The Pilgrimage

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This next preview for you comes from the fifth and final section of Soul Shaping Tails, bringing you with me along the Camino de Santiago, a nearly 500-mile-long walking pilgrimage through Spain.  I walked the Camino in between leaving my life in the UK and returning to the US.

 

Every morning for nearly a month, I would wake up in a shared room in whichever part of Spain I had woken up in. I would walk all day, carrying all of my belongings on my back, until I reached the next place I could sleep for the night.

 

Out of my travels through over 40 countries around the globe, this remains one of the top life-enhancing treks I have ever taken.

 

That morning, as we left Roncesvalles, we were gifted a gorgeous sunrise with a golden sheen lighting up creamy coloured cows grazing in the nearby fields. The villages we walked through were sandstone and still sleeping beneath the blanket of the morning light. 

 

As I walked, my stride became synchronised with others walking along the Camino, and so we naturally fell into conversations with other pilgrims that lasted hours, sometimes days. It was rare to actually sit down at an albergue and meet someone whilst not walking because exhaustion from the day’s trek meant food and sleep were all anyone really wanted upon arrival. 

 

Mostly, I met whoever’s pace fell in line with mine. “Buen Camino” was the friendly greeting along the road. Pilgrims would smile, nod, and say these words to each other as we headed out in the mornings, as we passed along the route, and as we dropped our bags at the end of the day. All nations, all religions. Buen Camino—have a good journey. 

 

Every single day walking the Camino was a full one spent discovering the unexpected topography of the trails, facing new difficulties with either food or board or blisters, and encountering fascinating new people, all pilgrims on the trail. 

 

The Pilgrimage was not just another travel experience or adventure through a new country. For me, the Pilgrimage was to help me with my transition. The weeks on the trail, I had hoped, would give me the time I needed to think about the newness of all that awaited me: new jobs, new locations to begin living in, and the potential for new relationships.

 

It seems like sometimes life spins you so fast and the momentum of your choices jostles you so rapidly that you have to be sure you have a firm grip and that the momentum is moving you forward. Even from its very beginning, the Pilgrimage provided me with a welcome relief to check in on the life I was gripping and be sure it was a life I wanted.

 

The all-day walking did just as I had hoped and enabled uninterrupted thoughts to roam. And even though the terrain often left me short of breath, taking time to breathe on the Camino was the best thing I could have done to help me ease from one kind of life into the next life unknown.

 

It felt good to meet so many captivating strangers along the road each day, sharing our stories. As we exchanged bios, I realised each pilgrim was a mirror. As we told each other about ourselves—who we were, what we did for a living, where we were from, and what we anticipated would come next, I realised we were really giving voice to how we viewed our own self. Most of us were not travelling with our families or friends and, like the French nurse back in St. Jean Pied-de-Port, had left our roles behind. On the Camino, we were only ourselves—however we chose to present that to others during the select kilometres that our journeys overlapped.

 

As I walked the Camino, I was in between homes, in between jobs. I had no address, no title. I was weightless—except for my too-heavy pack on my back. I felt both free and unsteady.

 

By only the second full day of walking and thinking and talking to strangers, I realised what I had done and where my choices had led me. After the commotion of goodbyes, the packing of bags, and the planning of trips had settled, I began to realise what it meant to leave the UK and start moving towards life back in California—the different rooms I had backed out of and closed the doors to. Even though I trusted my decision and was ready for the next thing beyond my life in the UK, it still felt like I had jumped blind off a cliff into darkness. Thinking about this darkness ignited a slight panic that could swell if I let it.

 

As I walked, as I met other pilgrims, as we shared stories and compared blisters, I realised something comforting: As I was falling in the darkness, I recognised from their stories that the others had jumped blindly too. We all had. None of these strangers walking in line with me, carrying our bags and our burdens, our dreams and our memories—none of us could truly know what was waiting for us next. We each were there on the Camino because, at some point, we had decided it was time to leave, to close doors. At some point, we had decided the next thing—whatever we envisioned that next thing to be—was waiting for us at the end of the trail.

 

And then, as I kept walking, and kept sharing and kept listening to others, I realised that I wasn’t falling at all. I was floating. Floating from one chapter of my life into the next. I exhaled a bit more throughout that day’s walk, and I remembered that it was okay to float for a while. 

 

We land when we’re ready. We land where we should. 

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