Sinning Across Spain

by Ailsa Piper

  Sitting there, remembering what I’d said on the phone, I decided it would be a sin to allow the German to take my joy. It would be my sin. I can’t fix anyone else, I wrote, but I’ll fix myself right now. If joy has been the gift of this camino, then joy it will be.

  And an hour later I was sitting on the verandah of a white farmhouse, enjoying Italian coffee and homemade biscotti with my garrison and a young couple who had moved from Umbria to Spain after walking the camino. It was easier to have a good life in Spain than in Italy, they said. Cheaper. And the people are more real. Il Capitano was suitably appalled.

  Il Soldato toured the house, looking at the joinery and making suggestions as il Capitano flirted with the slender, curly-haired maker of biscuits. Behind her, in long black letters on the whitewashed wall, was the phrase Per Aspera Ad Astra.

  By hope you will get to the stars.

  Rome again! I had last thought of that phrase back in the eternal city after seeing the Pope. I had first seen it in Ventosa on the Camino Francés. Full circles.

  Palimpsesto.

  I’d got to the stars. Thanks to my Italians, I found myself in a home, telling stories and sharing food, forming family.

  We walked on in scorching heat, together and apart, past ripening figs and blooming roses, and beside freeway constructions that straddled mountaintop and valley floor.

  I stopped to talk to a woman in a field. Wearing trousers and gumboots, she explained that Galician women had to be farmers. They worked like men. No, harder than men. ‘But we would not walk alone across Spain,’ she said. ‘That is work for no good reason. Loca, loca.’

  I pressed on, the sun my accelerator through chapels of beech forests and across manicured fields cultivated with sweat and devotion. Those fields made me think of my friend Ida, an irreverent sage, whose favourite phrase of the Catholic Mass is ‘by the grace of God and the work of human hands’.

  Grace. The grace to be on this planet at this time, free to walk the earth. And work. Turning up each day, even when dispirited or afraid.

  Snakes crossed my path, reminding me to shed what was left of my angry skin. I’d met my devil, and he could take his pressed khaki and try it on with someone else.

  Rounding a corner I caught il Soldato sitting on a wall. He leapt up and walked, as though he hadn’t seen me. He was carrying a staff of rough wood and I asked where he had found it. By the path, he answered. He showed me how he had whittled the end of it into a grip. If he saw the German, he would use the rod to teach him manners.

  I hoped we wouldn’t see him now. The last thing I wanted was for my soldier to get hurt—or hurt anyone else, which was, I suspect, quite possible.

  Up we went, catching a young Spaniard who said he could barely keep pace with il Capitano. I photographed them out in front and it’s impossible to say who is younger, the backs equally straight, legs equally muscled and strides equally sure. I strolled with il Soldato, watching him accustom himself to his new friend. He’d had staffs in the past, he said, and liked the feel of this one. Maybe the German had given him a gift. He thought he might take it with him when they left Santiago to walk the Francés in reverse direction, going home. Having walked a thousand kilometres from Seville, they were going to do the eight hundred back to the Pyrenees before flying home. Magnificent.

  We got lost. The Guardia Civil stopped traffic for ten minutes in order to find our way. Fingers pointed, foreheads glistened, two-way radios buzzed. Ultimately, it transpired we were on the right road!

  Just because you’re wandering, it doesn’t mean you’re lost.

  Up further, with the world at our feet, windmills dotted along distant hills, and the land below us like an aerial photo, we saw a sign: SANTIAGO 20.

  Up higher still, we were met by a group of thirty horseriders out for a trail ride. We climbed with them along dappled bridle paths.

  Suddenly there were eucalypts, the smell potent in the afternoon heat.

  Home. I was coming home.

  I picked leaves, squeezed them, inhaled them and pocketed them, like a koala let loose with her drug of choice. I tucked them inside my bra, close to my heart, and breathed them in.

  The eucalyptus, the heat and the light conspired to make me fly.

  ‘You are so fast,’ the horseriders called. ‘You will get to Santiago before us. You will get there tonight.’

  It was tempting. But no.

  We would have one final albergue night. One final road dinner. And besides, the gossip on the pilgrim hotline was that this was the Parador of albergues. Perched above the world, the glass and blondewood building was immaculately clean and spacious. We laundered and nested, but just as I’d finished unpacking, il Capitano appeared, miming conspiracy, and collected up my belongings. I followed him to the end of the hall, where, behind the arrival desk, he’d discovered a single dormitory. He arranged my belongings, announcing it was my apartment. The dragonfly suite!

  Dinner followed. Downhill to a café, in company with German Chris, Japanese Yuji and our Spanish companion. Salad, roast chicken, potatoes and Santiago tart. Most others had walked on or planned their stages so they didn’t overnight there in Ponte Ulla at the Albergue de Vedra.

  I’m glad we did. To have rushed into the city at day’s end would have been maleducato! We celebrated each other’s achievements and listened to stories. Chris had married an Australian girl and was preparing himself for big changes by walking to Santiago. Down under, he wanted to work outdoors, to make himself over from a computer-oriented German to a labouring Aussie, exploring alternative medicine and southern sun.

  Before we left the bar, the Italian army decided to have a special drink.

  Sol y sombra. Sun and shadow.

  It’s brandy and anise. Powerful stuff. It celebrates duality.

  Life is, as the lady said in Laza, sun and shadow, and we’d certainly had both that day, but we’d ended in the blazing sun of friendship. We drank to the camino. I was, and am, so grateful that it exists and knows what to do with all of us. That it’s endlessly generous and forgiving.

  Like Spain. Like love.

  ‘Buen camino!’ we said, as we raised our glasses. That wish never felt more like a blessing.

  The burning spirits slid down, and I tucked into the silence of the dragonfly suite for my final night before greeting the saint. I took out my journal, and wrote by torchlight:

  What have I learned in twelve hundred kilometres?

  Well, I do have faith: in the simplicity of walking, the power of forgiveness, the kindness of Spaniards, the goodness that wants to prevail, the ache to be better and the impulse to serve.

  I believe in the restful set of evening and the pale wispy promise of morning. In the hope of rain on parched soil.

  I believe in confession with all my heart, telling the true story of ourselves, eye to eye with another human being, owning up to all that we are.

  I believe that stories shape our lives, and that the more honest we are in our stories, the more freedom we will gain.

  I know there’s nothing more sacred to me than the act of putting one foot down on a dusty road, and then putting down the other. Again and again. For as long as it takes. Turning up and doing the work.

  And I know that the work never ends.

  I know there is beauty in effort.

  I know slow is sublime. Slow food. Slow dance. Slow talk.

  I know snails are gurus.

  I know we are all connected, whether we like it or not, and we owe it to this astonishing planet, and those we hope might come after, to acknowledge that fact in our actions as well as our words.

  I don’t know any more than I ever did about what comes after, or if there even is an after, but one thing I do know. I absolutely know.

  I will die.

  And I’m perfectly happy to die wondering.

  There are so man
y wonders …

  I closed my journal, flicked off the torch, zipped up my sleeping bag and shut my eyes. What would I dream?

  Perhaps of a pilgrim walking along a dirt road, leaving a trail of footprints etched into the dust. Of others walking north over muddy ground. Of the thousands walking out their doors, across hills and valleys, treading trails into the earth.

  Their trails are tales. Their trails are prayers. Their trails are hopes, wishes and intentions, stories being inscribed into the Spanish soil.

  Perhaps I’d dream of the man I’d seen leading his donkey down the road.

  Both wore coats, but the donkey’s was best: bright blue with a red Santiago cross on his flank. They plodded, inscribing the path with their own hard but beautiful story.

  Mediaeval, they looked.

  Out of time.

  Like a dream.

  29

  Sunny Santiago Sunday

  It began with words on a page and it ended the same way.

  This is the final email I sent home to my village from Spain.

  Well, it is done …

  For those who like a statistic, thirteen hundred kilometres completed in forty-three days. Approximately thirty kilometres per day, if you are interested in such things.

  But how do you measure love? Or experience? Or learning? Or gratitude?

  Maybe by steps …

  I walked into Santiago with my Italian pensioner angels on Tuesday morning in bright hot sunshine.

  Galicia, the bathtub of Spain, had turned it on for us. There has been a week now of temperatures in the thirties, and they are melting here in the land of lush green.

  I, of course, have been in my element—wide blue skies, eucalyptus all around, good strong heat to warm my blood, and a task nearing completion.

  We arrived in pilgrim central, were awarded our compostelas (the certificate from the Church that says we have made it here in this Holy Year), and in true Italian fashion, went out to lunch!

  Those seventy-something boys taught me a thing or two about life.

  Don’t eat on the run. Make a meal of a meal. Laugh. At every turn. Laugh.

  I think it is the laughter that gives them the energy to walk and live as they do. Everything is funny. Even when they bicker. Which they do, like little boys, partly to show off to me, I suspect.

  I miss them.

  We went to Mass together in the cathedral on Wednesday at noon, along with the Galician government!

  I heard the statistic read out: ‘One pilgrim from Australia from Granada.’

  So quick, to summarise such wonders.

  The botafumeiro (enormous incense burner that takes six men to swing it through the air, cleansing the cathedral of the waft of pilgrim sweat!) flew over our heads.

  We had A Reserve seats because we arrived an hour early, at il Capitano’s insistence, so I had time to write a long list of thankyous to all my sinners and benefactors and beloveds. You were all with me in the cathedral.

  But I also knew it was not the end. My instinct was right. I reckon the pre-Christian pilgrims knew a thing or two.

  The end of the world called.

  I went out into the vast square in front of the cathedral with my Italians beside me and began to walk. Out through the narrow, baking lunchtime streets of the city, as it snoozed through the siesta. Out towards the green woods that surround it, which were blessed cool on that hot afternoon. Out towards the first bridge, where we parted.

  They were going east along the Camino Francés, back towards their homes in Italy. I was walking west to the sun, another hundred kilometres with my sins and my village.

  We clicked photos. Said farewells. I cried. Leaving them was hard. The only parting that has felt difficult. I could always manage being in their company, and I came to love them so. Like fathers, friends, angels … amici …

  They text me every day. They miss me, and my laugh that they call ‘allegra e contagiosa’.

  They made me laugh like that. That was their gift.

  I am in danger of weeping as I write about them, so that is enough now.

  The walk to Finisterre was like a dream.

  Hot, clear, greener than green—like being under the sea and in the air simultaneously.

  Yet always on the ground. Feet on the ground. The blessed earth of Spain: furrowed, gravel, hard, squelching, muddy, dusty, stony. Spain. Under my feet, in my pores, in the fibres of my clothes, in my lungs.

  The first sighting of the sea on Friday, the third morning, was a shock. Suddenly there it was.

  Really? In all the shimmering heat, maybe it’s a mirage?

  But no. It’s the Atlantic.

  And then, oh then, from the top of a high hill, there is a headland and a lighthouse at the end of it.

  Finisterre. Land’s end.

  I cry, I laugh, I tell myself, ‘At the top of that hill, I have made it.’ For the first time, with the end in sight, and only fifteen kilometres to go, I have made it.

  And with that, I fall!

  My first, my only fall in thirteen hundred kilometres, and it was right at the moment that I had prematurely congratulated myself! Yes, I can now vouch for it: pride goeth before a fall, indeed.

  Pride.

  My sin.

  I have wrestled with that from the moment this journey began and I had to ask for help.

  I have wrestled with it daily when Leonardo and Ricardo and il Capitano and il Soldato and my amigo have tried to care for me.

  Pride. Just as I let myself wallow in it, it tripped me up!

  Fantastic, this road. This teacher.

  And so I walked very very carefully in blinding heat into Finisterre.

  The last two kilometres were barefoot, along the beach, collecting shells for all of you. They are wrapped in plastic, and you will have one on my return, in pilgrim tradition.

  Pilgrims walk with a shell on their pack now, but originally they only walked with the shell on their return journey, as proof they had made it all the way.

  You will have your proof!

  The sun sets here at 10 p.m., so that night (Friday) I hobbled out the last three kilometres to the Cape, and sat on the rocks high high up, and waited.

  It’s easy to see why they believed the world ends there. The Atlantic swirls away and disappears into mist. There is nothing but blue. No horizon.

  It was sublime. A perfect red sun dropping into an azul sea.

  I had my list with all your sins, all my sins, all your gifts, all your names, all my thanks. And at 10 p.m., I placed it under a small rock to hold it firm, I borrowed a lighter from a Dutch pilgrim, and I set it alight.

  It burned.

  Really beautifully.

  All but one tiny piece, with one word on it: ‘for’.

  For what?

  For love, for gratitude, for pain, for sorrow, for anguish, for scrapes, for bruises, for joy, for release, for compassion, for lessons.

  For privilege, for Spain, for friends, for colleagues, for life, for death, for sun, for shadow.

  For newborn lambs and pensioners, for silence and for laughter, for Australia, for the world, for peace.

  Within and without.

  For love. Always for love.

  I burned that last scrap. The sun dropped away. And a man on the rock above me said in Spanish, ‘And now the sun is rising on the other side of the world. Maybe Australia.’

  I said, ‘I’m from Australia.’

  He said, ‘Then it is rising on your home.’

  And he was right. It would have been 6 a.m.

  I did cry then. Just a little. I thought of you all, and of how much I care for and about you, and how lucky I am to have had such faith placed in me.

  Faith.

  I have wondered about it all down the road. Asked questions. Sought a
nswers. In the end I come back to something simple.

  We were taught as little things that God is Love.

  Well, I think that love is god.

  That’s all.

  And that loving well is the test and the gift.

  I walked back downhill like an invalid, my body suddenly aware of every step I had taken. But the happiest invalid on the planet.

  My job done. My task accomplished.

  I had served.

  On Saturday I slept until 8 a.m.

  I threw my naked body into the Atlantic (it’s okay, I had the beach to myself, so didn’t terrorise any locals!).

  And I caught the bus back here to Santiago, where every dreadlocked new-age wannabe and cross-carrying devotee and obsessive hiker is partying up a storm, while the Spaniards watch yet another football final. I tucked into clean sheets and an actual room with bathroom in Hostal Fornos. Silence and cleanliness and a towel.

  Bliss.

  And today I walked out the first ten kilometres towards Finisterre at dawn, because I wanted to. Without my pack. Fast. Flying.

  And I realised that I missed the pack.

  Why?

  Well, it keeps me upright and straightens my shoulders, and it slows me down. So I see the world and stand tall when I have weight on my back.

  Another lesson. Maybe we do need our weights, if we carry them with care and consciousness.

  I don’t know.

  I forgot! I lost a good friend, and it was a terrible, difficult farewell.

  When I fell, one of my hiking poles took my weight and it bent in the middle. My beloved pole, which has made two caminos with me, as well as many walks through central Victoria—well over two and a half thousand kilometres. I have danced with it, twirled it, been supported by it, argued with it, climbed with it, tapped rhythms with it, carried it across my shoulders and in my holsters. It saved me from having anything worse than bruising and scratching, but it had to stay at Finisterre because I couldn’t straighten it out to bring it home.