all over the place

For this story, we’re going to jump back about 24 hours before I met Dick (stop here and read my previous post if you haven’t. Then come back.) A different person was about to enter my life and change it.

You know what, while we’re at it, let’s jump back to before I left for Spain. My mom pleaded with me to join a “Camigas” Facebook group she’d found which connected women on the Camino. It even had a spreadsheet laying out peoples’ start dates so they could book a buddy. My intention was to go at this solo, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to enter my info. I also posted in the group that I was a 21-year-old first-timer, just in case anyone had advice.

Someone with an unforgettable name replied they were about my age and starting the same day. I liked her message, said I’d keep an eye out and moved on. It wasn’t likely we’d meet, even on purpose.

But now it was May 23, 2019. I’d successfully made it to Bayonne, France. One stop before the Camino starting point: Saint Jean Pied de Port.

I leaned on the train station railing, my idle thoughts mingling with the dainty drone of French voices. But the familiar twang of an American voice broke my reverie.

“Hi, I’m Hattie, from Colorado,” she was introducing herself to a group of pilgrims nearby. (Pilgrims are anyone walking the Camino. I’ll go into detail on what the Camino actually is later. Why not now? Because what is this blog if not all over the place?)

Something clicked in my brain and before I could stop myself I blurted out:

“Are you Hatteras Dunton?”

She looked at me, startled. Can’t say I blame her.

“I’m so sorry, I know it’s probably really weird to have a stranger address you by your full name before you’ve introduced yourself, but are you by chance the Hatteras Dunton from the Camigas Facebook group?” If it wasn’t her, this was about to be a really awkward train ride.

One not-so-awkward hour later, we parted ways. She’d booked a hostel at the opposite end of town from mine. We didn’t make plans to meet again.

I know this sounds like it’s going downhill, but just stick with me.

It was in fact only uphill from here. I ran into her the next day as I was trudging up a sticky slope. You could say it only took her one trip to fall for me (platonically), because it was when she was facedown in the mud and I was laughing at her that we silently decided we were going to be friends.

The beginning of our friendship was an accelerated slow burn. We walked together every day from that point forward, talking for hours, as if we’d run out of them. It took us two weeks to become inseparable, and then we had to separate.

Before we did, a hell of a lot happened.

I first want to explain something about the Camino. It’s not magical in the sense that it’ll grant you lifelong friendship and romance as long as you buy the ticket. But it distills down life’s daily purpose to four things: eating, sleeping, breathing and walking. The simplicity, if you can lean into it, opens you up to human connection in its most organic form. Good things are inevitable after that.

Here are some of those things, as they happened to me and Hattie. Each one deserves its own blog post, honestly, but I’ll give you the highlights:

Our second night, we stayed up until two a.m. drinking half a dozen bottles of wine with six strangers (you can do the math). I adopted a Swedish couple as my Camino ‘ma’ and ‘pa.’ After one particularly grueling day, Hattie and I took a nap in a sunny cathedral cloister and then roused the priest to let us inside as he lounged at the bar across the street. Neither of us are particularly religious, but sometimes we just needed to stare at Jesus.

We could have a cerveza con limón any time of day (also known as a radler) as long as we’d already imbibed in our first café con leche that morning.

One day, I changed a tampon on the side of the road on our walk into Burgos, then got food poisoning from a questionable Spanish omelet and finished the night with candy for dinner. Hattie and I became addicted to sour sandía gummy candy and were morally obligated to find a candy store in every town we reached. Another time, we filled our water bottles with wine spouting from a fountain at a famed mountainside monastery and got a little tipsy at 9 a.m. If you’re judging at this point, no need. “No vino no Camino” is a ubiquitous motto on this trek.

We tried saving a little change one night and ended up rooming with 50 old, hairy Italian men. And on one of our final days, after we said goodbye to all of the other friends we’d made along that stretch and walked a seemingly endless 30 km, we checked into our hostel and settled into two seats at its bungalow-style bar to commiserate the close of a cherished chapter. Then we watched incredulously as all of our friends arrived, serendipitously, one after the other.

The friends you meet on trips like this — most of them you’ll never see again. That’s the beauty of it, though. Because the bond forms anyway.

If you’re really lucky, like me, some of those bonds might endure. Hattie and I are still friends. We recently hiked the Inka trek together and are planning a backpacking trip in Wyoming later this year.

Our lives are entirely different, and we live them approximately 1,200 miles apart most of the time.

But here’s the secret: you don’t have to look for true friends. They’ll find you if you’re out there finding yourself.