The albergue looks like a mountain chalet. We are snugly situated deep within the Fonfaraón Mountains, which climb high into the Spanish sky, separating us from an entire civilization below the cloud line. 

Here atop the world, the mountain peaks look like incarnations of the Appalachians, with a fuzzy, green carpet-like texture, rounded edges, and swooping valleys that gather pools of fog like a white lake. 

We will be hiking this today. 

We have slept in bunkrooms for the past several nights. We have listened to much snoring, much nose blowing, much belching, and many lower-intestinal expulsory events. 

But we pilgrims know each other by now. We have been hiking together at different paces for the past week. We have eaten alongside each other, slept with each other, shared supplies with each other, confided in one another, and partaken in each other’s B.O. 

Besides, we are all here for the same reason. The reason: to witness some of the most powerful beauty on our planet. To conquer the mountain. 

We will walk the Ruta de los Hospitales, a strenuous path upward toward the sun, miles above Spain. The views up there, veterans tell us, are like painted landscape scenes that never seem to stop. The overlooks just keep coming, one after the other. 

Pilgrims come from all over the globe to hike the Camino Primitivo simply to see what we are about to see today. They are here from South Korea, France, Russia, Sweden, Washington, D.C., Cameroon, Serbia, Australia, and even Jefferson County, Alabama. 

We talked about it all night over dinner. We talked about it in the bunkrooms. We talked about it just before drifting off to sleep. Some of us are unsure whether we will make it. Some of us are unsure whether we should even try. 

And finally, it is time to walk.

We awaken in our bunks and do our best not to make eye contact with the offending pilgrim who snored all night long. We load our bags by packing many small bags, then stuffing them into many successively larger bags. We eat bread and jam for desayuno. We gulp down tiny cups of café. Then we are off. 

The first stretch is almost too steep to believe. We can see the trail from a distance, winding impossibly upward into the towering hills. And we are all in a kind of reverential shock at the incline.

“Santa María,” says one Spanish woman. 

“You’re kidding, right?” says a New Zealander. 

“…Mary and Joseph…” says one Irishman. 

With each step the grade grows steeper, and steeper still. The terrain becomes rockier. More jagged. More unstable. 

Less than one kilometer in, a few older hikers fall. They are helped onto their feet. They are bleeding. But they keep walking. 

Then comes the rain. The rain begins as thick fog. The fog is transformed into spit. The spitting becomes torrential. 

Then comes the wind. The gales are mighty enough to knock hikers down. And they do. People are losing hats. Some are losing footing. So they sit down to make themselves heavier and harder to blow off the mountain. 

Jamie and I stop behind a grove of cedars. We don rain jackets and ponchos and are nearly knocked onto our fat American aspirations. I use a pocketknife to cut holes into my hat and fashion a strip of paracord into a stampede strap. I fasten the strap around my chin and we keep coursing upward. 

The clouds are far beneath us now. We are enveloped in fog and downpour. The temperature is so cold I cannot use my hands, let alone feel them. There are other pilgrims alongside the trail, shivering. We all take time to help them to their feet and walk with them. 

“You’ve got to keep moving,” shouts one Scotsman to another pilgrim, hoisting him off the ground. “Or you’ll freeze out here!”

This is all beginning to feel very serious. 

Visibility is zero now. We are staring at our shoes as we walk because this is all we can see. 

We still have many kilometers left. An older Russian man tells us he had heard there is a food truck a few kilometers ahead. 

With renewed enthusiasm, we press onward. I can no longer feel my feet, which are saturated and cold, squishing in my shoes. My hands are so chilled they are numb; I cannot even make a fist. 

The rain picks up tempo. I cover my face with my handkerchief because my nose feels like ice. I’m pretty sure the rock rolling around in my shoe is my toe. 

After another hour of walking, we hear the generator of the food truck. We could cry from elation. We’re isolated in these mountains.

“I hear the generator!” shouts a pilgrim. 

We find ourselves beneath a tent with other pilgrims. The rain is falling and we are all shivering. Some are eating burgers. Others are gulping down beer. 

Samuel is the young man who owns and operates this food truck. He notices how cold I am. I cannot even form a sentence; my jaw is trembling too intensely. 

Samuel invites me into his truck and insists that I warm myself by his stove. 

I am soon standing at the stove with Jamie, an Irishman, and a priest. This sounds like the opening line of a great joke. We are all so cold that we’re holding our hands over the open flame, trying to get the blood moving. Meantime, Samuel is feeding us cookies and hot coffee and telling us to relax. 

He calls us a cab on his phone and tells us that we cannot walk anymore today. It is too dangerous. He insists. 

The cab arrives. Our driver is an amiable middle-aged woman named Louisa with a 91-year-old man riding shotgun. 

The old man smiles and tells us that this is normal weather for this area. He says the weather is sometimes our greatest teacher. He adds, “So, what did you learn today, peregrinos?”

My wife replies, “We learned humility, I think.”

He smiles. “We have an old saying in a’Spain,” he says. “El orgullo no engorda. Trágatelo de vez en cuando.”

“Beautiful,” says my wife. “What’s it mean?” 

“Pride doesn’t make you fat,” he says. “We must all swallow it once in a while.”