On the Camino de Santiago, every pilgrim is walking off some burden; we were walking for mum

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When I was a boy, my father took me on mountain hikes in the west of Ireland. When the path got too steep, he would take my hand and pull me past the rocks to sit on the crumbling heather and listen to the sheep bleating through the valleys.

My father is now 81 years old, and when we tried the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain earlier this month, I sometimes held his hand to help him climb the rocks as times gone by echoed everywhere.

We were like Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez in the film about a pilgrimage, The Way, only I was a little less dead than the character of Estevez. For a week we walked – or tried to walk – under a pale blue sky wearing disposable face masks, talking and singing.

My father wanted to cover the 250 miles from the city of Leon to Santiago de Compostela, the legendary resting place of the apostle James, in about 17 days and arrive in time for my late mother’s birthday by hook, crook or taxi. My brother Rich and I would take him on the walk that he would finish alone.

We had grossly underestimated the difficulty of the Camino when we three at noon from the Parador, one of King Ferdinand II and other Spanish aristocrats for Pilgrims of the 16th (at that time they liked their hostels decidedly more majestic than modern backpacker-way stations; the Parador is a building as breathtaking as any high-rise, its facade enlivened by a multitude of sculptural figures and its courtyard overflowing with notched stones and lush plants.)

Within an hour of crossing the historic bridge next to the Parador, Rich and I were brought to our knees and battled with my father’s camelback-style aquatic backpack.

Sunset was approaching and we were still in the outer furniture storage belt of Leon. The only thing that assured us we were on the right track were the yellow arrows that hung on the sidewalk every few hundred yards.

Throughout the COVID-19 era, I have had a strong sense of connectedness with the people of yesteryear. Everyone wore bird’s beak masks again and was given food in baskets in front of the door, as if the plague times of Boccaccio’s Florence and Daniel Defoe’s London had never ended.

The connection to the Middle Ages is even stronger on the Camino. It’s not just about crossing centuries-old bridges on foot. Modern life is seldom so analogous, with painted arrows instead of global positioning satellites and subsidized accommodation, the so-called Albergue Municipales, which are operated on the first-come-first-served principle instead of making reservations online or by phone.

If we sit around the table in the Albergue, eat from the same dish and drink from the same bottle as our fellow travelers, we could have been pilgrims from Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury.

There was still the modern day inconvenience of travel, of course. Flying has long been an exercise in jumping through as many airport tires as can be imagined in two hours. Now there are several tires added, most of them with COVID-19 and QR codes.

“When I get home,” my father scolded once, rummaging through his pockets for a mask and a hotel key, “I’ll be wearing pants without pockets for weeks!”

The volunteer manager of the Albergue in Villadangos, Juan Ignacio, was surprised that we arrived by taxi on the first evening. We explained that we had run as far as possible.

“Everyone has their own way of doing the Camino – that’s the point,” said Elaine, a California hiker who found my father and me slumped on a hill a few days later, looking uncertainly the way up and down. “Remember what they say: ‘poco a poco’, little by little.”

My dad and I took Elaine at our word, and we went to extremes. On the climbs we sometimes only covered 200 meters between long breaks for cigarettes and camel packs.

Many of our fellow travelers or pilgrims made little headway on their 400 mile excursion from St. Jean de Pied de Port in the French Pyrenees, which was recognized as the starting point for the Camino Frances pilgrimage route. However, when they saw our struggles, they had nothing but respect and benevolence for us.

One, an older Spaniard with a boombox on his backpack, cheered us on every time as if we were toreros when he came by: “Ole, ole!”

Since my brother Rich could not release us, he had left us in Astorga, the gateway to the mountainous region of Leon and Galicia. Before leaving, he and I toured an episcopal palace in Astorga, designed by Antoni Gaudi, the Catalan architect whose glasses seem to have only one thing in common – the feeling of entering an enchanted world.

The best friend we made on our pilgrimage was the taxi driver Luis Nunez. He saved us several times and introduced us to Antonio “El Oso” (the bear), who runs the last outpost of the Knights Templar with his comrade Tomas Martinez de Paz. On cold days, the knights provide pilgrims with a warm log fire and refreshments outside their home in Manjarin, near the highest point of the Camino, continuing the tradition of an order that has long protected pilgrims and crusaders.

On my last day, I was nervous about leaving my father alone. So Luis, the taxi driver, took us both to my father’s hotel in Sarria before taking me back to Leon by reversing through a pedestrian street to save my father’s tired legs.

My father reached Santiago with a few days to spare. Like many pilgrims, he went to an office where the Camino arbitrators issue certificates of completion. With a Torquemada-like adherence to dogmas, the referees decided that my father’s path did not deserve a certificate.

It seemed tough. As my father said, even St. James’s disciple needed the help of followers to get his remains to Santiago.

But my father didn’t go to Spain for the certificate.

He went to feel the mountain air after being stuck in his home for over a year. He went to leave a stone with all the other stones for my mother at the foot of the Iron Cross, near the highest point of the caminos.

“A lot of people leave something – a child who has died, a lost spouse, cancer,” as Elaine had told us.

My father went to Spain to hold his sons by the hands again and to find out about their lives in distant lands.

And he went to the Albergue of Villadangos to sing after dinner. A Catalan sang to us in flamenco style, a French couple sang old pop hits and my father sang the traditional Irish melody that ends:

When I’m drunk, the money is my own

And if you don’t like me then leave me alone

I’ll play my violin and I’ll rosin my bow

And I’ll be welcome wherever I go.

Rob Curran is a Denton freelance writer. He wrote this column for the Dallas Morning News.

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