Yesterday I stayed in Sarria, which is the last big locality more than 100km away from Santiago, the minimum distance one must walk to receive a certificate. So quite crowded compared to days past.
And today when I came into Portomarín it became clear that the difference was here to become the norm.
Street market!
The Buen Camino app (a guide for pilgrims) makes a big deal of it, so I’ll post a snippet here:
Those who started their pilgrimage before this place will notice the difference, especially in the summer: more pilgrims and hostels and everything becoming more commercial and perhaps losing part of the charm. However, the Way is what it is, always enjoyable if you know what to expect.
But tempered expectations haven’t stopped the wave of complicated emotions that has swept over me the past day or two. I’ll try my best to sort through them here by splitting the rest of the article into two sections:
First, challenging my righteousness about having started from “the beginning”.
I saw an old friend on the path today, who I last saw two weeks ago and first met on Day 3 (we shared laundry).
It literally made my day to catch up with and grab food with him, but I couldn’t help but name for myself that at least part of the intensity of my emotion I could attribute to the sheer number of people on the trail today who I couldn’t recognize. On a regular day before Sarria, I could recognize a lot of the people I crossed on the path - but today, I could barely recognize anyone. I met someone in a cafe and felt the urge to ask where she started from - when she said St. Jean, it felt comforting, even though we had never met, so the distinction should have been meaningless.
When the same friend (from Barcelona) made a point that many Spanish folks will use a weeklong vacation to walk the last 100km, I found myself judging them unfairly - who are they to intrude on our experience and mess it up for the OGs?
100km left :)
I didn’t like that I thought it, but it’s probably instructive to share the thought. It is resonant with a piece I wrote earlier on about religion, where I asked whether inclusivity trades off with depth of experience for those originally included:
It is also the same reasoning xenophobes use to oppose immigration, and it is the same reasoning that creates toxic social culture in elite colleges.
Now, probably some of these to you are less incriminating than others. So then, where is the line? Is my righteousness justified?
Second, lending credence to the importance of going the entire way, instead of just starting 100km before.
That said, I do want to share that I have absolutely no regrets about starting from the beginning. There is a reason having this time is a privilege - because there are material and structural benefits to walking the whole way, and I want to discuss them.
First, relative lack of volatility allows you to more easily reframe the suffering you experience. Today there was a whole lot of rain - probably not pleasant if this was your first day out of five. But you all have heard me detail my thoughts about something as simple as the rain several times on this Substack - but these reframings are facilitated with time, which exploits the law of averages to temper volatility.
Second, the “boringness” of the middle stages is exactly the stage needed for the mental exercise of the Camino to shine. Not every day is supposed to be filled with magnificent views and incredible touristy looking bars and markets, because part of the meaning of the Camino is the meaning you have to make out of thin air - you and yourself, feet against the ground, one after another.
Third, and most important to me, the time is so important for forming community.
My friend mentioned to me that many of the folks who come for just five days will book private hostels all the way through. I stayed in one yesterday - it’s not nearly the same community. People tend to stay to themselves, cook by themselves…the most social action I got yesterday in the hostel was helping the manager translate Spanish to English for a disgruntled customer who wanted to cut the drying machine line.
I’m so sorry but this to me isn’t the Camino.
The Camino, like any system with intentional coincidence for forming community, is about the privilege and the opportunity to show yourself “at your worst” to the people around you, and to allow and empower them to welcome and accept you anyway.
I saw someone I knew a few days ago climb up to the top of a hill and let out a prolonged scream, scaring the dogs and the bartender. Probably not his best moment. But that’s ok - I told him there’s a fireplace inside and he can warm up his hands. He gave me a smile and walked inside.
Yesterday I was visibly tired and then had a breakdown with someone I had agreed to get a drink with. Not my best moment. But that’s ok! We ended up having a long conversation later that day.
These sorts of relationships aren’t impossible to cultivate over five days - but it is much easier to treat five days as an opportunity to be with the people you care about most, and that’s it. To explore a different part of the world, together. To be a tourist. There’s nothing wrong with it!
But to me it is a fundamentally different experience from the lone traveler who has been walking for a month. Who has had the chance to show their worst and be accepted, show their best and be celebrated - to show themselves as they are, and nothing more.
Alone, but it really.
This is both crucial to my understanding to what makes community great, and also underscores why politics creates so much cognitive dissonance for so many people. People focus on either your worst or your best, and nothing in between - attacks are good politics and humane community is bad politics.
But back to the Camino - this is the charm that the Buen Camino app talks about, and I think they understate the difference between the “tourist” and the “pilgrim” experience (using these words as proxies, without the intention to offend). And it makes sense why - they want as many people to download the app as possible.
Even if their experiences belong to completely different planets.