From the Camino: I was walking one day in the mountains, on the Camino, as it led me through a beautiful, deep green pine forest. The day was a long one, lovely, but long. It was also on the warm side, and I appreciated the trees shading the path and scenting the air. I was intrigued because the trees were so similar to Monterey pines, a tree native to the Central Coast of California, just north of where I live. I felt at home, as I have spent many happy hours in pine forests in my time. My own childhood family had a potted Monterey pine that we brought into the house for several years as our Christmas tree, until it began to take on some misshapen, bonsai twists. Normally they have a beautiful rich green coloring and are reasonably fast growing. Their pine cones, curiously, remain closed until a forest fire causes them to explode, spreading their seeds just at the time when the forest cover is opened by the blaze.
A little reading in a guide book, later that day, informed me that the trees were, in fact, California Monterey pine (pinus radiata) – but there they were, planted in Spain! The tree’s wood is useful for construction and paper pulp, which is inevitably why they had been brought to northern Spain.
Introduced disease, the pine pitch canker, an exploding population of bark beetles, and an extended drought are all working together to threaten the three remaining groves in Monterey California. It pleased me to think that, even if the species was struggling, or died out in the place where it originated, it might survive in other places, such as Spain.
As I walked, I was intrigued that something from California could become so important to the economy of far-away places, in this case, some 5,000 miles away.
We are all so very connected on this planet of ours.
Psalm 84:2-5 – 2 How lovely your dwelling, O Lord of hosts! 3 My soul yearns and pines for the courts of the Lord. My heart and flesh cry out for the living God. 4 As the sparrow finds a home and the swallow a nest to settle her young, my home is by your altars, Lord of hosts, my king and my God! 5 Blessed are those who dwell in your house! They never cease to praise you.
For reflection: It can be hard to spend long periods of time away from home, especially when in a different culture. It’s one thing for Americans to travel in the United States and even Canada. England and Scotland, though, begin to stretch away from the familiar, and continental Europe is even further removed. Europeans travelling in the opposite direction can find themselves equally culturally at sea in North America, although the idea of vastly different cultures is more familiar to people who grow up in the richly varied cultures of Europe.
This sense of displacement is an ancient problem for pilgrims. In the 7th chapter of the “5th Book” of the Codex Calixtinus, are descriptions of the qualities of the people one would encounter in the Medieval Camino. Curiously, the grew progressively more derogatory, the further from home the journey carried the author. He couldn’t say enough good about the people of nearby Poitou who were brave, trained warriors, athletic, handsome, well dressed, clear speaking, generous and hospitable. At the somewhat greater remove of Gascony, the people were still admirable warriors and hospitable, but they spoke too quickly, were overly sensuous, consumed too much food, and were offensive in behavior and clothing. The author’s description of the yet further removed Basques includes mention of their incomprehensible speech, the viciousness of their toll collectors who were true forest savages with hard faces. The Navarese apparently dressed shabbily, were disgusting in their consumption of food and spoke like dogs barking. The author’s evaluation only picked up a little as he approached Santiago, as he was somewhat fonder of the people of Galicia, whom he described as more French than the other savages of Spain, but the author still judged them volatile and argumentative.
We all consider our own cultural norms, by definition, normal. The more alien things appear to us, either because people use different languages, because they gesture differently and view time differently, have different understandings of how genders are to act, or any of the many ways in which cultures differ, the more likely we are to experience ill ease, and perhaps estrangement from our new setting.
Conversely, when we find things from home that are cozy in their familiarity, we can take comfort in them.
The home in which I live, in California, for example, with its white plaster walls and red tiled roof, would look right at home in most of southern Spain and Italy. The “Spanish revival” buildings throughout California are a living, somewhat romanticized, testimony to the Spaniards who settled there in the late 1700s. It helped me feel at home in Spain. How nice to offer, in exchange, a lovely, productive pine tree.
We’re in this together…all of us. In this great wide world, there are so many negative places we could focus, if that is what we chose to do. We could, though, glance past the small aggravations of being in a foreign land without the means to communicate with clarity, to the places where union exists, where hearts meet, where the human spirit of community triumphs over alienation.
Wherever you travel, what connections can you make or find? How can you make the place you are in a home for your spirit? What can you offer in return that carries no ego within it?