Like the proverb, Kathryn Ronay began a thousand-mile journey with a step out her door.
Temporary destination? Walmart.
“I walked from my house (near Iola Public Library) to Walmart and back every day to get ready for the Camino,” Ronay said.
The Camino is the Camino de Santiago, an approximately 500 mile-long walking trail from the interior mountains of Europe to the coast in Spain, marking the apparent route that pilgrims took carrying the bones of St. James, Ronay explained.
Although she isn’t churchy, Ronay said, the idea of walking through Europe on a designated trail intrigued her.
So she spent months researching the Camino online and printing off lists of albergues, similar to youth hostels, along the route.
Ronay left Iola in early May, budgeting only $300 for expenses in Europe.
She kept spending to a minimum with spartan eating habits.
“I usually bought a baguette and ate that with butter, plus I brought along little cans of tuna,” Ronay said, a pattern that kept her meals to less than a dollar each. In contrast, restaurant dinners cost about 11 euros, or a little over $13, for “pilgrim’s fare,” a five-course supper catering to Camino travelers, Ronay said. But, she added, “I never can stand to eat that much.” For breakfast, she’d have cafe leche and pound cake, common at the albergues.
Her travel, she noted, is typically on the cheap, with free airline tickets provided by her daughter Amy Ronay, who works for the travel industry.
For Spain, she took only a day pack, a sheet and clothes, including a rain jacket. May in Spain, she learned, is the rainy season.
“It was very muddy,” Ronay said of the path. “Every time you picked up your foot, it was like picking up a five-pound weight.”
Each night, before receiving a bunk at the albergues, hikers — pilgrims as they are known along the “Way of Saint James” — must remove their mud-encrusted boots and store them, with scores of others, on racks provided for the purpose.
“Pilgrims bring these cheap flip flops or Crocs to wear at the end of the day when they’d take off their boots,” Ronay said. “Out in the towns, you could always tell who was a pilgrim because of their footwear.”
In light-weight hikers, she fared better than those in heavy leather boots, she said. “Everyone had many blisters. I just had one.”
Walking was non-stop, from after breakfast through dinner-time, when pilgrims would bed down at the next albergue.
The little rustic bunkhouses were strung along the trail every four or five miles, Ronay noted. Accommodations varied, from room for only a dozen to more than 100.
One notable inn was a converted church, she said.
An Italian couple, veteran pilgrims, had purchased the defunct church and converted it to a way station.
The couple provided a light meal, but first came Mass, and a foot washing ceremony reminiscent of that Jesus did for his disciples at the Last Supper.
With no electricity, the meal was by candlelight.
Other albergues were simply bunk houses, Ronay said, bare rooms crammed with beds. Any luxuries had to be provided by the travelers themselves.
Ronay noted an odd phenomenon. As she traveled from the mountains, towns became poorer.
The countryside changed from mountains to foothills to rolling plains “similar to eastern Kansas,” she said. And although “the size of the towns didn’t change much,” — always about 50 to 60 people — the economic status did.
In the mountains, more amenities were available to travelers. As she moved east-to-west, towns often had only a tavern to provide for travelers’ needs, Ronay said.
And evening Mass, a staple at the beginning of the pilgrimage, became scarce.
“The towns, because they were poor, had to share a priest, so many did not offer Mass every evening,” she noted.
Nonetheless, she said, the altars were resplendent.
“You can’t believe the gold in the churches. You’ll go into these small towns and the altar is nothing but gold.”
She said a fellow pilgrim remarked it was indicative of the people’s piety that, despite their poverty, for thousands of years the churches have stood undefiled, while people eke out a living from the land.
“They’re so devout. I think they’re a lot happier than we are,” Ronay said. “They know what’s important in life.”
RONAY missed an arduous part of the trail due to snow storms and volcanic ash that altered her initial starting point.
“Sometimes, I’d walk for hours and hours by myself, and not see anyone,” she said.
At other times, the 66-year-old said, people would offer her a ride to the next community. One man even gave her a tour of a town, refusing payment for his service.
“Once you said you were walking the Camino, everything slipped into place,” she said of the spontaneous help people offer along the Way.
About midway through her two-week trip, her 21-year-old granddaughter Annika Ronay, of Sonora, Calif., joined her.
“I’m so glad my granddaughter came,” Ronay noted. Annika’s presence helped Ronay weather the miles, which seemed farther than signs allowed, she said.
“I kept thinking that a kilometer is a lot less than a mile,” but slogging up and down hills made it seem more so, she noted.
“If I go back, I’m going to get a backpack with a waist-strap,” to make the walking easier, Ronay said.
Altogether, Ronay covered 277 kilometers — about 172 miles — over two weeks of walking.
“All along the way, you find pictures of the shell,” she noted. The shell is a large scallop shell icon used to denote the trail. It represents the shores of Santiago, where St. James’ bones were taken for burial.
Ronay had a shell, painted with a crusader’s cross, plus a small stuffed turtle tied to her pack. The shell showed she was a pilgrim and “the turtle is because I walk slow,” she laughed.
Another curiosity on the trail is the presence of roosters and hens in many towns — and in some churches, Ronay noted.
Myth holds that hundreds of years ago, an inn keeper’s daughter became besotted with a young pilgrim. Denied permission to marry by his parents, who sought to continue their trek, the girl accused the young man of thievery and he was tried and hanged by the town council.
Heartbroken, his parents continued on their way. Upon their return through the unnamed town, they came upon the body of their son, still hanging in a tree.
He looked at them and asked that they cut him down. Astonished, they approached the town mayor about the task.
At supper, the mayor quipped their son was no more alive than the roast chicken before him.
At that moment, his evening meal stood up and began to crow.
“No one ever mentions what happened to the girl,” Ronay chuckled.
The story states that San Domingo and the Virgin Mary held up the young man during the time his parents were away, allowing him to live.
Such novel tales are what keep Ronay on the road.
“I was born with itchy feet,” she noted. “When I was little, we traveled from Kansas City to California every year.
It wasn’t until “I was in my 40s, after my children were grown,” that Ronay began her global explorations.
She has no plans to stop, and hopes to travel again on the Camino, which wanders through France as well as Spain.
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