23/09/2025 - From DNA, or past lives themselves.

I don’t really know what to write today. If I’m honest, I don’t even feel the desire. I’m not yet at the middle point of this trip, and it starts to feel endless. Friday is my anchor; that’s when I’ll cross the halfway mark. Past the middle I can begin to imagine the end, and I need the end to exist somewhere ahead of me. It will, of course, just a matter of weeks, but I’ve never experienced anything quite like this before: the dormitories, the constant movement, the instability of it all. It’s heavy. I have to trust, and keep walking.

Now that my little wave of complaining has rolled through, I can tell you about the beauty that also touched me today. I woke up later than usual because yesterday morning was too cold. Not just chilly, a 15-degree plunge that froze the ground, numbed my hands, and turned my breath to mist. For a moment I felt like I was back in Verbier at the start of winter, mad at myself for being so poorly equipped. I’m waiting to reach a big city soon, to buy a proper sweater and gloves for my favorite early mornings. But when the sun rises, warmth returns and everything softens again.

But before today began, I just remembered I have to tell you about last night. I’d been lucky enough to get a bottom bunk and, until 7pm, I was alone. Bliss, fewer movements above me, more chance for deep rest. The kind of little comfort I enjoy while leaving in dorms. Then a young British woman arrived and was placed in the bed above mine. For some reason, the combination of her height and weight triggered an irrational fear in me. All night I kept waking with my stomach knotted, convinced she might crash through the slats, even though I knew it was absurd. I even checked on ChatGPT beforehand to see how much weight those beds could carry. I knew full well they hold large men every night, and she wasn’t anywhere near 200 kilos. Still, the fear gripped me at the throat. It was visceral, and completely irrational, I am aware of it.

Usually I can name my fears, look them in the eye, and they dissolve. This one didn’t. Maybe it's going to sound farfetched to you, but the only explanation that resonates right now is some old echo, as if I’d once been buried alive. As a child I used to overreact whenever my sister choked or my father coughed too hard. I couldn’t stand it. When I imagine this buried-alive scenario, it feels familiar in my body. Does it sound insane to you? Have you ever felt so viscerally triggered by something which doesn't adds-up that there's no rational explanation?

Two nights ago, I also watched Luc Besson’s Dracula (incredible btw), which weaves reincarnation through a love so strong that not even death can sever it. Maybe my mind reached for a story to explain the panic. Maybe it was a clue instead. The origin doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the night opened a door. It reminded me how much we carry unconsciously, from childhood, from our teenage years, from DNA and our lineage, or past lives themselves.

I am not claiming that I believe in reincarnation, I cannot prove it, cannot certify its existence. I can only attest of it as a possibility. If I let it exists within me, I definitely feel like some eras, places, even people in my life feel strangely familiar. And I like to play with it sometimes.

This thought was still circling when I had my first encounter of the day. I was sipping coffee near the albergue when two women and a man sat at the next table. We started chatting in Spanish about the Camino. They’d already walked ten kilometers. One was from Bolivia, the two other from Mexico. Instantly I felt that click. I’ve always been drawn more to South American Spanish culture than to Spain itself, though I never put it into words until now. There’s something indigenous there that feels like home. We drifted into science and holistic approaches.

One of the women said it was the first time she’d spoken about her ability to read the Akashic Records (said to be an energetic library of every soul’s memories, past, present, and potential futures) since starting the Camino three weeks ago. A small, fleeting moment, but a clue dropped on my path once again.

My second encounter came later as I walked alone, music in my ears, focused on remaining present, not as the mind but as the observer behind it. I’d stopped to meditate at the top of a hill just before entering the Meseta for real, slipping into a near-trance where every stray thought was gently pulled back to the now. That’s where I met Gérard, or Gé, as he calls himself. A man in his sixties, with Indian or Sri Lankan roots perhaps, and a beautiful white beard. Open, social, relaxed, direct, the kind who slides into a conversation as if it were always happening. At first I felt slightly intruded upon, then realized he was French and relaxed instantly. There’s an ease in speaking French that I love, a mutual understanding that needs no performance, no energy spent.

He was a big talker, full of adventures, reckless in the way my father can be. I liked him. But when I asked about his children, the conversation shifted. He told me they no longer speak to him because he’d had an affair outside a marriage already hanging by a thread. He spoke of his mistress with bitterness, insulting her, refusing accountability, fishing for my validation. I didn’t give it. Calmly but firmly, I cut through his explanations, confronting him with his own actions. I told him to stop playing the victim, to act like a man. That what he had sought, passion, intensity, intimacy, could have been found with his wife by meeting her anew, by being vulnerable, by going deeper instead of hiding behind secrets.

I was speaking to a stranger as if I’d known him forever. By the end he hugged me, saying I was wise beyond my age and had saved him ten years of therapy and asking me to be his life coach. Even I was surprised at the clarity and composure that flowed through me.

My third encounter of the day came at noon, when I reached the next albergue and went straight to lunch. No tables were free. “Ragazza, aqui!” someone called. I turned and saw the old Italian man I’d met the night before. I sat to eat with him and we spoke in a gentle mix of Italian, Spanish, and English, surprisingly smooth. I’ve never felt close to either of my grandfathers, but after that meal I felt close to him. Around eighty-five, walking the Camino alone, still full of youth in his eyes. He told me about climbing the Dolomites with his wife, traveling Europe together, until she had a car accident and lost the ability to walk.

Sixty years married, and he stayed, even though it meant no children, fewer adventures, a narrower life. He devoted himself to caring for her because he had promised. Listening filled my heart. Proof, alive in front of me, that the kind of love I’ve been writing about exists.

Looking back, I see how the whole day was stitched with the same thread. The night pressed on my chest like an old memory, a fear that belonged to another time. In the morning, strangers spoke of the Akashic Records as if to remind me that not everything we carry can be explained by logic. Then Gé arrived, pushing me to step into my own authority, as though we had met long before in another chapter of existence. And the Italian man, with his sixty years of love and his quiet devotion, felt like a messenger from another lifetime, proof that what binds us does not unravel with time.

Perhaps all of it was coincidence, just fragments of a long walk. Or perhaps it was a glimpse into how the soul keeps meeting itself, in fears, in lessons, in love, across lives and across paths.

With love, Loune.