A prodigious sight!
This poor little mite
Knew not which side to pee.
By no means a dunce,
Both legs cocked at once,
He sprayed out the back, did he.
It's the little things that brighten your day. There he was. A little terrier, standing on his front legs, both back legs raised in the air, in full spate, oblivious to my amusement. Was this a sign of his political leanings, I wondered. Symbols matter. I have a good friend who keeps clean tissues in her left pocket, soiled ones in the right, as a mark of her politics. Was this dog a centrist, eschewing excesses and extremes?
I left late this morning, with the rain pattering on my poncho. So much for my hopes of a paddle or a swim. I made my way back to the beach, where it was more of the same as yesterday.
Since Porto, I have been walking much of the time with the sea on my left and hotels and apartment buildings on my right. I left behind a busy port at Matasinhos, and this morning I passed a light house and an ugly gas-fired power station. But otherwise, affluent urban housing stretched forever in either direction.
I was tiring of this, and was even thinking of abandoning the coastal path and heading inland. But then the sun came out. And I encountered the acrobatic canine urinator. And I met my first companions of the road.
Trevor and Manzu are from Norfolk. "Very flat, Norfolk," I said. I had been waiting a lifetime to utter those words. To my amazement, Trevor is 76 and has weathered the ravages of time better than I. Still, it always comforting to meet someone older on the Camino. Manzu is originally from Bangladesh, and we chatted for a while about the assassinations that have been plaguing the country. I learned later that he has been touched by this violence himself. But he is optimistic that secularism will survive.
He asked me if I was walking the Camino for spiritual reasons, and when I gave my answer, he said, "Not enlightenment but peace and calm." A nice line!
Not enlightenment, but peace and calm,
No pious revelations of the mind,
Nor sanctifying light, nor healing balm,
But final understanding, of a kind.
Eventually, as I left the environs of Porto, the terrain became a little wilder, and instead of squeezing between the road and the beach, the boardwalk passed over sand dunes anchored with pigweed, dandelions, other sundry weeds, and even grass. I tried to identify some of them using an app called Plantnet, the botanical equivalent of Shazam. For example, I learned that the flower below is knapweed.
This is a very rocky coast, where igneous rocks have intruded into Precambrian beds as old as existence itself. A few hardy souls were pottering about, bag in hand, looking for something in the fissures and crevices. Waves pounded on these rocks with the full force of the Atlantic behind them.
Stretches of sand curved between the rocky promontories, but the beaches were deserted. More than one person has warned me against swimming on this dangerous coast.
As always, I was struck by the curiosities, strange to me, but no doubt having a simple explanation. Along the boardwalk, I passed a series of square pens, which once must have served some purpose, but now were filled in with sand.
Hardly the place for a garden plot. And the pickets would offer little privacy or shelter from the wind.
I was intending to walk on to Povoa da Vazim, but as I passed through Vila do Conde I came upon the recently opened Alberge Santa Clara, very bright and clean and comfortable, so I decided to stay. A handful of others had the same idea. A Franco-Swiss fellow, Jacques, and I did a load of washing together.
While I waited for my washing to finish. I ventured out for a beer. I was forced to drink a Heineken. What a dreadful drink, as bland and weak as the proverbial liquid bodying forth from the hand-standing terrier! There is nothing in Europe to compare with the body and taste of our Canadian craft beers.
Charles - your memory for poetry never disappoints! Keeps me reading every day!
ReplyDeleteWendy