El Camino

“Whatever you do, don’t run!” Every part of my body was frozen with fear as I heeded my father’s warning in the distance behind me. I could feel my blood run cold as the six-hundred-pound black bear, not fifty feet away from me, stood on its hind legs. A deathly silence filled the mountain trail. I could see the hot air escape from the bear's jaws as it let out an angry grunt and huff. “Walk back, slowly,” my father firmly explained, still in the distance.

I forced myself to focus on my feet to get them unstuck from the paralyzing fear that gripped me. One foot behind me, then the other. My eyes were locked on the blackness of its stare. Suddenly, I heard the ear-piercing sound of my father’s bear horn blow and the bear took off running in the opposite direction. This was a memory no teenager could ever forget.

The reminiscence of every trail, mountain top, waterfall, and valley we walked through as father and daughter flooded my mind while I waited for the attorney to open the package. “I am so sorry for your loss. Your father was an extraordinary man. He gave me clear instructions to give you this one thing upon his death.” She placed a little black notebook into my hands.

I took a deep breath and opened up the pages. A brilliant array of colors met my eyes as stamps of all kinds decorated the notebook like a passport. Some were in fine ink, others like cheap club stamps, and some pressed from an elegant wax seal. I chuckled through my tears, “You did it, Dad. You walked the Camino de Santiago.” The Camino in Spain had always been the dream hike together, but my busy life took priority. I looked deep into the pages and marveled at the stamps of the places that once held the steps of my father, each stamp proving his progression on the long journey. The stamps drew me in like gravity. I knew what I had to do.

In less than twenty-four hours, the Camino gravel and dust kicked up the sides of my hiking boots. I felt the crisp ocean air that hugged the coast fill every breath I took in. The Spanish hills kissed the golden valleys in a dazzling display. The sight of this trip was like nothing I had seen before. Fellow pilgrims walking the five-hundred-mile journey passed by with a smile and a blessing. “Buen Camino!” they cheered.

As my walking stick jumped from the dirt trail to the cobblestone of the local village street after a long day’s hike, I could hear the bellowing laughter echo from a small cafe. A familiar signage overhead read “Café del Reino.” I pulled out my father’s little black book from my vest pocket and flipped through the pages. A deep, red stamp resembling a luscious steaming cup of coffee with the café name had made its mark in my father’s journey. Curiously, he had drawn a star next to this stamp for some reason. “I guess this place was important to you, Dad, but why?” I murmured to myself.

Walking closer, I could tell there was something so magically inviting about this place. The cafe tables were crowded with smiling pilgrims drinking their rich, Spanish hot chocolate. String lights floated above the garden wall climbing with Bougainvillea flowers that blossomed like dancing flamenco dresses. The atmosphere itself held the fragrance of love and family. A sign hung on the door: “Señal de Venta”, translated in English, “For Sale.” I pulled aside the woman serving the tables and asked about the“For Sale” sign in my broken Spanish. She replied with a thick accent, “If you give me twenty thousand in American money by the end of your Camino, I give you everything.”

It was everything I could ever dream of! It was a deal I would never come across again. Then, reality set in. Sadness and regret covered me like a blanket. The long, lost dream of owning a café abroad began to swim in my mind. Though that deal was unheard of, I did not have twenty thousand dollars to my name. I had given all to make this journey. It was my lifelong dream to own a cafe for pilgrims on the Camino. I had wasted so much time with things that never truly mattered. The fragments of a once broken dream began to pierce my soul.

I began to thumb through the warped, used pages of my father’s notebook hoping to find a remnant of him somewhere in the sea of stamps. My glassy eyes were instantly drawn to a page adorned with a rich, red wax seal in what appeared to be a church building on it. The words, “Catedral Agape” embedded in the wax. Next to the seal was a hand-drawn heart just like he did for the drawing of the star for the café. I was starting to understand my father’s marking meant something special.

I set out for “Catedral Agape.” The rain poured on me like a heavy, lead curtain and the wind fought my every step. The path emptied of pilgrims. Not a soul to be found. The Camino trail began to blur out of sight. Loneliness, like an old, sinister friend walked beside me. As the cold clamped down on my shivering body, I was left to my darkest thoughts about all the times I ran away from living my dream. They were the ones I had pushed away for so long. The “What if’s…” , “I wish I…”, and the “If onlys...” crept in. The fog in my mind became thicker than the storm around me.

BEEP-BEEP!!! Screeching tires quickly filled the void of silence as two bright headlights came barreling towards me. In a flash of a second, my body was hurled to the other side of the road. “Did I just get hit by a car?” I thought, “Wait, am I dead?!” The car zoomed by and kept going. In the haze of my confusion, I noticed an arm wrapped around me. I looked beside me to be met by two blue, bold eyes staring at me. “Are you okay, miss?!” the American man quivered. I realized he had pushed me out of the way of getting hit by the car.

“What just happened?! I mean, I’m okay. Are you okay, sir?” I asked him. He chuckled, “Buen Camino?” The smile that had been missing from my face for so many days somehow found its way back. Realizing I had no recollection of where I was, I looked around. To my astonishment, our dodge with death left us at the front of the old, gothic steps of the “Catedral Agape” church.

We continued our Camino together. The once grueling hike seemed to pass with little effort as the days filled with rolling laughter. Our deep, soulful talks could be heard whispered late into the twilight hour. With him, the wine tasted sweeter, the pastures seemed greener, and the blisters on my feet didn’t hurt as much.

“’Nuestra Casa.’ I think there’s a dollar sign drawn next to it,” he said as he pointed to another one of my father’s stamps. A dollar sign had been drawn next to a magnificent gold crown stamp. We set out for our next destination. Walking up to the old, creaky shack by the seashore off the trail we looked at each other with extreme uncertainty. I knocked on the door that held the hand-painted plaque reading “Nuestra Casa.” An old man opened the door and welcomed us in without a word as if he had been expecting us. With a twinkle in his eyes, he handed me an envelope that read,“To My Daughter.”

In the midst of my confusion and shock, I took the letter that bore my father’s handwriting on it. Speechless, my heart fluttered inside my chest. The letter made a crisp crack as I opened it and unfolded the note, “My brave and beautiful girl, whatever you do, don’t run. You have run from your dreams for too long. Go back and do what you were made to do. It’s not too late. Love, Dad.” Through the swelling tears that puddled over my eyes, I pulled out a check left in the envelope for twenty thousand dollars.