Day 16: Rest Day in Burgos - Part Two

My second rest day in Burgos and I am completely relaxed and able to truly enjoy where I am. No pilgrims rustling their plastic bags at 0500 or pilgrim rush hour for the first hour out as people jostle to pass each other ignoring the spectacular sunrise. There are aspects of this hike that don't sit well with me. It is definitely not the Appalachian Trail, or even the Mason Dixon Trail!

Burgos Cathedral, interior courtyard 

My goal for today was to attend Pilgrim Mass in the morning, take a tour of the cathedral, and to climb the hill to the Burgos Castille ruins. I headed to mass as the eight o'clock bells tolled and met again a beggar at the door of the chapel. People bustled past her, hauling their backpacks in so as to make a quick escape after service. There are a few beggars here, those holding pictures of their needs - a surgery, food, a home. I bent down to drop my change in her beggars bowl and to touch her hand. Our eyes met and she said Gracias three times. "If you cannot find Christ in the beggar at the church door, " said St. John Chrysostom, "Then surely you will not find Him in the chalice."
The mass went very fast. I stayed for the longer one at ten. This time there were the readings, the Gospel, and a homily.  I took communion and listened as the throaty old pipe organ came to life, rumbling through the church pews. I stayed a while longer and prayed for a friend, dogs, and a family who has lost their grandmother. Then I headed out into the square just in time to be practically thrown off my feet by the noon bells! Nothing can possibly prepare you for this fifteen minutes of giant bells doing somersaults in their tower, spinning over and over on their axles. People stopped and stared up. Children clasped their hands to their ears. Dogs barked and howled!

So. Many. Domes.

I got my ticket for the cathedral tour and received my handy-dandy telephone things that featured a push pad of numbers that you could dial at each stop. At first the British narrator was interesting at stops 1-8. Chapel after chapel, dome after dome, sacristy then more sacristy.

Baroque and more baroque and sleepy.

Then for stops 9-30 something the voice changed to a sleepy lady Brit. She sounded like a sleep tape I once used. Oy. Every statue I looked at, holding her drifty voice to my ear, I yawned at. Gold-guilded retablos, gold-guilded throne things, gold-guilded everything. Oh the lavishness of it all as people begged at the doors. I found a handy bucket to toss my phone thing in and went for a safari. I decided to look for birds and animals in the artwork. It became a game I really enjoyed. Wide awake!

Griffons on the Golden Stairs.

Beloved terrier at a Queen's feet.

I noticed that mythical animals were given the job of guarding openings like doors, stairs, and passageways. Dragons and griffons perched high up. Lions and dogs laid at the feet of alabaster death bed figures. Dogs outnumbered lions. But there was a bear.

A hound at the feet of a knight.

A war dog at the foot of a king.

An eagle kisses a dragon - or maybe bites it?

Griffon guards the door to the cloister walk.

Peacocks display atop a painted plaster column. 

A pig holding a grape leaf.

I wandered round and round the cathedral looking for animals as tourists took hundreds of pictures of domes, altars, chapels named for every benefactor in Burgos since it was a Roman temple. I came across domestic animals in carvings and paintings. St. James was transformed from pilgrim to Slayer if Moors riding his glorious Castilian war horse. Another legend to contend with.

Manger scenes included cattle and donkeys. Joseph looks tired!

Donkey and cow drink from a watering trough.

From the Reconquest, the Legend of St. James the Moorslayer 

Castilian war horse prized for its courage in battle .

A large gallery contained a hundred large paintings of various Biblical scenes but I kept my eye open for how creatures were portrayed. Most of the paintings showed all the different ways to crucify a man, or skin him alive, or pierce him with forks and arrows. There was so much graphic tortured and death among the scenes of Christ's death and the death of martyred saints that my stomach was turning. Oh, religion. Why? But there were things with wings as well.

Holy Spirit descends as a white dove.

White dove scenes usually don't include torture.

St. Martin and the birds.

My favorite bird spotting in the gallery was of St. Martin for whom our migrating martins are named. This saint's legend is complex but in a nutshell, he had rejected the life of a warrior for that of a wandering cleric, and in so doing, found ways to convert Druids and other pagan people to Christianity by explaining Christ's lessons through nature parables that combined tribal beliefs about death and rebirth. He was a very humble man who found friendship with those that the Church scorned and persecuted. The birds have been associated with his feast day and it us said that as he lay dying, great clouds of migrating swifts, swallows, martins, and nighthawks swirled above him to lift his soul to heaven.

Mark and Bell.

I left the cathedral and began my walk up to the castle ruins, but didn't get far when I spotted a pilgrim and his dog. If course I had to go over and ask to pet her. Mark was from Toronto, on his way to Santiago with his wife meeting him every night at a casa rural. He explained that the dog began to follow him a week ago. "I made the mistake of feeding her, " he said. "She waits each morning for me to come out of the house. One day my wife gave her a ride back to the village she came from, but no one claimed her. We're trying to figure out how to bring her home. We've named her Bell."

Bell.

Day 15: Rest in Burgos - Part One

Burgos offered me a day of rest and ease, that helped immensely with persistent blisters that have been bothering me since the big rainstorm coming in to Zubiri a long while ago. Every morning I cut my gauze, apply ointment, tape everything up and walk fifteen to twenty miles. Every afternoon I pull the whole mess off, shower, sit in the sun and let my aching feet dry in the sun. Today, though, I just got up, put in my walking sandals with a nice cushy pair of socks and walked around Burgos without my backpack. I felt like skipping!

Museum of Human Evolution 

First stop, top of my list, was the Mussolini de la Evolucion Humana where I roamed for hours among the displays of the complex cave systems of Atapuerca and learned about the remarkable finds made there. The large, modern museum and research complex stands facing the large, Gothic cathedral across the river. Quite a paradox of positioning, although today's Pope Francis would most likely celebrate the view: science and faith as complementary books of the story of man.

Four floors of evolution - a Darwinian's dream!

I was imagining St. Jerome, the most learned of the early Latin Fathers, strolling the floors and smiling. He saw no conflict between the Greek system of scientific thought and natural history and his faith. When I entered the second floor that featured Darwin's home study, his cabin aboard the Beagle, and a vast collection of his writings on the mechanics of evolution, I imagined St. Jerome having a cuppa with Charles and getting on well over things like natural selection, genetic sequencing, and evolutionary trees.

Fantastic, life-size wall murals of paleolithic fauna of Iberia. 

Many of these species are found in fossil abundance in Atapuerca.

I am forever grateful to my high school biology teacher, Terry Leef, who was able to offer an AP course in Evolutionary Biology at our Catholic High school.  He had us reading scientific journals, complicated theory, and debating the naysayers long before the popular anti-science religious movement of conservative Bible belt politics. That was a long time ago, but it instilled in me a real love of scientific argument and the spirit of discovery that Atapuerca reignited while on my walk.

A new ancestor - Homo antecessor

Miles of caves contain ages of artwork that spans 50,000 years of occupation 

H. antecessor and child stroll Burgos

The history of humankind in Spain is rooted in tribalism and cultural identity that even today marks the influence of Neanderthal man, who introduced art, music, reverence of the dead, and seasonal ceremony. There is theory to suggest that the appearance of H. sapiens, coming from our long trek up through Africa, may have completed with our Neanderthal cousins of the north, fought them, or intermarried with them. DNA reveals as much. But researchers in the Atapuerca basin know that they lived near each other, camps sometimes only a few miles apart.

St. Jerome, scientific scholar of the Church, Cathedral collection.

From the blending of species, new cultures emerged. Over tens of thousands of years, the Iberian tribes fathered the clans of early Celt-Iberians and the wild Basques, people of the sea and the mountains. The Moors swept north and brought their traditions of irrigation, horticulture, astronomy and science, the building arts, and medicine. Indo-Asian tribes arrived from the East and brought agriculture. It took the Romans 200 years to conquer Spain, and though they occupied the Iberian Peninsula for 800 years, the fierce tribes of the north and south held out against them and traditions, languages, music, and independence endure.