In a moment of fitful dissatisfaction during the spring of 2014, I bought a one way ticket to Paris, France, determined to walk across Spain on the Camino de Santiago. I saved enough to budget roughly 30 Euros a day and to my parents surprise, I’d be taking the fall semester off from school. I felt frustrated- like I didn’t want to live a mediocre life. I craved challenge, both mental and physical. More importantly, I wanted to actualize my dreams.
When friends and family ask me why did I walked the Camino? I often describe a small voice deep inside me. I felt called to walk. Not after graduating, not in a few years, but now.
The decision to walk was a simple one. In hind sight, I surprised myself with the spontaneity of it all. I would put the comfort of security aside and come to embody the idea that hardship molds the soul. After all, from discomfort comes growth. My journey along the Camino would come to represent one my life’s truest ambitions manifesting itself in a couple of wayward months.
I want to pass this on. I want to encourage you to stretch through your anxiety of the unknown; to embrace our humanity through exploration and connection. I want to encourage you to run in the direction of your fear. Whatever your work, your walk, may you remember how supported you are in every moment, every footstep. May you remember how important it is, this wake you are creating right here, right now. Buen Camino.
My reflections on the experience are as follows.
I had a clear goal. I would walk 500 miles in six weeks, through harsh August heat, carrying only a few basic essentials. The walk from St. Jean Pied de Port, France to Santiago de Compostela, Spain is an ancient pilgrimage steeped in Catholic and Spanish history. Modern day pilgrims walk for a multitude of spiritual, physical, and cultural reasons. For me it became like a little life.
On a typical day, I’d wake up before sunrise, pack everything into my 40L backpack, and begin the day with two goals: to keep walking, and to try and limit my café con leche intake. Some days at the end of twenty miles I felt empowered. Other days my mind oscillated between one of two things: the perpetual soreness of my calves, and the burning heat rash gradually consuming my chest. Still, from the moment I hung the Jacobean shell around my neck, which symbolizes the way or the path to Santiago, it solidified a common ground with fellow pilgrims and the responsibility to finish honorably. For me, it was a journey that began without many questions and yet ended with so many answers.
"Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time."
Steven Wright
The northern regions of Spain along the Camino Frances each embody a different set of customs, cuisines, and landscapes. I’ve visited more cathedrals than I can count and smelled more cow manure than I care to remember. I’ve wandered into seemingly deserted villages only to realize it’s siesta, and there’s nowhere to gulp down a cerveza con limón for several more hours. I used the fundamental Spanish I know to find directions, receive an obviously miscommunicated haircut, and to weasel my way into homes for a water refill. I’ve witnessed the hospitality of the Spanish people where complete strangers hand you a bag of freshly picked fruit on a hot day. Only on the Camino does complimentary deodorant not seem like a total insult, but rather a sign of respect for your journey.
Holding fast to such generosities, the Camino taught me the human capacity for goodness. It taught me the importance of passing kindness on to the next stranger, creating a ripple effect of hope. I also learned how important it is when you feel stuck in life, to move. This idea manifested itself quite literally for me, but whether it be a pilgrimage, volunteer work, learning a language, or cooking a meal; once you put your hands on the things this world had to offer, your personal world consequently expands. In this way, my solo endeavors on the Camino felt like a study abroad in real life experience. No fill-in the bubble tests. Only real-life tests.
To put it simply, I found Camino magic in all the small moments that slowly accumulated into a newfound sense of self. I found it in the pilgrim who was a nurse by trade, and tended to my blisters after a long day. In the satisfaction of a cold shower after a long days walk. I found it in the Italian man walking the Camino for the third time that year. I found it in the mountainside Albergue roaring with the sound of pilgrims singing in celebration of simply being alive…and red wine, of course. In the American woman walking in honor of her deceased husband. In one of my final nights, sleeping underneath the cathedral in Santiago with new friends from around the world.
"Once in a while it really hits people that they don't have to experience the world in the way they have been told to."
Alan Keightly
I found it in the way a fellow pilgrim paid for my dinner, simply asking that I pay it forward. I found it in a seaside village, at the victorious 0 Km mark in Finisterra, where a young girl gifted me a hand-painted shell. It’s in the deeper relationships I’ve formed through an experience so unique that even with all of life’s uncertainty, the promise of one day reuniting rings so true. It’s in the way my journey on the Camino continued to grow over the years on different routes, and through different countries. Yet one thing remained: I journeyed step by step, day by day. Camino magic is contained in each moment of my memory, both big and small. It’s where I found a quiet confidence I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life.
