Hiking the Camino de Santiago
Camino de Santiago: Part One
I split my honey-colored hair down the middle to the base of my neck and pulled the left half to the side, brushing it with my fingers. Taking a shaky breath, I brought the hair towards my chest and began cutting two inches below my shoulders. Twelve inches of hair fell into my lap—no going back.
Tonight was the conclusion of thirty-five days spent walking the Camino de Santiago, an ancient pilgrimage in Northern Spain, and instead of burning my clothes like pilgrims used to do as a symbol of rebirth, I decided to cut my hair.
35 days previously —
Normally, I wrap my knowledge around me like a shield, a defense mechanism for situations when I feel I am inadequate. Today, my knowledge felt more like a silk sheet—flimsy and not useful. I had poured over dozens of blogs and spent hours getting lost in the threads of the Camino de Santiago pilgrim’s forum; “Can you wild camp? Sleeping bag or sheets? How common are bed bugs?” None of that prepared me for this. As my husband, Danny, and I stood in the flickering fluorescent light of the empty Irun Hedayo train station at 3 o’clock in the morning, I was rethinking our decision.
After fifteen minutes of bag adjustments at the station, we shouldered our packs and walked down the street towards the Iglesia de los Pasionistas, where our guidebook indicated we would find the first waymarks of the Camino. We found the church quickly, its tan –colored dome sticking out against the aging urban buildings. The directions I read online said to continue walking past the church, so we did, and soon after came upon our first waymark, a yellow arrow painted on the sidewalk.
Danny and I walked in the direction the arrow pointed, following arrow after arrow, out of the city. For three hours we walked in silence, each of us refusing to admit that we felt unprepared about what lay ahead.
The sun began to peek above the horizon around 6 a.m. as we walked up the hill towards the Santuario de Guadalupe, the first of many religious buildings we would pass on our pilgrimage. Tired and in need of a snack, we decided to take an early morning rest on a small concrete slab in front of the church.
Danny and I took our boots and socks off, wriggling our smelly toes. I pulled out the guidebook to see what else was in store for the day on our way into San Sebastian. From the santuario we had two route options. We could go to the left through an inland route, with frequent tree cover and a slow elevation gain, or we could take the other route, the “alpine” route, up a steep ascent on a loose dirt climb for nearly one kilometer.
We chose the alpine route.
The first section of the hike was one of the most strenuous hikes I had ever done before. The ground was slick from a recent rain, and the trail was nearly completely covered in overgrowth. We each lost our footing a few times but regained balance before taking any nasty spills.
After a mile and a half of steep climbing, the land leveled out into green rolling hills. A thick fog surrounded us, inhibiting us from seeing anything further than thirty yards away. The trail, now a thin dirt path, continued directly towards a gate and into what appeared to be private property.
Having grown up on a ranch outside of San Antonio, Texas, I was well educated on how to get on private property: you don’t.
I looked around for another trail or arrows that pointed in a different direction, but none existed. To our left was impassable shrubbery, to our right, a sloping rocky hill with no noticeable path. Left with no other option but to move forward, we prayed no angry farmer would appear from the fog as we stepped through the gate.
We were only walking for a few minutes when Danny called my name.
“Anna Claire, stop.”
I stopped, scanning quickly for the angry farmer I was worried about.
“Look, up ahead. Cows.”
We were definitely on someone’s property. Up ahead of us, five plump, orange cows laid directly on our path. The longer I stood looking, the more cows I saw. Eight. Ten. Twenty. Thirty-five. They laid or stood for fifty yards in front of us, most of them on the path we were supposed to walk on.
I was not about to get charged by a cow, so I told Danny to follow me as I made my way as far as I could safely go to the right of the trail, making sure not to lose sight of the path but still establish a safe distance.
Once we were past the cows, a new object rose up from the fog.
Gray, moss-covered stone stuck out of the mist like a phantom ship. Our guidebook mentioned this landmark; it was the first of five watchtower ruins we would pass today. The towers were built in the 19th century, during the Carlist Wars. Over the next three hours, we walked by the remainder of the ruins, although none of them were as impressive as the first.
The second half of our day was spent walking as fast as we could, trying to get ahead of a large group of high school students that had appeared out of nowhere behind us. They were from Spain, on the Camino as part of a class trip. There were twenty of them in total, and they all planned to stay at the albergue de peregrinos in San Sebastian that night, the municipal hostel Danny and I intended to stay at.
Our guidebook said that there were a limited number of beds, so we picked up our speed to stay ahead of the large group. Between our speed and lack of rest breaks, the last fifteen kilometers flew by. Clocking in a total of thirty kilometers, we finally made it to our destination for the night: San Sebastian.
On arriving, we searched for the donativo (donation-based) pilgrims’ hostel run by the Catholic Church in an elementary school building, the cheapest place to sleep in the city. We arrived at 4 p.m. and sat waiting in line for an hour before finally giving our small donation and getting the first stamps in our pilgrim passports, the small booklets that would allow us to stay in all of the municipal albergues and certify we had walked the full Camino.
After a cold shower, I lay on my back on the dirty mattress of the lower bunk bed. Sweat, mud and humidity from dozens of dust-covered packs and crusty socks made the dorm room air thick. I turned onto my side and stuck my legs out from under my sleeping bag. Voices in languages I didn’t understand became white noise to my thoughts; I couldn’t believe I was here, in an albergue de peregrinos on the northern coast of Spain with only a backpack, a 750 Euros and a guidebook to get me through the next thirty-five days. So often Danny and I dream about grand trips, but this time we actually followed through. My stomach tingled with nervousness and pride. We were here. We were doing this. I was doing this.
My confidence lasted about five seconds.
Danny rolled over on the mattress above me, causing the bunk-bed frame to shudder. I sighed and moved as well, lying on my back and staring straight up at the wooden planks keeping his mattress from crashing down on me.
My body ached. Blisters were already developing on my ankles and I could feel them each time I moved, the tender skin sticking to my sleeping bag.
“Thirty-four more days of this,” I thought, half-excited, half-wondering what we had gotten ourselves into.
*
Brittle, knee-high yellow grass filled the pastures on each side of the small farm road. Dozens of cattle dotted the hill to our left, on the other side of a small, gurgling stream. I asked Danny if we could stop and put our feet in the water. He agreed.
I dropped my pack and quickly took off my boots, desperate to put my swollen, blistered feet into the water. A rush of cold sent pin pricks along my heels and soles. I closed my eyes, wiggling my toes, feeling the moss of the river rock on the pads of my feet. For a brief moment, I forgot about my growing apprehension.
We were a week from our destination; Santiago.
I opened my eyes and walked back to the bank, sitting down to the left of Danny. He was making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I stole a small bite and then got back up to go sit on a small, precarious looking wooden bridge a short way down stream.
I watched Danny from my perch on the bridge. The profile I knew so well. Danny and I met in high school, I was a sophomore, he was a senior. We were friends for nearly a year before we started dating. His graduation came quicker than either of us wanted, and just like that our long distance relationship began. Two years apart until I came to Texas Tech University in Lubbock, TX, the same university he was studying at, and then another three months while he studied abroad for a semester in Sheffield, England. Then, a blissful four months together in Lubbock, during which time we got engaged. Followed by two more months apart as he did an internship out of town. Those months apart were hard, but we were young, selfish, and immature. I was easily jealous, and he was bad at communicating.
When we were both finally in Lubbock together, things got better. I fell in love with him all over again, how his brown eyes looked like the rings on the inside of a tree when he stood in the sunlight, how he smelled in the morning, a heady mixture of sweat and shampoo and detergent from bedsheets.
Danny looked up from his sandwich and caught me staring at him. He waved at me, laughing, nearly dropping his sandwich on the ground.
I waved flirtatiously back at him, raising my eyebrows dramatically.
“Love you!” he shouted.
“Love you more!” I shouted back.
I watched as he kept eating his sandwich, his long legs stretching out in front of him.
I climbed down from my spot on the bridge and plopped down next to Danny by the creek. I pulled a nectarine out from my pack and took a bite. Sticky, sweet juice dripped down my cheek. In the middle of someone’s farmland on a rarely traveled road in northern Spain, I didn’t bother wiping away the juice. I let it drip onto the brown dirt and watched as tiny red ants raced to drink it up.
After twenty more minutes of sitting in silence and listening to the stream, Danny sat up and suggested we continue on our way. We still had fifteen kilometers to go, but I didn’t want to leave the water. The stream and bridge felt like our secret garden, an oasis. The quiet gurgling of the stream felt intimate. I was sad to go.
But, as we put on our packs and walked away, I knew the stream would still gurgle and chatter away to the trees, to the cows, to the old wooden bridge, regardless of whether or not anyone was there to listen.
Arriving —
Camino de Santiago: Part II
“Space has a spiritual equivalent and can heal what is divided and burdensome in us.”
-Gretel Erlich, The Solace of Open Spaces
As we came up the hill, the trees began to thin and the sky opened up in that terrifying kind of way that makes you feel like the expanse is too big and the hugeness of the world is going to suffocate you. I felt like sprinting to the top and lying on the ground at the same time. We had made it. We had actually made it. The end of the earth: finisterra. Instead of running or sprinting, I compromised and walked steadily, each step a purposeful knee-bending, leg-forward, toe-to-heel movement.
In her book, Wild, a story about her solo journey hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, Cheryl Strayed, writes about walking, “Foot speed was a profoundly different way of moving through the world than my normal modes of travel. Miles weren’t things that blazed dully past. They were long, intimate straggles of weeds and clumps of dirt, blades of grass and flowers that bent in the wind, trees that lumbered and screeched. They were the sound of my breath and my feet hitting the trail one step at a time and the click of my ski pole. The PCT has taught me what a mile was” (191).
The Camino did the same for Danny and I. Over the course of the month we had been walking, our legs grew stronger, and more toned. Our shoulders and hips no longer grew sore from the weight of our packs. Our blisters and raw spots had calloused over.
Some of my emotional raw spots had calloused over, too. Spending thirty-five straight days with Danny, with solitude only during bathroom and shower breaks, had reminded me of why I married him. We worked. He did not expect me to be someone I was not, nor did I expect that of him. We were a team, determined to help one another become better versions of ourselves.
Plus, after five years together, we weren’t afraid to speak our minds.
My boss gives a speech before every trip, “What’s the most important rule in the backcountry?” he says, “Speak your truth. Otherwise you can’t be upset when those around you don’t read your mind.”
Danny and I followed his advice on the Camino. When a problem arose—maybe I snapped at him, or he was sarcastic towards me—we couldn’t slam a door or hole up in a separate room. We had to deal with it, and we did. By the end of the pilgrimage, we handled issues before they even became issues, talking things through instead of resorting to immature jabs.
I spoke truths to myself as well.
While I never answered the questions I came to the Camino with, what I did learn, however, was the importance of motion, of getting from “A” to “B,” even if “A” is picking your right foot up off the ground and “B” is putting it back down, a few inches ahead of where it was before.
The key was just to keep moving forward, step by step.
*
We arrived in Santiago three days previously and decided that ending our pilgrimage in a city wasn’t an accurate representation of our experience on the Camino. I wanted more time outside. I wanted to end with the sea.
Thankfully, there was another option: Finisterre. Ninety kilometers past Santiago, Finisterre, a small Spanish city stuck in the middle of a peninsula in the Atlantic Ocean, is the place where humans once thought the earth ended. Finisterre literally means “Earth End.” The city and its cliffside are now considered sacred, holy. They represent the beginning of the end of the known.
As we climb up the remainder of the hill, I was momentarily blinded by the sunlight sparkling off the water below. I could see Finisterre off to the right, a collection of white buildings with red clay roofs. It stuck out like an arm into the Atlantic Ocean.
Danny and I stopped for a brief moment to take off our packs and admire the view. Thirty-five days on the trail had taught us the importance of slowing down, of observing.
A yellow butterfly fluttered to my right, dancing its way to a flower near my knee.
We put our packs back on and continued down the path, skirting a highway for half of the way into town. We passed first through Cee, another Spanish town, before getting to the long beachside boardwalk that would lead us into Finisterre.
On our way into Finisterre, a group of teenagers ran towards us from the parking lot of a surf club. One of them, a boy who looked to be the leader of the group, ran ahead of everyone else and asked me a question in the province’s dialect. I had no idea what he said.
“Lo siento,” I apologized, “Repeata por favor?”
He repeated his question. Perplexed, I looked at Danny.
“Do you know what he’s asking?”
Danny shook his head no.
I looked back at the boy with his grin and shaggy brown hair and shook my head, frustrated that, despite being a few kilometers from our destination, I was still struggling to communicate.
He tried one more time to ask his question.
“Cuanto tiempo?” He asked, inquiring about how much time we had spent walking.
Ah! I knew that question.
“Treinta y cinco dias.” I said.
His eyes widened and he yelled back to his friends, shouting something in dialect again. Their eyes widened and they shook their heads incredulously, laughing.
Eager to continue, I smiled back, shrugged my shoulders and waved goodbye.
“Buen Camino!” They called after us.
Buen Camino, indeed.
*
“Can I see yet?” Danny asked from my left.
“Not until I’m finished,” I said, turning my back towards him.
I grabbed the right side of my hair, detangling it using my fingers as a brush and, again, picked up the shears and brought them to the place where my hair touched my collarbone. In three cuts, it was finished.
As we sat at the end of the world, near the lighthouse at the edge of Finisterre, I couldn’t help but think of the people who came before us, who looked out at the water and believed that they were looking at the edge of the world.
Only the top of the sun was visible over the horizon. Blue hour began to set in, filling in the spaces where golden rays existed ten minutes previously.
The term “blue hour,” derived from the French expression l’heure bleue, is the space where there is neither full daylight nor complete darkness. Artists love the blue hour because of the way soft blue light is diffused across every surface, creating a balanced contrast that maintains detail without blowing out highlights.
I could see why. There was just enough darkness that I could cut my hair without the dozens of other people scattered above and below us on the cliffside being able to have a good view of me, and just enough light that I could see what I was doing. The Atlantic Ocean looked like an infinity pool spilling out into the Universe. I didn’t blame people for once thinking this was where the earth ended.
I looked away from the water, placing my silver hair cutting shears on top of my backpack and picking up the hair from my lap. I put the hair in a clear Ziploc baggie, maybe to throw away, maybe to donate. I hadn’t yet decided.
I stared at the hair in the bag. A foot of curving brown and blonde tendrils. I turned to Danny. I hadn’t had my hair this short since elementary school. Did I look like a child? Like a woman?
“So?”
He ran his hands through my hair, tucking loose tendrils behind my ear.
“You look so different,” he finally said, “but more like, you.”
I couldn’t see myself yet, but I knew what he meant. I could feel it.
The sun was now fully set and the full moon had taken its place. Danny and I didn’t bother to put on our headlamps, the light from the moon provided enough light for us to gather our things and get back to the trail.
We stood for a moment, our packs on for the last time, staring out at the ocean.
I squeezed Danny’s hand, “Let’s head back.”
Still quiet, we turned and walked the two miles back to our hostel in the city.
Want more stories and photos from the Camino?
Check out my blog post with tips and advice for backpacking it yourself!Anna Claire Beasley is an adventurous wedding, elopement, + portrait photographer based out of Texas. She travels for the majority of all of her sessions, from across Texas, to New Mexico, California, Oregon, Arizona, Utah, Hawaii, and anywhere else there’s a story to document. Her work is grounded in the belief that photographs are about remembering moments + experiences and she makes it her goal is to capture how it felt so those memories can stay fresh for years to come.