Lessons learned on the pilgrimage trail
The Camino Walk: What did I learn?
I have a deepened interest in history. Think of Spain: today it is a constitutional monarchy: a country of 46 million people, with some sharp regional stresses; a member of the European Union, the producer of scores of artists and writers. In Spain, over time, rule has been by the Romans, the Christians, the Muslims, the Christians again, the Fascists and now secular, democratic humanists.
I learned something of my limits. Eighteen km is absolutely the farthest any human should walk in a day. Earplugs have not yet been created that work for me.
Sometimes you have to act before you know the meaning of your actions. Robert Sibley of the Ottawa Citizen, who walked with his son, advises that one adopt the traditional practices of pilgrimage regardless of one’s religious skepticism. Forego, he says, all the diversions of our consumer society that keep us from thinking too much.
I learned about the friendship of strangers, the wildness of the divine, the slowing down of life to a pedestrian pace. One of my companions, age 73, fell, and cut her forehead. Immediately two Irish nurses, walking along behind, had their kits out. Absolutely everyone, overtaking you or not, bids you Buen Camino. There was what we called the “hippie compound,” where a barefoot fellow offered fresh fruit, and three passing Mexicans sang in harmony in an impromptu concert.
I learned that New Age mysticism offers answers which don’t satisfy me. Yet mindless materialism is worse.
Faith and doubt co-exist. Walking is still the most popular way to go: there’s also cycling, and donkey-leading. There are 100 different routes from all over Europe. All are heading west, all with the sun at their backs.
It was not so much transformation as consolidation for me. All those miles of silence to think, while moving one’s body and not knowing what the rest of the day would hold. Some convictions became clearer for my life. Make poetry a priority: Tennyson, Levertov, Mary Oliver. T.S. Eliot, Margaret Atwood, Raymond Carver and so on.
Simplify and declutter even more. Can I go carless? Eliminate red meat? Even eliminate flying? Continue to support centre-left politics. I choose that position for strategic reasons, but my personal positioning is left. Maintain a feminist vision. So much has been accomplished for female equality in these last 50 years, and so much is left to do to make it global.
Nurture gratitude, as Canadian society goes about defining itself and acts in relation to our troubled southern neighbour. Theologian Richard Niebuhr said: “Pilgrims are persons in motion, passing through territories not their own, seeking something we might call completion.” Added the Talmud, “When a man’s passions bewilder him, he should put on black clothes and travel to a place where he is not known.”
About two-thirds of the way along the Camino route there is a giant iron cross high about the ground, surrounded by millions of small stones: pilgrims have left their burdens, their hopes, their grief. It is called the Cruz de Ferro.
I had asked some family and friends if they wanted to give me a small stone. So in my bag I had two little crystals from sick friends, a tiny bag of earth from our old home on Aberdeen Avenue, a lovely rock from the North Saskatchewan River collected by an Edmonton grandson, a dragonfly book mark shaped out of wire from BC, a lock of hair from a 12-year-old granddaughter, and John’s nametag from our CIDA briefing in Ottawa in 1975.
At the Cruz de Ferro, I laid these all out, in deep thought, while my Aussie companions took pictures. Done and done.
Except that Barb Woolner and I are hosting a one-time Camino reunion at Sadleir House for anyone interested, on Oct. 26 at 5:30 p.m.
Rosemary Ganley is a writer, teacher and activist. Reach her at rganley2016@gmail.com