July: Onward and Forever Onward

 Dear EN502,

53 days ago, I was trying my best, and failing, to fall asleep in an airplane. In my unfathomable boredom, I lazily chanel surfed on the seat-TV and played games on my phone and silently cursed whoever was responsible for the narrow, soul-crushing design of the 737 cabin interior. I did all of this until I checked the flight-map and saw that our cramped cabin were flying over Santiago. My Dad saw it too and joked "All you've got to do is walk back!" I spent the rest of the flight looking out the window and turning that thought over and over in my mind: all you've got to do is walk back. 

About a week into our time on on the Camino de Santiago, my fellow pilgrims and I were sitting outside of a closed cafe and this crazy guy with no teeth and a long, greasy pony-tail was trying to convince Decky to buy him a bus ticket to a brothel. Meanwhile, just on the other sider of the table, I was talking to a French pilgrim named Gill who, I have since come to understand, was wrong about almost everything lectured about. The toothless guy was beyond creepy and our French pal was being an ass but, before we left, Gill did say something of value, something real: "You can't be ready. You can just be open."

So there I was, high above the Earth in that airplane, and I was blinking at the mountains in the dark and the wild-sea beyond and I was trying, and failing, to get myself ready. I would continue to do this throughout the Camino. After hard days or difficult miles, I'd curl up in my damp tent or pull off the trail and I'd check my map. I'd study the terrain and asses how dehydrated I was and how much longer we had to go. While these things aren't bad in their own right, I was doing them antithetically. I was trying to get ready. I wasn't being open.

I mean that you can get yourself ready for a hard day of hot hills and then, because of a joke or a song or a new friend, that heat is just a warm breeze and those hills are fun bumps. You can get yourself ready for a nice, easy stretch of flat terrain but, rest assured, that asphalt will leave your feet feeling flayed through your worn-out trail-runners and your calves will twist into searingly tight bands of what feels like steel cable. You can't be ready to get turned away from the hostel because there's no room left or told to sleep in the parking lot. You can’t ready to get invited into a farmhouse by kind strangers for a few laughs and a few beers... just as you can't be ready for the trail to end.

Early yesterday morning, or relatively early I should say, we were kicked out of the hostel we stayed in because we slept through check-out time. Anyway, we rubbed the sleep fomr our eyes and started down the hill, toward our long-sought goal. We found the city strange and slow, sleepy and quite. The rolling hills turned to semi-suburban streets which rose into apartments and offices and cafes and then there was the old city and the renaisance palaces and rot-iron street lamps and then came the fountains and the cobblestones and the churches and the towers and it was quiet and no one said a word and how could this be it and what do you mean there’s no parade and then, suddenly, it happened.

When you stand in the Plaza del Obradoiro at Santiago de Compostela and your eyes lift upwards and you look on the Portico de La Gloria and all those holy, stone, sunwashed faces and sculptures and swirls, the feeling comes. There are no trumpets which blow on high. There is no parade. Instead, you stand there and you take a few photos and then the sun starts to rise over the bell towers and you sit down and you breathe and then you start seeing old firends from miles ago that you thouhgt you had left far behind and it rises. It's sure and low but it's soft and strong. Something comes into focus. It's something that you would have never noticed living without, but now that you see it... well, you'll never quite be the same again. Suddenly, softly, in that plaza with the cathedral and the strangers and the tourists and every single soul of everyone who has come before, you finally realize you couldn't have been ready and you never were. Even if you didn't know it, on airplanes or cliffsides or in blazing vallies or on windy hills, you were just open all along.

It's actually kind of funny when you think about it. The historians and theoligans and travel-agents of the world call the Camino de Santiago a pilgriamge and they're correct in a very specific religious/historical kind of way, but I think that most born-again pilgrims would agree that it's far more apt to call the Camino a prelude to a pilgrimage. 

Once you've climbed and swam and stumbled and ran your way to Santiago, once you've waded through all the heat and humidity and tour-agrinos you realize the the Camino de Santiago is 99.9% camino and .1% Santiago. It's about being open. It's about being human. The real pilgrimage starts when you leave this holy place, and you put down your hiking poles and stow your pack. The real pilgrimage begins when life begins, again, and you go about living with that joy and reverence and humanity that Santiago taught you with storms and dust and sweat and a smile.

I have been lucky enough to go on a few adventures in my life, but none have come close to this Camino. A sneeze over a thousand years ago, Alfonso II of Asturias decided to check-out this cool sepulchre somebody found in this out-of-the-way city in Galicia and I can't help but imagine what our boy would say if we could show him all the wonder and joy and light and love his few-week vacation wrought. 

Our camino de Santiago maybe over, but now I understand. While we draw breath, we are pilgrims. Each of us walk, laugh, love, run, wheel, swim, sing, our way onward and forever onward until that day comes when we cast our eyes upward and the sun comes rising high and clear and fast and strong. 

Do you know what I mean? If not, I strongly suggest taking a walk. 

Thank you, everyone. Thank you with love and thanks and laughter from your pilgrims and every weary pilgrim across the sea and in your city and on your street.

Onward and forever onward, 

Nick

P.S. 

sorry I’m late!!! :)