The Camino felt like rereading a wonderful book. I had not walked the 880 kilometer path across the north of Spain before this program, but the experience brought to mind old lessons that I learned in kitchens with my friends, on runs by myself and on the silent lakes of Canada. On the Camino, walking every day demanded that I feel impact of gravity in the soles of my increasingly sore feet. On the Camino, walking every day made me aware of the weight of every article of clothing, electronic device and wine bottle in my pack. On the Camino, walking every day forced me to focus shift my focus from the perceived and abstract needs of my daily life back home, to more simple and immediate needs.
In my life outside the Camino I can escape the importance of gravity on buses and elevators, but here gravity permeated my subconsiousness and sunk into my consciousness every time rain fell on my face and my sore soles flexed around sharp rocks and every time I loaded a bottle of wine into my pack. I knew how important gravity is before the Camino–I scraped enough knees as a kid and shed weight before half marathons to spare my legs the extra load–but on the unrelenting, in-my-head-silence, lugging a pack for a million-step pilgrimage, I relearned that every possession and bottle of wine that I carried was a burden. I know this now, not in the way of knowing that comes from reading or being told. I know it in my feet and back and calves and shoulders.
When I was in high school I went on four ten-day canoe trips in the backcountry lakes of Canada. I still remember the man who led the trips pulling me aside the night before we went into the wilderness and telling me that I was not allowed to get hurt. The idea of a sprained ankle being a serious problem had not occurred to me because access to wheels and motors had always meant that transportation on my feet was one of several options. Every time the Camino rolled down rocky trails or I felt the twinges of tendon pain in my feet I remembered that I need my body to work.
I stack responsibilties in my daily life: I work for money, spend money on school, go to school for the opportunity to have better work, better work for more money, more money for a more pleasurable life. On the Camino, gravity toppled this constructed tower of needs and brought pleasure back down to earth. After fifty kilometers of walking, who in their right mind would desire money or status over food and rest?
David Hlavsa said that humans are “meaning making machines,” and that it usually takes him at least a year before the meaning that he makes solidifies. I finished my Camino de Santiago two weeks ago. The meaning that I am making from it is still amorphous and the shape of it changes from day to day. But forced to declare prematurely what it is I have learned in these last two months, I would say that the Camino brought me down to earth.