30 Villages in 30 Days: We Made It!
7/16/22
“What I’ve learned is that living simply is relatively simple.”
(Steve, from the U.K., walking the Camino Frances with his wife, father of 2, age 65)
I hope you enjoy the videos I get to share with you related to these final stories of the Camino. I hope you feel a little of the Camino spirit! It’s so special!
“Spain is music—
She contains the sounds of Joy”
We passed through hundreds of villages, but only overnighted in 30.
The support system of the Camino Frances is astounding! Albergues, cafes, and farmacias all exist to support the pilgrim. Their woven interdependency supports the success of peregrinos on their pilgrimage. Covid restrictions strained all Caminos, most evident in the fact that many Albergues went out of business when no one was allowed to travel.
If you look at the symbolic Scalloped shell, you can see many lines that lead to a centerpoint.
The last 20 km that brought us together toward the cathedral, the centerpoint, brought out a variety of reflections. I realized that this feeling was quite like running a marathon, except this is the longest marathon I’ve ever been on and the finish line has no line. But if I looked within the eyes of the various Peregrinos, I could see that everyone came to this place for their own personal journey. There was no race medal, No ribbon to break through. It’s an arrival that we’re celebrating perhaps for some, an illumination. So much more than a completion of a task. It is, in fact, a pilgrimage. An interior journey as much as a long, long walk.
This next video is special to Michael who was walking alongside a beautiful voice contained within a man’s body, a sweet vocalist who was walking his journey with a group of friends and family. By using his gift as an a cappella tenor performer, He sang his Camino song while journeying forward. In the end, you can hear him sigh a “whew” as he realizes that it’s hard to do both simultaneously! We loved it so much!
At this point, we are within the city boundaries and we’re simply walking the last 30 minutes of our journey together very light-heartedly.
As we approached the cathedral, closer and closer we traveled under a road and through a tunnel where a bagpiper was playing. Anyone who knows me, knows that bagpipers and I have a secret passion for one another! So, upon hearing the tones, my trigger for tears came up immediately. Cue the waterworks!
This was a significant moment for me as it signified the end of a long journey. As I approached the light at the other end of the tunnel, that journey would end allowing space for another to begin.
On the other side of the tunnel stood the cathedral. Enormous and filled with crowds of people greeting each other, crying and supporting one another for reaching their destination, we were overwhelmed with the experience and emotional impact of it all. We hugged and cried and stood and sat still with it all. We, like so many other peregrinos, could hardly believe we had arrived.
It would be hours later when we would find ourselves still saying, “It hasn’t quite sunk in yet. I mean, we’re done! We’re not gonna walk in the morning. I don’t think my mind quite understands this.”
Still operating in “task completion” mode, we continue to move with a somewhat numbing motion.
Get Compostela
Eat something
Have celebratory beer
Check into sleeping accommodations
Shower
Nap through the siesta hours
Make arrangements to meet up with friends
Before we were able to sit still in the quiet of it all, there seemed to be this overwhelming need to yell and scream and celebrate and drink and celebrate more!
This doesn’t seem to be difficult at all.
That night we met with friends, fully showered and smelling much better, for meals and drinks. There are at least five languages that fill each table at any point in time. This has been our experience over the last 30 days. Yet it never interferes with our communication, it never interferes with the expression of emotions and experiences and journeys. There’s something here that requires no translator.
Once the final hours of the day approach us, we take one last stroll past the cathedral. It is quieter now and illuminated with lights and surrounded by the ever-present sound of music.
The next day we attended the Pilgram’s mass held at noon, vocally guided by a nun who sang with pure tones of a young child, like soprano pure and simple, yet complex.
There were no hymnals nor prayer books, so she taught us her “call and response” prior to the service.
At the conclusion of the mass, we witnessed the botafumeiro, a massive incense burner (censor) that swang with a veracity that required eight people dressed in red-robes called tiraboleiros to pull the ropes
(Rumor has it that the incense was once used this to defuse the odor of the pilgrims who have just completed their 780 km pilgrimage).
The mass was packed, standing room only. There were all ages in attendance and not just pilgrims. There were old ladies sitting on the floor and in the pews, there were young children standing next to their parents, there were strollers and young pilgrims still holding onto their walking sticks.
Everyone waiting in silence.
Everyone listening.
Everyone present.
The following day, we greeted additional friends who once traveled with us along the way but who may have chosen a pace that disallowed a mutual arrival day. Greeting them with clean smelling bodies and newly purchased “non-Camino” clothes, we found all the familiar feelings return, just with a more nostalgic essence to them.
Our planned departure towards the ocean in Finisterre commenced. We arrived at a beautiful Airbnb with an ocean view. The seagulls, sailboats, sunrises and sunsets allowed for proper settling of our experience.
We may not yet have the words to fully explain it, we do recognize a shift within our spirit. This, my friends, we hope and desire to one day properly impress upon you, this magical experience of finding one “Way” to Santiago.
Thank you for joining us on our journey, I look forward to sharing more moments of this experience with you whenever you wish.
Enjoy! (THIS one last video was super fun to make and be a part of!)
