As I
walked through the medieval gate and over the river to leave
Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port at the start of the Camino I wondered how many millions
had set out on this same journey over the preceding thousand years and in whose
footsteps I now followed. Yet despite the scale of time that separates me from
them - whether recent or ancient - this millennium’s worth of pilgrims will
have walked under the same sky and the same sun and slept under the same stars
as any modern pilgrim would. And as they travelled they would have seen the
same landscapes: the flat plain of the Meseta, the verdant rolling hills of
Galicia and, at the outset, those first blockading hilly peaks of the Pyrenees.
The texture of the landscape may well have changed over that time with more varied
and extensive agriculture - gnarled trunks of vines now growing where long ago
there once may have been smaller plots of cereals or other food crops - and no
doubt fewer woods stretch across the landscape now than did a thousand years
ago. But despite those changes to texture, the shape of the landscape remains
the same: cut by the same rivers, dotted with the same ancient habitations and
shaped by the valleys and hills that have run through this terrain for
centuries. It is a constancy that binds a thousand years of travellers together
despite the centuries that divide us in time and temperament and culture.
And in
the space of those years the nature of the pilgrim too has changed and yet
there remains a constancy over the character of pilgrimage. Today people set out on the Camino for a
variety of reasons, some religious or in some other way spiritual but many for
personal reasons. Few if any do it from the deep religious commitment of a
medieval pilgrim hoping to absolve their sins or cure themselves of
illness. And certainly nobody today
would pay for someone else to carry out the Camino on their behalf in the hope
of achieving the same, a practice of the wealthy in medieval times. And yet despite changes in the motivations of
the individual the underlying nature of the pilgrimage they make remains the
same. It is not the destination itself that is of importance - although it is
unquestionably the drive behind the journey being undertaken - it is that
journey that has real meaning. That idea
is captured in the word itself: ‘pilgrimage’ does not conjure in the mind a
place but rather it implies travelling, albeit to a destination of importance,
but travelling nonetheless. And it is
the impact of that journey on those that undertake it that brings out the real
value to its participants. Then as now
individuals face adversities, spending their time in relative hardship and
living a more simple life during their travels while placing themselves in the
hands of fate and strangers to deal with challenges and the unfamiliar. They
are shaped as their faith in others and in fortune is rewarded, moulding them
and leaving its mark; at the end of the journey the physical effects of their
travels may become faded memories but the emotional impact of that journey
casts a much longer shadow.
During
the course of my walk I mostly met people for whom this was the first – and
probably only – Camino. But I also met many who had undertaken the route before
and who, for them, it was clearly an experience that warranted repeating. It was evident that their desire to repeat
the trip was driven more by experiences that flowed from companionship and
friendship with other travellers rather than any physical challenge. But
whether done once or often, all those who have spent a relatively short span of
their time on this earth walking a Camino will carry long-standing memories
from that experience and the landscape through which they passed, a landscape
that holds a thousand years of memories of those many, many travellers.
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