were beautiful.

So after settling into life here I emailed Basia and asked about getting Ann into the retreat, explaining that we were living in Astorga and her response was "Let's meet for lunch."  It turns out she lived only 7 km (4.2 miles) from our home!  I had imagined her place to be far away and also that she was about our age. But she and her husband arrived with two young boys,  they are more like our kid's age!

We can walk to their place and have done so many times.  It is along a Camino route and they are involved with housing pilgrims in the town's Albergue as well as their retreat activities.  Perfect!

The town of Castrillo de Los Polvazares is magical.  That is the only one-word description that I can come up with.  It is an ancient Maragato village and is maintained as a cultural artifact - another museum without doors.  The population is about 100 people and visitors who drive there have to park outside of the town and walk a few minutes into the center to eat and enjoy the views.

Just walking through the town is an adventure.  It is a tourist destination for Spanish as well as international visitors.  The tiny town has hotels and several restaurants featuring a special regional meal called Cocido Maragato.  I think the culinary aspects deserve a blog entry of their own, that is coming up soon.

Ann attended the stone carving retreat and I volunteered to make what I called a 'memory book' for the participants - a photo book that also incorporated their thoughts before, during, and after the retreat.
And retreat is a word with deep meaning at Flores del Camino.  In this one Nick, a master stone carver from England who led the process was joined by Bertrand, Basia's husband, sharing his sacred geometry knowledge and coordinating field trips to a Visigothic church and a day-break visit to nearby petroglyphs.

Nick had the ability to take several of the participants who had never carved stone to a finished product of great beauty in a week of enjoyable work.  I had the pleasure of seeing the process and recording it in words and photographs.  Another spiritual input was having pilgrims join us for dinner - people that were walking the Camino and chose to sleep at the Albergue that night.  They added something very special to the community. For example, the first night it happened to be a priest leading a half-dozen US veterans along the Camino.  He provided Mass before dinner in a very engaging way and invited all the retreat participants to be involved.  This is more than a 'workshop' and everyone came away with more than stone carving skills.  Subsequent nights had one to three pilgrims from many nations sharing the evening meal with us.

We became friends of other participants.  One is Alexander, a well-known author, speaker, and thinker who returned to lead us on an Easter Retreat - by Zoom this time - from just down the road.  In this retreat, we had people from around the world,  but we look forward to doing it in person next year.

St. James (Santiago) Icon Painting

We became regulars at Flores del Camino.  Ann participated in an Icon Painting Retreat which once again was way more than a crash course in ancient art techniques.  A part of this retreat that fascinated me was that participants made their own paints using pigments from the earth they dug up along the Camino route.  Hanna, a world-class icon painter, was the main guide but Basia and Bertrand contributed with the pigment making and so much more.  I even contributed by eating a lot of pistachio nuts as they were going to use the shells somehow to make green paint.

All of the participants walked away with not only a beautiful icon painting and the skills to continue practicing this art form, but new friends and appreciation for the images one sees in holy places along life's journey.  A new friend from this retreat is Annette, a British woman who moved here a long time ago to build a sheep farming community.  She is such a wonderful, free-spirited person enjoying life.  Before the 'stay-at-home' we would meet once a week in a nearby bar for coffee and conversation.  She is in her 80s and gives me encouragement to follow in her footsteps.

From left to right: Bertrand, Ann, Kerri, and Andrea

Next, Ann did a stained-glass retreat and produced her first glass art.

We have the results hanging in our living room window, but more importantly, once again we gained a couple of friends, Andrea, who lives in Castrillo de Los Polvazares and Kerri, an American who discovered Flores del Camino a few years ago walking the Camino and returned for this retreat. She has really run with the stained glass and sends us pictures of her work in the States.


So the real value of our lives here is wrapped up in the people we meet and get to walk life's journey with.  You most likely are a friend as well and I ask that you take a minute to reflect on how we met, what moments are worthy of telling in a story, and maybe writing them up in the comments.

Love and peace as we go through this pandemic period and adjust to whatever the normal brings to your life.

That's it for today, I really enjoy writing these blog posts and hope that you enjoy reading them.  I'll try to keep the streak going tomorrow with a description of some of the many festivals in our city and how people of all ages demonstrate joy by participating. 

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The Other Jew of the Day is Marc Chagall, a Russian-French artist of Belarusian Jewish origin. An early modernist, he was associated with several major artistic styles and created works in a wide range of artistic formats, including painting, drawings, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramic tapestries, and fine art prints.  Ironically he was born on July 7th, my birthday as well.