When I was 52, I checked myself into the Emergency Room thinking I was having a heart attack. I didn’t have chest pains, per se, but I definitely felt “off” with that dreaded “sense of impending doom.” This was exactly the age my grandfather was when he dropped dead from an unknown heart condition. I didn’t want to take chances. To make a rather long story short, after two days in the hospital and ultimately an angiogram, I learned that there was nothing wrong with my heart; I hadn’t had a heart attack. But I discovered that I was born with a heart anomaly called a left ventricular bridge. It means that if I’m very tired, sad, sick, depressed, or over-exerting, that can trigger my heart to raise my internal troponin level, which the brain understands as “impending doom.” Furthermore, extended periods of cardio workouts are not a good idea for me. (Yet another reason why why I hated gym class as a youth.) The condition is very rare (one in a thousand), but certainly not unheard of.
Fast forward fourteen years to today, and that incredibly useful bit of information, impossible to have known before my lifetime (yes, ever grateful for modern medical developments) has always been in the background of my thinking anytime I notice I’m feeling a little off. And so, along the Chemin, I’m always conscious not to push myself on ascents, and to stop as often as possible. I do little things like make my water bottle impossible to reach without taking off my pack. This forces me to stop frequently, take off my pack, drink water, and relax for a few moments.
My walk along the Chemin de Saint-Jacques has now ended for this year. It’s the close of my third time of spending a week on the the route to Compostela, twice in France by foot, and once in Spain by car. I believe I have a good grasp on what the Camino, the Chemin, the Way, is about; but I also believe I only figured that out yesterday, my last day of walking!
Whenever you read about the famous Camino, the Way of St. James, the Camino Primitivo (dating to the 9th century), you read about penitents more or less forced to walk to Santiago de Compostela to implore forgiveness for their sins. You hear about bandits (in the Middle Ages) along the route, but also the ministry of hospitality which developed around this particular enterprise. What you never hear about are the countless throngs that went on this trip purely for the sake of adventure!
On virtually each day of my three trips, I tried to connect, metaphysically, with the (assumed) sorrow and difficulties of ancient pilgrims, but I never felt like I could. Was it simply because I had it relatively easy, with my up to date equipment, comfortable shoes, apps to steer me without getting lost, and well laid-out hospitality before me? Perhaps. But I think it’s more likely because I was looking for the wrong thing.
While on this trip I started reading about another highly significant pilgrimage route in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and was immediately taken by the clear absence of any need to grovel at the feet of Holy Church and beg for forgiveness for some wrongdoing. Quite the opposite! The opening paragraph, which is all one long sentence, alludes to a desire for travel and adventure which arises naturally in the veins as Springtime comes into flower. As the tale unfolds we discover that the adventure, itself, is a curious mix of personalities, talents, and humors, and that the community that gets formed in the context of abandoning home comforts and setting out with the insecurity of day to day life on the trail creates its own magnetic force which attracts them.
I don’t think it’s any different today. But having traveled solo on this trip, none of this occurred to me until the last day of walking. I mentioned before that there has been a dearth of pilgrims on this journey, not just noticed by me, but by every gîte host I’ve asked about this as well. (Everyone blames it on the rain and mud.) I didn’t meet anyone who spoke English after my first day, and I met no one who was walking at my pace, either – that is until this last day. A German man, fluent in English and rather uncomfortable in French, asked me if I knew any English. We struck up a conversation, walked together, and became friends over the course of the next few hours. It’s his second time to walk the complete route from Le Puy in France to Santiago: three months of walking. When I mentioned to him that I hadn’t met anyone to talk with on the entire route, he was amazed and said that the conversations engaged in, and the friendships made along the way, were THE main reason most people walk the Camino. Oh. Who knew?
So it caused me to rethink my trip somewhat. My trip had obviously been quite different from the way most people travel on the Chemin – entirely alone. Admittedly, I knew that France’s Chemin is considerably less crowded, and with far fewer Americans, than Spain’s Camino. (Other than the German I had just met, 100% of the pilgrims I encountered were French.) But I didn’t expect to be completely alone for nearly the entire trip.
But it was exactly that level of solitude that made it easy for me to discover my hermitage within. Conversation can sometimes pull me out of self-awareness as I subconsciously focus on trying to be a stimulating conversationalist. Without that distraction, I learned a level of self-reliance that I had never known before. The beauty of the ever-changing landscape unfolded within me as clearly as it did at my feet.
And so, as the trip comes to a close, I feel both sad at the ending of a powerful experience that can never be repeated, but also tremendously elated that I could maintain my schedule of daily hiking and nightly destinations so seamlessly almost entirely by foot. The self-discovery, deeper love for the world, and greater compassion for my fellow man have made it all worthwhile, and then some.
©2024, Jonathan Dimmock