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 assured us that the first day of hiking — our most ambitious — would be thirteen miles long. We stuck to the route but ended up hiking nineteen miles, which says something about what can happen if you rely on artificial intelligence to get through your day. Neither of us realized how far we were walking. Marcia grew tired around four o'clock but I balked at calling a cab, which says something about what can happen if you rely on me to get through your day. I didn’t want to hail a limousine in the middle of a spiritual pilgrimage. I wanted to finish on foot, not in a taxi.

That turned out to be a mistake. Marcia uttered no more than ten words during our last five miles of hiking. Even without conversation, I knew what was going on. Marcia was quiet on the outside, but inside her head she was watching a movie about her stubborn husband — the man she should have passed over for a less driven and more sympathetic soul who would have had the sense and grace to summon an Uber when the day’s trek fell apart. 

I asked Marcia how she was doing, but received no answer. 

“It’s all about the journey” I ventured, unhelpfully. 

Inside Marcia’s head the situation had escalated. There were now three screens, each playing its own film. The first screen showed stubborn Paul not calling a cab. The second screen revealed the comfortable interior of a taxi with a higher-quality husband by Marcia’s side, headed for a quiet dinner in a cozy hotel. And the third screen — well, I didn’t even want to imagine. All I knew was that there was a whole cineplex in there, and I wasn’t getting good notices for any of my performances. 

We hiked on.

Later that evening, after Marcia and I had showered and eaten dinner and settled ourselves, we conducted an after-action review of our day. Marcia had me look up the word “vacation” on the internet. It is derived from the Latin word vacātiō, meaning "to be empty, free, or have leisure." Emphasis, apparently, on “leisure.” 

I made Marcia a promise to hail a taxi if the next day’s hike proved too tiring. 

I am silently rehearsing this commitment in the morning as I lace up my boots. It’s a new day, I tell myself. A brand new day. But it isn’t, really. Today is not new. It is full of residua from yesterday — the pledge I am rehearsing; the incipient blister on my left big toe. Today is laced with the peaks and perils and promises of days past. It isn’t new at all. There is no such thing as an entirely new day. Not now, anyway. 

Almost fourteen billion years ago, when our universe willed itself into existence and took its first breath, when matter and antimatter and space itself and even time as we know it burst forth from the darkness and void in an unimaginably hot mass of blinding white light — now that was a new day. A fine new day. But they don’t make days like that anymore. 

Economists and political scientists and evolutionary biologists refer to this concept as path dependence — the idea that the circumstances and decisions that took place in the past constrain and shape subsequent options in ways that become increasingly difficult to reverse. History is not a sequence of disconnected moments; history is a noose that narrows the funnel of future possibilities. It’s a bit grim, when you look at it that way.

But must we? As I tie up my boot laces I resolve to make today a new day, even if it isn’t. Today will dawn a new hike and a new husband — a kinder, more empathic Paul who will leap at the opportunity to summon a taxi the moment Marcia’s legs grow weary. In fact, we will begin today with a cab ride, to the old monastery up in Castelo do Neiva, then work our way west through jagged narrow streets back down to the coast where we will pick up the trail again. Sure, today won’t be completely new. It’s going to be a day that is slightly used, like every other day, like the people who are living in it. So what? 

Today turns out to be better than its predecessor. Marcia likes her new husband, although she knows he won’t last. At some point he will revert to his old ways, both irritating and comfortably familiar. We chat as we walk.

This is what hiking the Camino is like. Pilgrims keep their minds partly in the present — placing one foot in front of the other, avoiding goat dung, talking with fellow travelers — but they also let their thoughts amble, reflecting on their life’s arc and all the souls who traced this same route centuries ago. I flit back and forth between past and present like a hummingbird. Neither world is entirely satisfying. When I am thinking about the past, I can’t embrace the present. But if I ignore the past, the present doesn’t make any sense — there is no context, no narrative, no meaning. It’s a conundrum. 

My daughters aren’t happy when my blog entries turn philosophical like this one. “Dad’s growing dark,” they text to one another behind my back. “He’s thinking about mortality and he doesn’t even know it.” They want light and funny stories with a twist of wit — reassurance their father isn’t losing his marbles. So sorry, Clara and Helen, but I am losing my marbles. There goes another one, a bright blue cat’s eye spiraling down the drain before I can grab it. I will finish this paragraph with one fewer marble. 

But don’t despair, daughters! My next entry should be more humorous. In a week I am scheduled to take my first yoga class in twenty-five years. What could possibly go wrong? 

More anon,

Paul 

P.S. I have included a photo of a Brown-lipped Snail (Cepaea nemoralis) that Marcia and I met on the Portuguese Camino. These snails have a top speed of 1.3 mm per second, so they are terrible hiking companions. They spend most of their time resting, and over the course of an entire lifetime this guy/gal will be lucky to travel a mile or two. Moreover, he/she won’t stray more than one hundred feet from his/her place of birth. Like most snails, Cepaea nemoralis are hermaphroditic, which means we needn’t worry about their pronouns — guy/gal and he/she will suffice.