I parted company with the Portuguese philosopher today. Manuel has been a man of obscure and mysterious character for me. Ours has been a strategic alliance dictated by the heat. We two have been walking together most recent mornings by flashlight illumination in the cool dark long before dawn. The star canopy this morning leaving Fuenterroble was especially magnificent. We were bundled up, shivering, and … enraptured. By mid morning, we were climbing the “Pico de la Dueña”, the highest point on the Via de la Plata outside of Galicia.
It’s characterizing that Manuel would wait till our last day to share his first personal details. It turns out that he’s married with daughters, eighteen and twenty-three. His wife, he told me, doesn’t work outside the home and has recently been struggling with a bipolar like condition. Our walking two days back had been disrupted by a cell phone call that had launched him into angry, frustrated, maybe anguished shouting. I had walked on to give him some discrete personal space. Today Manuel confirmed that this call had been from his wife.
Manuel and I have been comrades but I wish better friends. I should be more intuitive understanding others. Manuel diverges from here westward to walk the Via Portuguesa northward into Santiago. It has always been our destiny to part. I’ve reached Morille tonight. At kilometer 497.5, with a tiny little refugio all to myself, I’ve reached the Via de la Plata midpoint. I walk through Salamanca tomorrow. Halfway!
