A Pilgrimage Through History

I wake to the sight of a vaulted ceiling stretched high overhead, brought to unwilling consciousness by the persistent cold that invades not only my sleeping bag, but the three layers of clothes in which I am tightly wrapped. In the pre-dawn light, some moments pass before I can recall exactly where I am and how I got here. A gentle, furtive rustling, the waking movements of fellow bunkmates, reminds me of the former, while the nagging pain of my carefully bandaged feet vividly recalls the latter. I am a pilgrim on the Camino de Santiago, walking slowly and faithfully across northern Spain; just one more traveler in a line stretching back through the centuries, to the Middle Ages and beyond.

Now that the rustling has started, sleep-heavy forms begin to rise up from the bunks around me and, gradually, a whole company of pilgrims materializes, going through their morning preparations with the steady certainty of routine and physical exhaustion. A loud, crisp thud echoes in the stony space and a beam of light cleaves the darkness as a head-torch clatters from a top bunk to the ground. There are muttered curses in an unfamiliar tongue, perhaps Gallego or Portuguese. In an hour each of us will be on the path, making our individual journey towards Santiago, and there will be no trace of our brief stay in this empty church.

In some ways, the Camino is one of the oldest examples of responsible travel. Pilgrims have traversed its arduous route for centuries and yet the daily lives of local townspeople go on as if we were simply part of the landscape, a geographic feature like the craggy mountains of Navarra or the verdant, rain-soaked valleys of Galicia. There is give and take, with towns offering refuge and repast in exchange for income and livelihood, but for the most part, each side regards the other with a quiet, almost reverent respect.

Hostels, called albergues, shelter the pilgrims and hearty menus de peregrino nourish us, but in all other respects, we are invited and expected to share in the daily activities of the towns through which we pass. Many of these have hosted pilgrims since the 12th century. Indeed, one abandoned medieval outpost, Foncebadon, was only recently re-inhabited when the revival of the Camino in the 1990s breathed new life into its forlorn and dilapidated structures. A few days down the road from this re-awakened haven, I meet a hospitalera whose dormitory and café have been entirely financed by the pilgrims she serves. She is proud to have realized the dream of her father and his father before him, to assist pilgrims on their journey to Santiago.

If our surroundings seem untouched by history and our travels, our individual lives are much less so. Many pilgrims will return, to walk the Camino again or work in the albergues, but each leaves with an imprint of the culture, language, and people whose lives we shared in our weeks on the path.