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“There is a river in a wooded place two miles from Santiago called Lavacolla, in which French pilgrims, out of respect for the Apostle, wash not only their private parts but, strip-

ping off their clothes, clean all the dirt from their bodies.” - Codex Calixtinus (12th century pilgrims’ guidebook)

The Camino de Santiago de Compostela, or the Way of Saint James, is a pilgrimage route that has been in use since the middle ages, when the devout would travel from all over Europe to pay their respects at the tomb of the Apostle Saint James in northwestern Spain. The most popular of the routes to Santiago is the Camino Frances, or the French way: it runs nearly five hundred miles from the French Pyrenees, across northern Spain, to the tomb in Galicia. Each year over one hundred thousand pilgrims from all over the world will walk this route, from St. Jean Pied de Port in France to Santiago de Composte-la in Galicia, which takes about four weeks.

This book is dedicated to the people who make pilgrimage possible.

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St. Jean Pied de Port (French Pyrenees)

St. Jean Pied de Port is a tiny, ancient hamlet nestled in the French Pyrenees. Probably, if it were not for the Camino de Santiago its only inhab-itants would be sheep. In mediaeval times St. Jean was the only pass through the mountains, and today it is the major starting point for pilgrims who come from around the world. Before there were busses, trains, and airplanes, people walked here from their homes, but for most people today pilgrimage begins where the bus deposits us, at an out-of-service train station, after a long ride through the mountains from Bayonne. From here the mountains are visible, foggy, purple, and green. They are massive in a gentle way, not jagged or sharp, their upper reaches glow warmly in the afternoon sun. To the west the moun-tains are in shadow and look flat, like purple paper cut outs. Five-hundred miles beyond those mountains is the city of Santiago de Compostela. We are a small crowd waiting in the Pilgrims’ office, the Bureau de Pelerins, to give our names to the authorities and receive our credencial – the slip of paper which will be stamped in every town we visit, the license that confirms us as god’s vagrants and entitles us, as such, to certain charity and hospitality on our way. None of the people around me look like vagrants. We are too clean, and everyone’s equipment is too shiny. Pilgrims may be too big a word to describe us, right now we are hikers, models who have burst from an REI catalogue decked out in new Gore-Tex, with gleaming packs bursting with things we will throw away along the trail. We go to Santiago to visit the sepulcher of St. James the Apostle whose symbol is the scallop shell, whose body was transported under mysteri-ous circumstances to Galicia, a Celtic region on the storm wracked north-west-ern corner of Spain. We stoop over our lumpy backpacks to tie on scallop shells, in order to be recognized as those who travel in the name of St. James the apostle and to be welcomed accordingly. We, the millions who have made this journey before strung out across hundreds of miles and nearly a thousand years, go to Santiago for all kinds of reasons. In the predawn, the village of St. Jean Pied de Port lies silent, laden with sleep and mist while dozens of pilgrims with headlamps and shiny new backpacks like shadowy hunches cross the ancient stone bridge and begin to climb up into the mountains. The line of jostling points of light winds its way up into the mountains as the sun begins to rise and a pale, robin’s egg blue throws the dark heights of the mountains into contrast. The mountains are beautiful, steep, windy, wreathed in mist, and dot-

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ted with sheep. On the other side of the high pass is Navarra1 in Spain, where large bulls are raised in misty pastures among the hills.

1 One of Spain’s Autonomous Communities, Navarra has a distinctly Basque culture but is not the “Basque Country,” which is closer to the coast.

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Alto de Perdon

Alto de Perdon is not the highest point on the ancient path to Santi-ago. It is a prominent hill on the western edge of Navarra. Karen and I have been climbing for less than an hour up its flank. “Can you even imagine it?” She said, sweating up the hill. The valley we put between Pamplona and ourselves this morning spreads out beneath our heels. It is wide with fields and patches of scrubby grey trees. The shadows cast by wind-driven clouds give it a silvery, oceanic quality. A few ruined walls huddle together in a copse of trees. “The faith they had! These people believed! I don’t even think I could imagine it, and I was raised Mormon.” Karen is talking about the ancient pilgrims to whom this road belongs. I know her backpack has been bothering her and her hip hurts too. Though it is early in the day she is tired and we are both sweating hard as our thighs strain against the hillside. “They would come wounded, broken, useless, drunk, sick, rich, and poor. It was worth their time, their pain, and their lives. They were really pilgrims. They believed,” (She stresses the word that way, stretched it sideways just a little) “They would be Saved, or healed, or something. It was worth ev-erything they had, not months, but years of their lives, maybe their whole lives. It’s insane really.” “Are you religious?” She asks me after a pause. I do not know what she is expecting. “Not really,” I say, though I haven’t really considered it, which now seems odd since I had thought about everything else: budgeting money and time, packing the right clothes and equipment, buying a Spanish phrasebook. “Me neither. But I know what it is like to believe in something. I was Mormon, I had Faith. It was all real for me but I lost it.” She stops for a moment. “It can feel amazing, but it can also be horrible.” It’s just a hike, just a long, ancient hike; the whole “peregrinos” thing is just a convention. But then, doesn’t it have to be religious at its core? Isn’t that the whole point? Can a hike not be spiritual? “These people never became disillusioned, or if they did they kept walking.” “It’s pretty wild,” I say. “I kind of wish I still had it sometimes, but I doubt if I can ever get back there.” “Is that why you’re going to Santiago?” I ask as we climb the last out-crop before the crest of the ridge, because I expect everyone to have a story.

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“I am flying back to Tennessee next week. I’m not even going all the way to Santiago. We aren’t pilgrims, you know? We’re on vacation.” The top of the hill is exposed and windy. It is part of a ridge that is dotted with wind turbines. Along the trail at the top is a sculpture made of plates of metal cut into the shapes of a group of pilgrims from the middle ages, on horseback and on foot, with tall staffs and wide brimmed hats. People like to take photos of themselves in front of the sculpture, pose as though they are just one more member of this ancient procession. Karen and I stand where the path of the wind crosses the path of the stars, our faces red with exertion and from the wind. White wind turbines are strung out along the ridge like points on a constellation of monsters step-ping the earth. El Camino de Santiago – the Via Lactea – the Milky Way, the path of the stars, a constellation that is not a god, not an image, not anything, only a general swath, a route, an assortment of stars travelling westward.

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Villamayor de Montjardin

Some people say the Camino is three ways a challenge. It begins physically, your body is not used to walking and the long days and constant hills of Navarra are ungentle on fresh legs. Once you pass into the dusty plains your body has toughened. Your legs are strong, sinewy and burned. You have thrown away the heaviest things in your backpack, but the crushing flatness of the meseta reveals itself to be a mental challenge. It is hot and distances are far. Though you have left some things behind, your burden is still heavy. Past Leon, in stormy, verdant Galicia, your mind and body are tough. The journey then becomes a spiritual one, and things reveal themselves to the tired pilgrim in the fogs of Galicia, but those who reach Santiago think nothing of the weight they carry. They also say the Camino is a metaphor for life, but about this they are mistaken. The guidebooks say the journey, from St. Jean Pied de Port to Santiago de Compostela will take around four weeks, it may take less, it may take much longer, and it may end a long way from Santiago. The possibility that it may take much longer or might have to be abandoned is not apparent until you have been walking and you realize that each one of those five hun-dred miles must be walked. Covered in Spanish dust, swarmed by Spanish flies and exhausted on the ground in some woods near Estella, I despair. Right now metaphors are unhelpful because I am alone, because I am hungry, because I have gone twenty miles already today, because world is vast and I know no one in it. When no options present themselves, there is nothing to do but walk. There is no other way; metaphors are best left to those who reflect in arm-chairs. Here, the Camino is a task. I do not know how much further it is to Vil-lamayor, the next town on my map, but each step feels heavy and painful, my feet and legs are sore. By the time I find this small town on the side of a hill, it is getting late and I feel lost though I know where I am. A house overlooks the plaza and the town. It is made of stone that shines a rich warm gold in the evening light, golden like the heads of wheat and ancient castles in the sun. By the front door a few rectangular clothes drying racks hang heavy with synthetic underwear, wool socks, and a gaudy rainbow of nylon sports shirts. A pile of boots in many sizes and styles spills out from around the door. I am exhausted, weak, and in tears. The hospitaliero appears in the doorway, his loose white shirt framed against the warm stone. He is smiling. He welcomes me in Spanish. “Buenas tardes, peregrino.”

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“Buenas tardes. ¿Estés hospitalero1?” “Si,” “¿Habla Inglés? Necesito una cama, por favor.” He does not seem Spanish to me, but I cannot place his accent. I think he might be German, or Dutch. “Yes, yes. So, unfortunately we are complete tonight. I have no bed.” The hospitalero went on, “Just you, yes?” “Yes,” I say, thinking of today’s lonely walk and how the people I met in St. Jean were behind me now, I don’t know if they will catch up. “I am walking alone.” I might have to make some new friends. I have noticed, even already, that most people walk in groups of two or more, sometimes with people from home, but often with people they have met along the way. “On Camino de Santiago you never walk alone. You may be by your-self, but you are never alone.” A smile crinkled out from around his glasses, “Come in, I have a mattress we can put in the living room. You look very tired.” I learn pilgrims cry often. In the shower the salt and grime of the day slide off of my body, hotly and in the patterns the rain makes. Who would not find joy in such a ritual of ablution? Water brings new energy in a dry country. The hospitaliero says there is a Jesus Meditation; specifically he says I should join in it. I don’t know what this means and I am skeptical. I know it would be wrong to say no to these people who have shown me such kindness so I follow some other guests into a building adjacent to the large house filled with candles and soft ambient music. The walls are of rough stone with a low timber ceiling. The floor is covered over with carpets of various patterns in warm earth tones. The room is filled with pilgrims in their sandals. They have found places on chairs, cushions and the floor. A woman welcomes us in Spanish and then in English. She reads slowly from the Bible in a soft, prac-ticed voice, first in Spanish then in English. Around the room people’s eyes are closed and they nod along with particular passages. It looks as though I am the only one new to a Jesus Meditation; they all look right at home. Unsure what to do, I close my eyes as they whisper the day into stillness. The house is warm and comfortable, and I sleep soundly on the floor. In the morning we will leave as solitary as we began.

1 Hospitaliero/Hospitaliera is the word people use for the many sorts of innkeepers, hosts, and hostel staff that host pilgrims travelling to Santiago. It is anyone who gives a pilgrim hospitality and shelter.

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Walking Fast Over Flat Land

My feet roll over the dusty earth, the grass at either side of the pathbold, encroaching.Bristling with foreign flowers somehow identifiable:purple bursts,and poppies like crepe paper,some whites and yellows too.Unlike pixels, wheat and flowers are more interesting close up.In the distance it fades into a photograph, a landscapeblurry and combined: the majesty of the sea, but none of its drama.Over this ocean of plants and land I roll,on two well-worn boots and a walking stick,having passed through mountain lands, over tectonic shoulders where sheep eat,and farms where they grow grapes and wheatfor this land of bread and wine.The fields of wheat stretch off into the distance like a blanket.A tree ahead explodes with swallows.Startled by my heavy steps,they quickly disappear into a tree farther onand explode again,exploding over and over, movingsteadily onward until nightfall.

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Los Arcos

Outside of Villamayor the trail winds through hilly farm country. Large, square haystacks dot the landscape like improbable buildings. In some areas vineyards take over and blanket the land in their even rows. I walk by some men inspecting grapes on a small plot of vines, nearby a white pickup truck is beached on the rocky clay. As I walk through this almost laughably pastoral landscape I feel the frightening lurch of possibility that comes with being alone. I have freedom and emptiness in every direction as far as I can see; only a ghostly trail of footsteps ties me back to anywhere. The shadows are long in the bright light of ten in the morning. The twin steeples of the cathedral cast their shadows westward like arrows, beyond the gates of the town, into the hot rolling hills. I stop for a snack of bread and cheese. Like many people I meet, I keep a loaf of bread tucked into my backpack. Pilgrims have been living on bread for centuries. A middle aged American man in sandals walks over and says hello. “May I sit with you?” He has a seat and says he is from Minnesota. “How far are you going today?” I ask. The man is wearing sandals with socks that I soon realize are thickly wrapped bandages. “I am not going anywhere,” he says, laughing at his own misfortune. “I’ve been in Los Arcos three whole days. My feet got so damn blistered up I can’t walk anymore. I went to the clinic – turns out I’ve got a stress fracture in my foot. The nuns have let me stay here a few days to rest. They say rest until I’m ready to walk again, but I think I’m done. I think I’m gonna get a bus to Madrid tomorrow and just go home. Today is the first time they have really let me leave the albergue.” We talk for a few minutes before he hobbles off in the direction of the nunnery saying, “Make sure you take good care of your feet.” I am left uneasy. The fear of getting hurt wells up to temper my desire to cover as many miles as I can each day, to move quickly over the landscape. How can a person stand a week in Los Arcos? As I walk into the wheat fields beyond the town, I am more aware than ever of my legs, of the complicated movements of bones and tendons, of the shifting of weight that happens unconsciously as I move through space.

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La Rioja

This morning is just like all of the previous mornings, it is dark but the eastern horizon at my back is beginning to glow. I am not sure exactly how many days I have been walking. It may be a week; it feels like more, but think-ing about days is like trying to cut sand. The times and distances of each day’s walk have begun to blur together. If you think about it, these weeks of walking are not very much time, only the time is very dense. After a few minutes of walking the pain and stiffness give way and I am moving steadily forwards. To walk alone while the sun is not yet up is enough, to let the sun rise and warm the back of my calves as it warms the grapevines and the soil is to be a part of the earth. Behind me the sun begins to crack through the gray of the dawn. Slowly it passes over the ridge over which I passed yesterday; behind it is the rest of the Camino, all the other days of walking. The Pyrenees are back there somewhere with Pamplona, Villamayor, the wine fountain and the patch of woods outside of Estella, Roncesvalles, France, all of the towns and memories are behind me now. Their names buzz like a disjointed roll call. Ahead lies the rest of Spain, the strange cities and towns of Burgos, Leon, Galicia, and eventually Santiago. I can feel my joints and tendons loosening. The pilgrim’s feet are perpetually sore and blistered, but each day they grow accustomed to the weight of the ground. The air fills me as I move through it. I feel expanded by the promise of the sun, by the emptiness in all directions. A person can be alone and be ok. Alone you settle into a rhythm of footsteps and stick swing-ing forward as the sun rises higher and higher turning the grey sky blue until eventually somehow it stops being morning anymore. Last night it rained hard and loud. This morning the path is firm and good under my feet, it is muddy only in the low places on either side, even though the air is damp and cool. I stayed in a tiny town named Cirueña. There was only one other pilgrim in the village, and we sat in the only bar listening to the rain blast away at metal roofs and the stones in the road as it ran the red soil of La Rioja into spooling rivulets. Two days ago I met a man my age. His name is Kuhn and he began walking in Belgium with a pack that weighed as much as he did. There were no hostels and barely any trail markers until midway through France, so he used maps and slept in a tent by the side of the road. One by one he threw things away until his bag got lighter and lighter and he got happier and happier. Kuhn is probably far ahead now – he walks fast; thirty-five kilometers most days. When will my legs be able to go so far? Kuhn has an enviable ease of being about him; I can only picture him laughing or righteously indignant, always in the process of rolling or smoking another cigarette. He seems to be a part of

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the road itself. His is the classic case: he said to me, “My life was going no-where, and I knew you are supposed to walk to Santiago.” And so he pointed his feet towards Santiago and set out to find whatever turned up. A pilgrim is someone who has, if nothing else, a plan. At first young people on the Camino surprised me. I had been imagining my fellow travelers to be retirees with a smattering of holy men. I was expecting wild-eyed greybeards with twigs in their hair who shouted bible passages and talked to birds. All of the people I have met break pretty evenly into two camps: the twenty-somethings and the late middle aged. There are a few very old people as well, at least a handful of octogenarians. Apparently it is a popular trip among the twenty-something crowd, as a result my fellow pilgrims and I are more similar than I am comfortable admitting, especially the Americans. We know people at each other’s colleges, we have similar experi-ences travelling in Europe, we enjoy cheap wine and writing in notebooks. It is disconcerting. I am not special. The road is concrete through the length of a village, but disperses to gravel beyond the last houses. Through these fields the Camino always follows these gravel roads. In Navarra it passed over woodland hills where the path is worn into the rocky strata itself. The gravel that fills the path there has been broken off from the exposed veins of bedrock by the erosive power of millions of feet. The exposed layers of rock form a mosaic of stratigraph-ic linesthat wind like the spine of a fossilized behemoth. Like scrimshaw in the jawbone of the hills, the trail is cut deep and winds through ancient oak forests, the same sorrowful forests where Roland’s war horn1 still moans its desperate song .

1 Roland was one of Charlemagne’s generals killed in the battle of the Ronces-valles Pass in 778. Roland’s army formed the rear guard as the Franks retreated over the Pyrenees back to France, the Basques attacked the rearguard and Roland was defeated. Legend holds he refused to blow on his war horn to summon the rest of Charlemagne’s army until he was completely surrounded. Once he was surrounded he blew until his temples exploded and was avenged by Charlemagne.

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June 22, 2014

It is strange how sometimes, in very particularconditions. Doing laundry by hand in the sun,with the grass brushing my feet, I realizethat I am one of the very luckiest people alive.

I am staying tonight in a barn/cabinthing. It is awesome. It has a woodstove, a tiny kitchen w/ a hotplate + sink, a tiny living room half outdoors, and a bunkroom. 5 €.I could live in a place like this for a long time.

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Burgos

In Burgos1 there is rain. I have found a bed in the city’s public al-bergue. A huge, modern building with three floors of bunkrooms, it was built recently to accommodate the ever growing number of pilgrims. It is right in the middle of this city, only a hundred yards or so from the cathedral’s boney spires. Because I am about a day ahead of most everyone I have met so far, I know none of the other guests. The building rings with a cacophony of strange voices in many languages. Water streams down the large windows as the building fills with the mildew smell of pilgrims’ wet clothes and backpacks. The rain passes and I venture out into Burgos, the first big city on the Camino. I have not eaten yet today and the city reverberates with an unfriendly tone; it is ready to rob me, to starve me, to trap me in its crowded, maze-like streets. At a restaurant on an adjacent plaza I use my best bad Spanish to ask for a sandwich and beer, the waiter smiles. It is siesta and I have nothing better to do. It seems to always be siesta. The sandwich is of the same traditional cured ham they have everywhere in Spain. It is greasy and dark and tastes like dry breath. The bread is stale and sticks to my mouth. The bill is much more than I am expecting, though I do not know what I should expect. I swear at the waiter. It is hot and children are playing and yelling in the square. I give in and pay, swearing again at him, at being alone, at not knowing where the good food is, at not speaking Spanish, for not having hit the waiter in his stupid mustachioed face. My face is hot and my feet and legs hurt and I cannot stop myself from walking around this city, going I know not where. I find myself near the cathedral, among the ancient stone alleyways that are covered in graffiti and smell like piss. It is quiet and I feel unwelcome. To be a pilgrim means to be a foreigner. The word comes from the old French pelerine, which like the Spain-ish peregrino or the Italian pellegrino, comes from the Latin words for beyond (per) and the country (agri). A pilgrim is a person who comes from beyond the country, a person who travels beyond his own country, a person who is beyond country. Loneliness and anger precede a few glasses of wine and an invita-tion to dinner. It seems I need not have wandered far; across the street from the albergue is a bar where a group of pilgrims talking, eating, drinking and using the Wi-Fi has formed, and now that the rain is clear some of them have moved to the tables outside. Though I do not recognize anyone, I take a seat at a small table nearby. I say hello and they ask where I am from. They are two

1 Burgos was the seat of Franco’s empire for a long time. It is the burial place of EL Cid. It is a big deal, but not a very nice city.

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Germans, two Italians, a Dutch and a Swede, they joined together in Ronc-esvalles and caught my attention because they speak English to one another, as it is their only common language. For them Burgos marks the end of two hundred miles of reliable company and friendship. Here, they have decided to disband in order to experience the Camino on their own, as individuals. Every-where along the way pilgrims gather together in clumps, familial clusters that pick up and shed members as they roll towards Santiago. Their plan surprises me, it seems unnecessary. Maybe they are brave, maybe they are sick of each other, but it does not seem like it. They tell me that to walk to Santiago alone and to walk with friends are two different Caminos. They remind me of the little group I was with until Villamayor. I cannot say which is better, I don’t know. What if they never see each other again? I ask the middle-aged Ger-man woman who is a sort of ring leader. “In Santiago,” she says. After a pause she adds, “And also of course there is Facebook.”

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Vilalcazar de Sirja

Stephen is an Englishman who walks in leather loafers. The first thing he says to me after we exchange Buen Camino’s1 is “I threw out my trainers. It feels good to throw away things that have been really and truly worn out.” He moved to Madrid once his kids left. The sneakers, he said, were giving him blisters. Along a verdant irrigation canal we conclude that the Camino grants you only time and distance; that is the nature of its wisdom. I admit to him that I want to write stories. He does not laugh, he knows conviction is a fragile thing, but gives me a lesson in economics. For whatever reason, maybe it is the feeling of blood coursing through my legs, the cool afternoon, the company of an Anglophone or the greenness of the irrigation canal, math seems to have no bearing on reality and I am not dissuaded. In Vilalcazar Stephen wants to see the ancient Templar church but it is closed for Siesta so we sit across the square drinking cañas2 in a bar. The beer is cool and it takes the edge off the afternoon’s heat. I decide to ask Ste-phen why he lives in Spain. “I visited a few times, just like you are now. I guess I sort of fell in love. Love and hate. It is a particularly English relationship with everywhere else. Sometimes I say I am in exile, but this is only to be dramatic.” Stephen wants to spend the night in Vilalcazar, citing such reasons as his advanced age, the relative heat of the afternoon, and a nice albergue, he eventually agrees to keep walking and give me a lesson on the history of Spain. Tomorrow morning we will part ways and I know I will never see him again; the world is full of people always appearing and disappearing and this leaves me feeling full and happy. The possibility and promise of other people is maybe the presence of god.

1 The traditional greeting for passing pilgrims on the road to Santiago is “Buen Camino” meaning literally “Good Path.” Generally it is a habitual expression of good-will and fellowship, a way to start a conversation or indicate that you would rather be left to your thoughts. It means everything from saying that the road is good, physically in good repair, to saying that it is a good day to be walking, or that you feel good to be walking, or that of all roads to walk you feel good to be walking this one.2 A Caña is a 33cl glass of beer. It’s roughly the size of a standard can, which (I suspect) is why they call it a Caña.

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History

Near San Juan de Ortega1, which is about a day’s walk east of Burgos, the path follows a ridge thick with pine trees and looming white wind tur-bines. On this ridge, along a rutted dirt path, it passes an out-of-place looking concrete monument to thirty men whose lives were lost in the Civil War, and whose remains lay undiscovered for a generation that people spent in fearful silence. I do not know if they were communists, fascists, or just people caught up in someone else’s struggle, who can say now who was what? That ridge of pine trees no longer seems to me so simple with the acidic smell of needles in my nose and the crunch of dry earth under my feet. No, the Camino is a landscape of ghosts, probably everywhere is. How rarely is the visitor, the tourist, aware of anything more than the surface of what is around him? To a visitor the history that has been soaked up into the earth, into the grapevines and small towns, absorbed so that time and history continue to cycle all at once, can be invisible. We see a barren landscape. We do not know enough to know that the landscape we see, the one we cross so intimately with our feet, is the product of the invisible past. But these forces leave markers, little traces of history’s recession, the Mozarabic church in Saha-gun, the Roman road outside of Leon, the ruins of unnamed villages, and so we move steadily forwards, through four dimensions, space rejoined to time by Stephen’s stories of The Romans, the Visigoths, the Moors, the Reconquista, and the Civil War, all unfolding across a tilted, semi-arid hexagon. History is splotchy and dappled like the light that comes through the pines at San Juan de Ortega. I do not know the whole history of Spain; I I know so little of even the history of the Camino. The myth is that a ship bear-ing the body of St. James was wrecked on the coast but the saint’s body floated ashore, covered in scallop shells. His body was found and brought inland for burial at a spot named Compostela, or “field of stars”. When his grave was re-discovered in the ninth century, a shrine was built that grew into the cathedral that stands today. Nobody really believes this myth anymore; we don’t accept it as history, preferring instead to think of the Reconquista and the impor-tance of the shrine in securing Christianity in Northern Spain. However, as Stephen’s histories carve and overlay the landscape around me, as I think of the dusty churches on the plain of Leon, and the misty towns of Galicia to come, I cannot help but think that myth is more real than we accept. We are, after all, walking on our own ragged feet to this shrine, over a thousand years since it was first built, since St. James’ body was put there, or found there, or

1 Site of a notable Romanesque Monastery and church, founded by St. John the Hermit in the twelfth century. The name means literally St. John of the nettles.

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proclaimed to be there. The name James, I learn, comes from the name Jacob2, which comes from a Hebrew word having to do with footsteps.

2 In French it translates to Jacques, while in German the Camino de Santiago is the Jakobsweg.

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Meseta

On the meseta we do not know what to expect. That is, none of us, not me nor anyone else who has walked this way before, hours ago, days ago, eight-hundred years ago. Though we never know where we are, it is hard to get lost: there is only one road. A day beyond Burgos, highways and heavy traffic give way, somehow, to cultivated wilderness. It rains hard in the afternoon and the smooth soil turns quickly to mud, it is heavy and grey like wet cement, it sucks us in up to our ankles. It is slow going. A ruined castle appears on a distant hill. It drips down the mountainside like sweat or melting paint. The most important thing is to walk and the lesson that walking teaches is to forget about walking. On the meseta where there are no distrac-tions, nothing between me and the sky, my mind curls inwards upon itself and gives way to rambling pronouncements. The sky reveals itself to be an eye in every direction. And when I stop all of a sudden, in the middle of a wide sweeping plateau, where I can see storm clouds roiling hundreds of kilometers away, I realize the ultimate inescapability of my own self, and I get very sad. I begin to cry because I am ashamed of myself. My mind, my face, my wrists, these things are nothing and so I lean harder into every step. We will not be able to hide out here. Only the small animals that burrow into the loose soil can hide. The weight of carved stone, the arch of an abandoned church through which the road runs, hangs ponderously above our heads and teaches us, like the wide sky or the infinity of fields, to love in the way only prisoners can love. We who attempt to meet god alone, on foot, find the unconditional love of complete examination. At night the sky is larger than any world we ever dreamt possible. We lose all sense of position in it. By night the stars follow the same route we fol-low by day, ever west, ever west, stars or pilgrims, someone is always travelling. In the morning the land is dark, by ten o’clock it becomes pale, and in the evening it burns. There are no people around, only my tiny, broken body in a sea of wheat. I feel the balanced weight of selfhood, neatly piled on my back, held in place with nylon straps. I am the point of a leaden triangle, the tip of a pencil dragging itself heavily across a paper landscape. Sheep range all over the meseta following Las Canadas, the ancient rights of way, paths between grazing lands and markets. It is not wrong to be a sheep. An old shepherd clicks and mutters to his flock. His dogs are lazy. The path is covered in sheep shit. He switches a supple branch, his hat and pants are dirty, his face the color of tobacco.

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San Nicholas

The refuge of San Nicholas is an ancient stone building. It sits next to an even more ancient stone bridge. The only road of any sort that passes by here is the Camino’s dirt track. There is nothing else around. Here a man named Jacopo greets pilgrims. He was born into this life. When he was young his parents bought this medieval ruin, and rebuilt the walls and the roof. They filled it with beds and an altar and a stove. Three volunteers offer free beds and simple communal meals to anyone passing by. Though he is young, the weathered topography of Jacapo’s face draws light into its creases and crags. For a time he was a professor in Milan; he holds a PhD in Linguistics. I try to ask him about this, but I speak no Italian and he speaks very little English, so instead we drink wine and he shows me pictures of the building before it was rebuilt. The black and white photos show a pile of bleached stones covered with brambles, one wall is standing. The background of each photo is only perfectly dark emptiness. I confirm this fact when I go outside to piss in the middle of the night. There is infinite, treeless, lightless emptiness in every direction. The refuge is the only thing under a bowl of stars. Before dinner Jacopo and the other volunteers don maroon robes adorned with scallop shells. They recite a long prayer in Latin with their eyes closed. There is no electricity and the only light comes from candles which cast warm shadows over the pious hospitalieros’ faces. One by one Jacopo washes our feet with a white towel and a silver pitcher of spring water. This scene has played itself many times over for centuries. Centuries of pilgrims’ dirty feet. For dinner there is pasta, good bread, and cheese. We wash this down with many bottles of red wine. There is an English woman who cannot eat gluten. This the Italians do not understand. Most of the other guests are from Italy, and after dinner we clean dishes and sing traditional Italian songs. Jacopo brings out a bottle of grappa. We go outside to drink it and smoke while the old, Dutch woman teaches a dance and a drinking song from her homeland. We dance on the dirt path outside the refuge, the path we will walk on in the morning.

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Carrion los Condes

Today we walked on highways, tomorrowon ancient Roman roads. Will need to take food and water.

This is being written from a smokyfarmer’s bar where old men are loudlyplaying dominoes + smoking. Finding Nemois being played on TV. Lots of flies.Bad coffee.

From Carrion Los Condes the trail moves over dry flat land, pass-ing no towns for nearly twenty kilometers, not even water. All pilgrims must prepare for sun, for exhaustion. The route follows the Calzada Romana, the ancient Roman highway1. The packed gravel is worn smooth by a thousand years of footsteps, of hooves, of boot leather, of foot leather, of marching troops, stumbling pilgrims, and travelling merchants. Somewhere else an ancient road of this kind would be a national monument. A glass case would forbid walking on it. Here there is but a small sign to indicate that each step is a part of history. The name persists in the names of nearby towns – Calzada de los Hermanillos, Calzada del Coto – and the roads empirical straightness. The old, Dutch woman with the bandanna said only, “Yeah, you gonna start early,” before laughing through tobacco stained teeth. We often run into one another because we both walk fast, once she made me email a picture of myself to my mother. We prepare for the early morning by filling up our water bottles at the pump in the convent’s courtyard and buying fruit and chocolate at a small shop in the town. The flatness of the morning is a tiring thing. The earth is gray, as are the town and the sky. Sleep hangs onto the eyes. Outside of a café with a big sign that says “Desayunos 6am,”2 a cluster of headlamps cut small moons of light into the shivering morning. The sound of a walking stick clanking on pavement rings through the stony streets. As the sun rises a line of pilgrims snakes steadily westward. My pack is pulling me towards the ground instead of pushing me forward. I can see nothing but the long line of walkers extending in front of 1 The Calzada Romana runs west to Leon, which derives its name from the legion of Roman soldiers that was once stationed there.2 This is very truly early for Spain where, in the author’s experience, literally nothing in the small towns is open until 9am, even in Santiago de Compostela.

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me and behind me. I hate all of the little backpacks of the people in front of me. I hate the voices coming from behind me. The sun has become bright. I hate it too. I stop briefly in the shade of a tree that looks very out of place. I am searching for energy but I find only anger. I cannot find myself on the map. There are no landmarks, no waypoints, in this shifting field of wheat. All I can do is approximate my speed and guess how far I have come. I cannot even enjoy the soreness of my legs because they are not sore only tired – not responding. I begin to ask myself unanswerable questions: why am I walking? Who are all these people? Where am I? Can’t I just stop? Can’t I simply let my backpack fall to the ground and give up? A man with a blue backpack passes by while I sit by the side of the road. I remember passing him hours ago. Soon I am swept back into the hateful river, the only thing in this featureless sea of wheat. What could the first landmark possibly be but an outdoor café-bar with the ubiquitous red plastic tables outside? It seems to appear out of the fields, a distant blur of red like the poppies that grow in the grass between the road and the fields. The path is no longer interminable. We are getting closer and closer but oh! So slowly. Maybe it is a race. Yes. It is a race. Get there, get there can’t be more than half an hour and hold that thought for twenty minutes. How do you hold a thought for twenty minutes? How can you hold anything when your arms are swinging like this and your feet are moving one in front of the other climbing on flat ground? And all you are thinking about is coffee, coffee and your girlfriend and a clean shirt and being horizontal. You asshole, think about walking! Think about getting there! It is a race and I am losing. I am losing to these people and their little backpacks. These people who carry nothing. My stride is short and uneven as I come into the shade of the café bar. My mouth is full of dust from the road and salt from the sweat trickling down my face. I am standing outside the bar looking like a frightened animal, holding the little cup of coffee in both hands like a prayer; I may be shaking. A heavyset old man with a big green backpack and a white shirt and beard, both stained like old ivory, waves me over to an empty seat at his table. He is German and had spotted me immediately for an American. As I sip the coffee I feel the evilness of the morning’s walk melt from my skin. Meanwhile the man rolls a thin brown cigar and a cloud of blue smoke puffs about his head. I begin to feel the effects of the caffeine in my eyes, which had been narrow slits all morning. Now the muscles relax, letting in the light and wind.

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Camino de Vino

Its funny how a glass ortwo of wine or a beer canmake me feel so much more like I can do this.Like I don’t give a fuck howhard it is. I can do it. I will do it.

Ethan Tucker

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Terradillios de Templarios

Last night there was a fiesta in the village, the pueblo. I do not know, if anyone does, who invited us pilgrims, but it seemed like everyone who was staying in the village’s two albergues made their way to the darkened square of the tiny town. Like most of the little pueblos of rural Spain, this one was tiny, no more than fifty buildings, but last night the square was strung with lights and at big grills men sweated over chorizo while women poured wine from giant boxes. We, the lanky backpackers in neon sports clothes stuck out among the crowd of stooped old Spanish farmers, and laughing families in sweaty t-shirts. Little kids ran around in their sneakers, kicking a ball between their parents’ legs and screaming down the alleys in a pack after it while their parents talked, drank, and sang in groups. We, too, stood and talked and gulped down thick red wine in groups, our wispy, dirty hair tied back with bandannas, our beards untrimmed and our faces burnt and squinty from the sun. The night was cool and the wine was good and plentiful. We were welcomed with a respectful sort of distance. Not many of us speak Spanish, so we could do little more than say thank you. We talked with each other, in English and the other languages of people who come from far away, we had the kinds of familiar conversations people have when they are travelling with strangers, the same conversations pilgrims have been having for centuries: we talked about the places we had visited, the places we hope to visit, traded information on foot care and blister prevention. As we drank more of the red wine we got to talking about Santiago and what comes afterwards. More than a few are not planning on turning around and heading home. For them the Camino is not a reflective pause, after which life will continue as it was; they want it to be a change. These pilgrims’ adventur-ous spirit enticed me last night, filled me with the warm drive of discovery. But thinking now, in the cool morning, my head a little wooden and my legs stiff, I wonder how one is supposed to make a change complete without returning to the place before the change, to see. How else can you know if the change is within yourself or as superficial as your surroundings? Pilgrims are a constant in this village. Not one of us stays very long, we will leave early in the morning, but the collective status of pilgrims as a category is deeply familiar, and tomorrow evening a new crowd will trickle in seeking shelter. Pilgrims are welcomed in these pueblos in two ways. We are welcomed on faith, because pilgrims have always been here, and it is a duty to god and to the disciple St. James to help pilgrims on their way, or at the very least to allow them to pass. The second way is a matter of economics. In medi-aeval times pilgrims passed through towns, seeking food and shelter. In 2014,

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with Spain’s economy in deep recession and people leaving these rural villages for opportunity in the cities, pilgrims are a welcome source of revenue. We will pay for places to sleep, food, wine, and souvenirs, and so we are welcomed. There is a symbiotic relationship between the towns along the Camino and those who walk it; the two histories and economies are tied together.

Ethan Tucker

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Sahagun

I fucked up my knee and it is really hurting now. I don’t know what happened, one afternoon it simply started quivering and burning when I put the weight of my body on it. It is hurting so much that once I get going for a while it does not hurt so much because I get used to it. My mind active-ly blocks it out, anesthetizing me. The leg, though, is correcting itself to avoid the pain: I limp but I do not feel it. I am making it worse. When I stop walking, even for a moment or two, I will feel it again, notice the swelling, the hip-heaviness of swinging that leg forward, so I keep pushing these awkward steps. It is a problem of choreography. My body is discordant in space. Where the knee should go, where each tendon and bone should align, where each foot should fall, there is a projected shadow. Each step it slips, it catches, forcing the wrong move and I continue forcing it over and over again.

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On Churches Here is a priest who will not go into the churches. “If you have to pay it is not a church,” he says, “It is a museum or an amusement park, or something, but not a church.” I linger in the square and drink beer with him.

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Ponferrada

The anachronism of experiencein a town named for its bridge, like many towns are,but here “Iron Bridge” means “Knights Templar”this city, connected with that mysterious brotherhood, rings rarelywith the fearsome clatter of shod horses over cobblestones. allowed only by the calendar, and a rushing in of ghoststheir armor rings on their shouting, slouching bodies,it is a holiday, this is a celebration of history, identity. A good time.They are friends, comrades, inspiring love, not fear in each other. The savage glareof history has not made its way here yet. This afternoon has not yet becomean illustration in some history.They are not the bankers, nor the conspirators history has made themsimple, proud men who are happy to stand with iron in the sunoutside a church, blessed by a king’s recent visit, the knights assemble. To celebrate his presence.Only weeks ago Spain got a new king.A real one, in a suit.

These are not soldiers – they are knights and they are very real. That isto say they stand with no precision. They attend but are not at attention.They are more impressive for their casualness, confidently slouched, beards full, shoulders wide. Their uniforms homemade and each distinct.More rag tag than possible in the modern imagination. Their boisterous chatter fills the square until the order is given.Their tunics are varying shades of white and soiled. Their swords heavy and clanking. These are short men save for their horses, which will not stand still. A gesture at an evenly formed rank. The heaving voices, a cheer that could have been the last thing you ever heard in 1312. The vital dignity of a small parade in a tiny backwater of Christendom.

Would you say time is more dense here? On the TV of a nearby café a bareheaded man in a blue suit steps out of the building to face television cameras and forest of microphones.

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and men at attentionrifles and caps neat, adjusted. A short, rectangular man with a grey beardand a black fur coat strides out of the church’s side door arm and arm with a young woman.Her face is thick with celebratory makeup. Can you deny that everything goes on at the same time? While past and present form uneven ranks and wait for the order to march.The townsfolk watch with cellphone cameras and cheer for their brothers and husbands who are grinning the grin of the summer festival in a small town.

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Dragonte

I leave Ponferrada in the rain. Now we are drawing close to Galicia, the hills of western Leon are either gently rainy or sunny and verdant. In the high country between Leon and Galicia, old wooden houses are falling down like wet cardboard. In the houses that are still occupied straw and manure spill out of large ground-level doors in the stone; the family lives above and keeps their animals below. There are not many young people left in these villages, and in some there are more stone ruins than wooden houses. The road here is muddy with cow manure and mostly unmarked. The map is without landmarks and useless, so I try to follow only the well-worn paths. Cherry trees appear by the side of the mountain road, their crooked wild branches overflowing with shining morsels. The cherries are small and tart, just becoming ripe. I climb the short stone wall that separates trail from pasture to reach into the full boughs. The morning is sunny and the pasture is dappled with green light from the trees. I am not sure if this is stealing. It is questionable, falling in that grey area in which pilgrims thrive, always accept-ing the benefit of the doubt and their position of sanctity. I pull down a few berries, eat them and spit out the seeds. They are firm and the skin gives way under my teeth to a sweet tartness that is pure delight. I heap whole handfuls of red fruit and thin green leaves into my hat. Striding briskly along the path, snacking on cherries, I feel like a true pilgrim. Dragonte is on a less-travelled alternate route from Bierzo through the mountains, a shortcut that is paradoxically longer and more arduous. Most people take the road through the valley. From the mountains you can see down into the valley where the river and the highway twist around one another like conjoined snakes. A modern bridge leaps across the valley with the highway and an endless march of cars on its back. Dragonte is way the Camino must have been when it was still forgotten to the world. It was this world before the café-bars with their ubiquitous red plastic tables and free Wi-Fi, before the American and Korean pilgrims with their bright neon backpacks, their Gore-Tex walking shoes, before you could pay to sleep in a hostel and a refuge meant a barn or a cave. In the afternoon bulls follow me, their bells clanking inquisitively, as I descend from their high pastures into the valley. They are only a few meters behind me, and I do not wish to get any closer, though they are beautiful they are also gigantic and dangerous looking. Their horns shine like granite, and their flanks are smeared with mud. I pass under an electric fence and into the valley, leaving the bulls and their hillside world behind.

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Sarria

There is not much between the ancient monastery at Samos and the city of Sarria. There is only the cool morning and the shaded path. Sarria is the hundred kilometer mark, only a little more than three days walk from Santiago. I jolt out of my morning reverie with a quickening panic. I feel a dis-concerting lightness as though something is missing. The rhythmic lull of the morning walk shatters as I press my hand to my thigh pocket. I no longer feel the swinging weight of my heavy travel wallet that is loaded with coins, cash, cards, and my passport. I am frantic as I tear through my pack, pulling out my crumpled food bag, and the plastic bag full of books that is packed right underneath it. Out come my sweater and jacket, which I keep balled up between the books and the rest of the spare clothes. Scattered around my feet in the road are the many things I have not lost: headlamp, pocketknife, pencils, and charger cords for my cellphone. I have maps and slips of paper from various towns and al-bergues I have already passed through still jammed into various pockets of my backpack, but no wallet. I check again. I check again in disbelief. I cannot find my wallet. Around me people move up and down the narrow street, through the town. I recognize none of them. Since arriving in Spain I have had the sensation of being secured at the end of a very long rope, and now the rope is broken. I feel a sinking weightlessness. Without money and documents I slip from personhood into non-personhood. What direction should I go in? I am nearly sixty miles to Santiago and I have ten euros. What if I die in Spain? What the fuck. What the fucking fuck fuck fuck. My face is hot, but the sweat under my arms is cold. So quickly the world has gone from forwards to backwards to every direction. Spain, which has existed conceptually for me as a straight line from my feet to Santiago, is now spread out all around me like sand beginning to sublimate. I am trapped, trapped in Spain with no money or papers or way to get home or to Santiago or anywhere. And I had been so good at keeping it with me all the time. I had been told to keep an extra credit card stashed deep in my backpack but a string of robberies in the albergues on the Meseta made me re-think this, now I am a fool. I am a stupid kid who cannot take care of himself. I begin to retrace my steps. It has to be somewhere behind me. Where did I stop feeling the heavy weight of the wallet stuffed with change and papers? I walk back out of Sarria, heading east, asking all the people I meet along the way, in English and in atrocious Spanish, if they have seen a wallet.

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Eventually I come to an albergue set back a little ways from the trail and the road. I am well outside the city now; small farms line the highway that the Camino follows here. I walk up the path to the door and try to shake the panic from my voice. There is a woman cleaning and I ask if anyone had come by with a wallet that they had found. She immediately takes me to the office of the albergue, a small room with a refrigerator and a desk. An older woman sits at the desk. The two women speak quickly in impassioned Spanish. I make out only the words “mother” and “American?” I am expectant but not very hopeful. Maybe they have a phone I could use or know the number or the address of the bar where I stopped for breakfast. That was the last time I am sure I had it because I had to have paid the few euros for the coffee I drank. While I tell them my name and where I am from, a large man in a tight black t-shirt and wrap-around reflective sun-glasses pulls aside the beaded curtain and steps into the room. The young woman who brought me in here says, “It is ok, this happens all the time. We will call the tourists office and the police.” But her mother, who is standing behind her at the computer, looks worried. “Yes,” the man says after the woman explains in Spanish, “My name is Diego. If you want we will go and look for your wallet. I have a car. Whoev-er took it is on foot – there we have an advantage.” We drive all over the small city of Sarria. I tell him about the group of Spanish teenagers who came into the café afterwards with a guitar. He im-mediately suspects them as pickpockets, or at the very least people who would pick up a dropped wallet and grab the cash. We go up the main roads into the downtown area; we go back to the place where I stopped for breakfast. We stop in at every establishment along the main path of the Camino where Diego has a connection or knows someone –virtually every place. We go to the police. We go to the Guardia Civil . We go to the Tourist Office. We ask everyone we see who is wearing a backpack and walking along the Camino. After hours of searching we find ourselves along the main road, the Calle Mayor, not far from where I first realized it was gone. The road seems less crowded now, less scary. It is only a narrow Spanish street, along which are some cafes and shops that sell equipment and souvenirs to pilgrims. We have put in notices with the Guardia, and the Police, and with the tourists office in case something turns up: somebody finds it and brings it in, or they catch a pickpocket. Both of these are not likely, they said. We take a seat on some stone steps near the main thoroughfare. Di-ego produces a pack of cigarettes and offers me one. The adrenaline has worn off. I no longer feel the ground giving way under my feet, I feel like I have just vomited. I am shaky but starting to become solid. I feel the ground through

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unsteady legs for the first time since I lost myself. I breathe in smoke. “You know we may not find it.” Diego says matter-of-factly. I tell him I know and thank him dumbly for his help. In response he offers me only more kindness. He says, “If we do not find it you can stay at our albergue. I have asked my mother. We will take you. We can lend you some money and on Wednesday you can go to Madrid to the embassy and get a new passport. I have friends there who you can stay with. You can help at the albergue and eat with us. You will pay nothing.”I can feel my face getting hot again, overwhelmed by the kindness of the Diegos of the world. The smoke and the salt in my eyes make my nose run. I am a slobbering choking thing. I am a child confronted with the bigness of the world, squeaking out thank-yous to a stranger in sunglasses. I feel Diego’s hand on my shoulder. “You are welcome. It is our job to help the pilgrims. Many people now do not know the spirit of the Camino, even the hospitalieros. It is good money and that is ok, so they open an albergue, but I have made the Camino, me and all of my family. I walked from our home when I was just fourteen. And I know that if I was in your country and I had no money you would help me.” We sit for a while as I think about what it means to help a lost strang-er. To be willing to take in and help a random dirty traveler who was clearly incapable. I feel shameful.

A phone call at four in the morning is a scary thing; people don’t wake each other with good news. “It’s a man named Joshua on the phone. No. Jacob, his name is Jacob. He is calling from Spain.” “Yes.” he is in a town called Sarria” The sounds of cicadas and crickets that give summer nights in New England a static hum-ming sound drift in through the open window and go unnoticed. “Oh my god, is he with Ethan?”“I don’t think so. But he says he found his passport.” “I’ll call him, I’ll call him.”“He’s not picking up.”“Dammit.”There is a silence of two bleary eyed exhausted people. The July night hangs heavy in the air. On the floor the dog stirs but does not awaken.“He’ll figure something out.”“I hope so.”“Let’s go back to bed, there is nothing we can do right now.”They probably don’t sleep very much.

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Out of nowhere my phone begins to ring and a man’s voice on the other line is saying my name. He says he has my things and he is in Sarria. I am crying. I do not believe it. Diego must have heard the entire conversation because once I pull the phone away from my ear he has already thrown his cigarette on the ground and is looking down the road through his sunglasses. “Where are they?” “At a café down the street.” I say, not believing my own words. “This,” he says, “Is unbelievably lucky. It is good your phone was on.” A young blond man with a thin moustache is sitting with an older man at one of the red plastic tables outside a café a little ways down the road. The remains of their lunches are on the table still. Their backpacks, old, trail-worn, and dirty, are leaned against the table legs. The two men smile brightly as we approach. The younger one jumps from his chair and says, “I am Jacob, I think I have your things!” I embrace him. “It’s a good thing you had your phone number in in there. You know, Spain is a big country.” Jacob’s father looks at his son proudly. I am crying with joy, over-whelmed by kindness. I am not able to do justice to my feelings. I am able to indicate my gratitude but not to show it. Maybe no one ever is. I am fighting back tears and trying to thank all three of these people. “We are glad to help. That is the whole meaning of the way, isn’t it?” said Jacob, looking at his father. “I accidentally called your parents first, they might appreciate a call from you.” We all agree we will meet again along the way, “In Santiago!” the father declares. Diego and I walk back to his albergue where I left my pack while we searched the town. I should have paid for their lunch, or bought them a beer or something. Why did these ideas not come to me at the time? Why is it that action always precedes thought? I can only hope they do not remember me shamefully and somehow know my gratitude.

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Ribadiso

Very close to done w/ Camino.is my pilgrimage more about the sea thanthe church? is it more about myself than either? what should itbe about? I have learned a lot already. – I will learn more like it or not. I will have more highs +lows. Though of course it is not over,it hasn’t even really started.

What does a pilgrim become when he leaves the road? What will he eat? How will he know where to go? We will never again know the freedom of such a simple task. Across from me a river bubbles clear water over rocks. This area is verdant, filled with trees and grey stone walls. We have left behind the land of dust. Because the many routes to Santiago come together, the closer to Santiago we get, the more people crowd the trail. Many people walk only the last hundred kilometers from the town of Sarria, as this is the minimum distance for a pilgrim to walk in order to qualify for the Compostela, which is little more than a certificate of completion offered by the cathedral as a souve-nir. In the middle ages pilgrims would bring home scallop shells as a symbol of their having made pilgrimage. I am dirty and tired, but I feel strong. My body is wiry and the bot-toms of my feet have hardened into leather. The dust of the meseta has left its mark on those of us who have crossed it; we still leave our beds before dawn in the hopes of getting most of our walking done before the road fills with other walkers. Though who am I to feel this way? I started walking somewhere and so did they, and there are many who have walked from much further than St. Jean Pied de Port. There are pilgrims who stepped out from their doors in Germany nearly three months ago. We are all headed in the same direction, no matter how long we have been at it, and we are drawing so close, so deliciously close. None of us will ever be free again. We will never be hungry again. We will never be tired again. We will never have a destination again, we who have been scorched by the sun, trodden by the earth. Heaven and Hell are joined by a pilgrim’s feet.

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Monte de Gozo July 12th

Very excited for Finisterra – both thewalk + the destination.

Camino / “albergues” are overrun withSpanish tourists. Very few peoplewhom I recognize anymore.

getting ready for tomorrow’s walk. scared of what I will find there. what it will look like, feel like, what the crowd will be like. etc.

God has been watching me this trip. I know this; it has been apparent sincethat afternoon of despair in the woods.I have been watched over and provided for. Everywhere I turn things are ok. I am safe. is this god or Camino?

What do you pray for in a placeas holy as St. James? After a pilgrimage.What, ultimately, is pilgrimage for? I do not think I will know when I get there. I think it will take Longer.

I guess we can pray for the love ¬+plenty that is so apparent on the Caminoto exist the world over.

We can pray for a way to take the things we have learned on the roadthe lessons of kindness + and of being a goodperson + Bring them to life outside of the Camino

Pray to be able to translate.

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Santiago

The Basilica of Santiago is the length of fifty-three men, from the west doorway to the altar of St Salvador. It is thirty-nine men wide, from the French to the south doorway; in the inside, it is fourteen times a man’s height. -Codex Calixtinus

The lights of Santiago appear in the early morning. Closer to the city center the buildings appear nicer and nicer, the streets become the narrow cobblestones of a mediaeval town and the buildings are ancient, irregular and cramped looking. The sun is just beginning to rise. It will be a beautiful day. I am alone in front of the Cathedral. The plaza is empty. It is five-thirty in the morning. Today is Sunday, by mid-morning hordes of pilgrims and tourists will descend upon the square, street performers and beggars will clog the narrow streets and the basilica will be jammed with the devout. The front of the cathedral is covered in scaffolding; above which, in the center spire of the façade is a statue of St. James the Pilgrim holding out his crook and facing westward, wel-coming the storms from the North Atlantic and pilgrims from the east. I have never seen a cathedral so large. I have never seen distance so large. I sit on my backpack and laugh.

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The Parador

The Hostal dos Reyes Catholicos was built in 1486 by King Ferdi-nand and Queen Isabella– the same pair who sent Columbus over the edge of the world. It was built as a hospital for pilgrims who had finally arrived, after months and even years of hard travelling, at the Cathedral of Santiago. In the summer months these pilgrims were allowed three days of rest and five days in the winter. Back then most arrived in Santiago with broken bodies, dressed in rags, completely destitute. Many were sick and injured from the journey, their feet bloody from walking without shoes. The road was a dangerous place to be back then. Pilgrims travelled in groups to avoid being robbed or killed for their few belongings. The perils of the road included highwaymen, unfriendly townspeople, storms, disease, wild animals, starvation and more. There were no albergues with comfortable bunk beds, showers, electricity, and Wi-Fi to update your family. Many probably would never see their families again. They absolutely did not have cafés every ten kilometers with coffee, beer, and snacks. Today, most of those who walk down the cobbled street with a previ-ously unknown jubilation in their steps will depart from the small Santiago de Compostela airport, but in the fifteenth century, if you came by foot you left on foot. And so the cathedral was not an end point, but a halfway mark. Today the Hostal dos Reyes Catholicos is a state-run five star hotel. It is part of a system of fine hotels in beautiful historical buildings established by Franco in the 1950s called the Paradores. Wealthy pilgrims often treat them-selves to a night in the Parador after a month of roughing it in the hostels’ crowded bunkrooms. Though the Parador is no longer in the business of letting people stay for free, it continues its tradition of charity by offering free meals to the first seven recently arrived pilgrims three times a day. They do not advertise this, but if you go to the service entrance of the hotel a little before nine in the morning, you will find a small cluster of dirty, tanned pilgrims still wearing their sweaty walking clothes awaiting this expected kindness. The metal gate in the stone arch opens up and a man wearing a green hotel uniform with a little round cap steps out and counts the waiting group. He announces to us that backpacks are not permitted and must be left outside. This is a problem as pilgrims have a very real aversion to being separated from their backpacks. The French couple gets upset. The woman, Laura, who has a little Spanish, asks if there is safe place where we can leave them. The porter shrugs. We take out our most valuable things out and try to hide the bags themselves behind some boxes. Laura mutters in frustration, “Santiago is for the fake pilgrims.” I cannot help but agree. This city, for all the joy of completion it represents, is

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mobbed by tourists. The vast majority of pilgrims who register as having made pilgrimage on foot to Santiago walk only the last hundred kilometers. “It was this way at the Cathedral, too.” I add, remembering the feeling of frustration of being forbidden from entering the sanctuary with my backpack. They directed me instead to a place where I could check my backpack for a small fee. The cathedral quarter of the city is infested with gift shops and overpriced cafes and crowded with panhandlers and street perform-ers. “They treat us like money on legs.” She says with a tone of disap-pointment. Our conversation is interrupted and the short, emerald-clad porter leads us into the maze of manicured courtyards that make up the interior of the Parador. The staff, clad in the same sharp green uniforms with gold trim as our porter, bustle around carrying silver trays and pushing brass baggage car-riages. I become conscious of the beard curling around my face, and the sweat stained baseball cap that holds down my greasy long hair. My companions, too, are looking around a little wide-eyed. We are taken through a courtyard of stone walls that glow a warm gold tone in the morning sun, sculpted hedges, and bright red flowers that bloom in measured plots. The porter leads us down some stairs and into the kitchen where we see a team of chefs preparing all sorts of eggs, bacons, and other elaborate breakfast delights. Laura grabs me by the shoulder and points at a chef preparing a tray of scrumptious-looking deviled eggs. I see her part-ner Karl, whose dreadlocks fall well below his shoulders, staring awestruck at a sous chef who is preparing delicate bowls of fruit loaded with heavy waves of whipped cream. Karl looks positively unsanitary here in this whitewashed kitchen, we all do. One of the uniformed chefs hands our porter a tray of churros and croissants and a carafe of coffee. We follow him to a small room adjacent to the kitchen, occupied by a simple wooden table, two benches and an odd assortment of chairs. He sets down the tray and the coffee and another porter brings in a stack of plates and cups. They wish us a good meal and shut the door on their way out. Did we really think we would be eating deviled eggs and fried ham this morning? The meal begins quietly and slowly, a tense feeling of disappointment clouds the air, but after a few cups of the coffee, which is thick and earthy, we begin to chat. Soon we are all laughing at how delicious the food in the kitchen looked and how we thought, maybe for a second, that we were going to get to eat it. The plate of simple pastries, though, was a gift that we, as pilgrims, must accept with grace and thanks. Two of the Americans are going home this afternoon. The three

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Spaniards will take a train back to Madrid. Laura and Karl will keep walking until they reach the ocean. They began their journey in Normandy on the coast and will not be done until they see the water again. One of the Spaniards asks how we all liked mass in the cathedral. Karl smiles, he is invariably silent. “Of course!” Laura said, “The feeling when we walked into the cathedral. I cannot describe.” She pauses for a moment and sighs, “Incredible. And in the cathedral, when they made the…” she mimes the swinging of a pendulum with her finger, “what do they call it?” “The incense1?” “Yes, the incense. My heart was weightless. I was skipping in the air.” “Me too, that was the most incredible thing. It was pure joy.”

1 The Botafumiero is a giant censer that burns incense and hangs from the cathedral’s ceiling. At the end of the pilgrims’ mass at the cathedral of Santiago, eight clergymen pull on a heavy rope to swing the aromatic comet across the transept of the church and fill the air with smoke and the rich smell of incense. It is said that in medie-val times it was used to combat the horrible smell of the assembled pilgrims.

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Poems from the End of the World

Where does the sun go? What future place is waiting for us?“Just beyond that watery horizon, a few days walk.”From here to wherever the sun sleeps we are lingering, unsure how to go onwhen the sun is gone and there is nowherefurther to go tomorrow.

Or will we stay here forever?painting sunsets with watercolors and hanging them on café walls?The old hippie says stay a little longer, why are you leaving?“Where else are you going to go?”That is a life, but not a path. Not a direction.The colors never look as good on paper, or in memories or photographsAs they do in the sky.The mad Dutch woman says,“I walk from my house to the end of the world.”A declaration of definite articles. The surety of empire and of mystics.You expect colors to be a little more vivid at the end of the world than they are closer to its center; it has to do with contrast. Closter to emptiness means a littleless gravity holding things together, constraining.The something and the nothing, the I and the Forever.The sun still shining in the middle of the night.

Cabo Fisterra July 17th

Camino is over. Cannot followyellow arrows forever. The onlyplace left to go is home.

It is apparent now, switching from hostel to hostel, waiting got the rain to stop,waking up late and sitting in cafés; we are no longer pilgrims. We are tourists.

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Westward

It has always been the sun-seekers,the not all the way intellectualswho talk philosophy in café-bars,whose sunburnt faces smile as they rollcigarettes with unshaven edges,the ones who burn so hot they cannot stand to see the sun go down.We are yearning westwardto fly into the sunset’s feathery, hot glow.Or, at the very least, we will catch the last drops of daylight’s golden wine on outstretched tongues.

Ultreia!

The song of the pilgrim who forgets to go home.Who, with the blessing of the Saint upon his shaggy head,keeps walking.You can say “farther!” up to a point,but eventually you will run out of road, somewhere.When you get there you have options.You had forwards: all people in one direction.Now you can go forwards in all directions but one.From here we have to make our own paths.But not all pilgrims turn around.There are some, boots on their feet, packs on their backs,who stay, day after day, to stare into the sea and watch the sun set,and wonder why they are cursed to not be fish. And others too, who burn their boots, sleep barefoot on the beach.

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Finisterre

I am walking slowly through the early morning fog that rolls onto the Galician1 coast from the cold North Atlantic Ocean. The path takes me through the woods, on some minor roads and not along the shore. Even though I am a few kilometers inland, it is raining gently and the fog comes in around the trees, reminding me of the ocean. My legs and feet hurt badly from yesterday’s forty-five kilometers. By now, by the very last day of my walk, I thought my feet were leathery and tough enough to prevent new blisters but less than an hour into today’s walk I had to stop. I took cover from the rain in a bus shelter to pop blisters that formed from yesterday’s long walk and wrap fresh gauze around my feet, carefully taping it to keep out dirt and leave room for my toes to swell throughout the day. My feet have not hurt this badly since crossing the Meseta before Leon. There it had been hot and my feet sweaty and there were new blisters every day. Yesterday it had been just the pushing, the mile after mile that had chewed them into a bleeding mess, and the final decline, after hours and hours of walking, to the sea. God, the sea. Yesterday was sunny and bright; the sea was a glimmer of reflective blue on the horizon. At first it looked like a different shade of sky or a very low cloud, but in fact it was water, stretching out, flat and blue as a mirror. The last miles to the sea had rubbed my feet raw and descending bashed my toes against the front of my boots. In the beach town of Fisterra2 the roads are quiet and narrow and curve around a small harbor. A small café appears in the center of town, be-tween the main road and the harbor. Warm light from the cafe’s large windows spills into the fog. Outside of the door, underneath a narrow awning is a row of backpacks and walking sticks. Fixed to each backpack is a scallop shell, the ever-recurring symbol of St. James. I stop and look through the window where the name of the café is advertised: Café La Frontera – The Café at the End of the World. Inside, little tables, chairs, espresso cups, and customers clutter the space in front of the long shiny bar. Surprisingly I begin to recognize the people seated at the tables as my friends from all along the way. They are all here: talking and writing, drinking coffee and eating toast. Are they waiting for me? I do not know. It

1 The northwesterly autonomous community of Spain. It is incongruously Celtic in climate, ethnicity, and language.2 Fisterra is the name of the small beach town in the harbor formed by the Cape Finisterre. Finisterre is the English name for the cape – a bastardization of the Latin Finis Terrae. Most Anglophone visitors to the area simply refer to the cape and the town, and the whole general area around the town, and really just to their general destination if they are continuing their pilgrimage beyond Santiago, as Finisterre.

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does not look like they are waiting for anything. The American sisters are talking to Dave and Steve. Stephen, whom I have not seen since the afternoon we walked together on the Meseta, is sitting across the table from Crystal, Russic and Mia share a Napolitano. Where did Russic come from? I have not seen or heard anything from him since Navarra, where I was separated from this group of friends. The American hippie who said he wasn’t going to Finis-terre sits in the corner writing in a small notebook, smiling at the crowded café through his wire glasses. Laura and Karl, who had walked from Normandy, are sitting together conspiring over café con leches, maybe they are planning their next steps. California Craig is explaining the difference between the “vibe” of Napa Valley and the much more approachable Sonoma Valley to Micah, the twenty-something born again Christian, and Father Dave, the seminarian who wouldn’t go into a church. The man at the bar is wearing a loose white shirt and has a beard and smile that make him look like the Dutch innkeeper from back in Villamayor de Montjardin. I see Mads and Anna talking to a scraggly looking group of Spanish hippies on the closed-in terrace. Mads is finishing a cigarette and puts it out as he turns to go inside. He looks up for a second towards the door and we make eye contact. A look of pleasant surprise and warmth passes through Mads’s bright blue eyes. I smile, but do not open the door. I cannot yet enter that world; the company of angels is not for the living. I will come back to the café to warm up and have a coffee and toast, but not yet. I put my hood back up against the light rain and continue out of the little seaside town along a small paved road. The rain drums against the tight waterproof nylon of my hood. The road follows up the coast of Cape Finisterre3 for about a mile to the lighthouse. The thick fog obscures a drop-off next to the road and the sea below, but every now and then a patch in the fog opens up and I can see the restless black water crashing and swirling around the rocks. After over five-hundred miles of walking among wheat fields, forests, mountains, and farms, the sea’s violence and constant motion is sublime. I feel a great sense of ease in hearing its constant mutter as I walk. The sea is a reminder, after a landlocked journey, that the world has an end, and even the longest walk cannot go on forever. Before I reach the lighthouse I pass through the parking lots, full even on a rainy day like today with tourists’ cars, busses, and motorcycles. I walk past a cluster of souvenir booths selling postcards and refrigerator mag-nets from the end of the world. I continue past the lighthouse where groups of people in jeans and sneakers wait to see the historical museum inside or eat at the small restaurant attached. Around the side of the lighthouse and down some concrete stairs is the rocky promontory that the Romans named with the 3 Called Cabo Fisterra in Galego, which is the local language.

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words Finis Terrae. The End of the World. The point to which early Christian pilgrims not yet ready to go home after arriving at the cathedral in Santiago flocked because it was as far as they could go. It is the same spit of land on which ancient Celtic tribes performed rituals for the sun, long before anyone had heard of St. James or Gore-Tex hiking boots. Stretching back into the deepest foggiest recesses of time, this was the furthest point west, after which was nothing but the land of the sun, towards which they were all uncontrolla-bly drawn. The very last spit of rocky land that juts out into the Atlantic is scattered with small stone cairns, crosses, photographs of loved ones, written prayers on waterlogged paper, and little piles of charred driftwood and cloth-ing in the lee of the larger rocks. Here and there a pair of boots lies sacrificed. I pick my way down through the stones, beyond a group of motor-cyclists taking photographs with their cellphones, beyond a group of pilgrims attempting to light a votive fire in which to burn their socks. I walk out beyond everyone, so all that is in front of me are the stones, the mist, and the wide, uneasy ocean. Here I sit on a boulder and stare into the fog. In the leeward side of many of the surrounding rocks are scorch marks. It is a tradition from the druidic sun cults that once worshipped here to make a fire as an offering to the sun. With a prayer, modern pilgrims kindle smoky fires in the alcoves of large stones in order to burn their socks, their boots, their walking sticks or their money. From here there is nowhere further west to go. Not then, not now. But still, somewhere past the edge of the cape, beyond the burned rocks and votive crosses, beyond the little part of the gray sea I can see through the fog, beyond the fog itself and across thousands and thousands of miles of empty ocean, is my home. This is the same cold, grey water that licks its bristled tongue against the equally rocky coasts of New England and New York, that murmurs and spits into the great harbors of the East Coast, and kisses the beach homes of the rich. This whole time, the weeks getting further and fur-ther from the person I was, I have been walking towards home. Right in front of me, unobscured but for storm and distance and the unknowable curvature of the earth, American flags are rippling gently over shingle-sided beach hous-es, yachts, and harbors. For a moment the sounds of tourists posing for photographs and pilgrims trying to light a fire are swept off by the wind, smothered by the fog. I am alone at the end of the world, the westernmost person in Europe. I am the tip of the nose of a gigantic snake. The front most atom of steel in a sharp arrowhead. I am connected to something powerful, something I cannot see because it is behind me. All of the weight and energy of the road travelled

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bears down upon me, heavy but well balanced on my shoulders and hips, like the weight of a backpack. After some time I place the small stone I have brought from my backyard in Connecticut on the boulder. I hoist my pack and walk east to join my friends at the café.

Modern Pi lgr ims

Ethan Tucker