or seven days we continued walking through the Pyrenees, climbing and descending the mountains, and each evening, as the rays of the sun reflected from the tallest peaks, Petrus had me perform the Seed Exercise. On the third day of our trek, we passed a cement marker, painted yellow, indicating that we had crossed the frontier; from then on we would be walking through Spain. Little by little, Petrus began to reveal some things about his private life; I learned that he was Italian and that he worked in industrial design.*

I asked him whether he was worried about the many things he had been forced to abandon in order to guide a pilgrim in search of his sword.

* It has been said that there is no such thing as coincidence in this world, and the following story confirms the truth of this assertion once again. One afternoon, I was leafing through some magazines in the lobby of the hotel where I was staying in Madrid, when I noticed a piece about the Prince of Asturias Prize; a Brazilian journalist, Robert Marinho, had been one of the prize winners. A closer study of the photograph of those at the awards dinner startled me, though. At one of the tables, elegantly dressed in his tuxedo, was Petrus, described in the caption as one of the most famous European designers of the moment.

Let me explain something to you, he answered. I am not guiding you to your sword. It is your job, solely and exclusively, to find it. I am here to lead you along the Road to Santiago and to teach you the RAM prac- tices. How you apply this to your search for your sword is your problem.

But you didnt answer my question.

When you travel, you experience, in a very practical way, the act of rebirth. You confront completely new situa- tions, the day passes more slowly, and on most journeys you dont even understand the language the people speak. So you are like a child just out of the womb. You begin to be more accessible to others because they may be able to help you in difficult situations. And you accept any small favor from the gods with great delight, as if it were an episode you would remember for the rest of your life.

At the same time, since all things are new, you see only the beauty in them, and you feel happy to be alive. Thats why a religious pilgrimage has always been one of the most objective ways of achieving insight. The word peccadillo, which means a small sin, comes from pecus, which means defective foot, a foot that is incapable of walking a road. The way to correct the peccadillo is always to walk forward, adapting oneself to new situa- tions and receiving in return all of the thousands of bless- ings that life generously offers to those who seek them.

So why would you think that I might be worried about a half-dozen projects that I left behind in order to be here with you?

Petrus looked around him, and I followed his eyes. On the uplands of one of the peaks, some goats were grazing. One of them, more daring than the others, stood on an outcropping of a high boulder, and I could not figure out how he had reached that spot or how he would get down. But as I was thinking this, the goat leapt and, alighting in a place I couldnt even see, rejoined his companions. Everything in our surrounds reflected an uneasy peace, the peace of a world that was still in the process of growing and being created a world that seemed to know that, in order to grow, it had to continue moving along, always moving along. Great earthquakes and killer storms might make nature seem cruel, but I could see that these were just the vicissitudes of being on the road. Nature itself journeyed, seeking illumination.

I am very glad to be here, said Petrus, because the work I did not finish is not important and the work I will be able to do after I get back will be so much better.

When I had read the works of Carlos Castaneda, I had wanted very much to meet the old medicine man, Don Juan. Watching Petrus look at the mountain, I felt that I was with someone very much like him.

On the afternoon of the seventh day, after having passed through some pine woods, we reached the top of a mountain. There, Charlemagne had said his prayers for the first time on Spanish soil, and now an ancient monument urged in Latin that all who passed by should say a Salve Regina. We both did as the

monument asked. Then Petrus had me do the Seed Exercise for the last time.

There was a strong wind, and it was cold, I argued that it was still early at the latest, it was only three in the afternoon but he told me not to talk about it, just do exactly as he ordered.

I knelt on the ground and began to perform the exercise. Everything went as usual until the moment when I extended my arms and began to imagine the sun. When I reached that point, with the gigantic sun shining there in front of me, I felt myself entering into a state of ecstasy. My memories of human life began slowly to dim, and I was no longer doing an exercise: I had become a tree. I was happy about this. The sun shone and revolved, which had never happened before. I remained there, my branches extended, my leaves trembling in the wind, not wanting ever to change my position until something touched me, and everything went dark for a fraction of a second.

I immediately opened my eyes. Petrus had slapped me across the face and was holding me by the shoulders. Dont lose sight of your objective! he said, enraged. Dont forget that you still have a great deal to learn

before you find your sword! I sat down on the ground, shivering in the cold wind. Does that always happen? I asked. Almost always, he said. Mainly with people like

you, who are fascinated by details and forget what they are after.

Petrus took a sweater from his knapsack and put it on. I put my overshirt on, covering my I LOVE NY T- shirt. I would never have imagined that in the hottest summer of the decade, according to the newspapers, it could be so cold. The two shirts helped to cut the wind, but I asked Petrus if we couldnt move along more quickly so that I could warm up.

The Road now made for an easy descent. I thought that the extreme cold I had experienced was due to the fact that we had eaten very frugally, just fish and the fruits of the forest.*

Petrus said that it wasnt the lack of food and explained that it was cold because we had reached the highest point in the range of mountains.

We had not gone more than five hundred meters when, at a curve in the Road, the scene changed com- pletely. A tremendous, rolling plain extended into the distance. And to the left, on the Road down, less than two hundred meters away, a beautiful little village awaited us with its chimneys smoking.

I began to walk faster, but Petrus held me back.

I think that this is a good time to teach you the second RAM practice, he said, sitting down on the ground and indicating that I should do the same.

I was irritated, but I did as he asked. The sight of the

* There is a red fruit whose name I do not know, but just the sight of it today makes me nauseated from having eaten so much of it while walking through the Pyrenees.

small village with its inviting chimney smoke had really upset me. Suddenly I realized that we had been out in the woods for a week; we had seen no one and had been either sleeping on the ground or walking throughout the day. I had run out of cigarettes, so I had been smoking the horrible roller tobacco that Petrus used. Sleeping in a sleeping bag and eating unseasoned fish were things that I had loved when I was twenty, but here on the Road to Santiago, they were sacrifices. I waited impatiently for Petrus to finish rolling his cigarette, while I thought about the warmth of a glass of wine in the bar I could see less than five minutes down the Road.

Petrus, bundled up in his sweater, was relaxed and looked out over the immense plain.

What do you think about this crossing of the Pyrenees? he asked, after a while.

Very nice, I answered, not wanting to prolong the conversation.

It must have been nice, because it took us six days to go a distance we could have gone in one.

I could not believe what he was saying. He pulled out the map and showed me the distance: seventeen kilometers. Even walking at a slow pace because of the ups and downs, the Road could have been hiked in six hours.

You are so concerned about finding your sword that you forgot the most important thing: you have to get there. Looking only for Santiago which you cant see from here, in any case you didnt see that we passed

by certain places four or five times, approaching them from different angles.

Now that Petrus mentioned it, I began to realize that Mount Itchasheguy the highest peak in the region had sometimes been to my right and sometimes to my left. Although I had noticed this, I had not drawn the only possible conclusion: that we had gone back and forth many times.

All I did was to follow different routes, using the paths made through the woods by the smugglers. But it was your responsibility to have seen that. This hap- pened because the process of moving along did not exist for you. The only thing that existed was your desire to arrive at your goal.

Well, what if I had noticed?

We would have taken seven days anyway, because that is what the RAM practices call for. But at least you would have approached the Pyrenees in a different way.

I was so surprised that I forgot about the village and the temperature.

When you are moving toward an objective, said Petrus, It is very important to pay attention to the road. It is the road that teaches us the best way to get there, and the road enriches us as we walk its length. You can compare it to a sexual relationship: the caresses of fore- play determine the intensity of the orgasm. Everyone knows that.

And it is the same thing when you have an objective in your life. It will turn out to be better or worse

depending on the route you choose to reach it and the way you negotiate that route. Thats why the second RAM practice is so important; it extracts from what we are used to seeing every day the secrets that because of our routine, we never see.

And then Petrus taught me the Speed Exercise.

In the city, amid all the things we have to do every day, the exercise should be done for twenty minutes. But since we are on the Strange Road to Santiago, we should wait an hour before getting to the village.

The cold about which I had already forgotten returned, and I looked at Petrus with desperation. But he paid no attention; he got up, grabbed his knapsack, and began to walk the two hundred meters to the vil- lage with an exasperating slowness. At first, I looked only in the direction of the tavern, a small, ancient, two- story building with a wooden sign hanging above the door. We were so close that I could even read the year when the tavern had been built: 1652. We were moving, but it seemed as if we had not left our original spot. Petrus placed one foot in front of the other very slowly, and I did the same. I took my watch from my knapsack and strapped it to my wrist.

Its going to be worse that way, he said, because time isnt something that always proceeds at the same pace. It is we who determine how quickly time passes.

I began to look at my watch every minute and found that he was right. The more I looked at it, the more slowly the minutes passed. I decided to take his advice,