Last night at the albergue, I had an insightful conversation with a Danish pilgrim named Nicholas Olson, 28, who has been on Camino three times already. This is one of the joys of the Camino, the social one. You connect with others on the Way and have meaningful conversations. It started with my asking him the simple question: Why do the Camino?
He struggled to give voice to the answer, not because he did not have one, but because the answer was as multifaceted and complex as a diamond face.
There are many reasons to go on Camino. Here are ten:
1 To heal.
Many people go on pilgrimage seeking answers. They have some trouble in their soul. As an example is Martin Sheen’s film The Way. In this story a son dies on the Campostela trail and his grieving father finishes the Camino for him by scattering his son’s ashes along the way. On the road I have witnessed many pilgrims who walk the path to honor those they have lost. The walk, then, becomes an act of processing grief. People walk because they are trying to get over something.
I have mentioned in my first post that I myself am walking to receive insight into the way I should go in my life. I have taken time out from my job, from my family, from my hectic NYC scene, to listen to what God, somewhere deep in here and somewhere far out there, is trying to tell me. The whole world I believe is reeling in a liminal crisis. It is heaving into a new era and it is scared.
I can’t help but notice that as I walk memories of those who have passed away rise up to meet me: my dear uncle Christo with whom I shared a mountain trek and was taken by COVID; my father and his mental illness; my ex-husband and all his family trauma. As I walk, I wonder how my life has wound up to this point. I am thankful and mournful at once. Excited, exhilarated but exhausted. Time on the road is dedicated time to allowing what’s built up inside you to come out. You can only process emotional stuff when you are away from the cause of it, in a sort of minimal antechamber of sorts. To find answers inside, one walks to find them outside.
2 ) To find God
“Walking is a way to find God,” Nicholas Olsen expressed to me during our conversation. “There is a very strong biological connection between the body and mind, a strong sympathetic connection to God, he explains. “Humans both biologically and psychologically are meant to walk; they are not meant to be sedentary. Being biologically connected to nature brings people to God,” Olsen notes. He quit his job as a landscape architect and switched to gardener because he needed to be more physical. You need to immerse yourself in the world and not watch it from a distance. Pilgrimage forces you to be physically in the world
3) To rebel against the hedonism.
Nicholas remarked that he hates the way our modern society has evolved into this crass materialistic hedonism. He like many Stoics before him finds struggle vivifying. Our lives have become so comfortable we have lost the meaning of life. Life is a struggle. The hardships on the pilgrimage route awaken our senses to this. Compare our experience of the Camino to the pilgrims who went centuries before and you will see how coddled we still are. They had no GPS, hardly any way markers. They had to bring their food with them and if they brought horsed they had to carry food for them. They had to take care of marauders and highway bandits who could rob them of their goods (they were moving targets), assault them and leave them on the road to die. And what I had not realized until Nicholas reminded me, as modern-day pilgrims, we can jump off the journey and arrange for a flight home in one or two days. For the medieval pilgrims, Santiago was the half-way point! They had to haul themselves and their stuff back home with the return journey that would have been as strenuous if not more than the going.
In this way, going on pilgrimage is very countercultural. You are going against the grain—against the resort culture, the fly for points, luxury Club Med holiday. It is a hippie thing to do. All-inclusive trekking holiday that comes out to be quite a bargain.
4) To go on a hero’s journey
A pilgrimage is on its face a type of hero journey. One leaves his or her ordinary world and enters a different one. He undergoes hardships, has near death experiences, fights monsters on the road and in his or her own soul, reaches her destination and then takes that journey back again. The hero’s journey archetypically tied to our evolutionary history as hunters and gathers has taken on mythical and spiritual overtones in pilgrimage. What each person is looking for is meaning, his or her own personal meaning in this road called LIFE. While we do not return home bearing bloody meat, we are “civilized” now. What we bring back are stories about the journey and the integration of the psyche with whatever it was trying to put to right. This is why pilgrimage, whether you believe that God lives and has been resurrected or is dead, will never go away. It is the journey that is ingrained in our DNA. The pilgrimage journey it is inherently cultural, across all cultures. It is ingrained in us.
5) To live a cultural tradition dating back to the early Middle Ages.
What many pilgrims forget is that not only the places they pass through are UNESCO sites, but embarking on the actual pilgrimage is itself a UNESCO heritage activity. There is something incredible to walk along the paths of Roman roads and take part in a journey that other pilgrims have taken part in for over 1,000 years. When I read Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, I cannot but get goosebumps. I am doing the same Camino those characters did way back back in the day. I am part of history and literary tradition.
6) It is addictive. As much as a pilgrim complains about sore muscles and aches pains blisters hunger, once you accomplish your first Camino it’s only a matter of time before you finish your second and third. The exhiliration of the journey boosts endorphins so you do it again and again. I am not finished with my first Camino and I am already planning for my second through the Camino Frances.
7) To express your faith. Lest we forget a pilgrimage is a spiritual exercise. It is meant to connect you to Christ and His sufferings. Many people engaged in the Camino for remission of sins. That’s why pilgrims did it in the Middle Ages. This year 2022 is an especially good year to go on Camino as it has the Holy Year designation from Pope Francis. It was actually 2021 that had the Holy Year designation but it was filched due to COVID. To celebrate a Holy Year in Santiago means that the Apostle’s Day has to fall on a Sunday. This only happens 14 times every century. Additionally, on December 31, 2020, the Holy Door of the Cathedral of Santiago reopened for pilgrims after being sealed for years. Exceptionally, it will continue open during 2022 to celebrate the Xacobeo. This door, whose access can be found in the Plaza de la Quintana, is one of the most important rituals of the Holy Year. The Christian tradition assures that going through it is one of the three necessary requirements to achieve plenary indulgence.
While I am not Catholic, I am taking part in the pilgrimage because it forces me to keep my intention and my faith on Christ. It is hard to go through foreign lands as a stranger. I have promised to say the Jesus Prayer and pray along the Camino. When things got especially tough on the road, I had to break down and ask God for help more than once. The Camino is a test of faith and physical endurance. Once your body breaks down, you rely on your faith to push you through.
8 To reconnect to nature and the elemental.
Because the Camino brings you into rural paths, it is hard not to remember that God is in nature. Humans need to feel that we are part of something much greater than ourselves. That’s what it means to have a religious experience. Letting go of ego and melding into the mystic. When we connect to nature, we regain that sense of awe in the greater web of Being. When you combine nature with spirituality, well, then you have the winning formula for a truly life-altering experience=pilgrimage.
Nicholas also brings up that the Camino carries an underlying theme of leave no trace. “You carry everything in your backpack. You leave a very scant ecological footprint as a pilgrim,” he notes. For those of us who feel the need to save the environment in the face of ever more perilous climate change, it feels good to engage in this earth-friendly sort of slow vacay.
9 To take part in a personal challenge/To feel the burn
Even without the spiritual struggle, completing a physical and psychological feat that is a pilgrimage sets you apart. It is akin to those of us who train to take part in a marathon. You do it to prove to yourself that you can and you could.
The grueling physical and mental strain of the Camino connects the mind to the body. The struggle, however, is its own reward. It is the point of life. The more you strain yourself, the more meaning you get from it. The Stoical and the Christian perspective share this aspect in common. To feel the pain is the point. When you struggle, you are alive. This is the very idea of life. Through the struggle, you get the stamina to keep living. The Camino wakes up your wild side.
10 To lose weight Because of the sheer physical excursion of trekking from 100 to 600 kilometers, most pilgrims shed some weight. The Camino Diet as I call it guarantees a weight loss of 10 lbs or more. The average is 20 pounds. If you have ever despaired of losing weight naturally. the Camino gives you hope. What a great way to get rid of the COVID 19. Not only does it get you into the mindset for training, it helps you keep off the weight as your body learns to adapt to the constant physical exertion. It is a way of getting heart and legs muscles fit. With the body in constant motion it revs up the machine increasing metabolism. The lactic acid build up helps burn calories even days after the journey ends. Just check with your doctor before setting off as each individual’s body is different.
There are as many reasons to take part in the Camino as there are pilgrims. What are yours?
