Camino de Santiago Day 8: Logroño to Ventosa
Reflections on my first week on the Camino; how to measure human growth; churches of the Camino; and walking in the sort of rain that you cannot dry off from
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Is a week enough?
The first week finished, it feels like a moment that should be marked, at least mentally. Even if it’s an arbitrary cultural construct, the mental existence of the week is more powerful a force than most of us are able to ignore or rebel against. It is only by doing something like the Camino – removing yourself from the familiar place ruled by the routine of weeks and weekends, and facing into a journey which measures progress only in single days, if not merely the duration of a single step, taken one at a time.
Over the first week I met several people who were just doing a week’s worth of the Camino; which would give them enough time to make their way from St Jean or Roncesvalles to Logroño. For some, this would be enough, an enjoyable week spent walking through a beautiful part of Spain. For others, it was the beginnings of a multi-year plan to walk the entire Camino, one week at a time. Later I would meet people for whom the challenge of a week’s walking – over 100km – seemed arduous enough, and they wanted to mentally and physically build up to complete the entire journey. Though for most it was simply a matter of time and commitments: they couldn’t take more than a week off work, or away from their families, or some other responsibilities that dictated where they needed to be at any given time, either real or imagined.
I’d feel sorry for them, the week-longers, the work-committed, the half-Camino-ers; and likewise they’d envy me, at least explicitly, because that’s what you’re supposed to say and how you should feel, isn’t it. Once I’d decided to do the Camino, for me there was only one way I was going to do it: it'd be full duck or no dinner, the thought of doing this or any other expedition in small portions has never appealed to me – I’d rather do none of it than some of it.
When I got to Logroño, though, I did stop at one point and ask myself: if I had to go home now, by choice or by fate: how would I feel? Would I be as devastated as I’d assumed? Would I feel incomplete, or even be ashamed if something like an injury or some other failure of my body forced me to abandon what I’d assumed (and barely made a secret about the fact) would be an easy, or at least a straightforward goal? Or would I be satisfied with what I’d done and experienced (and even achieved) in the last week?
The question barely lingers a second in my mind; I can only say the past week has been an incredible experience: each day has brought a wonderful mix of walking, stunning and varied scenery, interesting conversation, sensory enjoyment, cultural appreciation and personal accomplishment, that it would only be by dwelling on some arbitrary idea of destination and achievement of external goals that could possibly make me feel less than satisfied with all that I’d done in the past week.
By any standards, a journey of a week is a long time for most of us, and the fact that each day has been so rich with stimulation, both internal and external, facilitated I believe by the great distances I’ve walked each day – perhaps not unnatural but certainly unusual by today’s standards – and the daily act of leaving one place behind and making my way to another, in one direction only, never to return to the old and familiar, does appear to have had some pronounced psychological effects on me, and inspired some measure of growth.
What is that measure? Well, it’s difficult to articulate at this early stage, the journey still being underway of course, but even after its conclusion, and the return home and reflection and integration of all that’s occurred, there only is one measure, and it’s still one that is always difficult for us to articulate: it’s yourself.
Take a step back, if you’re able, and look at yourself in those first hours and days on the trip. And take a step back – again, if you’re able – and look at yourself where you stand now. Try to see the difference there, if there’s any to be seen at all. In how you act and how you go about your day. And in how you see the world around you, and how you see yourself. Compare the two stories you tell, or if unable to tell, the wordless sense you get simply from observing.
This is the unit by which we measure a journey: the story.
It also happens to be that by which we can measure our very consciousness itself.
And so I have to say I’m very happy with how I’ve progressed in this first week, in seven days’ walking and over 150km, from St Jean Pied de Port to Logroño.
But nonetheless, I’m glad I get to continue, and really my journey is only beginning.
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Churches of the Camino
I stop for lunch in Navarette and someone suggests to me to check out the inside of the church, which I’m sitting under. It is incredible, ridiculous, sublime. To walk up the central aisle accompanied by the sound of monks chanting – I can’t tell if it’s live or pre-recorded, and I only assume they’re monks – makes the event feel like I’m the witness of a famous moment in history, which usually only happens during epic scenes in movies, which aren’t real, or when era-defining celebrities die. But the music would be for nothing if it weren’t for the scene and setting I was approaching:
A sublime altar plated in gold, except it’s not just the altar, it’s the whole back side of the church, all the way up to the dome above the altar. Statues, paintings, icons and artefacts. I have never seen anything quite like it, at least not in a building dedicated to the religion I was brought up in. Not just the materials used but the level of craftsmanship is staggering, both in terms of ability to wield tools and materials and to make something so perfect in the physical realm, and the ability to hold in mind a vision and to make it into a real thing
I immediately associate the scene with foreign and exotic religions: the Buddhist temples and pagodas of South-East Asia: Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, or the temples of Chiang Mai, or any number of statues of the Buddha that I came across in Vietnam or Japan. I don’t believe I’ve seen until now such dedication to the imagery of Christianity in real life, or if I have, I don’t seem to have remembered it.
I wonder why people don’t talk about these places so much. I feel like I know more about the ones that lie on the other side of the world than the ones on my own doorstep, physically and spiritually. To be honest, now I’m beginning to think that the church in Claremorris might be just as impressive and I just never thought to notice it – I’ll have to go back for a look. We don’t have as much gold in Irish churches though, and it has to be acknowledged as I gaze in awe at church after church on the Camino that Spain had, um, ‘access’ to natural resources that Ireland never did, and that now I might know where much of the Inca gold ended up.
In church after church, in town after town along the Camino, and presumably, all around Spain. Which isn’t to say that it’s the only thing that counts here the plundering and pillaging of colonies in order to build things that were ultimately about worship, either of a god or a king, at the expense of ordinary people who suffered for their creation.
In these places, not being the most well-versed in religious history or theology, and only remembering some stories from school, whose form were more like fables for children rather than well-elucidated and profound stories of eternal truths, though with much open-mindedness and curiosity about what really lies behind the stories and people depicted in these statues, these paintings, these murals and these sculpted plates of precious gold, I can only look at them, and stand in the silence of the church, and hope that the clear abundance of creative energy that went into them has some kind of effect on me, if that is to be its purpose.
Though then I realise that these things were (officially) created to convey the words and mysteries of God in a way that went beyond words, for people who could not read or write or understand Latin, or even understand stories.
And so maybe the point was to just look at them, and stand in the silence of the church.
What a difference a day - or a stage between towns - makes
I spend some time praying in the church, though I think I’ve gotten too old and spent too long pondering the nature of philosophy and meditation and prayer and spiritual matters and such, as I start to question if I’m even doing it right at all. Should I asking for something, thanking someone for something, thinking about things, or doing nothing and just ‘being’?
I reflect on my first week and resolve to keep trying to be a decent person.
However I think I’ve upset God because it starts raining as I finish up and leave the church. I think little of it; I’ve just another 7km to go and I feel great, having not left Logroño til quite late, my ankles give me no issue and my I have shopper’s satisfaction with my new hiking shorts.
I’ve already noticed that you must take each day as it comes. Not just that, take each stage as it comes – each section each day can bring a drastic change in mood and fortunes.
A day’s walking and a shift in the weather makes all the difference:
Having made some solid connections over the course of the first week, and feeling a sense of accomplishment at having made it to Logroño, it seems like over the last few hours I’ve lost several friends to the road.
The rain gets heavier. My ankles are sore again. My body is tired again.
I arrive to Ventosa, saturated.
Although I shower and dry myself, it’s the sort of rain that does not come off, and my spirit remains wet for the evening; the sort of rain that has given me blisters and strained tendons and swollen joints; it has exhausted me completely; the sort of rain that exacerbates the fact that, once again, I am alone.
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