Member-only story
Where I Tumbled on the Camino
This is a real photo. I mean it is not from the Internet. The broken fence shows where and why I tumbled.
Where: In the middle of the infamous Les Hospitales Route, the most difficult stage of the Camino Primitivo. If you have never heard of it, the Camino Primitivo is the most difficult of the Camino routes in Spain.
Why: We stopped for a quick water break, and I leaned on this fence, my backpack facing the abyss of the steep downhill slope behind the fence.
What happened next you can imagine: I tumbled backward, pulled down by the weight of my backpack. Somehow some subconscious instincts, or childhood muscle memories instantly commanded my body to curl into a coil by pulling the knees to the chin, the chin to the chest, my arms encircling the legs…
And off I went rolling downhill, contracted into a ball, accelerated by the omnipresent forces of gravity and momentum…
The elevation was high enough to kill me had I rolled all the way down to the bottom of the hill.
But I was lucky enough to roll into a nice thorny bush just after a few full circles. The springy twigs hedged me in tight enough to stop my downhill roll. The remaining momentum made me complete the last circle of my tumble, and in a split second, I felt my feet touching the ground under the twigs.
I instantly sprang into an upright position, my heart pounding, my brain still half-processing what just happened. I looked upward and saw my husband staring at me from above, with a look of horror and astonishment on his face.
Without waiting for the initial shock to subside, I promptly climbed uphill, back to the unperturbed reality of our water break in the middle of the Hospitale road.
Only then, when I leveled my feet on the horizontal ground, standing next to my husband, both of us marveling the miracle we just witnessed, my mind began wondering if I felt any pain anywhere in my body.
Believe it or not, but besides a few scratches left on my hands by the thorny bush, I…
