A finalist in our Pilgrimages competition dares to cross a section of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela that many others avoid – the Spanish meseta. Trapped by monotony and sensory deprivation, he encounters the stubborn suffering that pilgrims force upon themselves.
It is that point of time each morning when the cold chill of dawn changes abruptly into shimmering dusty heat. There is no gradual warming through any comfort zone. One minute it’s too cold; the next, too hot. One moment, there are the colors of sunrise. Then, there’s nothing but dry farmland withering under the hot, blinding sun. The Spanish meseta becomes limitless at these moments, its featureless plains expand outwards to encompass distances without end.
On a narrow path, an intermittent stream of walkers crosses the land. They are barely noticeable from above, invisible to anyone without a telescope and abundant patience. These hardy individuals are walking the medieval pilgrimage towards Santiago. Some are religious, but others are not. Some walk in groups, others in solitude. Many know why they walk, while others no longer pretend. All, however, walk towards Santiago de Compostela, the legendary burial site of Saint James, Spain’s patron saint. Enduring privation, there can be kilometers between them as they slowly traverse the Spanish meseta, drawn to the promise of cool green hillsides in Galicia and, finally, to Santiago itself. This morning, I am amongst them, walking alone, slowly westwards on feet which have not yet forgiven me for misrepresenting the adventure I promised them twenty days ago in the foothills of the French Pyrenees.
Many pilgrims skip the meseta, bussing or cycling ahead to Leon or Astorga, unwilling to subject themselves to weeks of harsh monotony. One could ask why I’ve chosen not to join them, but I’ve disavowed mechanical transit for the duration of my pilgrimage. It’s clear that I want to prove myself equal to the challenge of walking as others have for a thousand years before me, but there’s more back there in the recesses of my mind, reasons which remain elusive. Why am I still walking this path?
In the meseta, the wheatfields remain barren following the summer harvest. We endure days of sensory deprivation in the sun, hours on end with nothing but empty fields and distant horizons. Occasional breaks in monotony sometimes occur when subtle folds in the earth unveil farming villages, with eroded castles dating back to wars even the Spaniards themselves have forgotten. The heat rises, and my body stoically accepts the discomfort and continues to walk. The lack of external stimulation releases my mind to wander into dusty corners, odd places I didn’t even know were there.
Memories arise from afar, not all of them comfortable, some others even less welcome. Many persist, not unlike the vultures far above me, circling in loops of perfect, endless patience. I walk and think for hours on end, but resolution escapes me. Plodding westwards, the Camino rises to a slight ridge and curves south, and the trail stretches out again towards the horizon. In the distance, my eyes capture a dark speck, a tiny image shimmering amongst the heat waves where the trail disappears near the horizon.
I am a slow walker, my recalcitrant feet having exercised their veto power following a long, painful day into Burgos, so I have slackened my pace to reduce the intensity of pain following each footfall down to something endurable. As such, pilgrims pass me, not the other way around. In the distance, though, this particular black speck slowly grows. It becomes evident that another pilgrim is up there, somehow walking even slower than I.
Time passes – how much is hard to say. The intensity of the sun and the incipient grumbling of my stomach are the only real indications of passing time. Gradually, that black speck resolves into a human figure, exhibiting a gait that I have grown to recognize and somewhat fear. She is limping, driving herself onwards with a determined metronomic pace, belying what is likely her own personal hell of stubbornness, anger, and pain. Approaching slowly from behind, I walk beside her and ask if everything is OK.
“I’M FINE!” is her sharp retort, in that special tone of voice every married man knows better than to question. I am taken aback, perfectly aware that she isn’t fine, but what is the right thing to do? I think about this for a moment and decide to let her be. It is her Camino, and each of us must walk our own way. It’s been nearly 500 kilometers, so most of us know this by now.
“OK then, Buen Camino.”
I walk slowly past her; she chooses not to respond, and soon the footfalls fade behind me until I am alone again in the wide expanse of the meseta. I reach my destination mid-afternoon and fall in with friends, both old and new, eating and drinking while waiting for the sun to settle down towards a more comfortable spot near the horizon. While many are tending to their feet and legs, this afternoon’s injured pilgrim is nowhere to be seen. It’s not exactly surprising, for it is the nature of this walk that the Camino chooses who you will see or not see on a given day. It’s an unwritten rule of our ascetic experience that I’ve learned to accept.
In the morning, I arise to walk before dawn as usual, though today is to be special. The Camino descends into a river valley, eventually leading to the outskirts of Leon, my first city since entering the meseta. The oppressive heat and sunlight of the walk feel perfectly normal as I make my way into the center of the old town, but there in the central square stands the Leon Cathedral, its spires tall and graceful. I choose to enter, and thus pass into its seemingly impossible interior of cool, quiet beauty. Stained glass windows, fifty feet tall, draw colors from the mid-afternoon sun to illuminate the interior, beautiful and completely open within, remaining true to its high Gothic vision. I am bathed with reds and blues, and I find myself overwhelmed by this unexpected, sudden comfort and beauty. Something releases within me, and soon I am walking slowly down the nave with my head tilted back towards the colors above. Tears stream down my face; I’ve not a clue what it means.
Outside, I discover friends at a café under an awning, and we settle down for lunch. Others pass by, and before long, there are somewhere near fifteen pilgrims at our table, reconnecting and celebrating our milestone on the meseta. A raucous dinner follows with even more pilgrims and celebrations with liberal quantities of beer, wine, and Spanish gin-tonics. But all too soon, it’s time to sleep, for the Camino tomorrow is again long and hard. I retreat to the lobby of my hotel, where I say goodbye to a fellow walker, as her time on the Camino has ended, and retreat into my tiny but comfortable room, where I sleep gratefully, for once in a real bed.
The next day’s walk to Hospital de Orbigo is infamously long and remote. When a town on the Camino includes the name ‘Hospital’, it is wise to take notice. By mid-afternoon, I am still hours away, walking on a farm road that stretches into the distance, perfectly straight as far as I can see, either forwards or backwards. I’m looking inwards, mulling over the questions from yesterday’s experiences, when I am buffeted sideways by a sudden gust of wind. Stumbling, I stop. Debris and dust are violently circling me, blurring my vision of the outside world. I look upwards, and for a fleeting moment, a circle of sky opens up above just as the trailing edge of the whirlwind hits, doubling me over as I try to avoid the blast of dust blowing into my face. Abruptly as it started, the wind fades, and I stand amazed, watching the dust swirling out across the field, carving a haphazard trail through the harvested wheat.
A voice in my head tells me I should pay closer attention to my surroundings, and I am duly impressed, for voices in my head don’t happen every day – and yet, it’s difficult. Her last words in the lobby haunt me: a quiet, sudden confession, and a brief vision of innermost self, a moment of complete vulnerability, placing the weight of her soul into my hands even as she climbed into a taxi to disappear forever.
The whirlwind dissipates in the distance, and I eventually start walking again, for the meseta remains endless. Time passes, and there eventually is a place to stop – a dusty bar off the side of the road in a mostly abandoned rural town. Inside, I sit to eat and drink, and talk with a young minister, trying to compose comfortable words of pilgrimage for his parishioners back home, while his eyes betray the confusion of a man trying to reconcile his catechisms with what is actually happening in his head out here in the middle of Spain.
I stand and prepare to leave. A woman from another table approaches and asks if she can hug me. Unwilling to appear churlish, I nod, and she embraces me while I ponder who she might be. She releases me to say, “I was in a lot of pain that day, and so angry that I couldn’t keep up with my friends that I couldn’t see anything else.”
My eyes widen as I realize who she is.
“You woke me up, and I realized I needed help. I stopped at the next town and found care. I found a new Camino.”
I nod in quiet understanding. She embraces me, saying, “Thank you.” I respond with a simple, “Buen Camino”.
Moments later, she releases me to rejoin her friends on the Camino, never to be seen again. I shoulder my pack, pay my bill, and head back out into the afternoon heat, mentally shaking a head full of reverberating thoughts.
Days later, I am high in the mountains of Galicia, surrounded by forest and meadows, trying to make sense of the memory of those thin places in the meseta where other worlds seem to nudge close to the rational one that I can see and measure. The air is cooler and softer now. My eyes catch motion as some ferns swirl to the touch of a tiny whirlwind in the meadow on my right. I smile, for they are my companions now, walking with me every day; a gentle reminder of whatever it is that watches over me. I take a deep breath and walk onwards, for in the distance, Santiago calls.
