Travel Destinations

In 1994, my life was a lot different than it is now. I was young, daring, and challenging all comers to live grander than I. A backpack held any possession of value to me, and I slept with it tied to my arm for that reason. Had I not, I might still be in Pamplona, Spain.

~

“No man is an island entire of itself; every man

is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;

if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe

is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as

well as any manner of thy friends or of thine

own were; any man’s death diminishes me,

because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom

the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

~ John Donne

The sun shown through the trees on the horizon turning the morning sky a blood-red. I was cold, tired, and a bit dizzy as I labored to focus on the strange looking man kneeling over me. The stranger, I soon realized, was rummaging through the pockets of my worn trousers. His tattered jacket brushed against the side of my face as I laughed aloud knowing there was nothing to be found in them. I kneed the thief in the chest and he sprinted away. “Hijo de puta!” I shouted as he disappeared in the crowd.

As I lay staring at the sky above me, it took me a few moments to gather my thoughts. Suddenly I remembered the young man I took care of the previous night. I looked around me, but he was gone. Presumably, he had skipped with the clothes we had given him. He was cold and shaking, mumbling ominously about the surrounding festival. I was certain he was high; alcohol wasn’t responsible for where he was. He broke it down with remarkable focus. The bars. The townspeople. The eyes that stared him down, hunted him, almost took him. His crazed state made his ramblings seem poetic.

Toll…

The deep sound of a large bell echoed across the land around me. I noticed flocks of people moving playfully toward what appeared to be a bustling metropolis. Perhaps a large town.

Toll…

The bulls! My head began to clear and I remembered where I was.

“Pamplona,” I muttered to myself as I mentally checked off my location. The festival of festivals. San Fermines. To gringos, it’s known as the “Running of the Bulls”.

Toll…

I arrived in Pamplona the day before, and native friends met and took care of me. The festival itself was a sight to behold. Traditional music filled the air as people bounded about merrily. Upon my arrival on an overnight train from Switzerland, I was given the festival attire of white pants, white shirt, and red handkerchief by a family whose daughter was a friend from Salamanca, from where I’d left to travel weeks before. Susana and her family urged me not to run, but I had no choice. If I returned home having been to the famous festival and not been brave enough to be chased through the streets by a few tons of rampaging beef willfully, I would be tossed about the small town and regarded as a coward.

So there I was, ready to fulfill one of the goals I had written down when I was sixteen. I was ready to run with the bulls.

The festival of San Fermines takes place each year during the first full week of July. It celebrates Saint Fermin, the patron saint of Pamplona. One of the events of the week, and certainly the most famous one, takes place each morning at 8:00 am when a group of around ten bulls is let loose in the street while civilians run for their lives. This tradition led me to the Basque Country, and to this Pyrenees Mountain town that is relatively quiet during any other week of year.

Toll…

I shook my head clear as I just started to put things together. The tolling bells indicated that the time was near. All those in the streets not planning to run were to be leaving the streets, while anyone planning to run needed to start gathering along the route. I labored to my feet and struggled toward the town square. Droves of people were funneling in that general direction, so I wasn’t worried about getting lost. A stranger in the park the night before told me that once the bells start tolling, you have fifteen minutes to get off the street or on it. It was your choice.

I slept in the park to avoid running into Susana’s family. They weren’t thrilled at the idea of a tourist running – not so much as a statement of local pride, but more a subject of safety. They had seen too many drunken gringos over the years carried off those streets by the emergency staff. Outwardly, I beamed with confidence, assuring them I knew what I was doing, that my wits would be about me, I wouldn’t be drinking, and that I was actually quite fast. I’ll never forget the condescending look on Susana’s grandfather’s face when he looked me up and down and said, “Running fast here just means that you’ll hit the cobblestone harder when you fall.” It sounded a lot scarier in Spanish.

Toll…

The people around me began running, so I ran right along with them. As I approached the main square, a crowd had formed around an obelisk rising twenty-five or so feet above them. I stopped to rest and to satisfy my curiosity about the activity around the statue. A haunting chant rose from the crowd as they rhythmically pumped their outstretched hands toward a man that had climbed to the summit. Each hand gripped a rolled up newspaper that they waved wildly to the rhythm of a song I’d never heard before that day. They seemed to be coaxing the man to do something. But what?

The bells began to toll one immediately after another, and the crowd responded by thrusting their newspapers faster to the beat of the clanging. Just then, in what seemed like a momentary lapse of sanity, the man succumbed to the chants and dove headfirst into the crowd several feet below him.

Toll…Toll…Toll…

I had to move as time was short. I didn’t have a chance to see if the jumper was ok. Instead, I followed what I assumed was a pack of runners past the square and into the surrounding streets. It relieved me to find that my new comrades seemed to have the same battle plan that I did – be the first ones out.

After a few short jogs down cobblestone alleyways, we made it to the relative front of hundreds of people. If you aren’t in the street by 7:50 am, you can’t run. Conversely, if you’re in the street at that time and don’t intend to run, you’re out of luck. The bells are used as a warning for both the runners and the spectators.

Situated at what appeared to be the starting point, I took the opportunity to study my surroundings. La Policia had formed a hand-in-hand human wall at the front of the crowd. I seemed to be one of the only sober ones in the bunch, everyone else consumed in an orchestra of laughter, song, and dance. Confetti bounded about caught in the early morning breeze that flowed through the alleyways of the surrounding edifice.

The songs and chants grew louder as I inched my way onto the street. Once inside the barriers, the crowd became suffocating as I shook my arms and legs loose anticipating a grueling run. The police barricade was set up to keep runners back to a certain point, as well as to keep the route clear of any obstruction. I was just on the other side of them. My plan was to start at the front of the pack so as to give myself a head start and an advantage against being trampled and crushed by the other runners – the biggest danger in running during San Fermines. I went over the simple plan in my head for the one-hundredth time: Mind the people first, then the bulls.

Toll…Toll…Toll…

The crowd thickened. Like battle hymns of savage natives, songs filled the air in an eerie chorus of drunken determination. The masses waved the newspaper rolls in every direction as the excitement and tension were balanced at record levels. You could feel it in the air. It was close.

Toll…Toll…Toll…

The bells clanged at a faster rate as the crowd swayed to and fro giving into the forces pushing from all directions.

I returned to my mental checklist. A rocket would signal the start of the run. A second rocket would signal the release of the bulls. An optional third rocket would warn the runners of the breaking up of the bulls from their natural herding movement.

Toll…Toll…Toll…

The bells were faint now, drowned by the roar of the masses. They thrust their newspapers toward the crest of the city, which hung high on the outside wall of the building next to me, casting its shadow over my running mates.

Toll…Toll…Toll…

I thought of all the people in my life, all I had experienced and learned from. Everything that made me who I am was suddenly clear to me as I started to shake. A breeze blew and I felt a chill pass through my body. My heart raced as fast as the bells now and fear kept me sharp in those final moments. Then suddenly, everything was silent. At first I thought something was wrong. And then the crowd moved.

The anticipation of the pending release caused a small surge ahead. The clock said it was time, and the crowd reacted with an almost choreographed step forward. Moments later the police that formed a human rope of clenched hands across the length of the cobblestone street untied their firm hold on one another and ran to the outlining sidewalks opening the pathway for the runners.

I stared at my feet with hyper focus, terrified over constant warnings from locals that the real danger laid between your legs and the pavement. Trip, and you’ll pay with a trampling of Nike shoes rather than hoofed feet. The human mob poses far worse a threat than the bulls ever will. Fall, and you’ll be dragged away by emergency medical personnel before a bull even reaches you.

“Hells Bells” by AC/DC danced in my head – maybe because of the echoing bells, but mostly because I could have easily been in the front row of a crowded arena, the pressure of bodies from every direction nearly lifting me off the ground; the energy palpable. My last thought before I gave way to forward motion was the plan I had concocted hours before while partying in the streets. I would break ahead of the pack in order to control the speed of my advancement down the three-quarter mile route, freeing myself of the possibility of getting caught up in someone else’s footfall and being trampled to death on the streets of a foreign city.

I ducked my right shoulder, extended my right arm to carve my path, and slithered my way forward through the mass of energy and drunken bodies. Each side street was blocked completely by a six-foot barricade providing a very visible running route. As I broke ahead of the rest, the silence was replaced with shouts from the human clusters hanging over and pushed into the side street barricades. The scene on the safe side of those walls was almost as chaotic as the one on my side. Crazed festival fans furiously bounced, waved their newspapers, and smacked the inside of the wall with all the rhythm a drunken mob could muster.

Once clear of the crowd behind me, I had the opportunity to think through my course of action moving forward as I ran a few hundred yards at a brisk pace. There were a few other runners around me, but it seemed that, with no real effort at all, I was distancing myself from the pack. The side street mobs seemed to me yelling obscenities in my general direction and to question what I was doing. Did I take a wrong turn? That was impossible. Do they recognize me as an American invading their sacred traditions? I wasn’t sure about much, only that there was definitely angst emanating from the other side of those walls. I slowed my pace until I was walking. The crowd behind me still hadn’t reached the last bend in the cobblestone path and even though I could hear them, I couldn’t see them.

My Spanish didn’t reach an acceptable level of fluency until the height of a harsh winter in 1996 from the solitude of my frigid apartment in the small town of Ordizia, tucked in a valley in the Pyrenees Mountains. That is a story for another time. But my confusion in this situation and my awareness that I was being targeted for wrongdoing led me to approach an older man in the street walking near me even though my language skills would leave something to be desired.

The conversation was very raw, like trying to communicate with a strange dog you’re coaxing to come to you. I was able, however, to understand the problem. The tradition of San Fermines is sacred to these people, and as with bull fighting, there is much respect for the bull in the tradition of “running”. The idea is not to run ahead and beat the bulls into the stadium without being touched. As I had proven to this point, there’s nothing brave about that. The idea is to run as close to the bulls as possible, placing yourself with them as equals. The ideal run is only feet in front of a rushing bull. Once in front, you extend your hand, still clutching your newspaper, and place it on the top of the bull’s lowered head to demonstrate your proximity, all the while running and trying not to fall, get trampled, and possibly killed. Seeing as I was well ahead of the group and the bulls hadn’t even been released yet, I understood the mob’s displeasure. However, the sudden realization of what I was supposed to be doing didn’t make me feel any more at ease. In fact, I felt like I might throw up. This intensified as I watched a young boy sprint around the corner and jump onto one of the barricades to escape the street. The mob pushed him off the wall and back into the street to finish what he started. My new friend pointed to the boy and got my attention. His words were bone chilling and translated pretty much like this:

“You see, my friend, they will not let you out of your commitment to the bulls. They feel if you’re brave enough to run with them, you’re brave enough to die alongside them.”

I understand…you’re all insane.

Just then a rush of runners rounded the corner and overtook the wide berth of free space I had been enjoying for the last few minutes. I looked ahead and saw that one of the runners had jumped onto a large windowsill on the side of one of the outlying buildings and was looking over the pack to the rear from an elevated position. Without taking any more time to think, I jumped at his side and pulled myself up next to him. They were indeed insane, but I wasn’t about to run into the estadio only to be booed by thousands of spectators. I could stand here safely and wait a little while until I saw the opportunity to drop into a more acceptable position in the field.

After bracing myself for a painful five minutes on the awkward windowsill, the crowd below me thickened and I jumped back into the mass. I was running once again, being careful not to trip over anyone. I found myself watching my feet more than the direction I was heading. This crossed my mind about the same time my worst fear began to take shape.

I was about to find out that a crowd around the next blind corner had tried to pass too many people through too small a space. As I rounded the corner, lost in the rhythm of my pounding feet, I ran right into the herd and came to a complete stop. In a panic, I reacted quickly by spinning around to look for another elevated window to seek refuge until the crowd could funnel through. As soon as my shoulders were square and I was facing the opposite direction I was supposed to be running, I was smothered by the oncoming bodies. They pressed my back against those now behind me with such a force that I was lifted a few inches off the ground. I couldn’t move. I looked at the clear, blue, cloudless sky, and for a moment, it was almost relaxing. I was exerting zero energy in my current predicament, and the sky was so calm compared to the chaos of the streets. It was peaceful, blue, and uninterrupted, until a rocket of fire shot across it.

I was motionless, my arms trapped at my side and my feet off the ground. My only freedom came when one side of the crowd pushed harder than its counterpart pitching me in an endless tug of war motion of which I had no control. Never having actually seen the starting flare, it had occurred to me that maybe they had discontinued their use. That thought jettisoned from my psyche as I envisioned the ten very confused bulls that were now bounding toward me. “At least I’ll see them coming,” I thought, as my body was faced in the wrong direction.

I had to laugh a little at the situation, but it was a very timid, panicked laugh, like the nervous laughter one might experience just before they flip the switch on the electric chair. It was an odd circumstance. Being helpless while cognizant of the repercussions if something isn’t done. I couldn’t move and started to have trouble breathing. And the sky was really blue.

Suddenly, something broke loose and there was a huge surge forward. My feet slid to the ground and my back followed the group as I cascaded backwards and softly landed on the poor guy’s back that I’d been pressed against the last few minutes. He was flattened, and once again, I was staring at the sky. A lot of people fell down with the surge but I was able to push off my fallen friend and get myself spun in the right direction and fully upright, avoiding the certain trample. I’m not sure what happened to him after I used his spine as a springboard.

I felt stronger than I ever had and began throwing people out of my way to regain clearance. I suppose it was that survival instinct that you hear about when someone’s in danger. I was in a sea of fallen bodies and firm footholds were few and far between. I stepped on hands, backs, arms and legs, ever falling forward to regain a safe stride. And the bulls were closer with every one of my efforts.

A few minutes of labored intensity passed as I trudged through a human minefield of fallen bodies, stumbling runners, and drunken daredevils who were waiting like stoic statues for the bulls to challenge their valor. I stumbled to the ground a few times never staying long enough to be consumed by the onslaught, but enough to charge my adrenalin to new levels.  My hands shook and my heart pounded. The anxiety started to consume me just as the screams behind me changed. They became short and more intense and even silenced suddenly in some cases. The scene directly behind me was thick with intensity. There was no mistaking what was happening. They were there.

There are several ways to get hurt or killed at this point. You could injure yourself in a panic, you could fall and get trampled by people, or you can go one on one within this human obstacle course with a raging bull. I was able to avoid all three by finding a rare seam in the crowd. A clear egress that would snap closed any second. I launched for it and regained my positive stride. I never looked behind me and I’m glad I didn’t.

Just then, as I distanced myself from that pit of the fallen, I saw another flare shoot across the sky. I remembered Susana’s family walking me through the dangers of the run and the explanation of the flares and that I needed to pay attention to them (you foolish American). I ran through them in my head again.

The first flare meant the release of the runners, which I never saw. Check. The second flare meant the release of the bulls, after which I was nearly killed. Check. The third flare, they said, was the most important. It doesn’t happen every run, and is meant as a severe caution. It meant that the bulls have broken away from each other. As a group, they move fluently as a mass with a common destination. You can run alongside them without much danger because they won’t stop their forward motion. However, the cobblestones don’t provide a lot of traction for bounding two-ton animals, so they tend to fall as they attempt to turn the sharp corners. Once left behind by the moving herd, they become confused and disoriented. Basically, they stop and charge anything that moves.

My ribcage was the only thing preventing my heart from beating itself out of my chest as I rounded another blind corner along the death chute that last night was a simple cobblestone street. I had never felt adrenaline like that in my twenty years. It was truly a coming of age welcome to what perils your body and mind could endure.

As I banked the right turn, I held the inside corner like a race car driver trying to manage a quick exit to a straightaway so I might distance myself from what had become a shoulder to shoulder chaotic mass. I watched my feet when I could to keep them clear of obstruction, but made sure to extend one hand in front of me when I did so as to push anything blocking my path down or out of my way if I happened upon another obstacle.

Bodies were falling now as their feet got tangled with others. It happened every few seconds it seemed, but there was no time to stop. No time to help. Once on the ground they curled up in a ball accepting the trample, but protecting their head from serious damage. Once you were down, getting up was a challenge. There were simply too many people like me pushing you back. You became a hurdle more than anything else.

As I put the corner behind me, I looked as far along the path as I dared. What I saw shocked me. Rising above the mass in front of me was the regal facade of the Estadio casting a wide shadow that blanketed the road ahead. It lay not 100 yards from me. That doesn’t seem possible.

Even though my adrenaline was spiking like a true San Fermines runner, I hadn’t in truth even seen a bull. I felt their presence; the ripple of their masses pushed me forward in fear. But where were they?

I slowed to a brisk jog and made my way to the left side of the street to further examine my surroundings. What I realized became the source of my fear leaving what approached from behind a distant second. The townspeople lining the streets near the entrance as well as the deafening reverberation of the fans packed in the seats of the estadio were booing and throwing things at the runners that were finishing before nary a bull punched its way into the arena. Here we go again.

I thought about the teachings of the old man I’d left minutes ago, and what I’d learned about bulls and bullfighting during the months I’d been living in Spain. Although in most minds the treatment of the animals in countries that allowed true bullfighting was abhorrent and inexcusable, there was a communal respect for the animals and they tiered them at a high level that represented the agreed upon regality of the creatures. It was a time-honored tradition that represented man’s dominion over animal by standing toe to toe in a battle to the death against the very symbol of strength. To disrespect the bull by running in front of them rather than with them was a sin this morning, and one that I refused to commit. I a strange way, I wanted to make that old man proud of me.

A plan suddenly became clear to me. I had about one hundred meters left to run before I entered the estadio tunnel which passed below the stands and opened onto the arena ground. Even though the crowds lining the fences on the sides of the streets were almost as scary as the prospect of being trampled by a 2,000 pound animal, they would have to respect what I was about to do.

Just ahead of me on the left side I saw an elderly woman that seemed a lot more at peace than the fanatics around her. She was small in stature and clung to the fence standing on its second rung so she could see over the people around her. Alone, this would have been an odd sight to say the least. What is someone of her age doing in such a chaotic and drunken setting like San Fermines, not to mention how the hell she climbed onto that second rung? But there was no time to debate.

I ran a few steps forward and ducked against my side of the fence just in front of her. I didn’t want to be heckled and she seemed like my best bet. I looked up and greeted her with a simple Spanish salutation that fit like a square in a circle within the confines of this environment. She acknowledged me warmly as the boos, threats, and thrown newspapers rained over her head and into the street around me like strewn ash from a wrathful volcano.

I crouched and pressed my back against the structure, resting long enough to gather my thoughts. Something about the barricade, the soothing shadow it cast, and the force of the spectators pressing against it provided a feeling of security, if only for a moment. I tried to relax as I watched hoards of runners get thicker and thicker as the seconds ticked away. How long would I have to wait to prove my bravery at the hands of these natives? How long until the distance between me and a bull becomes small enough to place my life in enough danger to warrant a cheer resounding to silence the doubters.

The boos started to dissipate and the tension ratcheted a notch with each fading jeer. It was hard to pinpoint, but there was an exact moment that the waiting was enough. The boos faded with the wave of an icy wind that blew across my cozy shelter with awakening force. The sudden silence was pulled away in the tail of the gust as fast as it came and I was forced to my feet by the sudden surge of an impenetrable crowd of runners. Regaining my heightened vantage I saw the drastic change the shoot had taken in the few minutes I had spent in the nest of the barricade. The crowd in the estadio was now emitting a deafening roar that increased with every runner passing through the Tunnel of Death – the welcoming nickname locals had dubbed the darkened twenty-yard passage linking the street with the inner arena. I watched the backs of runners disappearing into the darkness of that tunnel and wondered if it was my time.

Suddenly, an unforgiving, manic grip pierced my shoulder and set into motion twenty seconds of sheer terror. It startled me, so I was quick to react. The old lady’s face wasn’t looking at me when she started screaming, using my shoulder to heighten her view; she was looking over me, across the heads of the runners frantically moving toward me. I knew what she had seen immediately, I could sense the hulking presence and although I’m sure it was in my head, could hear the drumming of hooves…but it took me a few seconds to translate her piercing howl. “Corre!”~”RUN!”

I whipped my head around to follow the eyes of the weathered Spanish matron and focused immediately on an exhausted, contorted face, twisted in terror and bearing down not twenty yards from the spot I stood. It belonged to a man in his twenty’s if I had to guess, but I spun and started running mere inches in front of him instead of pausing to ask. Every curve of expression he displayed is burned in my memory even today. He was a man that truly appeared to be running for his life, and I knew that which drove him forth was bearing down on his heels like an impossible black cloud. But I only saw the man’s pained face for a second, as I never looked back once I began my final effort to live through this trying debacle.

My right foot pivoted in the gathered dirt below the fence line and my first fear passed to the second as my travel-worn sneaker held true with the thrust of my movement. The second fear would be a long one, even as the entrance to the estadio was a mere sprint away. The fear of tripping lingered long, and would only be topped at that moment by the fear of dying, which sat like a domino ready to fall seconds after I did. Dying wasn’t one of the advertised thrills of San Fermines that appealed to my spirit, young as I was.

I could feel the terrorized face of the man behind me pushing through my back as I threw my right arm forward to fend off anything in my path as I reached a full sprint, all the while watching the labored landings of my feet to insure safe passage. Do not fall.

I couldn’t hear specific words or phrases. Past the thunder of my own breath, all that remained were the sounds of struggle and peril and then the sounds of the fallen. They would scramble to return upright to no avail while enduring the unconscious blows of staked feet and hooves and dust across their faces and bodies. They would all live that day, but many wouldn’t be able to leave the streets on their own. I could hear their cries as I reached the shadow of the estadio tunnel, the busiest finish line in all of sports.

It wasn’t until that moment that my valiant finish and how I would handle it tickled the recesses of my mind. The end of each runner’s run had the potential to go a number of ways. I had escaped the boos; that was clear at this late stage. And I was pretty sure that although I hadn’t seen one first hand, at least one bucking beast had made its way to the center ring, chasing the caged runners that were finished around the circular enclosure until they were forced to dive into the first row of spectators to evade the horned sweeps that hunted them.

For this reason, I could feel comfortable celebrating the clean finish. There would be cheers, but once you enter the arena you’re far from safe. The bulls have one final opportunity to get the best of you if you choose to stick around. They’ll make a few charges at the runners who continue showcasing their mastery of evasion before the animals are rustled back to their paddock.

All this crossed my mind in the shadow of the tunnel, and it must have been enough to distract me and slow my momentum to the point that my heels began to be clipped by the man at my back. It was, without question, the man with the Edvard Munch-inspired face. Instinct took over, and as the sun on the other end of the tunnel cast back across my face, I felt the additional force of the cheers and the pandemonium of the moment get the best of me. I was going to fall from the pressure.

Before the inevitable happened, I planted my right foot, pushed off with every force I still had, and dove headlong left near the protection of the interior arena wall. One more second and that option would have eluded me. While airborne, I twisted my body toward the crowd and clenched my right side to absorb the impact of my dramatic fall. Instinctively, my head adjusted to look quickly over my feet, still without ground, hanging lifeless in the dust filled air. Before my right shoulder took a thundering jolt of unforgiving earth, my eyes focused on the runner behind me, who was just reaching the arena. His body outran his legs and he was falling helplessly forward, landing face to ground like a plane without wheels, followed by a cloud of dust and sweat and the largest animal I had ever seen that close.

As my shoulder skipped across the dust bowl, I writhed in pain, but never took my eyes off my unknown fallen comrade. I was sure he was finished for this world. His situation couldn’t have been worse, and I couldn’t have been closer to being him.

The bull ran across his scrambling body, bucking like a two-ton seesaw, every pound of the beast having its way with the feeble opponent. Behind, over, across, and past is how it went. The bull disappeared into the crowd as his prey lay lifeless in the dust of his wake. It occurred briefly to me that I needed to crawl over to drag the man from the arena’s entrance knowing that the pounding legs wouldn’t stop coming. He would be trampled to death if he wasn’t dead already. And just like that he came to life, popped up to full stature, and ran to the crowd where he was welcomed into the open arms of strangers, a hero in their eyes.

And I, lying in the safest place I’d been all day, was far from safe. But I had done what I came to do, and I was reveling in that moment as long as I could. That’s when I noticed the cheers, and they were close. I rolled from my stomach to my back, every small movement aching in the way that can only be accomplished through extreme physical exertion. And I saw them. Behind outstretched and lively hands, there were what seemed like hundreds of faces offering both congratulations and assistance. There were no boos, no looks of condescension for the fallen American, only arms stretched outward – tree branches dangling over a raging river to pull me to safety. I grabbed one, and with that I knew I had won.