Those who walk past Camino can tell you: Once it’s done, it lingers. It urges you to come back and go further next time, it’s a different route, more weeks, less planning – no matter the greater adventure. More than a year after her death, and as my father’s 60th birthday approached, walking again Camino felt like the right way to celebrate him and respect her. But this time, we are sure we will adopt the ever-changing landscape of the Portuguese approach. So we take out the calendar and set the date.
Six months later, my first (the second day) of Camino arrives gently – you only feel the kind of the morning of the day when the sun isn’t high enough to burn. Equipped with our hiking gear, a bunch of electrolyte powders and our Camino passports – a brochure carried by the pilgrims, collecting stamps along the route – my siblings have two, and I set out from Porto. (My father, other sisters and brother-in-law will join us in the second week.) As we walked through its old, cobbled streets, the cafe opened, we walked up to the promise of a new adventure wandering in the distance.
When we arrived at the first Alberg (the hotel of the pilgrims of Camino de Santiago), the sun was high and the heat was hanging thick and heavy. I felt my body aches and a rash appeared on my feet. We let Albergue wrap us in its quiet ceremony: showering in public stalls, splashing with hand-dressing clothes on soft water, and stories flowing to the evening like whispers. My mother showed me how to live like this – moving around the world easily, carrying only what you need, turning small movements into a prayer. By the time night fell, Alberg was quiet, with only the sound of breath filling the air.
The next day, I tried to keep pace with my family, but my feet betrayed me, and each step was beating and stinging. The rash has been solved deeply, like the pain I can’t shake. I thought of my mother again-she always seemed to know what to do, trust the remedies, how to keep moving forward. On the Camino, there is no choice but to fall, even if it weighs too much. So we walked for a few hours from the seaside town of Labruge to Povoa de Varzim, 9 miles along the coast.
I was near my edge, fighting to prevent my body from falling. People keep asking about my rash how it climbs all the way to my knees. “Are you okay?” asked an 80-year-old man from Ireland. “I don’t know,” I replied.
The church and the collapse are about 37 miles. I was there, lying on the ground while one of my sisters kneeled beside me. She took a sip of cold water, splashed a few sharply on my face and feet, and fed me some brownies as if I were a fallen Roman soldier. At that moment, I realized, that’s what Camino meant, too – a moment of breaking, collapse, no longer moving on, but, somehow, you do it by relying on the people around you and accepting their dubious snacks.
