Mosquitoes and other insects dive-bombed me. I had my mosquito netting in my backpack, but it all happened so fast I was too late. As I stopped and unzipped my backpack, my face became a human feast. They were in my hair, my eyes, my ears, all over my hands, and diving against my leggings and shoes.

  I thought of the night I spent lying in the sarcophagus of the King’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid at Giza. It was legendary that if you lay in the sarcophagus, you would manifest that which you needed to clear and resolve. One of my points of unresolution was mosquitoes. I couldn’t bear them. Sometimes when I was with others, the mosquitoes bothered only me. I drew to me what I was afraid of. There, as I lay in the sarcophagus, I was suddenly covered with them. They came from nowhere. I lay there meditating for them to go away. But my attitude toward them was based on fear, and they wouldn’t leave. I had not yet learned to ask why I was concerned, not why I was afraid. It had been a miserable night, alleviated only by a citronella candle I had brought.

  Now I was having the same problem. The mosquitoes swarmed around me as I finally secured the netting around my head—with none trapped inside, thank God. I watched them as they tried to eat through my shirtsleeves and leggings. It was good to be inside my net cage as I walked faster. Again I thought, Why am I concerned? It was because I didn’t want to die from being bitten. I knew that was ridiculous. But I also didn’t like the idea of them sucking my blood. I laughed to myself. Maybe that came from a vampire past-life experience.

  A little further on, I came across two German men. They were not bothered by the mosquitoes. They said they had walked forty-eight kilometers (almost thirty miles) that day. One of them was about to be a father, and he was deciding whether to marry the mother while on the Camino. He said that if he didn’t marry and something happened to the mother, under German law the state would take the baby away and place it in an orphanage. The other German was having so many relationships with both men and women he was walking to figure himself out.

  We talked of commitment and of blisters and of wool versus cotton versus capoline until my mosquitoes went to feed elsewhere. I walked on by myself.

  Twenty miles later I arrived at Frómista, where John’s prophecy came true.

  The refugio was pleasant enough, with a yard in the back and a nice clothesline. I washed one set of T-shirts and hung them out to dry overnight; then I cleaned my boots and carefully placed them under a bunk I chose. There was no one else in the refugio.

  Suddenly, a woman came around the corner shrieking that there were clothes on the line. She ripped them off and flung them to the ground and began to berate me for reasons I didn’t understand. I didn’t know who she was or whether she had anything to do with the shelter. I gathered up my wet clothes and folded them, put them on my cot and sat down. She stood over me and screamed again. I didn’t know what to do. A couple came in. She screamed at them. They turned around and left. I sat on my bunk listening to the woman go insane. Her eyes were those of a wild dog. I stood up, trying to understand. What did this mean? She turned to the walls, and shrieking at them, she left.

  I was shaking. I began to cry. I felt totally alone in an insane world. I could cope with most anything if I understood it. But insanity was not logical. I wiped my tears. I needed to get hold of myself. I undressed, put my small towel in front of me, and then found a shower. Perhaps the cold water would help. As I drained my tensions under the cold water, the shower curtain opened and a photographer stepped into the shower. He popped his flashbulbs in my face, taking pictures. I flailed at him until his camera dropped from his hands into the water. Yelling in what little Spanish I knew, I told him to go away. There were other photographers outside. I yelled at them until they disappeared. Still shaking, I dried myself, dressed, and walked outside. No one was there. Had I made all this up? I was wearing a light pair of thong shoes, but my feet hurt so much I could hardly move. My arms felt like lead poles. I had my money belt with credit cards around my waist. I made my way into the village. I spotted a phone booth and placed a credit card call to my friends at my ranch in New Mexico. When they answered, I felt safe for a moment just hearing their voices. Then I heard a TV set loudly playing in the background. I heard the excited voice of a television reporter who was apparently following a car chase on the freeways of Los Angeles. Someone had murdered his wife and was escaping to Mexico. It was O.J. Simpson, and his wife and a friend of hers had had their throats cut. Was I in the real world? And which was crazier—the Spanish refugio or the City of the Angels?

  The next morning I headed into real meseta country alone. Ali and Carlos hadn’t made it to Frómista. The road was dotted with loose pebbles, so my entertainment was to maneuver around two stones that had plopped into my shoes. It took so much energy to stop and remove them, so I played a game rolling them around with my toes so they wouldn’t cause more blisters. A wind came up. I stopped and removed the pebbles, secured my hat, and pressed on. In no time, more stones were in my shoes. I couldn’t figure out how they got there. Through the wind I tried to focus on which stones would jump over my boots and fulfill their seeming destiny to cause blisters. The wind blew dust into my face.

  I had friends in the States who were involved with the Hopi Indian tribe. The Hopis said that from the last decade of the twentieth century and after the turn of the millennium, it would be necessary for man to “tie himself to a tree.” In other words, “big wind.” They said the weather would become unpredictable and would “cleanse away many things with wind and rain.” They said we must each be self-sustained and go back to growing our food from Mother Earth. Above all, they said, man needed to go within himself in order to gain spiritual understanding of what would be happening.

  Their prophecies matched the Mayan prophecies. From what I saw occurring with the weather, they seemed quite accurate.

  As I walked, I saw squadrons of storks. They made their nests among high trees and atop church steeples in the villages. Packs of dogs congregated under them. The wind stopped.

  Bees, butterflies, birds, and some mosquitoes fluttered up against the sky and fields that stretched as far as I could see. A porcupine lay dead, killed while crossing the road. I could certainly understand that. My upper body was very sore as a result of the weight shift with my new staff. I hadn’t named this staff either. My angel Ariel hadn’t been around for weeks. John the Scot seemed to have replaced the vanilla-scented angel. But he wasn’t around either. I walked as though in a trance, a moving meditation on my life and times. It was impossible to get away from myself. I was all I had. My legs began seriously to hurt. I could see why people quit. In fact, at this point many people did. I saw discarded shoes, trousers, shirts, and books along the way. I wondered if anyone ever cleaned the Camino.

  Whenever I thought it was so hot I couldn’t take another step, a breeze churned around me. A gift from God, somehow. If I was going to make Compostela by July 4, I’d have to double up on my pace. I did just that. I was certainly my mother’s daughter. She would set her mind to a task, and nothing or no one could divert her. She walked past her benches all the time. I used to watch her put herself in a trance state of determination until she accomplished her task, regardless of the diversions or the consequences. I had begun emulating her by the time I was ten years old. Many times into my adulthood I found myself exhibiting her traits of determination, to the point where, ironically, it shocked her. Many times she remarked aloud at my drive and refusal to give up. And she wondered where it came from! She would shake her head in noncomprehension.

  A Belgian hiker stopped me and said I had been his older sister in a past life. It was probably true. He was carrying a baseball bat and some larger contraption that he said would paralyze any dogs or people who might attack him. He wanted to talk about God and the universe and the meaning of life. I didn’t. I wanted silence. I told him it was better to walk alone quietly. He asked me to bless him. That made me extremely uncomfortable. I didn’t like being seen as a New Age guru. That was the reason I quit conducting my traveling seminars. Too many people gave their power away to me. I wasn’t the reason they got something out of them; they were their own reason. And when people began to follow me to other cities, I knew it was time to stop. I didn’t really know any more than anyone else anyway. I couldn’t even explain why I was doing this pilgrimage except to take a journey through myself.

  I was now on a mountain trail when suddenly I came to a dead end. The path went no further. I couldn’t find any yellow arrows. I was lost again. I retraced my steps for about five hours until I reached a bridge that was down. I didn’t know which way to go. I heard some cars, so I followed the sound until I reached a lone highway. I walked along the highway for another few hours, looking for the yellow arrows. It began to pour. I pulled out my Gortex jacket and plastic poncho. It was chilly.

  Someone in a car stopped. “The arrows wrong,” he said in Spanglish. “The bridge down for few months. Nobody fix.”

  “Which way do I go, then?” I asked. He pointed west, of course, along the highway. I was going west. “Ultreya,” he shouted as his car disappeared.

  I clutched my poncho around me and walked some more. Finally, I saw a yellow arrow that led into the hills. I followed. I was now out of water with no way to catch the rain. I walked on until I found myself in what looked like a military installation. Two soldiers stopped me. “Not allowed,” they said. “Not allowed further. Arrows you follow two years old.”

  Oh, God, I thought. Now I was really stuck. I walked away from them, retracing my steps, and I was very thirsty. I had been walking since six A.M. It was now six P.M.

  Two young girls approached me with a bottle of water and a bunch of flowers. I saw a small doll-like house nestled in the trees. They smiled and handed me the flowers. “We see your picture—ultreya.” They stepped aside and pointed to the road again.

  I walked in that direction. I had to get to a refugio before dark, and I didn’t even know which or where the next village was. When the girls were out of sight, I stopped and sat down to pee. I sat in an anthill. The ants crawled up my legs and stung me. I poured precious water from the bottle and drowned them, and walked on.

  I would not be afraid. I was at a dinner party in NewYork. Then I was swimming in the Pacific. I was in a trailer between setups on a movie set. I was performing on a stage. I concocted a blurred tapestry of activities in my mind’s eye.

  I passed four more screws on the path. I really was terribly lost. I didn’t know what to do. For some reason I thought of how my father would have laughed at the four screws on the path. “You’re really screwed this time,” he would have said. And then suddenly, I felt him near me. Of course, he was not there, but I felt that his energy was. Then, next to him was Mother. They didn’t say anything. They just comforted me. Then I felt them propel me to an alternative, almost obscure path. I followed it. They seemed to be walking beside me. I felt they had come together for the first time since both had passed on. I very strongly felt they had come together on the other side to guide me. My eyes welled up. Then I saw a road. I was a mess of emotion by now. I wanted to talk to them, ask how they were. What was it like over there? But a truck stopped. The man inside offered me a ride. I thanked him, refused, and he nodded, seeming to understand. He pointed me to the next village, said there was a correct arrow a little further up the road. I focused again on Mom and Dad. But they were gone…. They had been there for me when they were alive and had done the same now.

  I found the arrow and walked for a few more hours, thinking of how my parents had devoted their lives to their children while sacrificing their own dreams. I wondered what my own life would be like if they hadn’t. And then, grateful, I came to a village and a refugio.

  I slept without dinner, only water, remembering my mother and father. I felt them smiling down on me.

  12

  The next day was entirely different. Each village blurred into the next. I was somewhere in the state of Palencia. I walked alone again.

  Bright sun was followed by driving rain. Double rainbows appeared over me, spurring me on. I walked through their colors as they met the ground. I breathed in the purple and red and orange and yellow. I breathed in the air, ran it through my brain cells and breathed out again. My brain and consciousness became the rainbows. I thought of the colors of the rainbows and how they matched the colors of the esoteric energy systems in the human body. Not too many people in the West understood or had even heard of the chakra system within us. There are seven chakras, and each is a center of energy through which we literally derive our balance and consciousness. The Hindus and Buddhists were very familiar with the importance of the chakras, but this essential knowledge had not yet been widely accepted in the New World. Each chakra has a color and is associated with issues of living. For example, the base chakra, located at the root of the spine, is where we energetically experience fight or flight. It is the color red. Going upward slightly, the next energy center is orange and deals with creativity and sexuality. The third is yellow and deals with personal power. The fourth, green, is the heart chakra, through which we experience love; the fifth, blue, is located in the throat and deals with personal expression; the sixth, indigo, is the chakra of vision; and the seventh, violet, is the spiritual center at the top of the head.

  As I looked up at the rainbows, I was reminded once again that these colors corresponded exactly to the inner colors of the human chakra system. We were each our own rainbow. In sophisticated spiritual circles, people do their chakra balancing every morning because they understand it is necessary for happiness. A bad mood can come from an unbalanced chakra, and by meditating on the color of each one’s location, you can alter the energy that accompanies a bad mood.

  I breathed in and visualized each color of the rainbow streaming through my own chakra system. Everything I needed was contained in these colors. That’s how the Buddhist monks reached their bliss.

  Slowly the pain left my legs and feet. My shoulders relaxed, and I actually started to skip. The backpack became almost weightless. I found myself walking on the balls of my feet first, not the heels. I remembered seeing the lamas in the Himalayas float down the mountainsides in the same fashion. They touched the hillsides with the balls of their feet so lightly that they looked as though they were floating. I saw lamas immerse themselves in ice water, and when meditating, steam rose from their bodies. They knew the value of visualized energy. It was more powerful than the physical. It actually informed the physical. They knew that consciousness was energy. And that was why Tibetan medicine was so effective. It activated the chi (life force) in each chakra center and healed the body.

  The trees on the mountainside seemed to be dancing to the music of the wind. It was my favorite kind of orchestral performance. A storm cloud would thunder a percussion. Then lightning crashed like cymbals, and a rain of what sounded like violas and cellos and whistling flutes enveloped me. I opened my Gortex jacket and ripped off my poncho. I didn’t want protection from my orchestra.

  I smelled the ozone in the air, knowing that it heralded more lightning flashes.

  I was utterly happy and part of everything around me. I stretched out my arms, welcoming the raindrops, and began to turn around and around. The thunder timpani rumbled in rhythm to my turns until the cymbal lightning crash accented my stop in mid-turn. I looked up and saw the sun shimmering above the storm. I felt warmth in my eyes. And when I gazed up at the reflection of the sun on the rain, I saw that there were two more arched rainbows above the storm. Then the percussion of clouds cleared, the violins of breeze washed away the drama of water music, and there was sheer silence. The trees swayed and bowed in appreciation as though they had adored the spectacle they had been a part of. I felt that I had been the conductor.

  The refugio at the end of such a magical day was disgusting, as though God was reminding me there was always a duality.

  Trash, dust, and filth covered the floor. The smell was vile. I didn’t know where I was, and it didn’t matter. I placed my sleeping bag on a cot that had been eaten away by rats, then unzipped it, and careful not to touch anything, I eased myself inside. I was oblivious of the snores and coughing of the homeless travelers around me, who were too exhausted to notice the conditions. I blew my nose on a precious piece of Kleenex and kept it beside me, knowing that I could use it for the toilet in the morning. A mere plastic bag or a piece of tissue could be as valuable as gold when you learn to carry nothing with you. I fell asleep listening to the rats scurrying along the floor, hoping they wouldn’t make it up the side of my cot.

  I had a dream that night that I had gone to heaven, which was inside an airport. My parents were there to meet me. My father stood straight and curious as I descended from some kind of flying machine. I looked around for Mother. She was huddled up against the walls of heaven. I couldn’t interpret that dream then, but I believe I might have some understanding now. My father had lived his life in a pathless way. He noticed everything along the road. Time never meant much to him, which was why he was essentially an underachiever. Mother always looked to the end of the path for her children, desiring us just to get there. He would have understood my appreciation of the storm. She would have said, “Walk faster and come home successfully.” Even though I was more a creature of my mother’s goals, I was trying to balance the two. The process, the path itself, was the fulfillment and the achievement.

  Ali and Carlos arrived late in the night. Ali had bad shinsplints and refused to sleep in the filth of the refugio. I turned over and went back to sleep.

  When I awoke, Carlos was sweeping the place himself. Ali watched and took another Advil. She was on a diet of Advil, wine, and tranquilizers by now. However, she still had no blisters.

  We were joined by an Englishwoman who opined that she had to go back and support her husband in England. Somehow this led to a discussion about infidelity. She said that she had absolutely never been unfaithful to her husband. I then turned to Carlos and spontaneously asked him if he had ever been unfaithful to his wife. He smiled and answered, “In twenty-six years, never.” I asked why he was smiling. He answered, “Because you even presumed to ask the question.”