If
only. It’s not just an arrow, not just a symbol and sometimes it’s not always
yellow: sometimes it’s red, for heaven’s sake! The arrow has ceased to be a
mere tool that guides me along the camino, that does my navigating for me and
saves me having to carry a wad of maps in my rucksack. Oh no, the arrow –
yellow or red – has turned into a metaphor that’s wandered free from the confines
of materiality; it’s an icon out of context and out of control.
You
don’t believe me? You think the crazy middle-aged pilgrim’s had a bit too much
sun and pyschogeography? You think that all those hours on the camino, alone and aloof, have given her
too much time to think? To analyse and concoct geographical fairy tales? Who’s
to say you’re wrong? The ritual, the liturgy, of walking day after day, step
after step after step can do strange things to the psyche – can do even
stranger things to the soul. But who’s to say I don’t want that to happen?
Perhaps, rather than remaining permanently wary and prudent, I might want to throw
caution to the wind; to make a Kierkegaardian leap in to faith. I am the land,
the land is me; what is there to fear but fear itself.
To
follow the yellow arrow is to make that leap into faith: it’s all or nothing,
no time for wavering or pussyfooting around. You can’t follow the arrow
half-heartedly, you have to throw in your lot and trust it to the nth degree, even when it seems to be
leading you astray. The arrow says turn left – you turn left; the arrow says
turn right – you do so without a moment’s hesitation. You’re standing alongside
the CA-185, the road that winds tortuously up from the pretty town of Potes to
the glacial austerity of Fuente Dé. For the tired pilgrim it’s a highway to
hell: BMW drivers sniff pedestrian blood and drive like petrol-head Beelzebubs.
Then you catch sight of the omniscient yellow arrow and it’s like all your
Christmases have come at once.
The
arrow whisks you away from the tedium and banality of the road and, with its
long, elegant digits giving you the come-on, lures you back onto the path, the
not-so-straight and the not-so-narrow. Do not think the yellow arrow will lead
you to self-righteousness; it is deviancy and deviousness personified. It will
take you from Alpha to Omega; eventually, once it’s run out of juice.
The
yellow arrow points up. You follow, cursing at every uphill twist and turn. Gasping
for breath you find yourself badmouthing the arrow and before you know it you’re
both engaged in dialogue which, yesterday, went something like this (believe
me, I’m not making this up):
The yellow arrow:
‘Calm down, Siân Lacey Taylder, there’s no need for that sort of language. Certainly
not from a pilgrim who’s just touched the wood of the One, True Cross[1].’
The pilgrim:
‘I’m tired and I’m hungry and I’m very, very angry. I just want you to take me
to Espinama, with minimal effort and distress.’
The yellow arrow:
‘Then take the road, it’s simple and straightforward; it’ll get you there
before me. Nobody’s making you take this path, nobody’s put a gun to your head
and told you to go walking in Spain. I’m neither demagogue not despot but an
agent of liberation. You follow of your own volition.’
The pilgrim:
‘That’s as well as may be, but can’t you, just now and again, cut me a bit of
slack?’
The yellow arrow:
‘Why should I? You wanted deviance, I’m giving you deviance; you wanted to throw
caution to the wind, I’m blowing a gale to scatter your prudence across the
four corners of the globe. But you have to believe.’
The
pilgrim curses under her breath. ‘What’s that?’ asks the yellow arrow. ‘You
heard’, she replies. Strange how, from that moment on, for the last three
kilometres through the woods and alongside the Rio Deva, the arrow is suddenly
absent and I feel like a spurned lover; I traipse into Espinama in a fug of
guilt and shame. Tomorrow I’ll have to find the arrow again, I need it to take
me over the mountains; without it I am lost.
I
hate the arrow, I love the arrow, like pleasure and pain they’re just extremes
of the same emotion. And boy, do we love extremes? Pain and pleasure, white and
black, there’s nothing that lies in between.
Well, nothing interesting,
anyway.
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