¡buen camino! 

From dawn to dusk, each day last week I gave and received the greeting ¡buen camino!

Along the route from Sarria to Santiago de Compostela, these words were offered from our overnight hosts, local farmers, friendly bartenders, but mostly they were exchanged with other pilgrims on the path through Galicia along the Camino Francés

Sometimes the expression was muttered with a nod as walkers overtook. Sometimes it burst out like a big happy song ¡BUEN CAMINO!, with hiking stick raised.

Mostly though, it was like one bird calling to another from across the muddy way. Often these were the only words of shared comprehension (beyond hola) … since pilgrims descend from the world’s every nook and quarter.

Occasionally, the expression came with a hug as we bid goodbye to near-instant friends we made over pilgrim meals (and soaked disrobement). There was Marilyn from the Caymens who just quit her job, Adam from London tending a broken heart, the Derry Girls – mothers and daughters marking the loss of loved ones.

The expression will be familiar to anyone who has walked any or all of this medieval pilgrimage.

It can be taken to mean:

Good journey. Good path. May you have one.

Implicit within it is the notion I am with you. We are together. We each are Pilgrims – foreigners to the place we walk through, journeying to a sacred place. Sometimes in penance, or grief – often at crossroads in life, but also for the sheer adventure and camaraderie. Along with the precious chance to lose oneself and re-find the world.

The week before I headed off on this trip with my dear friend Feargal, I was away from home in very different circumstance and setting, attending the annual gathering of a few hundred people I work alongside (who I meet in person infrequently and in much smaller groups). And so, I have been gone from home for some time. Certainly for what feels longer than a mere two weeks. Gone from the solitude of my normal life. Between the work gathering and the Camino, I have been immersed in Intense Experiencing without the usual mind-space to process it all. The enlightening conversations, unusual sightings, and moments when Life utters the clue that unravels a long-carried riddle.

It seems reasonable to assume that walking all day should allow for plenty of internal “processing.” And, for me, normally it would. But on the Camino, my mind emptied and my senses filled. The changing scenery and the hours of lashing rain, flooding walkways and hats grabbed by the wind kept my attention trained on the immediate – eyes scanning for safe footing (especially after Day Two when a bad fall nearly brought my pilgrimage to an abrupt end).

It will take a little while back in the familiarity of my own bed, the usual shape to my days, before I imagine I will integrate all that unfolded.

From the Latin perfect participle of integrō: “I make whole, I renew, I repair, I begin again” from integer (“whole, fresh”).

What I can report now is that the daily swell and disbursement of pilgrims mystified me. We’d trickle out from sleepy towns just after first light … traipsing behind other two-sticked, pack-backed, hunched-over, rain-ponchoed figures. Making sure to keep other pilgrims in view until we would come across the first milestone or yellow arrow of the day — typically bearing the scallop symbol. Then, within minutes, the company dispersed. Each time this vanishing seemed weirdly magical – where, oh where, did everyone go? And so, we mostly travelled alone, the pair of us trekking over streams, down dirt or stone slabbed paths, along tree lined meadows or deep into the forest. For long stretches we saw no other human.

A sudden re-gathering of pilgrims up ahead signaled a steep incline or shelter from the skies in a café.

Only on the last stretch, the final hour of our six day’s on the road, at a point where the five Caminos intersect — the French route, the Portuguese, the English, the Norte and the Primitivo — did we finally weave into one long parade of a bedraggled legion. The rain celebrated with endless buckets.

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But with every buen camino, we remembered that a pilgrim is not alone. All are welcomed. All are seen. All cared for when in need. Which reminds me of something I shared a few years ago:

There’s an anecdote Sharon Salzburg tells as part of her Buddhist teachings. She credits this thought experiment to her friend Professor Bob Thurman from Columbia University:

Imagine you are on a packed subway and these Martians materialize and zap the subway car so that those of you who are there, will be together forever.

What do you do?

If someone is hungry, you feed them. If someone’s freaking out, you comfort and calm them. Not because you necessarily like them or approve of them but because you are going to be together forever.

To take care of yourself, you take care of the rest.

Which makes me wonder … if we wished everyone who crosses our path buen camino would that help make it so? Not just for those who speak like us and share our peculiarity of thought, but equally, if not more, for the seemingly unfathomable stranger, and the trickster, the wrongdoer, the damaged and the misunderstood, what hardships might we prevent if we never forgot that we are in this adventure together.

It’s a sentiment I’ve long held – though it remains far easier to keep it clear in the head than embraced by the wounds of the heart. Even so … this difficulty too — it only connects us.

So, buen camino. Good journey. Good path. May you have one.

You are with me and I with you.

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