We walk into the village, coasting on fumes. We are covered in mud and sweat, clutching our backpacks. Looking for rooms.

The woman at the hostel utters four magic words. “Si, we have beds.”

This is amazing. There have been no beds in Spain for Holy Week. It’s almost Easter Sunday and we have been beggars, compelled to walk the Camino de Santiago with our hats in hand, and our hands out, looking for beds.

“Puede ayudarnos?” (Can you help us?) is a phrase I’ve grown too familiar with, asking strangers.

Many pilgrims have grown discouraged and already abandoned the trail. I know two pilgrims who dropped out and caught planes home. One woman slept in a public restroom. Spain is simply too full to find rooms. I think everyone in this country must sleep standing up.

Even the little pueblos are packed. Easter in Spain is like Times Square on New Year’s Even, minus the giant ball and the public urination.

But we have a bed. Tonight. Us. A

warm bed. With a shower! I could cry.

Tonight’s hostel is small. This place is, by all means, a total dump. The bunk rooms look like Club Med for bedbugs. I don’t believe the staff has cleaned this place since the Spanish-American War. The shower smells like an intergluteal crevice. But to me, this place is pure heaven.

We are served a communal dinner. The table is surrounded with pilgrims from many nations. Denmark, Taiwan, Bosnia, South Korea, France, Austria, and Jefferson County, Alabama.

A woman brings us wine in clay pitchers, which we drink from mismatched plastic tumblers. The soup is simple, potatoes and leeks. The bread is hard enough to sand oil stains from residential driveways. And it is the best food I’ve ever tasted in my…

We leave our inn at daybreak. Our innkeeper is awake and already at the front door, wearing a robe, waiting to say goodbye to us. Like a mom seeing her kids off to school.

She gives us a heartfelt and emotional goodbye in French, with double kisses and everything.

“Dieu sout avec toi,” she says.

I don’t speak French, so I answer, “Ten four.”

Which she evidently doesn’t understand. And there’s no way to explain such a philosophical concept as “ten four,” so I give her a hug instead. The French, I am pleased to learn, are huggers.

And we’re off.

Jamie and I are wearing heavy packs. But not as heavy as some pilgrims. Some hikers have fallen victim to overkill packing. They are wearing packs the size of Hondas. But they will learn. Just like we all will. That on the Camino, as in life, it is not how much you carry that matters, but how much you are able to leave behind.

There are a handful of other pilgrims leaving San-Jean-Pie-du-Port

at the same time we are, making their exodus on foot. You can pick us “peregrinos” out of the crowd because of the enormous backpacks we carry.

Soon we are all on a highway which winds through impossibly green hills. A thick fog drapes itself over the earth. Sheep everywhere. Some of which stand directly in the road and poop.

But this is all part of the experience. The fog, the livestock, the poop. Just like life.

When you close your eyes, all you hear are the patter of your own footsteps. Occasionally you will pass other pilgrims. They all have reasons for walking.

Soon we are all climbing steep mountain highways. And it’s all starting to sink in. This is not a “vacation.” This is not supposed to be “fun” in the traditional sense. There are no tour guides. No tour groups. No itinerary. No…

3:03 a.m.—I’m awake before my wife. Actually, I’m awake before the rest of France. Jet lag has me screwed up. It’s 3 in the morning here but 8 p.m. in Alabama.

Thus, I am locked away in our inn’s bathroom, door closed, sitting on a latrine, playing my fiddle, with a brass mute affixed to the instrument’s bridge.

4:10 a.m.—Jamie is still sleeping. I’m still fiddling.

5:37 a.m.—I am now sitting in the inn’s garden, fiddling. Sleeping Beauty still hasn’t budged.

There is an older woman in the cottage next door, listening to me play through an open window as she works in her kitchen. She pauses to lean out the window and give light applause when I finish playing “Over the Waves.” I’m not sure whether she is applauding because she liked the song or because I am no longer playing.

6:24 a.m.—I am watching a calico cat creep along terracotta rooftops in the dark distance. He carefully leaps from one roofline to the next. I think he hears my fiddle and is looking for his

wounded sibling.

7:28 a.m.—The sun rises in San-Jean-Pie-de-Port, slowly ascending behind the small French hamlet, nestled in the Pyrenees. Silver mist clings to the mountainsides like a damp dishrag. Distant sheep graze on swatches of green farmland quilting the rocky hillsides. It is my great hope that my wife wakes up someday soon.

8:32 a.m.—Jamie is awake. We eat a breakfast of muesli, which is cereal. Our innkeeper tells us muesli will help us go to the bathroom. The French woman doesn’t speak English, so instead of saying “bathroom,” she uses hand gestures to pantomime “severe gastrointestinal distress.” Then she laughs. The French are wonderful.

10:00 am—We are at the supermarket, buying food for our upcoming walk. There is evidently no peanut butter in this store, or in all of France.

They sell items I've never heard of. Tiny octopuses in a jar.…