Coming into Pamplona, we drove past a beautiful field of sunflowers in full bloom, red tile roofs and crumbling walls of old buildings and we found the campground as promised, an easy distance to the festivities. We set up alongside German and Spanish festival go-ers beneath a row of trees overlooking a hillside and our accommodations were reasonably comfortable. Not surprisingly, the campground was populated with mostly young people, primarily Australians here for the running of the bulls.

It was at nightfall that our hearts sank – Pamplona is a noisy city no matter where you are staying and drunken revelry is to be expected, but all through the night before the opening of the Fiesta, a throbbing drumbeat swelled in the darkness. As the sleepless hours went by, the tribal atmosphere intensified. The problem was, it wasn’t our tribe. The drumbeat came from music blaring through the trees along with the laughter of strangers and unknown languages overheard in the darkness. The whole campground, it seems, was wide awake at 3 am. Never the less, we managed pretty well that first night, calling it part of the experience and grateful for a hot shower in the morning.

The next morning, we wandered along with thousands of other people into the older part of Pamplona – an ocean of people dressed in red and white. The French and Spanish women wore beautiful white summer dresses and oh how handsome the men were in their white shirts and pants and red scarves. At noon, the rockets went off and the crowds held up their red scarves and sang the opening song. It was impossible not to feel excited by what might happen next.

On the second day we were almost delirious with sleeplessness, but still we dressed in the darkness at five am to join thousands of other people in the streets of Pamplona. Several people recommended that we buy tickets for the corrida and watch the runners coming in from the streets, which we did. We got there at 6:02 am – the morning was still a little cold, but with hot coffee in our hands the time passed quickly. I marveled at the variety of ages and nationalities gathered here. While we waited for the running to start, we heard traditional songs from a brass band and the singing crowd, which as Bob Orlin describes, “doubles in size every 15 minutes”. Spectators sang to each other from section to section and from the street into the corrida. It was amazing, no matter how tired you are! I have tape recorded some of the sounds we heard that morning which I will post as soon as I can.

Promptly at 8 am we watched the bulls and runners careening through the streets on big screens, heading towards us. As the runners and the bulls behind them burst into the ring, the energy and the noise exploded. The running of the bulls through the streets happens very quickly – it is over, it seems, in about 5 minutes. But as the runners all come together in the corrida, another kind of running starts. We sat in front of an older man and his wife, clearly Spanish, and their reactions highlighted the differences in our two cultures.

At this point, the inside of the ring is absolute chaos of movement, noise, color and danger. As each young man brushed against potential injury and death with the flustered bulls – the Spanish man behind us laughed. His laughter was an open chortle of pure enjoyment. Sometimes he would exclaim meirda! with mirth as a young man was thrown down, rolled under the bull’s horns, or a bull headed straight towards an unsuspecting runner. At first, I was a little tense watching all of this, but gradually I understood something about the whole scene.

Those men, young and old, were facing fear, danger and death head on. I’ve read about this and know it intellectually, but to watch it and stop breathing for a moment until the danger passes – that is altogether different. And the laughter, the delight, the joy, of the bull runners and watching them comes from surviving. I have to say I am tearing up as I remember this and try to describe it to you: it is as if all problems are forgotten for a moment – all of life’s difficulties and distractions fall away and it is simply this, we are alive, alive. And perhaps because for a few thrilling moments the question of whether we will live or not is in suspense, we feel our aliveness and value it.

Certainly the festival was different in Hadley and Ernest’s time; less commercial for sure, but so much of it remains the same. It is true that I did feel a little bit sorry for the bulls, but the fiesta transcends that and becomes something symbolic that might be different for each person. It does not surprise me that it took Hemingway a whole book to work out the drama that happens during fiesta. I’m sure I will be writing much more about what happened in just a few short thrilling hours.

I said a silent thank you today for Hadley and Ernest Hemingway and all that they’ve given me. I am thankful for the people and places they’ve added to my life and for always learning more about how they lived theirs. They were in love and hungry for experience, they were intelligent and rebellious. In photographs, they look full of promise, full of dreams. They are in black and white – and here I am in Pamplona: in color!

Note: I will be writing more about Hadley as I travel. To hear Hadley describe Pamplona in an earlier post, click here: “This Gorgeous Brutality”