The day before, the wind was at our backs. It blew dust past our legs to mock our speed. It was the kind of day that required more introspection because an inspection of the landscape revealed mostly empty fields, harvests being weeks past.

A field of sugar beets offered some greenery for our eyes until it was replaced with sticks of harvested sunflower plants, transitioning to wheat. Our path was rocky, so when the wheat field revealed a farmer’s softer, flattened trough, we took it.

Then a pilgrim ahead of us left the harvested field, returning to the rocks. Nancy and I wondered if we should follow, but we persisted for lengths sufficient to host two soccer fields. Our feet thanked us for the comfort. We were feeling great.

We could still hear the wind flowing through the poplars. If I reported that the glowing leaves “rustled,” the picture would be underwhelming. In fact, the friction of wind against leaves delivered the sound of crashing waves — stormy-day surf when it is too dangerous to swim. The wind softened the sun, mitigating all the predictions of a guide book for sweltering heat.

Eventually we left the wheat field, returning to the rocky path, where directions changed — whether the wind or the path, I cannot be sure. However, the wind was still carefully poised as an artist, painting images of ice cream cones on our calves with dust — a funnel shape of caked-on makeup that I was sad to remove in the shower to come.

My introspection that day focused on the power of human will — the mind over the body to persist against fatigue, pain, and distance. Faith can move mountains. Nancy and I were walking triumphant. Still no blisters, and we would be approaching our half-way mark on the Camino de Santiago in just a few days. Nancy told me she thought, “I could walk forever.”

Half-way on our day’s walk, we passed an ancient “hospital,” an ancient resting and healing site for pilgrims headed to Santiago in the twelfth century, but now maintained by an Italian confraternity. For me, it was the clarion for a nearby café and albergue, where, by chance, our friends were sitting down for a CocaCola Zero. Nancy and I organized a group table. When even more friends came, I rose to arrange a larger array of seating. Thanks to some Spanish, corporate brewers, a stash of red, vinyl chairs was waiting behind me.

Stacked five high, the faded, red chairs welcomed my lift, and I turned to the table only to be met by a metal stanchion of the albergue’s clothes line, inappropriately placed on the patio. The momentum of my forehead felt the full-force impact of tempered, rusted steel.

I fell to my knees. Thin blood covered my hands — crazy rushing blood.

The crash startled the crowd on the patio — not quite a train wreck, but a commotion sufficient for stories to tell.

Nancy and others ushered me to a restroom, where I was offered every conceivable remedy. Antiseptic, bandages, pain relievers, alcohol wipes. I took some antiseptic and bandages. The blood was greater than the end result. I am sure I will leave Spain with a shell-shaped scar on my forehead, because I am loath to get a tattoo — anywhere.

A night’s sleep prepared us for another day of the same — few ruins and few mountains. Leaving before dawn, however, provided us with a silhouette of an old church, some yellow flowers, and a wonderful grove of trees.

Whereas the wind was our friend the day before, it was biting cold now. Would that I had worn pants. Gloves would have been appropriate. Gusts just pushed the bitter cold beneath our packs. We stopped at a rest area where hot chocolate warmed Nancy’s hands and those of our friends. I opted for nothing, wandering, instead, about the park so my hips would not tighten up in pain if they became cold.

We moved forward. More white dust was in store on the stoney road. My pace pushed me ahead of Nancy but I looked back to ensure she was in sight. Eventually I saw she was in pain. Behind some unseen curve, someone offered her an adhesive to warm her painful shin.

With each step, her pain persisted. We stopped occasionally so I could push on her leg here and there to relive the hurt, but the relief was temporary. For another three-plus miles, she pressed on, limping in pain.

On the final course to our destination where medical assistance would be available, a Spanish civil servant on his own pilgrimage advised medical treatment for Nancy because he had been through the same pain. If pills don’t work, the surgery is simple, he predicted.

I worried.

I was quiet.

How would I get Nancy to Barcelona or Leon for the best treatment. Surgery?

The health center in Carrion would not open until 6 p.m. Maybe their siestas were taking precedence. For three hours we waited until a trauma nurse could open his iPhone for a series of translations and a diagnosis, by way of a physician in a traditional white coat.

We fumbled about with the paperwork and a mandatory payment of seventy-five euros to proceed.

Shins splints? No. Stress fracture? No. But perhaps tendinitis, yes!

At that point, I left Nancy to be prompt for a 6:30 haircut appointment, feeling guilty that I had left her in literal dark tunnel of medical ambiguity.

When I entered the barber shop, a customer asked me how I had been doing. He had been a spectator to the accident on the patio. News of the train wreck had been spreading from pilgrim to pilgrim. Had anyone photographed the stream of blood from the clothes lines to the restroom? Was the blood stream going viral? I was a small freak show in a tiny town.

Nancy and I agreed to meet between the our two store fronts. When I came back on the path with shorter hair, I saw her leg plumped with bandages and her painful limp.

The doctor had bandaged up her entire right leg. In addition, the physician had torn a piece of copy paper, stamped it, and offered Nancy a prescription.

Worse, the doc insisted on two to three days of rest, meaning Nancy would be taking a taxi to our next destination.

Nancy still limps, but she was the courageous pilgrim who listened to her body and personally arranged the logistics to get to the next city for recuperation. More encouragement came from a six-year old granddaughter who left a video message saying, “I hope you have a little rest and I hope you don’t walk for a few days. . . . I love you Grammy. I hope you have a GREAT day.”

She would.

Thereafter, I walked alone, missed Nancy, and found her in room 211, asking for a bottle of water.

The walk had once again been dusty, this time without wind. Behind my back was no longer a wind, but a trail of abandoned pride. Just when you think you can do anything, life humbles you and lets you know your place.