Running for My Life on the Streets of Pamplona
No one tells you about the bells. And why would they? Bells sounding off from yet another charming Spanish clock tower — ringing through the winding Pamplona streets — are the last ephemeral detail anyone would bother including in their tales surrounding the pulsating pageantry of the Festival de San Fermín. Bells in church steeples in sleepy towns and big cities ring every hour of every day, but these were different. Today was different.
We knew about the rockets: the first when the bullpen gate opens, and the second when the last bull crosses the street’s threshold. Those were the sounds the four of us listened for as we obsessively checked our watches until 7:59 morphed into 8:00. The rockets were our starter’s gun, our barometer signaling this was no longer a half-baked idea after one-too-many beers or something far off in the future.
This was now, and our chance to back out had come and gone.
As I paced around the freshly-swept cobblestone streets awaiting the projectiles and the stampede of bulls and the mob of panicked people from all over the world that would soon be at my back, I scrolled through every piece of advice cataloged in my hippocampus: Stay to the left…don’t run too early…dive under the barriers, don’t climb them. I thought about my double-knotted shoelaces, glancing down, again and again, making sure they hadn’t magically come untied in the 10 seconds since I last looked. I questioned my choice of pants — cheap white skinny jeans — that I swore were stretchy and easy to run in, a premature assessment untested outside the cocoon of a fast fashion fitting room.
The crowd had dispersed now. People next to me a few minutes ago had relocated to another part of the street or maybe decided, “hell no, not for me!” I thought about my wife, propped against the curtain of wooden barriers behind us, who assured me that everything would be okay. I thought about how good that first beer would taste when this was all over, how great I’d feel minutes from now when my heart finally migrated south back to its home in my torso.
I ran my tongue across the inside of my right cheek — now raw from relentless chewing — reminded myself to breathe, tried to forget I had chosen to run down a narrow passageway alongside 1,200-pound beasts 5,000 miles from home. I cuffed my pantlegs one last time, rolled the day’s newspaper and gripped it tight. I looked down at my size 11s.
Then, came the bells.
DING
We planned a dream trip. Two weeks on the Iberian Peninsula swimming in the Mediterranean, exploring cities and eating and drinking the menu. But the nexus of our time in Spain, the sun that the expedition revolved around, was Pamplona. What started as my friend Chris’ lifelong and by all accounts insane idea of running with the bulls got catapulted to reality a year and a half earlier when we made the audacious (albeit slightly buzzed) decision to quit talking about it and go the summer we turned 30. It would be an homage to our 20s, a final act of stupidity before any of us had real responsibilities like mortgages or kids.
But as the reckless outline of what it actually meant to run with bulls slowly came into focus, I found myself grasping at any excuse to back out. And despite a daily barrage of posts from Kerouacian Instagram influencers making me feel guilty about a life confined to a desk when I could be traveling the world posting photos of my feet atop mosaic floors, my impulse for adventure is low. But like any good millennial, the fear of being seriously injured capitulated to the unrelenting and seductive fear that is missing out.
By the time we stepped off the train in Pamplona, the confidence I’d mustered had vanished like a sand castle at high tide. The breeze was cool at the train station and carried with it the smells of stale beer, syrupy sangria and bodily fluids — odors of a week-long fiesta. My hangover from the previous night’s parade of red and effervescent alcohols had faded and a different, anxiety-spiked, nausea had taken its place, firmly planting its flag on my insides.
Like it or not, we were here, and in a few hours, the bulls would be, too.
“Have you ever run before?” I asked our ebullient Airbnb host at check-in.
“No, I’m not crazy!” she said with a smile that never left her face. “It’s more fun to watch and drink from a balcony.”
Not the response any of us wanted, but it wasn’t surprising. Unlike our friends back home or the group of Americans we met in Barcelona — who were equal parts excited, encouraging and envious — Spaniards reacted to our plans like a worried parent.
“Did you see the video from this morning? One guy was gored…here watch,” our Spanish friend exclaimed, shoving her phone in front of us. “You guys are stupid.”
Nothing anyone said helped. My mind latched on to everything that could go wrong and held on tight. Worst case scenarios on loop in high definition and Technicolor: a perfect viewing experience for the pessimist in me.
The unofficial uniform of the festival is what we’ve all come to know: white pants and shirt with a red sash and bandana. After acquiring the red accents from a store across the street, we quickly changed and plunged, unencumbered, into the madness.
We grabbed beers at a nearby café, and to stoke our confidence for the next day’s run, began walking the route, analyzing each length as we passed. The mid-afternoon July sun felt warm on our backs and intensified the miasma of fermenting garbage and waste seeping out of dumpsters and alleyways at every turn.
We’d been warned to avoid the beginning where the bulls were strongest. Dead Man’s Corner was out of the question — because, well, the name — along with the end that dumps out into the bullring where pileups are frequent. Picking the “safest” spot on the half-mile course was a little like picking the cleanest Porta Potti at a music festival.
Eventually, we decided on Ayuntamiento square in front of Town Hall. We liked the view there, and wouldn’t be surprised when the bulls rounded the turn. The plan was to take off as soon as the cameramen in the balconies moved their lenses right, following the bulls up the hill.
If the rest of the group was nervous, I wasn’t sold. Isolated in my anxiousness, I glided through the motions of the afternoon like an apparition, trying to think about anything else except the next morning. But when you’re in a city to run with bulls, the conversation inevitably circles back to, surprise, running with bulls. Stretches of other topics or silence would routinely be interrupted by someone exclaiming, “I’m so ready for tomorrow,” or asking, “How’s everyone feeling?”
My eyes answered.
We walked through the Plaza del Castillo and stopped at Café Iruña, the favorite bar of Jake Barnes et al. from the novel that bears so much responsibility for this mad quest we, and so many others, were on. It’s bigger than I expected and as hip and cozy as a “Spanish café” in the middle of Epcot. Whatever magic Hemingway felt here had long ago been exchanged for selfie sticks and a commemorative plaque. American club music blared from the speakers while tourists — who were drinking by the liter and not the glass — tried to dance, their feet sticking to today’s sloshed beer and sangria with every step, crackling on release like the slow tearing of velcro. It was three in the afternoon.
At dinner I forced down bites of velvety gazpacho and jamón ibérico and roasted hake, regretting that our one nice meal was tonight when not even wine helped. All of us were more subdued, even those who (claimed) they weren’t nervous earlier talked a little less as the weight of the next few hours bore down.
“Estas todos bien?” our concerned waitress asked, looking askance at the amount of food still on my plate.
“Si, estamos bien,” I said, forcing a smile. “Yo como…no rapido.”
She nodded and walked away, unconvinced with my explanation and even more confused with my Spanish. I poured the last of the wine, swirled it around the glass and took a drink. The red liquid moved through my mouth, and I could feel its warmth spread across my face and down my throat.
Meanwhile, the bulls had been ushered into their pen for the evening, so after dinner, we walked over to take a look. By the time we reached the bullpen the sun had disappeared over the hills leaving the last fleeting evidence of its presence clinging to treetops and buildings. We joined the crowd atop a vantage point and saw the bulls, tomorrow’s competition, resting behind the wooden slats. Their very existence seemed improbable, and for a moment, they appeared peaceful corralled in such a small enclosure.
The moonlight shone down on the largest bull’s coat illuminating his coiled muscles. He swaggered across the pen, stabbing the earth with his front hooves as dust rose around him and dissolved like a rain cloud approaching the desert. I walked away from the others and sat down. The numbing effects of the wine had mostly worn off and seeing the bulls in person only made tomorrow’s risk more real.
I was stuck between two paths, each as frightening as the other. There’s no shame in not running, I thought. No, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life, answered back. Warring sides of a spinning coin seconds before wobbling and falling to the surface.
The festival’s revelry raged outside our windows through the night and into the early morning. By the time alarms started going off, most of us were already awake. A full night of sleep was never in the cards, and I was glad to see the sun’s upper limb cresting over the stone buildings outside our window.
We dressed in yesterday’s ensemble and walked outside where the thin street was already bursting with people. Along the way, we stopped and bought copies of the morning’s newspaper from a man seated outside a storefront making sure to look the part even if I didn’t feel it. The cover framed two runners on the business end of a bull’s horns. I couldn’t translate the entire caption, but I didn’t need the four semesters of Spanish I sat through in college to understand, “sufrio una fractura de clavicula…”
We reached the bottom of the hill, joining the others in pre-run sacraments. Candles flickered next to a figurine of San Fermín inside a small nook carved out of the stone wall while spectators lined the railing above. We belonged to them, now.
Standing around, it was easy to pick out the seasoned runners. While most dressed like us the veterans—with fútbol jerseys and red wristbands— stood out like a Tesla in a gun range parking lot. One of them lit a cigarette and pulled deep on it. The fiery tip glowed like neon before a cloud of vapor filled his airspace. I’m not a smoker, but if ever there was an occasion, this was it.
At ten till eight the crowd quieted, and a sea of newspaper-clenched fists reached heavenward before breaking into the ceremonial chant, a homily to Fermín asking for his protection.
A San Fermin pedimos, [To San Fermin, we ask]
Por ser nuestro patron, [Being our patron saint]
Nos guie en el encierro [Guide us in the bull run]
Dandonos su bendicion [Giving us your blessing]
Viva San Fermin! Gora San Fermin [Long live Saint Fermin]
We didn’t know the words but moved our outstretched arms back and forth in time, hoping to conjure up any blessing we could, even from a saint who’d been in the ground for more than 1700 years. As the final note rang out we turned around and began the short jog up the hill. I glanced over at Chris, silently cursing him for setting this moment into motion that spring day 18 months earlier. He returned the look without a word.
The time for talking was over.
DING
When the first bell tolls, the crowd doesn’t erupt like Time’s Square on New Year’s Eve; it hushes as people in balconies and along the street look westward, hoping for chaos like spectators at a NASCAR race secretly wishing for a crash.
For some reason the clang and clash of the bells urge us to jump up and down like sprinters before taking the blocks. After a few bounds the first rocket explodes high in the air, its echo ricocheting off the walls and up the street before smacking us in the face. The boom is more thunderous than I expected. I was worried we wouldn’t be able to hear it from where we were, that we were too far away. Again, I was wrong.
The bells peal above us, their incessant hammering matching the escalating tempo and volume of my pounding heart. I look around and see the two men to my right staring at their watches. “Fifteen seconds,” one of them says to the other. The countdown only raises the temperature, each second pushing the adrenaline and anticipation higher…12…it’s clear they’ve watched as many videos of past runs as we had…10…hell, they’ve even timed it down to the second — why didn’t we do that?…8, the second rocket pops off, and the crowd begins to stir. I remember wading in the ocean a few days earlier and watching a wave out in the distance, it’s crest growing bigger and picking up speed, before breaking over us. This felt similar, but instead of refreshing Mediterranean water, it was crazed people running for their lives from beasts born and bred for death.
I look at Chris and Cameron and Jack, my eyes darting back and forth between the three, not trusting my instincts. Not believing I could wait much longer, or worse, believing I might just climb the fence and walk away.
Don’t climb, dive under…don’t climb, dive under…
“Five seconds,” the man says.
At last, the camera lenses in the balconies move, our cue, and I take off down the left flank, sprinting at first, slowing only to pass a man ahead of me — fear and impetus driving my fast-twitch muscle fibers. I move toward the center of the street and glance over my right shoulder. In an instant, the bulls are upon us like a car stuck in your blind spot, and then, not.
The bellwether is barreling ahead. Powerful legs propelling him forward. The path clearing between him and his destiny. The others are steps behind and slicing through the crowd — layers of bone and keratin pounding roughshod across cobblestone — while people veer toward the sides. My head swivels back and forth, and I see the horns. Long. Sharp. Controlled by their masters with incredible force. I should get closer, I tell myself, but at two arm’s length away I can’t move. It’s as if we are the same poles of two magnets aimed at each other.
How were these half-ton animals so fast?
I’m part of the herd for what feels like an eternity, but in reality was five, maybe six seconds, each bull flying by faster than the last. And just as I’d gotten used to them, just as I tried to take a mental picture of this moment to remember decades from now when maybe a grandkid asks, “What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done, grandpa?” they were past me. Dark-colored masses receding from my vision, veering right and vanishing.
I keep running, free as air, the feeling of relief washing over me with every step.
Finding each other afterward was pure elation. Immediately, we began trading stories like friends rehashing a blurry timeline the morning after a night out. My eyes found Katie’s before we embraced, both smiling and breathing a sigh of relief that it was over and that no one would have to make a middle-of-the-night phone call to loved ones back in Texas.
Storefront and café owners were removing the wooden beams and braces that protected the facades minutes earlier as runners and spectators began pouring inside for caffeine and alcohol. Nothing bad could happen now. The sixth day of the festival had officially begun, and we were there to drink it all in, one grande Estrella Damm at a time.
We wandered into the closest cafe to order a round of café con leches and tortilla españolas followed quickly by grande cervezas in broken Spanish. We downed the beers and ordered another round. We took photos, posted Instagram stories, and texted loved ones. My brother responded right away with, “Fuck ya!”
A few days before Pamplona, a few of us had latched on to a phrase, the genesis of which came from a jetlag-fueled night of bar-hopping and drinking games: Do you play the game of life?
We laughed it off at the time, but it soon became our mantra, our explanation for every indelible moment or dash of good luck we encountered along the way. It’s corny, but some lessons are. The game of life, like any game, isn’t won or lost or experienced by spectators. As living beings hurled into the daily arena of being alive, it is our responsibility — our birthright — to play.
Glancing over my shoulder at a dead sprint and seeing a smear of horns and fur and red and white is a high I’ve never experienced. But the greater feeling was overriding every instinct to play it safe and take the risk anyway. To stare down uncertainty and fear and defy them both.
And for someone entering a new decade, leaving behind an era of youth where “still figuring it out” was an acceptable answer to tough questions about the future and the courage to choose a life I want had been discarded somewhere along the way, it was all I needed.
A shove into the arena. A bell to stir me from complacency and into a world that rewards the risk takers.
