Camino

I’ve always loved walking. I like the simplicity and freedom of it. No tying or troublesome equipment needed — just a serviceable pair of feet. Planes, trains, ships, cars, bikes, horses and donkeys all limit you in one way or another. With foot travel — barring walking on air and walking on water — you can go wherever you want, whenever you want. You don’t have to look at a timetable, you don’t have to wait for a ride, you don’t have to spend lots of money and you don’t have to buy loads of gear.  All you have to do is point your feet to the north, south, east or west. Walking creates an intoxicating sense of possibility you don’t experience with any other form of locomotion . . .

This is part of a post on the Camino I was invited to write as guest blogger on Roselle Angwin's  Qualia and Other Wildlife. You can read the rest of it here . . .

Camino

I began writing a novel about the Camino in the summer of this year, but haven't looked at it for several months. Now I realise that it's seriously flawed and needs rethinking entirely. Oh, well. Who ever said writing was easy? I've salvaged a few sections . . .

I’d first heard about the Camino several years earlier. I’d been walking the Pennine Way and had booked my final night in a B&B close to the Scottish border. There I’d met another hiker, a merchant seaman called Martin. Martin used to spend months at sea, followed by equally long non-working periods on dry land. At first he had passed this ‘holiday’ time like many young men with cash in their pockets — drinking, taking drugs, lying on beaches, picking up girls. Then one day it struck him that he was bored and wasting his life. A magazine article about the Camino he’d picked up in a dentist’s waiting room piqued his curiosity. He went to bookshops and libraries, discovering more and more about this old pilgrim route. He was hooked. From that moment on he spent much of his free time trekking these ancient trails. He found that there was not just one but a whole network of paths criss-crossing Europe and beyond. And the more he researched and walked these paths, the more he realised that caminos existed anywhere you wanted them to be. There were caminos in every country and in every culture, caminos across time and through space — even caminos in the mind and in the heart . . .

The story of the Camino goes something like this . . .

After taking Christianity to the Spanish, the apostle James returned to Judaea, where he was tortured and beheaded by Herod Agrippa in 44 AD. According to the legend recounted by various anonymous authors of the 12th-century Codex Calixtinus, and later by French scholar Aymeric Picaud, some of James’s disciples shipped the body of the martyr back to Spain, but their boat sank in a storm just off the northern coast. The undamaged corpse was washed ashore covered in scallop shells — the scallop shell ultimately became a potent symbol for the Camino — and was buried in a secret place. Centuries later a hermit called Pelayo saw a star shining directly over the spot. A bishop called Teodomiro had the site investigated, soon identifying it as the apostle’s tomb. This was a shrewd and farsighted move, promising much future revenue for the church. A chapel was built there, which later became a cathedral, and a city grew up around it, which was named Santiago de Compostela — ‘Santiago’ meaning ‘St James’ and ‘Compostela’ meaning ‘Field of the Star’.

During the Middle Ages, Santiago was celebrated as one of Europe’s holiest shrines. Routes led here from all parts of Europe. The four most well-known paths through France to the Spanish border started in Paris, Vézelay, Arles and Le Puy. It was in Le Puy, of course, that I had begun my own journey. The Reformation and the Black Death put an end to this enthusiasm for pilgrimage for a while, though a trickle of penitents continued to flow. Then, four hundred years later, in the mid-1980s, pilgrim numbers began to rise again, and they have carried on rising ever since. So, this year, perhaps thousands of hikers, pilgrims, tramps and vagabonds had already passed this way before me, vanishing into the dust. Or at least disappearing into the next bar . . .

A Small Village In Germany

I'm living in Germany right now, in the western region of Rheinland-Pfalz, and it's beautiful: picture-postcard villages, lush green valleys, hills and forests stretching as far as the eye can see. This pilgrim sign made me feel reassuringly at home . . .

The church of Saint Sebastian in Friesenhagen. Next to the church is a fine example of a black-and-white Fachwerkhaus, or half-timbered house, dating from the 18th century.

The valley of the Wildenburger Bach.

The chapel of Saint Roch above Friesenhagen lies on one of several Caminos which cross the area. After Saint James, Saint Roch is the Camino's most important saint. Like Saint Francis, he distributed his worldly possessions among the poor, then set out as a mendicant pilgrim from his birthplace of Montpellier in south-west France heading for Rome. In northern Italy he nursed plague victims, paying scant regard to his own health, and was later venerated, along with Saint Sebastian, as a 'plague saint'. He is usually shown dressed in pilgrim clothes and pointing to a plague sore on his thigh; the dog normally depicted at his feet saved his life by licking the wound clean. He was falsely arrested as a spy and spent five years in prison, where he died. According to Wikipedia, Saint Roch is the patron saint of bachelors, diseased cattle, dogs, wrongly accused people, invalids, Istanbul, surgeons, tile-makers, gravediggers, second-hand dealers, pilgrims and apothecaries — covering most options, you might say!

A rose for Saint Roch.

Satori

As regular readers of this blog will know, I'm very interested in Buddhism — Zen Buddhism in particular. This is not the place to go into the fascinating and complex history of Buddhism in India, China and Japan; nor is it the place to explain how DT Suzuki brought his interpretation of Zen to a spiritually-bereft Western world. Suffice to say that, simply put, there are two modes of Zen thought and practice — not mutually exclusive, but interwoven and complementary: one involves study, contemplation, meditation and discipline; the other is the spontaneous, immediate, less intellectual, more intuitive experience of koan and satori. Reflecting back on my recent Camino along the Via Francigena, it occurs to me that my illuminative moments on the banks of the Rhône were an unexpected, unpremeditated satori. Here's my account of it:

It was near to here, on a flower-strewn bank overlooking the river, that I had my picnic lunch: a superb garlic sausage, doux Fontal cheese and pain complet from the Migros supermarket in Aigle, plus a small 20 cl bottle of Aigle les Murailles white wine bought in the castle shop. It was an idyllic place, and, after the meal, I experienced one of those sublime, mystical moments I treasure so much. You never forget such rare, spontaneous events, and they cannot be manufactured or predicted. Suddenly I had a strong conviction that everything was coming together in an almost magical way: my mind, body and soul felt at one with the life I was leading out there on the road — and at one with the universe itself. My practical skills for what they were worth — knife or route-finding or backpacking skills for instance — seemed to merge effortlessly with any emotional and spiritual intelligence I might have; it was an overwhelming, deeply satisfying sense of harmony, control and insight. I have explained it as best I can, but really the experience was beyond words. This intense state lasted for perhaps five minutes, then, when I had packed up and left, the feeling was still there, but more diluted. Here I was, living cheaply and well, each day in the open air and in the heart of nature, like some vagabond or holy tramp, in good health, in good spirits, and as free as a bird . . . Indeed, I was truly fortunate.

The Next Pilgrimage

The long straight track.

Much of the time, we are willing to do almost anything rather than face the unknown, the wilderness. When we drive in our cars, we'll go on for endless miles, rather than admit we're lost. We drive our lives that same way until a crisis stops us. But that fear blunts our experience of the world, doesn't it?

. . . if you're lost enough, then the experience of now is your guide to what comes next. None of us knows what comes the next second.

WILLIAM STAFFORD

Oh, a storm is threatening / My very life today / If I don't get some shelter / Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away THE ROLLING STONES Gimme Shelter

The pilgrimage I'm undertaking soon may well be a challenging one: many days, if not weeks, of solitude — with cheap accommodation, or indeed any accommodation, thin on the ground. I'm taking a tent. And this time I'm making sure my pack weight is nearer a manageable 20lb than a punishing 30lb. I came up with the following 'ideal' guidelines, which I'm carrying with me in my head (zero weight!). Wish me luck.

     

Twelve Zen Guidelines for the Long Distance Pilgrim and Walker

1. To walk — and live — fully in the present.

2. To neither regret wrong turnings (the past) nor yearn for destinations (the future).

3. To walk — and live — mindfully, aware of and focused on what’s going on around, through the five senses, and what’s happening inside, through thoughts and feelings.

4. To try to get beyond desire, craving, negativity and division.

5. To let go.

6. To welcome intuition and the imagination, and to use them creatively.

7. To walk — and live — simply, thriftily and economically, consciously making each coin, each morsel of food and each mouthful of drink, count.

8. To be grateful for the luxurious, comparative freedom of a long-distance walk: going where I want, quickly or slowly, directly or obliquely.

9. To be grateful that, for a period of time, I am not subject to the usual routine dictates and compromises of family and society.

10. To consider walking a kind of art form.

11. To consider each step, breath, mile, thought, feeling, action, encounter, sight and insight a kind of prayer.

12. To try to love unconditionally.

Footpath through poppy fields.

For some time now it has seemed to me that the two questions we should ask of any strong landscape are these: firstly, what do I know when I am in this place that I can know nowhere else? And then, vainly, what does this place know of me that I cannot know myself?

ROBERT MACFARLANE The Old Ways

The Pilgrim's Way (10): Tao And The Journey Within

Zen pond.

How many times now

have I crossed over hill crests


with the image


of blossoms leading me on —


toward nothing but white clouds?

FUJIWARA NO SHUNZEI 

Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.

WALLACE STEVENS

Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the pond.

THE SOLITARY WALKER

Perhaps the truth depends.

THE SOLITARY WALKER

Perhaps the truth does not depend.

THE SOLITARY WALKER

The longest journey a man must take is the eighteen inches from his head to his heart.

ANON

The longest journey is the journey inward.

DAG HAMMARSKJOLD

We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

But in the end, the journey is all within, isn't it? Perhaps that is why the emotions elude us when we most think they should be present. So much of why we travel is actually to learn about ourselves . . .

AMANDA from Travels with Persephone

Funny that we tend to bracket events with 'beginnings' and 'endings'. Perhaps this is just another illusion. Perhaps everything is fluid and boundless, insuring that our tiny brains will never understand the mysterious concoction of energy that we call 'life'.

GEORGE from Transit Notes

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

PROUST

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes. 

PROUST 

Banish learning, discard knowledge: people will gain a hundredfold.

LAO-TZU

Knowing others is intelligent. Knowing yourself is enlightened.

LAO-TZU

We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep. 

PROSPERO

Ain't talkin', just walkin'.

BOB DYLAN

The rest is silence.

HAMLET

The bright road seems dark,

The road forward seems to retreat,

The level road seems rough.

Great TE seems hollow.

Great purity seems sullied.

Pervasive TE seems deficient.

Established TE seems furtive.

Simple truths seem to change.

The great square has no corners.

The great vessel is finished late.

The great sound is scarcely voiced.

The great image has no form.

TAO hides, no name.

Tao yin wu ming

Yet TAO alone gets things done.

LAO-TZU

Meditation on the Far and Near / 'What Is Beyond?' Koan

What is beyond thought, beyond reason, beyond unreason, beyond feeling, beyond emotion, beyond words, beyond music, beyond poetry, beyond art, beyond birds, beasts and flowers, beyond river and rock, beyond hill and valley, beyond plain and mountain, beyond travel, beyond exploration, beyond talking, beyond walking, beyond desire and regret, beyond hope and expectation, beyond pain and pleasure, beyond memory, beyond life, beyond death, beyond silence? If love is beyond these things, what is beyond love? Is TAO beyond and before and within all these things?

THE SOLITARY WALKER

This concludes my exploratory 10-part series 'The Pilgrim's Way'; I hope you enjoyed the journey.

The Pilgrim's Way (9): Somewhere And Nowhere

The real traveller finds sustenance in equivocation, he is torn between embracing and letting go, and the wrench of disengagement is the essence of his existence, he belongs nowhere.

CEES NOOTEBOOM Roads to Santiago

Santiago Cathedral.

The emotions experienced on arrival may be unexpected and confusing. What am I supposed to feel? Why, after climbing the cathedral steps and looking out over the Praza do Obradoiro, do I feel a strange, paradoxical mixture of excitement and disappointment, climax and anti-climax? Why don't I feel as ecstatic as that pilgrim over there, lying prostrate before the altar? What do I do, where do I go next? Is this the end or another beginning, an arrival or another departure, the destination or just another stop along the Way?

Feelings come and feelings go — there's no point in trying to pin them down or analyse them too deeply. Expectations are merely that — expectations. Illusory and imaginary, desires belong to the past and hardly ever correspond with a present reality. Accept the feelings, look at them as if you're standing on a riverbank and watching them float by like driftwood, be curious about them, perhaps amused by them, but don't take them too seriously, don't be disturbed or overwhelmed by them. Feelings come , feelings go — just that. Accept them, whatever they are. Then you may feel a kind of calm, an inner peace.

The Solitary Walker arrives at Monte do Gozo.

I wrote this about my final few days on the Camino in December 2007:

Finally I reached Monte do Gozo which overlooks the outskirts of Santiago. (In Galego, the Galician language, this is Mon Xoi, and means Mount Joy.) I was greeted there by Jan, a retired schoolteacher from Australia. She asked how far I'd walked. I replied: 1000 miles. She congratulated me on my achievement. We took photos of each other. It was an emotional moment.

You can't see Santiago's cathedral, the tangible goal of my 1000-mile journey, until you're almost upon it. I walked downhill from the modern statue on Monte do Gozo, over motorway and railway, and through the suburb of San Lázaro, where there used to be a leprosy hospital in the 12th century. I scurried over the ring road and into the Rúa dos Concheiros — this name being a reference to pilgrims wearing the concha, the scallop shell symbol of Saint James. It was late in the afternoon and getting dark quickly. Minimal, tasteful Christmas decorations swung over the path. People thronged the streets. It was a Saturday. The shops and bars would be open till very late. I hurried across the tiny Praza San Pedro, Saint Peter's Square, and through the famous Porta do Camino into the old medieval city. And finally into the Praza do Obradoiro, the Golden Square, which lies at the foot of Santiago Cathedral's glorious western façade. I climbed the steps up to the west door. I had arrived. I was exhausted but elated. I made some phone calls. I sent some texts. But mostly I just looked and wondered. And almost cried at the beauty of it all.

As I've written before, this final stage of the Camino, the stage between León and Santiago, is traditionally and mystically known as The Way Of Glory. And everything really did seem like glory to me that evening.

I wanted to place my hand on the Tree of Jesse, the central marble column of the cathedral's Portico de Gloria, the Entrance of Glory. Unfortunately it was barricaded off — presumably for renovation or repair. However I didn't really mind. It's not the time-honoured routine of pilgrim ritual that matters in the end. It's what you feel inside.

The next day, a Sunday, just before the 12-noon pilgrim mass, the west face of the cathedral looked wonderful in the sunlight. During mass the Botafumeiro, the celebrated giant incense burner, wasn't swung from its ropes and pulleys. Apparently they do that much less nowadays. I wasn't really disappointed. I met up with some of my pilgrim friends afterwards — Ezequiel, Kristin, Daniel, Hiroshi, Marlis, Sebastiane, Marco, Philippe. We all hugged. We were visibly moved. And glad to have arrived at our spiritual destination.

They were all going to eat in the bar at the Hostal Suso. But somehow I didn't feel like going with them — not at that particular moment. I wanted to be alone, to take in the particular atmosphere, to untangle the complicated thoughts and emotions which had suddenly woven themselves around my mind and heart. I stepped outside the cathedral into the cold and wintry air.

Santiago Cathedral.

What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from . . .

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

TS ELIOT From Little Gidding in Four Quartets

All by Myself

I've leaned so much

On conchas and flechas amarillas,

I fear I may be lost

Without them.

So now

(Guided by no maps or marker stones,

Pricking no shelled and arrowed way,

No trail angel appearing mysteriously

At a crossroads in the middle of a prairie

To point the right path)

I'll try contact

Some benign spirit deep within

For comfort and counsel;

Though along the Way I learned,

All by myself, with sweat and tears,

That the more I'm lost, the more I'm found,

And that all roads lead to somewhere and to nowhere.

THE SOLITARY WALKER From Raining Quinces

To be continued . . .

The Pilgrim's Way (7): Silence And Tears

I remember that first day on the Chemin very clearly. 17th October 2007. Blue skies. Warm and sunny. The hills and valleys of the Auvergne. Wooded slopes and the golden leaves of autumn. Peaceful deserted villages basking in the noonday sun. Romanesque churches with rounded stone vaulting. I kept bumping into pilgrims all day. Some shared their lunch with me as we picnicked on the grass in front of the Chapelle Saint-Roch (see photo).

By late afternoon I'd reached the village of Saint-Privat-d'Allier. It's stunningly situated on a volcanic cliff above a gorge of the Allier river. A Christian family took me in free for the night. 'While you are here treat this house as your home,' they said.

At twilight I climbed up to the 14th century church and went inside. The silence was profound. You could hear absolutely nothing at all. Except for the slight whirring in my head of my own automatic, pointless thoughts. And with an effort of will even these were stilled. As the darkness closed in, shapes lost their solidity, and my sense of time and place became blurred. My mind emptied itself.

Later at dinner my hosts, Jean-Marc and Marie, told me how they had met on the Camino, fallen in love, married, and then decided to open their house to pilgrims. Another pilgrim arrived. Food kept appearing. The wine flowed. Their young son chased an enormous dog round and round the room. The conversation was animated and far-ranging. I couldn't understand the half of it. I realised how rusty my French had become.

Then a strange thing happened. I don't know if it was the effect of the wine after two nights' lack of sleep, or whether I was touched by the kindness of strangers, or whether I was charged by the many emotions I'd felt on this, my first day of pilgrimage. But tears welled up inside me and I wept like a child. Jean-Marc patted me on the arm reassuringly, a wise and benign expression on his face. 'Don't worry. It's quite normal,' he said. 'We experience this time and time again. It's necessary...'

That night I rolled out my sleeping bag in their attic-dormitory and slept long and deeply for the first time since leaving home.

THE SOLITARY WALKER 24 Dec 2007

To be continued . . .

The Pilgrim's Way (6): The Via de la Plata

To be continued . . .

The Pilgrim's Way (5): Tears (Or Feelings)

Today I remembered something I was told while walking in Spain by someone I met only that day. 

Like many days, I was walking and crying, it was the very early morning, he passed by my side, he saw I was crying and then he said: 'Don't be afraid of crying, you will always have tears, don't save them for later, crying is also a wonderful experience, a wonderful way to express your feelings, ensure you cry every time you feel like.'

Today I realized that one of the reasons why I want to come back to the Camino is to recover that gift of expressing my feelings.

From Lo Naciente, the blog of my South American pilgrim friend, Cris M.

To be continued . . .

The Pilgrim's Way (3): The Journey Itself Is Home

Arrival, like origin, is a mythical place. REBECCA SOLNIT

Symbols, metaphors and allegories aside, pilgrim ways are actual physical routes which take you through and to spiritually resonant and numinous places — or 'thin places' as the ancient Celts called them, places where the distance between heaven and earth dissolve and you may, if you're lucky, catch a glimpse of the divine. Some are carefully waymarked — such as the Caminos to Santiago de Compostela (due to the vested interest of the Catholic Church), some are only sparsely signed, and  some are not indicated on the ground at all. The latter require a little map reading and a lot of imagination and speculation. The famous and much-frequented pilgrim paths are well provided with guidebooks and places to eat and stay. On the less-publicised paths you are on your own, and you have to rely a great deal on supposition, and your interpretation of history and the natural and man-made features of the landscape. (Graham Robb has written eruditely and fascinatingly, if conjecturally, about the lost pathways of a pre-Roman Celtic Europe, travelled by Druidic scholar-priests, in his 2013 book The Ancient Paths: Discovering the Lost Map of Celtic Europe.)

The Stones of Callenish and the Abbey of Iona in Scotland, Glastonbury Tor and Canterbury Cathedral in England, the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadeloupe in Mexico City, Mecca in Saudi Arabia, Mount Kailas in Tibet, Uluru in Australia, Mount Parnassus in Greece — wherever you go in the world, you can find ancient and not-so-ancient foci of sacred significance. Some are popular destinations ruined by tourism and commercial exploitation; some are little-known sites, hard to trace; others are personally talismanic, meaningful only to the individual — such as the poet Kathleen Raine's rowan tree above the waterfall at Sandaig on the west coast of Scotland, once home to Gavin Maxwell and his otters. Interestingly, such personal places may later be sought out by literary pilgrims — which attaches a whole new layer of 'holiness' to them.

Yet despite the importance of these spiritual destinations, and the personal satisfaction in having reached them, often arduously, there is the idea that the journey itself is what matters and is the process where the real answers are to be found. The Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber, observed that all journeys have secret destinations of which the traveller is unaware; and the Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, wrote that the wanderer follows no road — the road is made by walking. In other words, we alone create the path, and that path is the only really important path, because it's our path, even though its purpose and direction often remain unclear. JRR Tolkien wrote that not all those who wander are lost, for, even if we meander and stray, it rarely means we are completely without hope; indeed, we may find the true meaning of the path, and ourselves, in those very deviations, blind alleys and 'wrong' turnings.

A great thing about pilgrim routes is that they are not tourist routes, and pilgrims are not tourists. The routes can take you through quite ordinary countryside and less-than-pretty towns just as easily as through stunning and beautiful landscapes. Although pilgrims are not averse to a spot of sightseeing when time allows, their main concerns are the simple day-to-day desires for movement, food, drink,  shelter and rest. And perhaps a little companionship along the way. Scenery is there, and sometimes it's stunning, but there's something else, something more, something elusive, something to do with the thread of the whole journey, and how it connects up, and what it reveals. As I wrote in my poem, A Prayer: . . . I am desperate to find meaning / In something more than landscape.

One thing I'm sure of is that we are all pilgrims and our lives are pilgrimages. Pilgrimage is not the limited property of those few who are fortunate or crazy enough to tread the actual, physical pathways; after all, many of us are unable to do this, for a variety of reasons. Pilgrimage can be in the mind and an attitude of mind; pilgrimage is the path we take daily from dawn till dusk, and then in our dreams at night; pilgrimage is questioning, abandoning, discovering, accepting. Pilgrimage is life. Pilgrimage is love.

Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home. MATSUO BASHŌ

On the Via de la Plata in Spain.

    

To be continued . . .

The Pilgrim's Way (2): Inner and Outer Journeys

The metaphor of life as journey, a journey of trial and tribulation, of discovery and revelation, a journey in pursuit of self-knowledge and world-knowledge, a roller-coaster ride of contrasting delights and disappointments, a continual series of births, deaths and rebirths, an uncertain pilgrimage of sorts — is long established.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the world’s literature. Everywhere you look people are shaping stories about their lives and the lives of others, trying to give sense and structure to existence in the form of fiction, allegory and myth. The grail quest book (eg Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur) or the German Bildungsroman (eg Goethe’s Wilhem Meister novels), in which the ‘hero’ undertakes a journey of self-realisation, are just two examples of this human and literary desire. Homer’s Odyssey, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Dickens’s Great Expectations, Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, Hesse’s Siddhartha, Fowles’s The Magus — all these works, and countless more, take us on a journey of the human body, mind, soul and spirit, a pilgrimage into the unknown.

In the distant past we were nomadic creatures —  hunting and gathering, moving from one region to the next in search of food, fleeing deserts and glaciers and seeking more favourable climates. We were always on the move; our lives were actual journeys. Then we began to clear the forests, farm the land, domesticate animals — to settle down. We congregated together, created societies, cities, empires. Our fluid and orally-transmitted stories gradually became more fixed in manuscript, then in print, then in digital form. Culture, for better or worse, was born.

But our journeys continued — journeys into art and science and religion, journeys of exploration to exotic lands and inhospitable places. We were astonished by the Egyptian pyramids, by Greek and Roman architecture, by the Buddha and Jesus, by Galileo and Newton, by Leonardo and Michelangelo. We learnt the world was a sphere and we sailed around it. We opened up trade routes — the Silk Road, the Spice Route, the Northwest Passage. And we made dedicated trips to sacred sites and religious shrines — to Stonehenge, to Delphi, to Mecca, to Jerusalem, to Santiago de Compostela.

It seems that we humans have a need to travel, to explore, to find out — either physically or imaginatively or both. We go on journeys, on pilgrimages, both interior and exterior, both real and fictional, both spiritual and secular, because we have an urgent need to discover who we are and what the world is about.

We turn our lives into fictions and allegories, the stuff of the world into symbols — the sun, the moon, the stars, the rivers, the trees.

Our outer world reflects our inner world and vice versa. We are microcosms within a macrocosmic universe, fractals within other fractals — our small but perfectly-formed bodies vast worlds of atoms, cells and molecules, our minds potentially limitless in their imaginative powers.

Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man sketch.

To be continued . . .

The Pilgrim's Way (1): Reflection, Penitence, Glory

It’s Easter Sunday, and it's raining, and my thoughts turn to the Camino. I haven’t consciously thought about the Camino for some time, but today my mind is full of it. In many ways pilgrimages are intense microcosmic distillations of our general macrocosmic lives, rich in the symbolism of birth, death and renewal.

In the autumn of 2007 I walked the ancient pilgrim route from le Puy-en-Velay in south-central France to Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain. This 1000-mile journey lasted 60 days. 

Almost a year later I walked my second Camino from Arles in the French Camargue to Puente la Reina in northern Spain. This time I went more slowly, and the 550-mile walk took me 46 days to complete.

In January and February 2010 I walked four-fifths of the Spanish Via de la Plata from Seville to La Gudiña, a total of 500 miles. And during the last two weeks of September 2011 I walked the Via Gebennensis from Geneva in Switzerland to Le-Puy-en-Velay in France, a distance of 225 miles.

In May the following year I retraced part of the original route I’d taken in 2007 from le Puy, finishing in Limogne; and then, last July, walked a very short stretch of the Via Francigena from Canterbury to Guînes just south of Calais. I’d like to rejoin this route, and do the full trek all the way to Rome one day.

Of course, the distances travelled and the number of days taken are among the least important facts about the Camino.

As well as these long and grand European pilgrimages, I’ve walked trails in England, such as the Dales Way, the Pennine Way, the South West Coast Path and the Hadrian’s Wall Path, and local routes such as the Trent Valley Way, the Viking Way, and the towpath along the Grantham Canal.

I walk whenever and wherever I can in the UK, and particularly like the Peak District, the Lake District, Scotland and Wales.

But what does it all add up to, this walking, and what does it mean? I don’t think I’ve really come to terms with the significance of my longer pilgrimages, how they affect me in the context of my whole life, how they fit into my personal human journey. Perhaps I feel more ready to do that now, more able to see their allegorical and spiritual value.

There's a saying on the Camino Francés that the Way is divided into three parts: the Way of Reflection, the Way of Penitence and the Way of Glory. All serious walks contain something of these three aspects, I believe . . .

To be continued . . . 

Reasons To Walk The Camino: (3) A Harmless Obsession

A few years ago I was sitting in the pub at Kirk Yetholm on the final night of a three-week hike along the Pennine Way, that magnificent walk of hill, dale and moorland along England's backbone. My drinking companion was a fellow walker and hiker who had also just completed the trail. I think his name was John, but I can't remember for certain. In the time-honoured way of those who confide in strangers they've just met and will never meet again, he told me his life story.

John was a merchant seaman and spent half the year doing backbreaking work on cargo and container ships. Though he'd travelled the oceans of the world, he didn't really feel he'd seen the world properly, seen it as closely as he'd like to have seen it. During a voyage, shore leave was limited, and most of the time he had his nose to the grindstone. For the rest of the year he squandered the cash he'd earned in a non-stop merry-go-round of drink, drugs, call girls and expensive resort hotels. He was young and fancy-free. This went on for many years. Then, one morning, as he lay by a hotel pool in Monte Carlo recovering from a hangover, he realised in a blinding flash that not only was he bored, but that he was totally wasting his life. He suddenly recalled a friend once mentioning the existence of an ancient network of pathways criss-crossing Europe, pilgrim trails which led either to Jerusalem, Rome or Santiago de Compostela. He decided that in future he'd spend all his spare time following these paths and other long-distance trails. And that, for all I know, is what he's doing still.

The trail became an obsession for him, in the manner of an addict giving up one drug for another, like an alcoholic radically converting into a teetotal, bible-thumping evangelist. Though John's new addiction is, I think, quite a benign one — healthy, wholesome, laudable even. I must admit I have this Camino addiction myself, latent at present, but liable to burst forth at any moment. A harmless obsession, to be sure; though, be warned, it is no panacea for life's problems.

There have been lots of books written about the Camino — many of them mediocre, pretentious, full of hyperbole and romantic claims. Increasing numbers of pilgrims flock to walk it each year — especially the Camino Francés route — full of expectation. But, at the end of the day, despite its uniqueness, its history, its religious resonances, its popularity, its promise of friendship and spiritual enlightenment, its cheap and hospitable accommodation — it is just a path, after all. (I'm not talking it down. I love the Camino. I'm just saying that there are lots of paths, and any one of them could bring illumination.) I myself — contrary to the experience of many — had a feeling of confusion and anti-climax on reaching Santiago. Perhaps the goal is the path itself, and the meaning lies in the walking. As Bashō wrote: The journey itself is home.

The Camino is not all sweetness and light. As in life itself, the good, the bad and the ugly punish their feet along its straight lines and sinuous curves. You'll traverse monotonous, grain-growing flatlands, which test your mental stamina. You'll walk stretches next to busy highways, which almost drive you insane. You'll meet bandits as well as angels, bores as well as beautiful people. You'll meet tramps, saints, poets, escapees from troubled relationships, thieves, vagabonds, seekers of all kinds. And you can't get away from them at night like you could at home, because they're right there in the dormitory, snoring beside you. However, most people you'll encounter — both natives and pilgrims alike — are perfectly nice, friendly, helpful and generous, tolerant about your sketchy grasp of Spanish, and ready and willing to share their bowl of soup or pasta with you. Don't go with preconceived ideas, don't go expecting too much, don't believe all the books and blogs and films about it. Just go with an open mind and see for yourself. Buen Camino!

Reasons to Walk The Camino: (2) Negative Capability And The Via Negativa

If a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark. ST JOHN OF THE CROSS

The term 'negative capability' was first coined by the Romantic poet John Keats as a description of a state in which man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. Keats turned a seemingly 'negative' state of mind into a 'positive' force, and realised that too much reliance on intellectual logic could imperil another kind of knowledge, which clothed itself itself more mysteriously, more obliquely: mystical knowledge, spiritual knowledge, artistic knowledge, a direct and unfiltered awareness of beauty, the revelations of the heart and the emotions.

Keats was not alone in recognising the potentiality and necessity of doubt. Several centuries before, the Spanish mystic St John of the Cross described a semi-comparable state in his poem, The Dark Night of The Soul. In this poem, Christian union with God comes about only through difficulty and darkness, pain and suffering, doubt and conflict. One also thinks of John Bunyan and his Pilgrim's Progress, and of many Christian saints, mystics and thinkers: Thérèse of Lisieux, Mother Teresa and Simone Weil, for example.

The via negativa (or negative theology or apophatic theology) is a theological approach — common to many religions — which attempts to describe God by negation, by describing what God is not rather than what God is. The Middle English poem, The Cloud of Unknowing, advocates the abandonment of all preconceived notions and beliefs about God; it's only from a state of 'unknowingness' that we can ever hope to glimpse the transcendent.

This belief in unbelief, this embracing of doubt and denial, this surrendering to mystery and uncertainty, this discovery of the positive in the negative — is an attitude to life which appeals to me very much. Plato quotes Socrates as saying that the only thing he knows is the fact of his ignorance. Tolstoy writes in War and Peace that the only thing we can know is that we know nothing.

But how does all this relate to the Camino? Surely we follow the Camino in order to learn, to achieve a goal, to put our lives in order? Well, perhaps. But the truth is rather less obvious, less clearly structured than this. In fact I've come to realise that the Camino — like life itself — is a via negativa, a path unwinding as much in darkness as it is in the intense light of the Spanish sun. (My poem Camino Fever contains the line How dark the soul in the dead of night! But how bright the morning sun!) There are bandits as well as angels along the way. There's bitter loneliness as well as unexpected, sweet companionship. And some days it feels as if you're taking one step forward, then two steps back. The Camino's lessons, answers and revelations — if lessons, answers and revelations there are — leak out slowly, if at all, and often only many years or decades after the Camino is done (though, of course, the Camino is never finished; it goes on for ever).

I have walked several Caminos through France and Spain — the route from Geneva, the route from Le Puy, the Arles route, the Vía de la Plata, the French Way — and I've walked some sections twice. I've also trekked round the south-west coast of England, and followed many other short and long-distance paths in Britain and Europe, which may be considered pilgrimages of sorts. (Though 'pilgrimage' is a loose term, like many terms. 'Pilgrimage' can mean different things to different people, as can the terms 'path', 'destination', 'illumination', 'revelation', 'transcendence' and 'Camino' itself. These notions are open to differing meanings, emphases and interpretations, and we can colour them with our own personal subtleties, and that's good, because words and ideas are fluid and malleable, and the truth seeps out through the cracks within them and the spaces between them, and in their combinations and juxtapositions, and in their poetry.)

These long walks and pilgrimages have become lodged in my being for ever. They define part of who I am, and I ponder them often, and their significance. But their significance is far from clear, and their meaning reveals itself only sporadically, like occasional pinpricks of light in a darkened sky. The following are just a few of the thoughts and questions I ponder.

Recently I began a pilgrimage to Rome, but returned home after a few days suffering from fatigue, aches and pains, deafness and a punishingly heavy backpack. Did I learn nothing from my other Caminos? Or will I perhaps learn more than I've ever done before from this abortive Camino?

Why did I feel such an overwhelming sense of anticlimax when I reached Santiago for the first time? 

How can I reconcile these two conflicting images in my mind: the happy pilgrim approaching Santiago and the recent tragic train crash near Santiago? 

Why do I embrace those Camino micro-friendships when they offer themselves, but soon tire of the proximity (often a much-too-close proximity in dormitories!) of other pilgrims, and long for my own company again, despite the omnipresent threat of loneliness and isolation? 

Why do journeys turn into exaggerated epics when recalling them to oneself afterwards, or recounting them to others? Why does one forget about the long stretches of boredom, of depression, of suffering? Do our memories ever recall anything accurately? (I suspect not.)

Why did I decide to walk the Camino, and why am I always compelled to go back? (Most people think I am crazy. You've walked across Spain three times? Why?)

Questions, questions . . . and there are more, many more, because questions like these are endless and eternal, and probably unanswerable, and asking them is part of what makes us human. I don't really know why I've walked the Camino, or why I go back, nor will I ever be able to grasp the Camino's full significance, nor will I ever be able grasp the full significance of anything (for only God can do that, only God in his or her or its ineffability and 'unknowingness').

Let us be content to remain, if we can, in a state of uncertainty, mystery and doubt, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. For perhaps only in this negative-positive way can we attain an inkling, a brief flash of the truth.

Reasons To Walk The Camino: (1) The Slough Of Despond

This is the first piece in an occasional series I'm calling Reasons To Walk The Camino.

The name of the slough was Despond. JOHN BUNYAN The Pilgrim's Progress

It was another time and another place, and she was younger, but not that much younger. She was old enough to have suffered a little, and to have experienced melancholy, and to have survived this suffering and melancholy. She carried some scars, and some hurt, and some confusion, but she still had faith in the future, still saw the glass half full rather than half empty. Until one day, one quite ordinary and uneventful day, a pit opened up before her feet, and she fell right in.

She stayed there in the darkness for a week or two — or was it longer? Her thoughts were grim, and she tried to push away these negative thoughts. She was almost completely immobile during this dark time. Movement was an effort bordering on torment. Better to remain still, to breathe slowly and regularly, to breathe deeply and determinedly, in and out, in and out. She prayed the walls of the pit would keep straight, as they appeared to bulge, then deflate, and rock from side to side.

She must have eaten and drunk throughout this period, but she cannot remember what she ate or drank. In fact, she cannot remember eating or drinking at all. She did not seem to want to read, or even to be able to read. Noises reached her consciousness only intermittently: snatches of music, mainly Bach, Mozart and Brahms, and some pop songs from her past, Johnny Halliday, Françoise Hardy. There was no world outside the pit, outside her mind, outside her body (which was curled up in the foetal position for most of the time).

Then one day the fog cleared, and she tried to walk, which she did shakily, and she realised she was not in a real pit, but actually in the bedroom of her house, and it was a morning in early spring, and the sun was dripping like honey through the curtains, and the blackbirds were scolding each other and making alarm calls in the garden.

And she gave thanks to the bedroom, to the house, to the garden, to the sun, to the blackbirds — and probably to God and to the Infinite Spirit and to the whole universe too. She gave thanks that life was change and flux and a process of becoming, and that nothing lasted forever, even dark pits into which we might fall. She resolved to avoid these pits in future if she could, and if she could not, then at least she now knew they would eventually dissolve and disappear and change into something else: perhaps a warm room with a bed and a blanket and the sun filtering through the curtains, or even a wood or a forest or a green valley or a high hill or a rocky mountain. Or a path which wound through the wood or the forest or the valley, and up the hill, and over the mountain.

It was at that moment she decided to walk the Camino. And she has been walking the Camino ever since.    

The Priest And The Cook

In a recent post on her blog Big Fun In A Tiny Pueblo, Rebekah Scott — writer and hospitalera from Moratinos — mentions meeting up with Don Blas, the legendary Camino enthusiast and priest of Fuenterroble, a parish midway along the Spanish Vía de la Plata. I wrote this about my own encounter with Don Blas in February 2010.

I stumbled into the pueblo late one afternoon. It was cold and had just started raining. It had been a hard day through puddles and mud. I entered one of the pueblo's two bars and put my jacket to dry on a chair in front of the radiator. The architect was already there with a drink and cigarettes. He looked angelic with his curly hair and soulful eyes. I ordered a beer. He told me to go to the priest's house just across the street. 'How will I recognize it?' I asked.

'You can't miss it. There's a bloody great cross outside. But don't sleep in the albergue behind the house. Put your stuff in the little room above the kitchen. There are a couple of bunk beds in there, and it's a bit warmer.'

So this I did.

Then I didn't know what to do. Outside it was cold, wet and windy. Nothing was happening on the streets. Except paper bags blowing around and the big cross shaking slightly in the wind. Inside it was warmer. But not that much. So I burrowed into my sleeping bag and had a lie-down. 'This is ridiculous!' I said to myself. 'In your sleeping bag at 6 o'clock?' So I had a shower, read a book, and tried to write a poem. The priest had invited me to dinner at 9. The minutes seemed to crawl by. Finally at 9.30 the teacher knocked at my door. 'Dinner!'

The priest and the cook.

I joined them all at table in the priest's cosy living/dining room: the architect, the priest, the teacher — and now the cook. A fire blazed in a huge open fireplace in one corner. On the table was a platter of beetroot and asparagus, some freshly-made fried eggs, a big bowl of home-made chips, a bottle of wine and a jug of water. 'Help yourself! Tuck in!' All men together. Arms on the table. Smoking between courses. Smoking between mouthfuls! The architect, the priest, the teacher and the cook. And now the pilgrim. Sounds like that Peter Greenaway film. What was it called? The Cook, The Thief, The Wife And Her Lover? But no wives here. Tonight this was an exclusively male preserve.

The cook was wild and extraordinary. He reminded me of a younger version of Father Jack Hackett from the TV comedy series, Father Ted. We spoke in a weird hybrid of Spanish, English, French and German. The cook had spent 20 years as a barman serving drinks to tourists on the Costa Brava. 'Never again!' he barked, spitting into the fire. He fetched some huge chunks of pig meat, which the priest threw onto the grill above the hot embers. It was soon ready. We gorged on the succulent pork and gnawed on the bones. Later we drank bitter, black coffee, and the priest disappeared — to reappear with a strong, colourless alcohol in a plastic Coke bottle. We drank. A great evening. A memorable evening. And so to bed...

The next morning I breakfasted alone with the priest. Melon, oranges, a meat pasty, yoghurt, café con leche. He gave me some fruit and the rest of the meat pasty for my packed lunch. He enquired if I wanted, perhaps, to return later that year as a voluntary hospitalero. He asked for no money. It was free to stay there — but I left 12 euros in the donation box. He showed me the rest of the house, the renovations, the old wooden cart which was being restored and repainted. He was a kind man, a good man. A very good man. And an intellectual man. His shelves were full of religious books, historical books, books about Don Quixote. Then I stepped outside into the damp, foggy air, and set off once more along the Camino.

It had been yet another unrepeatable, unforgettable night on the Vía de la Plata.

Raining Quinces

My first poetry collection, Raining Quinces, is now available through Amazon US and Amazon UK and all European Amazon channels.

The book contains over eighty poems and is divided into three parts: Camino (poems inspired by wandering the French and Spanish pilgrim routes to Santiago), Lightness of Being (light verse and humorous poems) and Blue Fruit (poems on love, life, nature, landscape, art and family relationships). Linking these three sections is the implicit or explicit notion of spiritual quest. The book is dedicated to 'Camino pilgrims everywhere'.

raining quinces

farewell to the land of luscious fruit

where apples hang like rosy pink lanterns

and pumpkins swell like pregnant farmgirls

and bunches of grapes are purple chandeliers

and succulent figs so wickedly feminine

they seem barely legal

i’m back in the land of bitter sloes

where crab apples lie wasted in the orchards

hips and haws food only for the fieldfares

and blackberries are shrivelled up and tart

but it’s always raining quinces

in my heart

For me the quince is the essential taste of the Camino — read more about it here.

Embracing And Letting Go

Santiago Cathedral, Spain. Image: Wikimedia Commons

The real traveller finds sustenance in equivocation, he is torn between embracing and letting go, and the wrench of disengagement is the essence of his existence, he belongs nowhere.

Read the full quotation from Cees Nooteboom's book Roads To Santiago in my new Turnstone post.