by Patrick Gray
“Hi, who are you?” I ask.
“I’m Jasper. I’m one of your videographers.”
As Jasper squeezes into the room, he says, “Mike called me yesterday as I was headed up to Mount Hood to do some skiing. He said he needed some help on an amazing project in Spain.”
“When he said he was interested,” Mike chimes in, “I said, ‘Great, can you be here in twenty-four hours?’”
“So, do you know why you’re here?” I ask.
“Not exactly, but here I am! So tell me what we’re up to.”
As we head out to explore the town of St. Jean, Patrick and I fill Jasper in on how the whole adventure started, and we can see that he’s excited. He and Mike previously worked together on some ski film projects, where Jasper gained experience with filming action footage.
When we return to the hotel, we leave Jasper to familiarize himself with the more than one hundred pounds of video gear Terry has assembled while we go to a nearby bar to pick up some snacks for tomorrow’s hike.
As we’re about to leave the bar, I hear an unfamiliar voice call out in a thick French accent, “Are you Justeen?”
A short, wiry, black-haired young man with a thin, wispy mustache is smiling at us.
“I am Robeen. I’m your driver!”
A native of Bosnia, Robin skis professionally and was part of a film Mike worked on. In addition to his skills as a production assistant and driver, Robin brings fluency in Spanish, French, and Bosnian to the team.
As afternoon turns to evening, the members of our newly expanded team—the four-man film crew along with Ted, Patrick, and me—gather around several tables at a local café. Our excitement builds as Terry and Mike explain the gear they’ve brought along and the logistics of filming out on the trail.
With the sun dropping behind the Pyrenees to the west, we enjoy cold beers and a hearty meal while we lay out our expectations of the film crew.
Patrick looks at each one and says, “You guys are here to film, to capture what unfolds. But you can’t help us in any way. We want things to happen the way they would have if you guys weren’t here filming. So, you’re just flies on the wall—with cameras.”
As the conversation comes to a close, we pay our tab and head back to the hotel, where we settle in for as good a sleep as you can get the night before you take on the Camino with a wheelchair.
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— PATRICK —
In the morning, as we’re packing up to leave, I can’t find my glasses anywhere. After I thoroughly search the room, Justin asks, “Did you leave them at the café?”
Crap!
Going back to get them is not an option. The restaurant won’t reopen for several hours, and we need to get moving if we want to achieve our first day’s objective of reaching the town of Roncesvalles (seventeen miles of mountainous terrain away) in time for dinner.
Outside, we are greeted by bright sunshine—after several days of unrelenting rain—with only a scattering of clouds to soften the depths of the cerulean sky.
Justin, Ted, and I meet the rest of the team at a small café down the street from our hotel. The smell of fresh baguettes fills the air, and the aroma of rich French coffee floods our senses—we can almost taste it. After purchasing some of the fresh bread and coffee, we make sandwiches with cured ham and cheese while the film crew preps their gear. Feeling well-fueled for the morning of exertion we are about to face, we get up to leave.
As we’re gathering our things, our server approaches, points to the cameras, and asks what we’re doing.
“We’re walking the Camino,” Ted says.
“In that?” she asks, pointing to Justin’s chair.
Ted nods and says, “Oui.”
The woman laughs and begins to walk away. As she turns, shaking her head, we can hear her say in a thick French accent, “No, you’re not.”
This woman isn’t the first person to point out that the odds are against us. Just yesterday, in fact, when we went to the Pilgrim’s Office in St. Jean to register for the Camino and purchase our pilgrim’s passports (credenciales del peregrino), everyone we talked to just shook their heads and told us we would never make it through the Pyrenees with a wheelchair. We heard the same word—impassable—a lot.
By now, Justin and I have become accustomed to negativity and doubt. Many of our friends and family members are concerned about our safety on this journey, but several told us we were completely stupid to even attempt it. Discouraging as it may be, it is fuel for our fire.
“We will make it to Santiago even if you have to strap me to a donkey,” Justin says.
Leaving the woman’s pessimism behind us, we begin our pilgrimage—and right out of the gate we’re struggling. A steeply ascending country road requires Ted to strap in and pull much earlier than we had anticipated, and soon we are on an even steeper dirt trail littered with brick-size rocks.
Back in Idaho, the trails and roads we trained on were flat from side to side. Here, every turn has us on a lateral pitch that forces Justin to counterbalance by leaning his weight in the opposite direction. The thousands of images and videos we culled through in preparation for the Camino have failed to give us a true appreciation for what we are now facing.
As we struggle onward and upward, the camera crew runs ahead to capture shots at the best angle. They are working every bit as hard as we are, but with our focus on the task at hand, we soon forget they’re here.
Though we stop every half mile or so to eat a protein bar and drink some water, by three miles into this seventeen-mile day, I am on the verge of retching from exhaustion. The air is cooler and drier than we expected, but still my body is lathered with sweat. All I can do is rehydrate and pound down another protein bar. We have to keep moving.
Ted and I begin to switch positions even more frequently. Pushing and pulling use different muscles, but already all of those muscles are becoming fatigued.
After several hours at near maximum exertion, we find a place where the ground is somewhat level and stop to rest. As we catch our breath and drink more water, a fellow pilgrim approaches us. Introducing himself as Father Kevin, an Episcopalian priest, he asks if he can say a blessing over our travels. We welcome the offer and close our eyes as he prays over each one of us a blessing of safety, guidance, and provision. For me, it’s validation, acknowledgment that we are on the right path.
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— JUSTIN —
Reinvigorated, we continue to work toward our designated lunch stop, Refuge Orisson, one of the pilgrim-specific hostels known as albergues that can be found in cities and villages along the Camino route.
The trail has been incredibly difficult up to this point. Patrick and Ted are constantly slipping on the rocks and loose shale as they work to propel the 250 pounds of my fully loaded wheelchair uphill. But now we’re on a section of paved road, a brief reprieve from the rugged path that has been jarring my bones for the past several hours. I feel like I’ve been riding a bike down an old washboard road.
Not long into this next stretch of the Camino, we meet a young British woman named Lucy, who lives in Austria. Her curiosity about the cameras accompanying us has gotten the better of her, and she asks what we’re doing on the Camino. We tell her our story and ask about hers. Her life is full of questions—about faith, family, and a potential career change.
“So, what’s your job?” Ted asks.
“I’m an opera singer.”
“You have to sing for us then,” I say with a smile.
Lucy gives us a choice. “Would you rather hear an operatic piece or an old English folk song?”
We choose the folk song. As she begins to sing, the sound of the wind at our backs, eagles crying in the distance, and the far-off jingling of bells around the necks of the sheep on the hillsides offer the perfect accompaniment to her extraordinary a cappella performance. The intense colors of the landscape and the purity of Lucy’s voice bring each of us to silent tears of appreciation. It is a moment of pure beauty
.
When she finishes, I say to her, “So you’re an opera singer. What’s your new career going to be?”
“I’m an accompanist; I want to be a soloist.”
Here in the heart of the Pyrenees, we’ve been blessed to witness her first public solo.
Having set a pace that is quicker than ours, Lucy moves on ahead and gradually fades in the distance, but the beauty of her voice has filled us with renewed energy. Despite the strain on Patrick and Ted, and the fatigue in my core muscles from the constant pitching from side to side, we keep trudging slowly up the long hill to a stone cross surrounded by a simple fence, which serves as a shrine to the many pilgrims who come this way.
The climb has been punishing on all of us, and far more strenuous for me than I had imagined. My back and neck are tight and feel misaligned, and as we reach a plateau and stop to rest, I shift in my wheelchair to take the pressure off the sore spots on my backside. The chair has shocks intended to mitigate the jarring nature of the path, but they have proved no match for the rocks, large tufts of grass, and grooves in the trail from more than a thousand years of use. In spite of all this, Patrick and I smile at each other in silent understanding. There’s no place we’d rather be.
After stretching his calves to work out the built-up tension, Patrick sits down on the side of the path and reclines in the damp grass.
“Listen to that,” he says. “Nothing but silence. . . . It’s a beautiful sound.”
Embracing the quiet, I look back at the distant green hills below, where we started the day. It’s difficult to process how far we’ve come.
As we get ready to move on, I turn my attention to the pathway ahead of us.
“That can’t be the trail!” I say in utter disbelief
In the distance, the hillside is littered with irregular stones and haphazard steps of earth and rock—as if a staircase collapsed and was covered by dirt and shattered boulders. There’s no way we’re getting through this with me in my chair.
The word impassable is echoing in our minds. We are beginning to appreciate what the people at the Pilgrim’s Office meant. Maybe they were right.
Nevertheless, Ted straps in and begins to pull the makeshift red nylon harness attached by carabiners to the leg rest on my wheelchair. With Patrick pushing from behind, we gradually make our way closer to the base of the obstacle-ridden path. The closer we get, the more obvious it becomes that no amount of pushing and pulling is going to get me up this next stretch of trail.
Patrick and Ted chock the wheels with rocks to keep the chair from rolling down the steep path while they look for an alternate route. Leaving their backpacks on the ground nearby, they take a scouting run up the hillside about a hundred yards. By the time they return, they’ve agreed that the only option is to carry me through the debris.
As we discuss the best way to handle the carry, Patrick tells us, “There’s also some good news. I went a little farther up the trail, and around the bend at the top of the hill there’s pavement.”
Filled with the hope of some relief from the rough path, we are motivated to keep moving. With the brakes secured and the wheelchair anchored, Ted and Patrick retrieve a nylon sling we’ve brought along for such an occasion. As they gently slide the fabric underneath me, I psych myself up for this next challenge, and my two friends ready themselves to lift me out of my seat.
“On three!” says Ted. “One, two, three!”
The four nylon handles, two on each side of the sling, are suddenly drawn taut as gravity enforces its inexorable law. Ted and Patrick struggle to keep their backs straight as they lift me out of the chair and begin to carefully navigate the rough and steep terrain.
Progress is painfully slow. After only fifteen feet, they have to lay me down on the ground and rest for a minute
Three hundred feet . . . fifteen feet at a time . . . how long is this going to take?
“Let’s keep moving,” Patrick says as he grabs the straps of my sling again.
As he and Ted carry me, I’m in a reclined position and completely at their mercy. Step-by-step, they work their way forward, maneuvering over randomly placed stones while trying to keep their balance—and not drop me—on the uneven terrain. We make it another fifteen feet before fatigue forces us to stop and rest a second time. Three more carries and we are almost halfway.
My friends lay me down in a patch of grass while they scout ahead to determine the best route. Closing my eyes, I just listen, taking in this moment of reprieve. All I can hear are the bells around the necks of far-off livestock and the distant cry of a hawk. The wind whispers its way through the grass around me, and these few short minutes seem to last for hours. As I lie here, questioning how much more of this my body can take and whether it will be enough to last this monthlong pilgrimage, I sense someone approaching me.
When I open my eyes, I see an elderly Basque man straddling me, wearing faded jeans, a yellow plaid shirt, and a black beret; I am captivated by his huge smile. Before I can say anything, he bends down and slaps my face. It isn’t a hard slap—more like the affectionate slap an Italian mother might give her son to let him know how much she cares—but coming from a complete stranger, it’s more than a little unexpected.
“Incroyable!” he says to me in French.
When I respond in Spanish—“¿Cómo estás?”—he switches languages.
“¡Bien!”
“¡Estoy muy loco!” I say with a laugh. I can tell he thinks we’re crazy.
“Estar un poco mal de la cabeza es algo bueno.”
He’s taxing my limited Spanish, but I think he just said that being crazy in the head can be a good thing.
As we continue to converse, Robin offers to translate.
“He says he’s spent the last twelve years tending sheep in these mountains and maintaining a small refuge hut a little farther up the hill for pilgrims caught in inclement weather. In all that time, he has never seen a man in a wheelchair come over the Pyrenees.”
With a look of approval, the man points at Patrick and Ted and says, “Muy fuerte.” Flashing a thumbs-up sign, he adds, “Bueno, muy bueno,” and continues up the hillside toward a hut made of earth and stone.
Halfway up the hill, the man stops and turns back toward us. Raising his arms with fists clenched, he shouts, “¡Lo imposible es posible!”
Such a brief interaction . . . but there is so much power in his words. They wash over us and fill us with a strength grounded in the idea that things are only impossible because they haven’t been done yet.
With this renewed strength, my friends pick me up again and we finish the long, slow march to the top. After a quick water break, they head back down the trail to retrieve my wheelchair while I enjoy another few moments of solitude, lying in the grass and embracing another moment to rest.
When the guys return with my chair and load me into it, we’re ready for the next section of trail. The path is now smooth, and the thought of getting onto a paved surface fills us with hope. But as we travel around the bend to the left, we recognize the trail for what it really is.
“That’s not pavement,” shouts Ted. “It’s mud!”
What Patrick, with his poor vision, could have sworn was asphalt was instead more than a hundred yards of thick, black mud. With the mountain sloping up to the left and a cliff dropping hundreds of feet to our right, our only option is to go through the muck.
Though no one will say it out loud, we all have the same thought racing through our minds: This is just the first day! How in the world are we going to make this happen?
Pushing the unknown future aside, we keep moving, one foot in front of the other and one turn of the wheel at a time. Ted and Patrick take turns, one donning the harness and pulling like an ox while the other pushes the chair from behind. The sweat pouring down their faces stings their eyes, and the sweat running down their arms makes it difficult to grip the handlebar at the back of the wheelchair. With every muscle screaming for a break, lungs burning for more oxygen,
and bodies desperate for another drink, they push slowly onward to the end of this stretch of incredible resistance.
The physical strain on my body is brutally punishing as well. With every tilt of the chair over the uneven path below, I have to counterbalance with my weight in the opposite direction. The equivalent of thousands of precisely timed abdominal contractions are taking their toll. This expanse of mud and the constant uphill climb are slowly eroding our confidence in our decision to make this five-hundred-mile pilgrimage. The final destination of Santiago de Compostela seems an eternity away. Yet, the Basque farmer’s declaration—the impossible is possible!—resonates in our hearts as we continue to trudge through the thick, oozing mud.
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— PATRICK —
Just when we think we’ve put the mud behind us, we are hit with another section of dark, wet muck. This next stretch seems even deeper than the first.
Slowly the wheels on Justin’s chair keep turning as Ted strains against the red nylon harness with everything he has, trying desperately to keep the chair from sinking any deeper into the sludge.
My breath is now coming in ragged gasps as I push against the handlebars, with head down and arms outstretched, doing everything I can to keep us moving forward. I know that Justin is having a rough ride, but he resolutely calls out course corrections to us—“Go right! Now left!”—to help us avoid the worst obstacles and deep puddles along the way. Though we’re all suffering, it’s a true team effort, and it’s drawing us together, even if we don’t yet realize it.
Inch by inch, we work our way through this section and farther up the mountain, straining the wheels as the mud tries to swallow us from below. As we approach our third section of more than a hundred yards of mud, we see a small footpath where previous pilgrims have been able to easily bypass the mire. But it is too narrow for Justin’s chair. We have no choice but to embrace the reality that sometimes the only way through something is through it.