Last Day

Thirty-two Days and 471 Miles on The Way

“I just Googled my Albergue for tonight, and it is an 18 minute car ride away,” Luke from New Zealand said this morning as we were getting packed up for the day. He started to laugh. “I could call a taxi and be there by eight. Just in time for breakfast. Instead, I will be spending all morning walking there.”

“Yeah, we have not chosen the most efficient way to get through Spain,” I said. And, because this is how the Camino works, it turns out that I am staying at the same Albergue tonight as Luke, so I, too, could have been at my destination in less than twenty minutes.

I have found myself thinking some variation of “I am walking through Spain” almost every day over the last month. Sometimes it comes in the form of a sudden wash of gratitude that I get to see all the amazing things I have seen over the last month. Other times it shows up in a more judgmental thought that it is kind of weird to walk this far.

Yet I have.

Tomorrow will be my last day walking the Camino. I will walk from O Pedrouzo to Santiago, a relatively easy 19.4 kilometers, to be precise. I will attend a pilgrims mass and get my Compostela, certifying that I have made the trek on foot from St. Jean Pied de Port to Santiago.

It feels bittersweet to have this come to an end. Yet, it must. The time on the Camino since Sarria has started to prepare me for the end of this adventure. Throngs of people have started walking the last 112 kilometers, mostly in groups, formal and informal, and the paths and bars and Albergues are filled with unfamiliar faces. Patrice, Luke, two French/Spanish guys named Sergio and Jose who I can’t really communicate with but with whom I share a Camino kinship because we traversed the Pyrenees in a thunderstorm together a month ago are the only fellow peregrinos who I have known from the start left on the same walking schedule as I am. Everyone else is ahead or behind because we are each walking at our own pace, walking our own Camino.

The Albergues after Sarria don’t offer pilgrim dinners and all have fabric sheets, which seems like it should be a good thing, but it makes me yearn a bit for the more rustic and smaller Albergues of la Meseta. The feeling of family the pilgrim dinners offered is gone. The influx of people reminds me that I will need to return to the real world at some point, and that time is very near.

Walking almost 500 miles with a backpack over mountains and rolling hills, through plains, along highways, on rocks, gravel, shale, and asphalt, has given me an  unprecedented appreciation for my body. I asked a lot of it. It delivered. My body waged its protest with blisters, a sore hip, and stiffness if I take too long of a mid day break, but every day it got into a rhythm and took me anywhere I needed to go. It understood the assignment and came through. I am immensely grateful.

I have been told that the real Camino begins when this one ends. That statement makes more sense now that I am facing the end of this part.

How long will my body still expect to wake up, have coffee, and walk anywhere between 18 and 32 kilometers?

How long will I expect to see the faces of my fellow peregrinos who have become so familiar in such a short time?

How do I keep the peace, serenity, freedom, and joy that I have experienced over the last month as I return to real life and step out of what at times seemed like a dream?

How will I sleep in a non bunk bed without the snoring of strangers?

I don’t know.

My body, mind, and soul will be processing this experience for a long time. I have no idea how long it will take for me to fully make meaning out of this.

On the eve of my last day walking the Camino, I do know this—I am proud of myself for not taking a taxi this morning, or any other day, literally and metaphorically and for taking the crazy, long, challenging, varied, uncomfortable path to get here, even if I don’t fully understand why yet.

I know someday that I will.