The rhythm of the Camino

Sept. 6, 2012

I arrived in Belorado today. That’s 210 kilometers from where I started in St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port, about 130 miles. The trip to Santiago de Compostela is a quarter done. The days have developed a rhythm.

We Peregrinos awaken in the darkness and begin gathering our things. A sip of coffee, some fruit, a bite of pastry, and then we hit the road.

The weather has been kind to us. Rain has threatened most days, but except for an occasional sprinkle we have remained dry. The overcast skies have kept the walks cool.

As the kilometers disappear beneath our feet, towns emerge on the horizon. First we see a tan steeple against the sky, then the buildings, beige and gray and ocre, spreading out hard against a mountainside, spilling into fields.

We walk amid grapevines, or olives, or corn, or greens. We pass wineries. Home gardens mix with acres of commercial farms.

We enter towns through industrial areas, where potatoes are processed, cement is mixed. We pass suburban apartment buildings, then we cross a river, or turn a corner, and we step back centuries into a world of narrow streets and cobblestones and churches, to find our beds for another night, to shower, to share a meal.

In our first days, we were focused on living. In the climb from St.-Jean and down through Zubiri to Pamplona, we worried about the wind, and the rocks, and the narrowness of the paths. We worried about survival, and whether we had the mettle to make it one step farther. Now we face ourselves.

The rhythm of the Camino, the sameness of the landscape, gives us time to look inward, to examine the reasons that have gathered us all here in this beautiful place, amid the greens and golds and grays of Spain, where we see the medieval collide with the modern, the past and the present joining hands in a search for this country’s future. We are all affected by it. We are all sustained by it.