7. Past and Present
Dearest Family and Friends, It is a new day! It is a new day in an old body. It is a new day in an old body that is tentatively lacing up a pair of boots for a second day of hiking. I already see the beginning of a blister on the outside of my left great toe, an unhappy creature carried forward from yesterday’s hike. I will tend to that later. Marcia and I are walking the Portuguese Camino, reserving five days to hike the littoral route from Porto up to Caminha at the Spanish border. “Littoral” means “near the shore” — literally — and yesterday we kept the Atlantic Ocean no further than a hundred yards over our left shoulders. As we walked we heard waves thrashing the black rocky coast and breathed thick salt mist and saw impertinent gulls trying to wrest sardines from one another’s beaks in midair. We met a few Germans and a young couple from London, and for a short stretch a goat accompanied us, but mostly we walked on our own. Marcia planned our route with the help of ChatGPT, which...