On The Way

I have realised that I never wrote any blog posts from my hike on Camino de Santiago de Compostela last year. I certainly posted pictures and comments on Facebook, but I didn’t write a journal and neither did I write any reflections afterwards. Having now done another, and more significant segment, I inevitably look back at last year’s trip for reference and comparison.

Let me go all the way back to the sources. I heard friends over the years mention Camino de Santiago that in my mind was something devout Catholics did, like devout Muslims go to Mecca, or actually other devout Catholics go to Czestochowa. In other words, something other people did. This was probably even before I became a wanderer. And then one day I heard the story of my cousin Misha. He has three children and a homemaker wife, both rather unusual in Russia, and he had always worked hard to support the family, but one day he just left and went to Spain and walked the whole Camino in six weeks, all on his own. Now, Misha is the last person in the world to embark on a religious pilgrimage. Whatever he actually found on the Camino, his original plan was just to escape from his everyday burdens. Yet he obviously found something because since then he has done it several times, each time on his own. My son who told me this remarkable story added that the impulse for Misha was the feature film TheWay. This was before streaming, but I found the film on DVD because I was curious about a film that inspired my baby cousin to abandon his family, his work and his friends and spend six weeks walking on his own toward a goal that, in my view, had no significance for him.

After I watched the film (several times by now) and after I did a lot of reading, I understood that people had dozens of reasons to do this walk, and far from all viewed it as a pilgrimage. And interestingly, whenever I mentioned Camino to someone, as often as not either they had done it or wanted to do it so I realised it wasn’t as outlandish as I once had thought. Still, I had it as a far-fetched dream rather than a concrete plan. I knew I didn’t want to carry a heavy backpack and sleep in dorms, so I was happy to discover that there was a luggage transfer service for comfort-loving pilgrims. I also knew I didn’t want to do it on my own. The Big Question: Why I wanted to do it? - was vague, maybe along the lines of: Because I can, because I am now a passionate wanderer, and this is probably the most famous walk in the world… well, the Western world. Yet it was still something hazy, something in the distant future.

Three years ago, when I repatriated to Sweden and joined a walking club, I saw that the club was organising a hike on Camino del Norte, precisely in this leisurely mode with luggage transfer and decent hotels, and I signed up at once. It was supposed to happen in May 2020, and of course it didn’t happen. We didn’t know much about covid then. I remember in the beginning of March I still thought it would be over by May. But it didn’t, and the travel agent moved the trip first to autumn, then to spring 2021 and finally to October.

When it didn’t happen in May 2020, I consoled myself by making the trip virtually. Every day I walked in my nearby nature reserve the distance we were supposed to cover. I cooked Basque and Cantabrian food. I watched films, not just The Way again, but YouTube videos and travel agents’ advertisements, so by the time we actually boarded the plane to Bilbao via Frankfurt I knew what was in store. No, of course I didn’t, because neither photos nor videos can fully convey the sense of being there, and walking 20 km with high elevation was not the same as walking in a Swedish nature reserve. I very deliberately set my expectations low. I didn’t know what I was looking for or what answers I hoped to receive for what questions. It was just a hike through glorious landscape.

But that’s not quite true. The month before the trip, there occurred two deaths in the family, and one was my stepson Jakob. Now, Santiago is St James, and in Swedish it is Jakob, and I felt I was walking Jakob’s Way, for my Jakob. In the churches that were open – far from all – I would light a candle: it was quite funny, because the candles were electrical, you put a coin in a slot, and a candle lit up. Jakob was definitely not a believer, and I don’t believe in afterlife either, but it did make sense to think of him on this walk.

We only walked from San Sebastian to Santander, but I knew then that I wanted to come back and maybe try to find some Answers because I felt the mission, if there was a mission, was not completed. Many friends who had read my Facebook posts and seen my pictures said how wonderful it was and how envious they were and one day they would… but only one friend responded to my comment: Why one day? Why not now? I want to go back, would you like to join? And this is how the next trip started. After we agreed on dates and managed to put together all complicated puzzle bits, I posted on Facebook: We are going, anyone wants to join? Two more friends responded.

Now, last year we were a group of sixteen that quickly split into smaller groups some of which walked quickly and reached the day’s destination early, to sit and enjoy beers for the rest of the afternoon. I found soulmates who wanted to walk slowly, stop at points of beauty as well as coffee shops; who didn’t want to chat all the time. I presented this walking mode to my new companions. They were delighted.

The plans were made in February-March, and as usual it felt very far away in the future. As time got closer we created a chat on WhatsApp and started exchanging useful tips on books and blogs, and of course I recommended my companions to watch The Way which wasn’t available for streaming in our region, but I found a weird platform where it was texted in a totally unfamiliar language.

I didn’t ask my companions The Question. We all had a reason, or maybe several reasons, and one thing we had in common was that we had all lost our husbands within the last three years. Eventually we called ourselves Camino Widows.

All of a sudden, the departure day was tomorrow, and it was getting real, and then it was today, and Annika and I met at the airport, and we were allowed to carry our walking poles on board, and the first leg, to Madrid, went smoothly, but our other two companions were connecting from Copenhagen, and their flight was delayed, and they barely made it. Christina’s bag got lost, and it took some time to sort it out at the airport, but our driver was very nice, and finally, by 11 pm, we were in our hotel in Vilalba, tired and hungry. There was an open bar across the street, and we had tortilla at a ridiculous price of 4 euros. Everything felt weird. There we were, far away from everything, and we were going on a strange, unfamiliar adventure, and we were supposed to spend a week together at close quarters. Inexplicably, it felt good.

To be continued.