Tony Kevin. Walking the Camino: a modern pilgrimage to Santiago. Scribe: 2007.
Cathay O. Reta. Keep Walking, Your Heart Will Catch Up: a Camino de Santiago Journey. cathayreta.com. 2020.
Hape Kerkeling (trans. Shelley Frisch). I’m Off Then: Losing and finding Myself on the Camino De Santiago. Free Press. 2006.
cover image: https://forum.scssoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=267679&start=250.
Sometimes my spirit needs a break. Maybe yours does too. I’ve been reading for a year about so many aspects of fascism, dozens of books on racism, militarism, capitalism, the collateral damage to the planet, our global relationships and our domestic policing. It’s heady stuff, but also heavy on the heart, you know? I needed something else. Like palate cleansing during a wine tasting, or palette cleansing, I guess, during an art class.
So, apropos of nothing, I began to wonder what would it be like to walk across Spain. I’ve been pondering the Camino De Santiago, an ancient pilgrimage where millions of folks have gone before, and I’ve read three books now, journals by folks who have completed some version of the Camino. This has become my bedtime reading, the last thoughts before lights out, a way to set my spirit free from the sometimes soul-crushing reality of life in this world, this country.
In Walking the Camino, Tony Kevin, an Australian diplomat, describes his journey, the longest of the three I’ve read so far. At 63 years old and not a little out of shape, he took on the Via de la Plata in Seville, preceded by the Via Mozarabe from Granada — 1200 kilometers in all (745 miles) in eight weeks, mostly by foot but with intervals on a bus.
Kevin asked: What drives hundreds of thousands of people of all nationalities and creeds to take time out from their normal lives to walk long, exhausting and not particularly scenic routes across the cold mountains and hot tablelands of Spain, in order finally to celebrate a medieval Christian liturgy of spiritual renewal and reconciliation with God?
His own answer? I knew I was looking for something in Spain that I had been unable to find at home: some answers to the complexities of life, a circuit-breaker from the growing stress and pain of living in what seemed to be becoming a more selfish and joyless society. I really did not know what Spain would show me. I feared I might not be up to handling it. Most of all, I feared I might not be able to see the point of it.
Kevin’s travelogue is detail-oriented, focused on the places and topography, the way communities provided for the common good, the ancient and modern relationships among Christians, Jews and Muslims, plus a lot of history, from the Visigoths, through the Spanish Civil War, and to Spain’s decision in our time to reject the machismo that fueled the war in Iraq, seeing little purpose and a lot of international damage. Kevin mulls “what makes Spain Spain,” and ponders his own history in the context. A Catholic, he countered his pilgrimage with “the old Adam” that has been his life, and wrote in the end “I think my pilgrimage was … a precious opportunity to ‘take my life for a walk,’ to unflinchingly hold up to the light memories of past relationships and responsibilities, to examine how well or badly I met those challenges…”
It is the longest read of the three; it is the most educational. It is also the one that allowed me to keep the safest emotional distance, which was probably part of my point.
Cathay Reta’s pilgrimage account, Keep Walking, Your Heart Will Catch Up, was the most tender and emotional of the three. In her mid-60s, David, her husband of 33 years, had died the year before, leaving her wondering what life was supposed to be now. She committed to celebrating her 65th birthday on the Camino and approached the Camino as a being all its own, trusting it to provide what she needed and show her what she needed to know. She memorialized David, cried a a lot in the beginning, struggled the most with physical needs (blisters can be debilitating) and with loneliness — surrounded by people but bound by her reluctance and unable to connect. A partner with her deceased husband in an evangelical ministry, she seemed not to have ever spread her wings before, lacked surety or clarity of who she is. This journey is very much about a woman becoming free and learning to love herself.
Her language is reflective of her evangelical bent, and I found myself praying for the grace to ignore the very male language for God and embrace her path. The route she chose was the Camino Francés, 483 miles across northern Spain, beginning in France. She tended her body as she should and took the bus more often than she desired. (To qualify for the certificate of completion, the Compostela, pilgrims must complete the final 62 miles on foot or the last 124 miles on bicycle or horse; all the pilgrims I’ve read took the bus at some time or other). Over 37 days, she danced in the rain, expressed doubt and self-pity, wept as she placed a memorial rock for David at a holy site along the way, learned to laugh, and struggled against the temptation to find herself a luxury hotel and call it quits.
Of the three, Reta shows more of her vulnerability and inner turmoil. She is embarrassed to learn that she snores (sleeping quarters are almost all shared hostels); she is unapologetically a slow walker, and bold enough to include pictures of herself along the way. Her story is inspiring, and though the quickest read, it was the most inviting in terms of being with her on a journey.
Hape Kerkeling is a German comedian, pretty famous in Germany and other parts of Europe. His pilgrimage account is I’m Off Then, the most entertaining of the three. In it, he writes that the Camino “poses a single question to each of us: ‘Who are you?’” Kerkeling chooses the Camino Francés, as well, and tries very hard to be incognito throughout, using his lesser-known full name, Hans Peter, as he goes.
Kerkeling is the least overtly religious, but perhaps the most spiritually hungry, trying in fact to discover if God exists. “Apparently I don’t have a very clear idea of who I am, so how am I supposed to figure out who God is?” So he searches, offering insights from each day (July 6, 2001: Sometimes even the most annoying people mean well”), and telling stories of his travel that seem largely to center on people he met along the way — sometimes walking together, sometimes merely encountering each other here and there as they journey to the same destination.
A gay man, he dodges unsavory invitations from men and persistent though misguided come-ons from a Portuguese woman who clearly wants what he cannot offer, and he must convince women with whom he desires camaraderie that he is gay and “safe” to them. He gathers and tells stories of other pilgrims and pretenders, their complaints and quirks; he also eventually must out himself as a German celebrity, after too many autograph seekers make his cover hard to keep. (“Why did that couple want a photo with you?” “The lady wanted to have a picture with a real pilgrim.” She remarks that my compatriots behave very strangely in my presence.) He hikes perilously close to highway traffic, takes cover from a fourteen-year-old with a loaded pistol, (“It’s hard to maintain a Dalai Lama-like composure in a situation like this”) and even rescues a dog! He’s a great storyteller; I mulled his insights, and laughed at his experiences — on the Camino, in his earlier life, and in at least one compelling past life.
He, too, is unashamed about taking the bus or train, nursing blisters along the way and talking himself out of quitting more than once. The most well-resourced of the three, he also enjoys non-hostel accommodations and luxury meals more often. But the journey, he finds, is what it needs to be. “My travel guide tells me that this path is a path of illumination, but I think it doesn’t come with any guarantee of illumination, just as taking a vacation doesn’t guarantee relaxation. Fine: I won’t set my hopes too hIgh, but illumination wouldn’t be bad. Whatever it is!”
Kerkeling has the most robust experience of other travelers as he is most skilled in languages. While Kevin and Reta are native English speakers comfortable with Spanish, Kerkeling is fluent in at least 5 languages that I counted — German and Spanish, but also French, English and Dutch. And I’m pretty sure he picks up a little Italian and Portuguese along the way.
His quest for God? I don’t know completely. He writes “Everyone of us needs something to hold onto, but the only stability comes from letting go.”
All these travelers got something they needed from the journey; their stories also have given me something I perhaps needed — the respite from a world in pain. I also appreciate the stories of folks in about my stage of life (with my general state of out-of-shape-ness) wondering what it is all about. I don’t know if I’ll ever walk the Camino (I’m considering it!) but I’ll keep reading, keep escaping, keep finding refreshment from those who do.
My next book will be What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim: A Midlife Misadventure on Spain’s Camino de Santiago de Compostela. I’ll let you know how it turns out.