He was a blind man, walking the highway toward El Burgo Ranero. If he wasn’t totally blind, the sunglasses meant he was low vision. Cars shot past him as he trudged along, seemingly unaware of the vehicles.

The old man walked bent at the waist, carrying a wooden walking stick. He was shuffling forward slowly on the old Spanish road, wearing a neon safety vest. He was using his stick to tap the ground, running his cane along the edge of the pavement for surety.

Another car sped by.

This car, faster than the others. I could feel the draft from the vehicle’s forward motion. It was enough to knock a person down. There are no posted speed limits on this highway. Each passing motorist drives like a proverbial bat out of Gatlinburg.

And still the man walked forward.

It had been one of those days when I didn’t feel like walking. My mood had dropped. I was thinking about certain problems in my life, and it was getting me down. Sometimes I think too much about the past.

The silence of the Camino was weighing on me. My godforsaken backpack was weighing even heavier on my shoulders, like an overgrown toddler. My joints hurt. I was low on sleep.

Some days you walk the Camino; some days the Camino walks all over you.

My wife was half a mile ahead, walking with her friend and superhuman speed-walking Australian, Tracey. They were a long way ahead, in the distance, giving me space.

I could see both females ahead, gesticulating as they talked, flailing their hands about, like tiny animatronic silhouettes on the horizon. Whatever they were talking about, by the velocity of their hand movements, their conversation looked internationally important.

Tracey is our new friend and my wife’s walking partner. Tracey is a highly energetic, extremely exacting individual, with an editor’s keen eye, who likes to read my daily writings so she can pick out the article’s flaws.

“Picking out flaws just relaxes me,” says Tracey.

These minor literary technicalities she is picking out, mind you, are flaws so petty, they hardly even matter. Such as the slight misstatement I made yesterday when I wrote that Tracey—who is from Perth, Australia—was from Norway.

Or maybe it was New Zealand. Either way,

I made another slight error when stating that Tracey was in her mid-40s when in fact Tracey is just north of 29.

“You are dead to me,” says Tracey each time she and my wife power walk past me.

So there I was bringing up the rear behind the two superhumans. A little despondent.

I was about to overtake the old man. We passed each other on the old highway.

“Buen Camino,” I said to the old man—we pilgrims use this phrase every 8.3 seconds on the trail. You say it to others even when you don’t feel like it. Sometimes you even say it to stray cats and various forms of snails. It’s decorum.

“Buen Camino,” the man replied in a soft, ancient voice. He sounded so feeble. I was worried about him.

“Are you okay?” I said in Spanish, yelling over the din of traffic.

Then he paused his journey to face me. He smiled his tooth at me. Cars shot past with violent gusts of wind.

He removed his shades. His eyes were unusual, and sunken. I don’t think he could see me. But somehow, it seemed like he could.

“Are you okay?” I said again.

“Oh, mijo,” was all he said. “It’s all okay.”

I don’t want to reach for melodrama, but I somehow feel as though I have seen this man before. I also believe, somehow, I might see him again someday. And more than anything, I choose to believe what he said is true