Walking on sacred ground

Michael Bolden
Aug 9, 2017 · 3 min read

Sept. 29, 2012

As I near Santiago de Compostela I have been walking a path of contradictions.

I am weary. I am energized.

I desire to be alone with my thoughts. I desire to spend these precious last days with my newfound friends.

I am overjoyed to have traveled this far — 750 kilometers — by foot. I am angry that I am sharing this path with newcomers who have joined the Camino in the last couple of days. It is the anger that worries me, that fills my thoughts and my prayers, as I am engulfed by a tide of emotions, conflicting passions, unlike anything I have felt before.

Thirty-nine kilometers to Santiago, short enough conceivably, to be tackled in a day’s time in one fantastic paroxysm of walking. This is sacred ground.

I think about the climb to Roncesvalles and those first two days, when I wondered if this was too hard, when I wondered if the wind itself would stop me, when I wondered if God himself had descended on the mountaintop to say, “You can go this far and no farther.”

I think about the kilometers that have disappeared beneath my feet. I have taken this one step at a time, one day at a time, in stages of 20 and 25 and 30 kilometers.

I think about views that stretch to the Atlantic. I think about fields that look like gold. I think about windmills on mountaintops.

I think about the people I have met. The elderly German couple who made the climb from St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port on that first day. The man who lost his corazón. The young couple looking forward to a lifetime of love. The businessman seeking forgiveness for a lifetime of sins. I think about their blisters and sprains and cramps. I think about their perseverance.

I see it in myself. I look at pictures of me from that first day and I scarcely recognize who I was. I have found strength I didn’t know I had. I have touched the steel deep within my soul, and it has surprised me. It has scared me. This is sacred ground.

It took a week in the wilderness for me to even realize the enormity of what was before me. It has taken a month to see patterns in the landscape and in my emotions. It is satisfying to see the symmetry that has developed in the countryside and in my journey, the shared journey, on sacred ground.

I want these last kilometers to be filled with reverence for what the Camino is, for what it has meant and for what it will mean. I want to see the sun move in circles across the sky. I want silence on Earth. I want angels to sing.

Instead I see tour groups carrying day packs. I see hiking pants, stiff with creases. I see boots fresh from the box. I see the desecration of sacred ground.

I hear friends gossiping, the chatter of the every day, intruding as I think about the insights that have come to me, the revelations that have unfolded, the sacredness of the ground that I have traversed.

I pray for guidance. And understanding. And peace.

I want everyone to want my Camino, but my heart knows better. Everyone has his own journey. Everyone finds his own Way.


Originally published at mbolden.tumblr.com.

Adventures on the Camino

A curated collection of stories and photos from my walk along the Camino Frances route of the Camino de Santiago in 2012. The content originally appeared on Tumblr.

Michael Bolden

Written by

Southerner. Journalist. Managing Director, John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford University | alumnus @knightfdn @washingtonpost @miamiherald

Adventures on the Camino

A curated collection of stories and photos from my walk along the Camino Frances route of the Camino de Santiago in 2012. The content originally appeared on Tumblr.

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