Today, I’ve got a real treat for you.
I recently reviewed VM Karren’s wonderful book of short travel stories – click HERE to read my review of The Tales of a Fly By Night – a book to which I said I’d award six stars if I could!
While the whole book is a delight, one chapter in particular stood out for me – the one on the Camino de Santiago. It captured the spirit, the challenges, and the quiet magic of the pilgrimage in a way that stayed with me long after I’d finished reading.
Today, I’m excited to share that chapter with you! It feels particularly relevant right now, as Mark and I are taking a break from our usual travels and are nestled in a French farmhouse that sits right on the Camino. Every day, we walk along part of the trail ourselves, so reading VM Karren’s words about the pilgrimage he made with his son, Matthew, feels like stepping onto the path alongside them.
If you’ve ever been curious about the Camino, or simply love a beautifully told travel story, this is not to be missed.
A Walk Across Spain
by VM Karren
Halfway down the mountain, some of us rested. Some called it a day and took off their packs and boots for the evening. Others simply waved as they continued to the valley floor to find their beds—too weary to stop, too weary to sit. The descent of the west side of the mountain was, to everybody’s surprise, harder on the joints and thighs than the climb up the east side. Knees and hips cried for a soft place to sit, muscles begged for glucose.
The Camino de Santiago (The Way of St. James) gently guides pilgrims from all over the world on their personal journeys for inner change, over towering mountains and across the sun scorched high desert plains of Spain, to converge in the ancient cathedral city of Santiago de Compostela. Although every step of the nine hundred kilometer path is well worn, and the destination singular, nobody ever truly treads the same path as another.
The French Doctor sat down at the café table next to us with a grin on his dusty face, twisting the cap off of a bottle of Coca-Cola. “Voila, le doping!” he said as he greedily consumed three hundred and fifty calories of sugar—just enough for the next hour of hiking.
“How are ze boy’s feet? Are ze dressings still intact?” the Doctor asked.
The Dutch boy gave the Doctor a silent thumbs up and a chipmunk smile across the table, his cheeks stuffed full with complex carbohydrates cooked in olive oil.
“So, I will meet my wife at ze bottom, in Molina Seca, and then for me…c’est finis! I go home,” he said as he slowly stood, testing his feet. He waved a warm goodbye. “And you will go all ze way to Santiago, non?”
“Yes, but we will sleep here tonight,” I answered. “Buen Camino!”
“Buen Camino…”
There are no rules, no expectations of those who choose to walk the Camino de Santiago. It is a choice. The only person pushing you forward is yourself. It is as much a spiritual journey, a soul searching, as it is a nine-hundred-kilometer trek over mountains and across the golden expanse of la Maseta.
If the pilgrim could look through purely spiritual eyes, she would see the hillsides leading to Santiago de Compostela strewn with discarded grudges and insecurities, disowned sins and vices. The self-induced suffering of the pilgrimage strips away pretenses, exposes the raw nerves of the ego. Limits are discerned, both physical and mental, weakness and infirmities are accepted. We learn to be comfortable with being naked in front of the world. We accept help and encouragement from strangers whose names we never learn. Comradery forms quickly through mutual suffering.
“Did you leave a rock at the Cruz de Ferro?” Ireland’s wife asked me.
“I emptied my backpack a few summers ago. I came to take something away more than to leave something behind,” I answered.
“You are walking with your son?” she discerned.
“Yep. It’s his last summer with us. Thought we could turn off the phones and the tablets for two weeks and talk.”
“I wish my husband had done this with our boys when they were his age. It’s a life changer,” she reminisced. “He’ll go home a man after this.”
“That’s what I am afraid of,” I said, blinking the tears from my eyes, “or was hoping for. Not quite sure yet.”
“Where did you start?”
“Léon. We’re only walking three hundred kilometers.”
We consciously choose to go (social) media free for two weeks on the Camino. We broke that rule only once, in a hotel room in Porto Marin where burst blisters sidelined us for the afternoon. Having emptied our heads of worries by reducing our activities to walking, eating and sleeping, the immediacy of the television news and the worried faces of the broadcasters were too much to take in. Unable to watch terrorists causing panic and death in the streets of London, we quickly switched off the television. The whole scene seemed so far away, so implausible–as if from another planet.
“What would you keep?” Matthew asked me.
“Not much,” I answered, huffing up the hillside. “One really doesn’t need that much to be happy.”
“What about comfortable?’
“I think the things we own say more about our fears than our needs,” I replied, looking out over the valley we had just climbed out of. “Fear of boredom, fear of being uncomfortable, fear of having to face ourselves, our motives, how much time we waste. We clutter up our lives to stay distracted.”
“I can see that.”
“What’s in your pack?”
“Not much.”
“You happy?”
“Yeah. It’s hard to beat this!” my son Matthew answered as we stood and gazed out over the lush green valley and the mountains of Galicia as the morning sun peeked over the hills opposite.
During our journey, we learned that one can walk ten kilometers before breakfast while still sleeping; a dreamy sort of walk we only hazily remember when we are fully conscious. We learned that one can walk through just about any pain, and that a good night’s sleep will take care of any pain that one cannot walk through. These lessons remind us that most of the time life is just hard, but that one can enjoy the journey so much more if one has good walking poles, leaning on supportive family and friends to get up and over the hard times. Metaphors of life.
“Dublin? Is that you? Am I walking too slow for you?” I said, looking over my shoulder.
“Yes, yes, she says I can come home now! Can’t talk, gotta go quickly. Booked me a flight from Vigo tomorrow afternoon.”
“We’re sixty kilometers from Santiago. You’ll never make it.”
“I’ll walk all night if I gotta. She said I can come home again.”
“What did you do anyhow?
“I really can’t talk about it. I’ve done my penance now. I’ve done my Camino. Goin’ home tomorrow, whatever it takes.”
Our anticipation of reaching Santiago became difficult to contain. We woke earlier and paced faster in the mornings, eager to cover as much ground as possible before the heat inevitably slowed us down. We built up our glorious arrival into Santiago in our rambling conversations and in the lactic acid in our calves, as we traversed the last one hundred kilometers of undulating eucalyptus forests.
When we finally arrived, Santiago was filled with pedestrians walking in the wrong direction and shops selling impractical shoes and useless, bulky merchandise. The city seemed confusing, rushed, unfocused. How odd it was to see faces walking towards us! How could everybody not be heading to Obradoiro Square to witness the rapture?
Once the spires of the cathedral were glimpsed against the sky, the throng of pilgrims funneling through the ancient alleyways, began to trot. The taste of incense filled my mouth and nostrils.
As I emerged into the bright sunshine to gaze on the soaring facade of St. James’ Cathedral, tears of release and elation flowed involuntarily down my smiling face. We did it!
“Why are you crying, Dad?” Matthew asked, posing for a selfie with St. James.
“I don’t know,” I answered, “ it just feels right!”
After thirteen straight days of walking, the tears of joy came because tomorrow, we’d be home again, instead of strapping on our boots again before sunrise. Later, as we sat and wondered at the cathedral’s towering facade, tears of regret welled up because tomorrow, we would be home again, instead of strapping on our boots before the six o’clock church bells could chime.
On the trail, my soul had become calm, my thoughts still and profound. My daily fatigue felt sweet, not tense. My heart brimmed with gratitude, yet I mourned the inevitable undoing of my transformation. If only we could start again.
Thousands of pilgrims walk the sacred path across Spain each year. They pass through the same cities, climb the same mountains and sleep in the same beds. They suffer the same thirst, the same soreness, but there are no two stories about the Camino de Santiago that are the same. Although the walk is communal, the journey is uniquely personal.
***
Click HERE to read The Tales of a Fly-by-Night
Or visit VM Karren’s official author page HERE.
Author Bio:
Drawn to all things Soviet as a child of the Cold War, author Val Karren first visited the former Soviet Union in 1992 for language training, work and study, visiting the far corners of the defunct empire; from Kyiv to St. Petersburg, and Moscow to Volgograd. His later travels and academic research landed him in some precarious situations, including (but not limited to) becoming dangerously tangled up in a Russo-American spy ring, which served as the inspiration for his debut novel The Deceit of Riches. Later experiences traveling throughout Europe as a young father (Italy, Spain, Holland, Romania, and Ukraine) inspired him to write about his world-expanding travels in The Tales of a Fly-By-Night, andThe Armchair Travel Series.
Thank you so much to Val for letting me share a chapter from his wonderful book, and for entertaining me so royally with The Tales of a Fly By Night! And just for your pleasure and delectation, scroll to the bottom to see the view from the Camino from near the farmhouse Mark and I have rented in France.
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World Wide Walkies 
I will definitely read . Booked
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I am absolutely sure you will love it! 🙂
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Nice view in France! I love how you really put the six stars in the banner for the book, haha. Well, now I want to walk the Camino as well, although I doubt my head will be able to handle it due to migraines when sweating, climbing, exercising. 😦
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The Camino is quite some undertaking. I’m not sure I could cope with the heat! I have always wanted to walk the South West Coast Path in the UK, as featured in The Salt Path and Travels With Boogie (one of my fave books!) Not sure I could cope with the uphills on that any more, though!
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