I woke up this morning to find that I was the last person in the dorm. All the beds were empty. It was barely 7 and everyone had already left, probably eager to finish the damn walk. Well, I suppose if I had been walking for the last 6 weeks I’d be rarin to go as well.
8km into our walk or so, we saw the Irish lady from the albergue, the one who’s been doing the walk in stages (etapes) – finishing one etape and coming back another year for the next. Curious about how she maintained the motivation to come back year after year, I asked her why she’s doing the walk. “I see it as nourishment for the body, mind and soul,” she said. “It’s good to take time off from life and nourish these three things.” And then she added, “More than any other walk, the Camino always seems to pull people back to it,” she said, as if the reason she – and thousand others – always come back and keep walking is partly supernatural, an invisible magnet of sort that pulls people into its sphere. Because the first reason she gave us, albeit rational and easily understood, didn’t fully explain the madness that is the walk.
I felt the cumulative fatigue of the walk and the physical toll of sleeping in hostels and being on the road for a week. Each step felt like a slog, the next one heavier than the one before. After lunch we walked for another hour before we came to a hill outside the city. And there they were: the three spires of the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. This spot must be our personal Monte de Gozo (Mount of Joy), the spot where past pilgrims caught the first sight of their destination after weeks of struggles. Traditionally, pilgrims cry out in rapture upon seeing the symbol of the end of their walk. I had no such desire and it struck me that perhaps these pilgrimages, like other challenges in life, are only transformative when they are so hard – physically and mentally – to the point where you think you can’t go on. Or perhaps we blindly assume that a transformation must have occurred to justify all the sufferings because otherwise, … what’s the point?
The last 3km, I must say, was not the end I had in mind. As soon as we entered the city limits, cars and traffic and noise and people beset us from all directions. I saw another pilgrim who was walking in front of us made a detour to take a coffee and cigarette break at a sidewalk tavern and I wanted to ask, “Why?” Or perhaps it was more of a “How??!” How could he have the patience to delay the end further and resist running to the end of the finish line when it’s so close yet feel so far as the city seemed to conspire to hide the end from sight. Even the painted yellow arrows that had been our constant assurance and companion throughout the walk suddenly disappeared. We had to use our phone map to guide us. I felt, for the first time on this walk, lost.
As we pushed our way into the inner sanctuary of the city, presumably closer and closer to the cathedral, we started seeing more souvenir shops, restaurants offering ‘End of Pilgrimage’ menu and other people with big backpacks like ours. Roads turned into alleys flanked by tall stone buildings from centuries ago and finally, after a few turns, the path opened up into a large plaza with the cathedral on one side and hundreds of people sitting on the stone pavement on the other side. Llegamos. We’re here.
But our journey didn’t end there. To receive our last stamp and a Compostela (certificate of completion), we had to go to the Pilgrim’s Office, which was another experience in itself. The official name of the building is the Office of Pilgrim’s Reception, but everyone drops the word ‘Reception’ from the description because no pilgrims ever feel received or welcomed in this place. Every day during summer months, one thousand plus people finished the Walk and had to come to this office to get their Compostela. When we arrived, there was no sign whatsoever, but luckily another person told us to head down the stairs into he garden, into another building behind the main building to get our queue number. We were 1034, 1035, 1036; they were currently processing number 530. The lady who gave us our tickets said it would take 3-4hours before our turn. I had heard about the long queue but didn’t expect it to be that bad during the low season (i.e. not summer) like now. I looked around the waiting room and saw a few faces I recognized – people we met on the walk, at the albergue – though everyone looked too forlorn to offer a nod of recognition. I caught a glimpse of purgatory in this room.
We finally got our Compostela in the evening. A piece of paper written in Latin.
The Chapter of this Holy Apostolic Metropolitan Cathedral of St. James, custodian of the seal of St. James’ Altar, to all faithful and pilgrims who come from everywhere over the world as an act of devotion, under vow or promise to the Apostle’s Tomb, our Patron and Protector of Spain, witnesses in the sight of all who read this document, that: <name> has visited devoutly this Sacred Church in a religious sense (pietatis causa).
For three Euros you could get a “personalized” version of the certificate that would note your point of departure and the distance, because the template doesn’t mention the walk, the distance, and the struggle you went through. And there it is again, our desire to have the world recognize our individual suffering.