The last week of our Camino took us into the city of Santiago de Compostela, of course, and to the famous, wondrous Cathedral. I felt numb and a bit dumb; perhaps we all did.
I’m writing this in retrospect eight months later and it’s going to be brief. I need to complete this sporadic blog account; I am sorry, truly, that my discipline lapsed; I apologize to anyone who was gracious enough to follow this blog, and I apologize to myself, even. But sometimes the commitment to document interferes with the moment of experience, and simply experiencing without comment becomes the more satisfying choice. And then there’s also the tangle of emotions and reflections that call for poetry at the end of a significant experience. But what if one’s not a poet?
In Santiago, we stayed two nights in an albergue on the outskirts of the city because others were filled. We learned how to read the map and take the bus into the old city. We went to the pilgrim office to present our credentials and get our compostelas (the certificate that you walked at least the last 100 km of the pilgrimage).
We attended pilgrim mass with its gorgeous display of priests in bright red robes reading in various languages. I went around the altar area to join the line that takes one up a narrow staircase to the backside of the gold statue of St. James as it looks out on the audience. I rested my forehead on Santiago’s shoulder, thanked him for his blessings, and gave the guardian priest a coin for a picture card. I would return another day when I felt more in touch with devotion, with appreciation, with mystery, I decided.
And then Marla, Ginny, and I decided to take the bus through the mountains to Finisterre, to what used to be known as the end of the world, the western-most point of the European continent. It’s where many pilgrims ended their trek, where it was once customary to burn your pilgrim clothes.
And there, another miracle: we found German Dr. Hannah, and then Danish Niels. It almost makes me weep to remember. Dr. Hannah, 77, said she had been coming down to the bus stop morning and evening for several days to look for us; she knew we’d show up. And Niels, well, he just somehow kept appearing before us.
What kind of karma pulls us all like magnets to find one another for a last goodbye?
Then after a night and a day, it’s back to Santiago. Another several hours at the cathedral; a quest to find good paella; final pictures. Our trio is splitting up. Ginny returns to London; Marla, to Sevilla; and I, well, I decide to go back on the Camino. I feel I have unfinished business. I take an overnight bus back to Pamplona.
And it was in those few days alone, after seeing Santiago, that I had my sweetest experiences. For example, I spent the night at the albergue at the Eunate Iglesia: there were just three of us—one German woman, a Frenchman, and me. We did late-night singing and prayers in our own languages in the tiny round sanctuary. I felt I was back perhaps eight centuries. I could hardly believe the grace that permitted me that experience.
The following day, I climbed a mountain off the trail to a deserted abbey, and saw the most beautiful sculpture of the whole trip—a wind-worn stone with the Virgin in ecstasy.
A day later, in Santo Domingo de la Calzada, I stayed at an albergue that contained many pieces of art that depicted that great saint, the engineer of the Camino.
Why didn’t I buy a figurine of him? Little did I know that I’d have an experience with him on the road to San Juan de Ortega. (And I won’t write of that at this time—it’s too fragile, precious, inexplicable.)
Then I found Tosantos, where I chanced upon the opportunity to tour the beautiful cave hermitage of Our Lady of the Rock built into the mountainside; and Ages; and Atapuerca, one of the most significant archeological sites in Europe.
Finally, I ended my Camino in Burgos. I’d walked every step of the route. I felt complete. And the capper was with a sweet, strange, magical, mystical encounter with another pilgrim/disciple of Santo Domingo in a restaurant in that warren of streets that surrounds the magnificent cathedral.
Blown way, I took a bus about midnight to Barcelona.
And there, the miracles continued. It is a great blessing and privilege to be a peregrina on the Way of St. James!
