“Tu mochila es tan pesada como tus miedos,” says Leonardo San Sebastián, as he lifts the bottom of my backpack to check its weight. We’re standing before the Santuario de Santa María a Real do Cebreiro, an oval-shaped, thatched-roof church located in a mountaintop town that feels more likely to be in Ireland than in Galicia, an autonomous region in northwestern Spain. I enter the building and make an offering before lighting a candle within a red votive holder. I place it at the front of the church, near the altar, then take a seat in one of the old wooden pews to contemplate the last several days spent hiking the Camino de Santiago. I’ve walked over 100 miles, which has left my feet and legs tired and sore, but has given me hundreds of hours to be with myself and my thoughts amid rolling fields of poppy and wheat.
Guided by the experts of Mountain Travel Sobek, I’m walking the Camino Frances route of the Camino de Santiago, a network of paths that weaves through the South of France and nearly every stretch of Spain and leads to Santiago de Compostela. Though it’s a Catholic pilgrimage, I’m not participating in the walk for religious reasons. I’m here in the spiritual sense, a calling of curiosity to learn more about the world’s great pilgrimages and why people do them. I’ve had the opportunity to experience cultural rites of passages around the world, from walking parts of the Kumano Kodo in Japan with a practicing monk to participating in the Qoyllur Rit’i walk in Peru to celebrate the reappearance of the Pleiades constellation in the sky. I’m fascinated by the transformative power of a singular destination shared among many: when hundreds, even thousands, of people all have the same goal in mind, it creates a certain type of momentum—like magic. A desire to feel what that meant for people walking the Camino de Santiago drew me to this pilgrimage, as did my love for Spain.
Originally from the Basque Country, Leonardo is one of the three guides leading me along my two-week journey along the Camino Frances, one of the most popular routes of the Camino de Santiago. Given that my bags were already transported to the next hotel, he’s wondering what I have in my backpack that could weigh so much. I tell him a film camera, journal, and extra water are causing the weight, though I know what he really means. His question is deeper than my answer, and nods to the greater meaning of a journey like walking the Camino de Santiago: The more fear we have, the greater our load, whether alluding to the gear in a backpack or the fears and anxieties we hold as we move through life.
No matter which route travelers choose to take, they all end in Santiago de Compostela, where the trails come together at the town’s eponymous Romanesque cathedral, a structure completed in the early 1200s and believed to hold the tomb of the apostle St. James. When the tomb was purportedly discovered in the 9th century, the town and its cathedral became one of the most important Christian pilgrimage sites in Europe, leading to the creation of the Camino de Santiago. While each route has its unique history and heritage, the Camino Frances has been the most popular trail since the Middle Ages and is about 500 miles. It takes about five weeks to complete. Given that I only have a few weeks to spare, I’m hiking it in parts, totaling about a 125-mile journey on foot.
Beginning in St. Jean Pied de Port Camino Frances, a village on the French side of the Basque Pyrenees, I’ve already crossed from France into Spain and walked along the historical Pass of Roncesvalles, where the hero of the Charlemagne Army, Roland, battled against the Basques. I’ve crossed through the oak and beech forests of the Erro Valley, arriving in Pamplona before setting off for the 9th-century city of Burgos on the Rio Arlanzon. I’ve walked through central Spain, beyond seemingly endless fields of billowing wheat and poppies, to the city of Leon, home to one of the most famous Gothic-style cathedrals in Spain. I’ve walked down country roads lined with vineyards until crossing into Galicia for the final stretch of the journey.
Just a day away from reaching Santiago de Compostela, the lead guide of my trip, Erik Perez, tells me why he chose to dedicate his life to leading travelers along the Camino de Santiago. When he was 25, he was an avid mountain climber, until he had a fall that nearly left him paralyzed. During his three-month stay in the hospital, he began to form a unique view of the Virgin Mary, who was framed on the wall before his bed. He promised her he would dedicate his life to doing what he does today if she let him walk again. The walk he’s leading me on marks his 127th journey.
“The Camino de Santiago is special that way. Many people do it at significant turning points in their lives: graduation, resignation, retirement,” says Erik. “Many pilgrims walk because their path forward is unclear. Through days of silence and time alone in nature, they eventually find their next step.”
Though the trail is a Catholic rite of passage, most people I meet aren’t walking for that reason alone, as Erik suggests. They, like me, are stepping out of one phase of life and entering another. One woman I met told me she talked to her late husband during her entire walk, feeling his spirit near her throughout her journey. Another pilgrim said he walked because, at 73, he didn’t know how much longer he would be able to do such an athletic feat. For me, I felt like I had a chance to process my last relationships. I hadn’t given myself much time between them, and I thought about my contribution to where things had gone wrong. At one point, during a water break at a mountaintop, I opened my journal to write. All that came out was, “I want something different.”
Walking the Camino de Santiago taught me many lessons. Each day is different. Sometimes it’s a pleasure to trip past undulating fields of wildflowers, and other times it’s a slog of rainy days where the path ahead is barely visible. But on the Camino as in life, I choose to keep walking. Even if the forecast calls for rain, it likely means there’s unknown beauty ahead—usually in the form of a rainbow smeared across the sky above a distant valley I’ve yet had the joy to know.
