When Terry sent me a draft of her lovely and subtle reverie about her father she asked if I thought she should post it on Facebook. Although she talked about love and affection, she also mentioned sadness and job difficulties and drinking and smoking and death, so she thought it might be too personal and too revealing, particularly on a day when most posts talk about the greatest father in the universe. I suggested she go for it. For one, when you turn 60 you're allowed to be yourself and say what you want. But also, my experience posting on FB has been so heartening recently. In this day and age of 140 characters, bumper sticker posts, and personalities boiled down to quotes, I wondered what the reaction might be to my posting long rambling muses about my experiences and referring to my weaknesses and vulnerabilities as well as my happiness. And though I figure some friends of mine might feel I'm being too revealing, I've gotten an awful lot of positive feedback. In fact it's totally exceeded my expectations. It makes me think that, at least with our self-selected group of friends, there's a hunger for the personal, for complexity, for the revealing.

And Terry's post has gotten all sorts of positive reaction. That makes me so happy. Maybe the new subversive is being open and personal and vulnerable?

In recent days I've met a few people whose vibe was less than great. One guy, to whom I said I had walked 15K and my feet hurt, told me oh he had done an easy day, only 30K but was going to make up for it by walking more the next day. Ok, how quickly can I escape this conversation? Another guy was walking with his son, who had been violently ill the previous night and yet they were still walking 30K even though the son looked like hell; in the context of talking about his son's illness he told me a truly foul anti-Obama joke, and I was disgusted.

So as if by magic I ran into and walked with a wonderful guy today. What a turnaround. A South African who lives in Sao Paolo but travels the world. He went to Brazil to study shamanistic practices, stayed and married a Brazilian woman, and became a therapist who works with breathing techniques, the psychedelic drug ayahuasca, and psychotherapy. He uses the drug ritually himself and says he has successfully used it to cure ills in others ranging from depression to drug addiction. He holds seminars around the world, and in fact just held one in Boston recently. (I googled him and he does seem to be the real deal). And this is his eleventh Camino! He leads a group of 10 or so people every year or two and they do meditative and breathing exercises as well as walk an average of 12 miles per day. We had a rambling conversation, discussing everything from man's yearning for transcendence to torture instruments during the Inquisition to our mutual love of Rome. He was knowledgable, thoughtful and undogmatic. He totally won me over when he said every time he visits Rome he's brought to tears.

The walk today from Astorga to Rabanal del Camino was about 13 miles, with about a 750 foot climb altogether, and it seemed easy. The terrain is changing, more bushes, more trees, mostly pines, less agriculture. Tomorrow is a steep climb into the mountains. I'm planning on doing about half a stage and staying in a mountaintop village. Hopefully the weather will hold, though apparently it changes very quickly in this neck of the woods. In fact I hung out my freshly washed daily set of clothes about a half hour ago in the clear sun and now it's clouded over. Onward and upward!