Day 26

Day 26 – Rabe de las Calzadas to Hontanas – 18.5 km

Today we tackled the dreaded Meseta.

Typically pilgrims deplore walking across the mesa because of the heat and barrenness of the land. Today, however, was a comfortable 50 degrees, with alternating breezes and showers, and lush green fields. 

Yet still I felt the isolation. Even with the dozen pilgrims I encountered on The Way.

Ten long kilometers passed between each small town. Long enough to feel alone in the world. Insignificant. As if I could get lost, or even disappear, without anyone taking notice.

I long to be noticed. To make a difference, during this one life I have to live.

While Randy and I were taking a rest at the foot of a cross, Rosita from Brazil stopped and asked if she could tell us a story. This is her second walk across Spain. Last year she encountered a couple who met each other on the Camino and finished their walk by getting married in Muxia, a few days beyond Santiago, surrounded by friends they had acquired on The Way.

We've heard similar stories of love. And it makes sense. You share so much, so deeply, when you walk with one another, day in and day out.

She went on to ask if we were planning on arriving in Santiago during Holy Week. I said I was. She warned against it. “The Camino makes us sensitive,” she said. We share tears and blisters and take care of one another. But once you get to Sarria, she said, more people join the Camino. Especially during Holy Week. And instead of being a place of open-heartedness, it becomes a competition. A race to get a bed in the next albergue.     

You only have to walk the last 100 kilometers of the Camino to receive a Compostela (certificate of completion). So, many begin their walk in Sarria for those last 100. Either because of time constraints or because the Camino, for them, is about reaching Santiago.

Unlike the woman from Holland, who I met yesterday, who said her longing was not to walk to Santiago, but to walk the Camino. So she will walk as long as she has time, from Burgos to wherever she ends up.

It made me think that it doesn’t take the barrenness of the Meseta to make us feel alone. We can feel just as isolated in a crowd of people. Competing to have needs met. Prayers answered. To live lives of significance.

Perhaps I will have another Meseta-like experience during my final days to Santiago. Or maybe by then I will feel close enough to Christ, myself, and the community that holds me, to know that I will never be alone.

I’m now halfway through the days I have in Spain. Twenty-six of my fifty-two already experienced. I imagine I will continue to wrestle with this question of significance. What the journey means for me. And you. Praying all the while that I will be changed, to more accurately represent the face of Christ, in this one life I have to live. Because that, to me, would be worth noticing.