For everyone who doesn’t know, on the 1st of June Leonardo and I departed to Saint Jean Pied Port in France to start our 28 day hike along the famous Way of St. James. This is just our first post about it because we have a lot things to share and it is not possible to say it all in just one post.
Therefore, this first post is to try and give a general view about this pilgrimage and the course, to try and answer the question which Leonardo and I have been asked the most since we came back to “civilization”: – Ok.. But how is the Way of St.James?
Our sticks
Yes.. To make that trip/hike is an awesome experience and very hard to describe. So let’s go guys.. You don’t see gnomes, witches or fairies. You also don’t cross a magic portal that will transform you into dimension or make you float along Way of St. James without feeling tired. It is a magical place but don’t think for one second it is easy.
For those who have read “The Diary of a Magus” and think you are ready for the walk, forget that! This book is an entertainment source and only talks about the Way in a charming manner. My dear, you need to seek a bit more information, search in a more conclusive fashion and listen to other pilgrims’ testimonies. If you haven’t physically prepared then you are in for a big shock.
Anyway, how is the Way of St James? So, imagine yourself crossing 800km of a country like Brazil with striking differences from one region to the next. You face beautiful landscapes which distract and amaze you every day, as you walk a trail that is much older then the documented story of Saint James. For those who don’t know, The Camino was already a trail used by Celts (Celtic people) a long time ago and there is a lot of Celtic symbolism along route.
To travel Way of St. James means to change your inner self on a daily basis and you can’t plan fully for what the next day will bring. It is to have a very intimate experience and to reevaluate yourself. You will have to rethink your core values and how you want to treat other people. Also a lot of the time you need to distract yourself just to have the power to reach your destination. You will want to give up every night but wake up very early the next morning and leave. You will no longer see cultural and language differences in other and will only want to help or be helped. The biggest discovery on the trail is not the landscape or mystic things, but your fellow pilgrims and their individual stories. It´s a simple way of life without complications. You will make friends along the way and you will never even know their names or see them again. You forget your daily troubles and just look around in amazement at the beauty around you. You learn to think about the welfare of others and not just yourself. It strengthens your faith.
For me to make this journey, meant stirring emotions within myself. I have seen my partner save me from falling face down into the mud, or simply keep my spirits up when I was feeling down and felt I couldn’t continue. For us it was a discovery of what it meant to be partners. A different way of love and union. Besides all the experiences of the past 25 years, I can now truly say I have found inner peace. It has also shown me where I am in my professional life and that I have a love for life.
Too beautfil as a paint
The most important thing is to know that the journey did not end in Santiago and that I will continue on this journey throughout the rest of my life because the Camino is inside each one of us. Therefore we always say we can try to explain how Way of Saint James is, to give tips, to say what we did and did not like but you will just understand what it means if you do it yourself. Alone or accompanied, the most important thing is to open yourself to the experience.
Our ‘compostelanas’
