Walking the Camino de Santiago

“Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about un-becoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.”

June 20-28

It’s been such a busy week and a great experience to meet so many amazing people from all over the world I just haven’t had time to write it down.

Over the last week, we’ve had several people in the albergue from all walks of life: Korea, USA, Romania, Spain, UK, Italy, and Japan. The experiences each of these pilgrims have had on the trail and off have been inspiring.

I met a woman, named Inka, from Germany who quit her job and is walking the Camino. She has been so moved by her experience on the Camino that she doesn’t want to go back home and live her former life. So we sat and chatted about how we felt about the Camino experience, and how she might be able to carry that back with her in her daily actions in life. Inka is an artist and she shared some of her sketches with me. She’s very talented. She asked the group of pilgrims how they felt about time on the journey. Every day blends into the next and it can be hard to remember when something took place. That spurred a big discussion about how time is suspended on the Camino and the pilgrims coined the phrase “in the plasma”. This is true as a host too. Kathleen and I feel that time blends into each day and it can be hard to remember what happened when.

Two women from the states: NY and Washington, met on the Camino and became instant friends. They both had significant foot issues, so they chose to switch to bicycles for the remainder of the Camino. When they arrived to our Albergue, they were in pretty bad shape, so we let them stay an extra day to rest. Mimi and Sandra were so fun to get to know. Mimi has had many adventures in places like the Appalachian Trail and even went kayaking for over 40 days down the Erie Canal during the COVID lockdown.

Today, we met a father and daughter from Sicily who are walking the Camino together. Such warm and caring individuals. It’s an honor to get to be part of all of the pilgrims lives for a moment in time.

There is a lot to do as a host. But the most impactful is interacting with the pilgrims from all over the world.

A few days ago, we started asking the pilgrims if they wanted to help create a community dinner in the Albergue. This is where each pilgrim helps contribute their service to the dinner. This can be in the form of cutting up vegetables or setting the table, or being the cook. So far I’ve taken the lead on cooking and have been making several recipes that I know. They all say they love it, so I’ll keep doing it. It provides a space for everyone to gather together and get to know each other more.

Probably the most rewarding for me has been working with Kathleen. She’s just an amazing person and I know we will be friends for life. We have had so much fun together laughing at ourselves, crying over specific pilgrims we grew close to, and sharing our life stories with each other. Someone up there 👆🏻 put us together and knew what they were doing. We also share that we both lost our spouses to cancer and while that has been sometimes a painful discussion, we just “get it”.

My thoughts: I’m humbled and grateful to be able to take the time to do this. It’s once again not lost on me that I am very fortunate to be able to be here as a volunteer, in Spain, at this location, with these people. I know I will volunteer again, and as my journey comes to an end in a few days, I’ll be sad to say goodbye.