I am made for movement. Sitting still in simply not for me. Which is why, in my reckless youth I sought out everything that moves: sports, the sun, and the sea.[1] But now, with the years passing with the same suddenness and speed that was reveled when time was taken for granted and rebelled against now that I know for certain how little can be done to stop this time from passing, it is stillness that I seek; a stillness that can be found only in mountains.
And yet, even as I drag thirty behind me kicking and screaming to meet its fate of forty I am unwilling to give up my youth, just as I am unwilling to give up my love for the sea and that is why, in the beginning of August I found myself in the northeast corner of Spain about to begin an adventure that I knew so little about. Most days I did not know where I was going or how long it was to take to get there. I did not know the terrain over which I was to cross or the names of the towns that were to be passed through. I only knew that along this coastal route there was to be mountains and there was to be the sea. And that was enough.
Walking the Camino de Santiago was always the intention of this journey; I just began a little further east than most. But I chose to walk El Camino de Norte, a solitary route along the north coast of Spain instead of the heavily trafficked Via Francese because after four months of traveling through city after city, country after country, and walking among millions and millions of people, I needed silence, I needed stillness, I needed peace for I am solitary, I am stubborn, and I am competitive. Socially, these are not the most endearing qualities but when it comes to crossing almost an entire country on foot there is no other way I would rather be.
But it was not just the physicality of this pilgrimage that I was after- the demands of this trek were enough to make me question my sanity every morning when the alarm rang before sunrise, every time I strapped twenty pounds on my back just to carry it with me for miles on end, every switchback, every ascent, every descent, every step, every day for thirty days- what I really sought was the e-motionality of this journey because it is only here, between mountains and oceans that I was left with no other choice but to reflect upon these very same heights and depths within myself.
And reflect I did as I walked up and down, down and up for four hundred and eighty-eight miles, sometimes cursing and damning the days that were difficult (which were many), but mostly walking in wonder and awe of this world. I walked over unnamed mountains, across beaches so long that the tide changed as I made my way from one end to the other, down backcountry roads that make you care little of the existence of cities, passing vineyards whose grapes will one day yield Rioja and Txakoli, and through wild fields of wildflowers that make you realize how unnecessary it is to be tamed.
And with every step I learned, like mountains, like the sea, when it is better to be rock, when it is better to be water, and when it is better to be something in between. And with every step I learned how exactly it is, as we move through mountains, as we swim through the sea, that WE FIND WHAT WE SEEK. So much so that when I arrived at Santiago de Compostela; the place where it is said to be not the end of this journey, but only the beginning, it was the mountains I wished to return to. I wished to return to the sea. Because it was only there, in the space between all that makes me hollow and all that makes me whole, where I finally found stillness, where I finally found silence, and where I finally found peace.
[1] I know that the sun stands “fixed” in the sky and that it is the earth that revolves around this big ball of fire, but please do not take my love of alliteration away from me.