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Well Earned Rest
Lying in front of the Cathedral in SantiagoLying on hard stone never felt so lovely. After 500 miles we arrived at the Cathedral in Santiago and promptly deposited ourselves on the ancient tiles of the plaza in front of the church. The four of us (Allen & Annie had joined 115 km back in Sarria) just laid there in the sun on our backs, our backpacks as pillows, and took it all in. I cannot really describe the feeling. Even now, 24 hours later, I can't fully get my mind around it.
It's maybe like the last day of school in junior high. We're done? Really? I mean, I've been looking forward to this moment for a long time, but still...really? Summer? Now what?
More on that vibe in a bit.
First, to catch up from the last entry: essentially...two more weeks of walking. Two more weeks of rain. Then Allen & Annie showed up and the rain magically disappeared and we moved through the final days feeling particularly blessed.
That's the thing about the Camino. I think I mentioned it earlier. The increased magnitude of things we otherwise don't think twice about. Shelter. Food. Companionship. Non-smelly clothes. Life becomes about the little things,
Storks
Everywhere! On Every church tower across the land! and so, in a way, becomes huge.
Especially time. It took us 35 days to walk the 500 miles from France. We both agreed that it was the single longest month of our lives, at least since those aforementioned junior high years. And not in a bad way, either. Rather in the most sublime sort of way. Time became elastic on the trail. Your usual markers of hours and days, locations, etc., just sort of fell away. Like those summers of yore, time went on forever. The past seemed a million years distant, the future equally so. I cannot express how glorious a feeling this is. A constant sort of presence. A perpetual immediacy to the days, if that makes any sense.
We hung out with spiritual seekers of all sorts--Christians, mystics, New Agers, Buddhists, even mediums. Met them on the trail during the day, found them again in the cafes at night, drank vino, ate tapas and pilgrim's meals, shared stories, opened up the vaults of our hearts and hopes with surprising ease and candor. I have not seen people so easily bond. Perhaps it is because we shared the same trial that is the pilgrimmage.
Those people, in snapshots: the guy doing the Camino with the donkey, the guy walking it with a dog, the guy walking it barefoot, the guy running it, clad in Dolphin shorts, carrying a pilgrim´s staff, wearing a pilgrim´s hat, and barking French loudly into his cell phone as he dashed past us. The German woman who'd lost her husband suddenly last spring and was trying to make sense of things. Even the Canadian guy who was doing it to get over his 'impure urges about small children'. Yep, all kinds.
Annie & Allen were great. They were just the infusion of energy we needed when our wills and bodies were flagging after 440 miles. All smiles and excitement.
We couldn't help but cry in the taxi on the way to the airport this morning. Onward in our journeys, yes, to new lands...but suddenly the spell was broken. The perfect little perpetual Habitrail that we were on, the Camino, where the outside world with its concerns didn't encroach upon our simple lives on the trail, was back. We missed that. The simplicity of it. The intimacy. The sameness of aim in our fellow travellers on the trail. Really
just a profound, deep richness that I can't really put into words. A sense that for those 35 days, we really
lived...
So now we're headed out to the next leg of the journey--4000 miles of train across Russia, Mongolia, China. We're gonna buy track suits in some Moscow market and hang out with guys named Dmitri who drink vodka right out of the bottle like it's Gatorade. We're goona eat boiled cabbage and grow Stalinesque moustaches (okay, just me) and learn how to do that funky squat-pop up-squat dance the Russians do. With luck, we will run into Ivan Drago.
Most of all...no walking for a while.
Sounds good...at the moment...but then again, after a thousand miles of rail travel...we'll probably have snapped, crawled the walls, launched ourselves off the train somewhere into the middle of Siberian night just to feel hard ground under our feet again....
Only time will tell. More to come.
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denidax
Deni, Dax and Ella
welcome to my homeland!!!
I went to university in Santiago and used to lay on the stones of Plaza del Obradoiro at night looking at the cathedral...it was magic...I never got tired of it!!!... enjoy the "tapas", the "pulpo" and the rain!!!!...it will rain sooner or later... but that's the best way to see Santiago!!!