I am sitting in the laundry room of my albergue in León mentally blessing the kind soul who decided that pilgrims could use these washers and dryers for free. Laundry is one of the most annoying expenses on the Camino, second to maybe Compeed, because it’s so outrageous. If I paid 10€ for an albergue, I don’t want to pay another 9€ to wash one shirt and two pairs of socks. But I also don’t want to smell like a nasty unwashed hiker, which I will.

The last week on the Camino has been mostly blurred by an awful deluge of rain and boot-envoloping mud, punctuated every few days by a few hours of sunlight. Standing in your rain pants and watching clouds disappear in the sun sort of feels like the post-flinch moment after somebody pretends they’re about to punch you in the face. Mostly cautious relief but also somehow annoyance.

Every night I buy newspaper and stuff it into my soaked and squishy boots, changing it every few hours like I can prevent what I know is going to happen again the next day. I lace up my boots, painstakingly dried, and immediately walk through a long, deep, and entirely unavoidable serious of puddles. Boots are soaked again, feet will be pruned for the next 20 kilometers, nothing to be done, keep walking. Repeat ad infinitum. At the albergue in Puente de Villarente I complain to Brendan, the Australian SWAT team captain I’ve been hiking with, that my feet look disgusting and dead after days of this routine. He replies sarcastically, “I bet WWE soldiers would be sympathetic.” Trench foot? Sounds about right. Someday I think when I take my boots off half my foot might come off too. Is there a type of Compeed for that?

But now I am in the city of León, with free clean laundry, and there’s a café across the street that sells fresh pressed juices and really good loose leaf tea, plus I think I saw some vegan smoothies. There’s a frutería on every corner and an American sized grocery store two blocks away (this is something so rare it’s worth reporting; most of Spain is dotted with little tiendas the size of closets that sell two kinds of fruit and somehow all have the same mixed nuts). All of the aforementioned food is a big deal for me; my body could probably use a refeuling. Two days ago I hit a complete physical wall, which I attribute largely to a lack of food. I hadn’t eaten anything but peanuts, peanut butter, and rice cakes for five days. After 17k, which would normally be a breeze, I felt like fainting. My muscles weren’t giving me anything else. They were done. I was genuinely scared I wouldn’t get to my desination. That night, for the first time in five days, I had access to a kitchen. With what I could find at the local grocery-closet, I threw together a rather poorly seasoned vegetable/lentil/rice dish, which I devoured and then followed up with about two heads of romaine lettuce.

So here I am in León, wondering if tomorrow I should firmly plant my ass on a  chair in that café and infuriate the waiter by ordering every juice on the menu, plus a smoothie and some tea. Then maybe follow that up with another round at the frutería. But somehow not all of me wants to stay; I can feel the momentum of the Camino telling me to push on. The thought of staying behind irks me. For some reason the idea of losing half my foot seems more appealing than drinking my weight in pineapple juice.

The Camino is weird.

Today was a slog through the most appallingly deplorable quagmire of shit imaginable. For twenty five kilometers we marched through a river of mud so deep it submerged my boots, while simultaneously battered by a torrential downpour of rain and hail whipped by winds so strong they gave each of us a temporary facelift. At one point, after about five hours, I turned around and looked at my travel companion and just screamed. In the words of my British friend Mark, “Shitty death, this is awful.” And indeed it was.

But lo, there was light at the end of the tunnel. In a small village five kilometers away from my destination stood four of my classmates, full of hugs and smiles in the middle of that heinous wasteland of watery death. Aaron, Evan, Jackaon, and Cecelia accompanied me for five kilometers and listened as I word-vomited stories from the last two weeks of walking. And as we arrived in Fromista they faded into the distance while I stayed behind with my Camino companions. We checked into an albergue and I translated the tirade of rapid, stern Spanish coming from the proprietor. Finally in a warm, dry room I took off my drenched clothing with this woman still talking at me. Add to lessons learned so far: when you are the only one of the group that speaks Spanish, you will be the one yelled at for the errors of anyone in your group. I stepped into the bathroom with her voice still running but I could no longer register it.

There it was: the shower. With a knob that didn’t have to be pressed every ten seconds, it was already the most appealing thing I’d seen in days. My skin was covered in goosebumps from the cold, wet hell we’d just traversed, and I was shaking. When I turned it on I knew it was the one. It was love at first touch: the water was scalding. As I stepped in I think I actually made a rather raunchy noise; the Spanish lady probably left me alone at that point but I was too distracted to notice. I turned the water past the point of hot, until it was painful, and then just a bit hotter than that. Oh my god. I couldn’t even care if my skin blistered and burned, I still wouldn’t have wanted it any cooler. I hadn’t washed my hair in eight days and today was finally the day. I carefully measured the shampoo in my palm, cupped carefully so as not to spill a single precious drop. Putting it on my hair I closed my eyes and remembered sitting with Jim and watching videos of his eldest son’s Greek Orthodox baptism; olive oil carefully poured over the crying infant’s head. In all the Camino I hadn’t had an experience as religious as this one.  Leaving that shower I was cleansed of every sin, every horror of the day.

I think I might take another one later.