Life is a Trip (15 page)

F
rom the first time I heard about it,
I had a burning desire to go. I wanted to be a pilgrim, stripped down to whatever I could carry on my back, trekking five hundred miles from St. Jean-Pied-de-Port in southern France to the final destin
a
tion of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, which pu
r
portedly contains the tomb of St. James. I pictured myself turning inward, timing my footsteps to my breath, meditating, unplugged from news, my computer, phone, fax and, most of all, social chitchat. Inane co
n
versation about weather, whether or not to buy this or that, rehashing of TV shows, and m
i
nute dissections of who said what to whom grind my soul to ash. I wanted the simplicity of the medieval pi
l
grims who walked the Camino de Santiago de Compostela (a collection of pilgri
m
age routes also known as the Way of St. James). I yearned for a month-long spi
r
itual undertaking, over hill and dale, pasture and plain, carrying the iconic scallop shell which signifies to ot
h
ers that you are, quite literally, walking the walk.

Twenty-five years ago, a few thousand devoted pilgrims followed the Way of St. James every year; today estimates are in the 100,000 to 200,000 range. The pi
l
grims come on foot, bike, and horseback. A few even bring donkeys. Some do the whole walk and others complete a section, hopping on a train or bus for part of the pilgrimage. They are young and old, fit and unfit, short, tall, fat, thin, bearded, shaven, rich, poor, educated, unschooled, religious, non-believers and the just plain curious. They are easy to spot; they carry walking sticks and huge backpacks. A few months ago, I set my feet on the Camino for the first time.

At a public hostel for pilgrims, I met a buoyant young man from London who was standing patiently in line, waiting to get his pilgrim’s credential booklet
stamped. When he got to Santiago, the stamps would serve as proof that he had walked the Camino, or at least the last sixty-two miles of it, and this would qualify him for a pilgrim’s certificate.

“How far did you walk today?” I asked him.

“About twenty-five miles,” he replied.

“May I lift your backpack to see how heavy it is?”

“Sure,” he answered, with the good humor that was characteristic of most pi
l
grims I met.

I bent over and raised it up; more accurately, I
tried
to lift it. It weighed more than fifty
pounds. The young man was grinning and I was mortified. My back ached before I had taken one step on the Camino. What was I thinking? I hated carrying anything. Some days, my handbag was too much for me. I loved being unencumbered, phy
s
ically free.

I peered inside the hostel; beds were lined up in a gymnasium-sized room. Each had a blanket, but no sheets. There was zero privacy. A gaggle of walkers waited to take cold showers because there was no hot water. In a small courtyard next to the hostel, people were soaking their blisters and icing their tendonitis-inflamed legs. One pallid wo
m
an said she was so exhausted she didn’t know if she could go on the next day. It was then I knew that I would never be a pilgrim. It was fine for others. But for me it was a fantasy. A dream. A demented d
e
lusion.

Why, I wondered, did anyone walk the Camino? I began to ask the pilgrims I met. In a municipal pilgrims’
albergue
, or hostel, three young men were cooking eggs for dinner in the small kitchen area. They d
e
voured them with mounds of tortellini and cheese sauce. One of them said he was walking the Camino before he started eng
i
neering school. A second had been laid off and decided to make a pilgrimage before going back to work.

“I’m not sure why I’m doing it,” said the third. “But I can tell you that the s
o
cializing at night is the best part. You drink beer or wine and you meet people. The three of us didn’t know each other before.”

I stopped at a private albergue, which offered separate rooms with baths for pilgrims who wanted more comfort.

“I just went through a divorce,” said a middle-aged woman, sitting in a lounge chair nursing a beer. “It’s very meaningful for me to be here, with no contact from my ex, away from my familiar surroun
d
ings, thinking about who I am besides a wife.”

Ahh
, I said to myself,
maybe if I stayed at a place like this, I could bear the walk
. Whom was I kidding? I learned that last year there was a plague of bedbugs in both the municipal and private hostels. And some of the private albergues were as basic as the public ones.

In Rabanal, I met Abraham from the Canary Islands, Francisco from Tenerife, and José Luis from Salamanca. The three new friends sat under a tree nursing their tired feet. For them, the Camino was an inexpensive vacation; they could explore a region of Spain they didn’t know, and it would give them a sense of accomplis
h
ment to finish it.

A Korean woman said she had learned about the Camino on television, and then she read an inspiring book by a Korean writer about the pilgrimage walk. It sealed the deal.

Alexander from Vienna quit his job as a banker because it didn’t suit him. He was walking to ponder what he would do next.

“I’m not talking to other pilgrims about it,” he said. “It’s more about me and my own thoughts. I’m an athlete and I don’t find the walk hard or tiring.”

Two young Spanish girls said, “We walk by day and we ice at night. Our o
b
jective is to get to Santiago. We don’t know why we are doing it, but we’re really happy.”

Judy Magee from Toronto was nervous about hauling her backpack. “Mom, don’t worry about the weight of your backpack,” her daughter Kaitlin had cou
n
seled her. “It weighs less than the to-do list you make every day.” Judy said, “That thought is with me all the time. I’m learning to let go, and not to plan for every contingency.”

Kellie, from Wales, said with a laugh that quite a few happily ma
r
ried couples met while walking the Camino. She wasn’t exactly looking for a mate, but she wasn’t ruling it out either.

The more pilgrims I spoke to, the more diverse reasons I heard for doing the walk. Some wanted fresh air and an active, outdoorsy experience. Others were intrigued by the churches and art and great Spanish food along the way. The va
r
ied landscape drew some, and the challenge called to others. There were devout Catholics, atheists, Jews, Bahai’s and Buddhists. For some, it was a spiritual quest, a long prayer of gratitude, a meaningful way to mark a life transition. And more than a few were repeat pilgrims; they had done the Camino once or several times before.

I began to feel the discomfort of the outsider. They were all walking and I was watching. They were making sacrifices, and I was sleeping in hotels, driving in a car, and dining on regional foods that burst on my joyous palate.

“Maybe I’m helping the pilgrims by writing about them,” I joked to one wo
m
an, and she nodded and said, quite seriously, that there is a whole tradition of pe
o
ple serving the Camino.

What does that mean? How do you serve
a route?
I wondered. So off I went, to find out about non-walking pilgrims who are somehow engaged in service to pe
o
ple, a path, or something else I didn’t unde
r
stand.

On the outskirts of Sahagún, I met loquacious, vivacious, eighty-two-year-old Paca Luna Tovar at the Virgen del Puente hermitage. Every day, Paca walks over a mile
from town to the hermitage and adorns the altar with flowers and candles that are dedicated to the Virgin. She carries with her
galletas de hierro
(a regional cookie) and fiery, alcoholic aguardiente for the pilgrims who come inside. While I was there, she spontaneously broke into song; the lyrics were about the patron saint of the town, the Camino, the hermitage, and two local churches.

“My ancestors welcomed the pilgrims here,” she said proudly. “When my aunts were alive, they brought me here to greet the pi
l
grims, and when they died, I took over. I am the fourth generation. I come to be with the pilgrims. No matter what language they speak, I understand them all, although I am not sure how this happens. The government is planning to do restoration at the hermitage, but even during the work, I will walk here every day to meet the pilgrims. If I stop my daily walk to the hermitage, it will be the end of me.”

Little do the pilgrims suspect that when they drop by the he
r
mitage and munch on cookies or accept a shot of firewater, they are helping to keep an octogenarian dynamo alive.

At a hostel in Rabanal del Camino, which is run by the Confraternity of St. James in Britain, I met Martin Singleton, who had come from London to volunteer as a
hospitalero
for two and a half weeks. He was probably in his late sixties to mid seventies, and his jobs i
n
cluded making breakfast and keeping the rooms clean.

Singleton’s relationship with the Camino began after his wife completed a pi
l
grimage. “I had never walked farther than my house to the car,” he said, “but I put my boots on, got an old rucksack, and went back with my wife the next year and walked 120 miles. I had no phy
s
ical problems walking. It affected me spiritually. It changed me. I made a promise to come back and complete the entire Camino. I did it last year.”

He confided that the second walk was less moving than the first—an exper
i
ence he says many returning pilgrims share.

“It only happens once in your life,” he said in a low voice. “After that, my wife and I wanted to give something back to the pilgrims, to help them along on their journey. We joined the Confraternity of St. James in England and went to mee
t
ings. We decided to become hosp
i
taleros and here we are.”

After a pause, he added, “I never did service before in my life. It’s wonderful. It’s a bit like the first experience I had.”

In rural Moratinos, population eighteen, a former American journalist named Rebekah Scott lives with her English husband, Paddy,
in an old, painstakingly r
e
stored and repaired farmhouse they call the Peaceable Kingdom. The Camino goes through the village and passes by their house, and Rebekah spoke with knowledge and enthusiasm about the famous road.

“Do you know that the churches and monumental buildings along the way are meant to be seen on horseback? The best vantage point is from four feet off the ground, where the rich could see them,” she said.

Tomas,
the Croatian handy man who was helping the couple, is also attached to the Camino and to a dog named Mimi he found while walking. He tried to take her with him, carried her for about twenty miles, and then was forced to leave her behind. After he reached Santiago, he went back to visit Mimi, earned a little mo
n
ey doing hand
i
work, and walked the Camino again. And again. And again.

“There is counseling for people who keep doing the walk. What will they do after they stop walking? There’s a kind of post-Camino stress syndrome,” Rebekah explained. “Maybe they have no work and no purpose. They can stay cheaply while they walk and depend on the generosity of strangers. They are drifters on the Camino. And then there’s the whole subject of who is a pilgrim. If you stay at
pa
r
adores
(expensive hotels), are you a pilgrim? Are you one if you bike or ride a horse? In the past, people were sentenced to walk the Camino, to get them out of town. There’s a whole history of people telling war stories about their walks.”

Rebekah paused, served me some delicious Thai curry, and then resumed.

“When you walk, you become aware of everything; you hear the stream, the birds, your senses become acute. You lose weight, get fit. I’m a hospitalera now. I volunteer at hostels, listening to the pilgrims, cleaning up, cooking, applying first aid. It’s a nice break from the o
r
dinary. And you get to know another town.”