Walking the Camino Francés: Living in the Present Moment
Time moved differently on the Camino: especially in the beginning, each day felt like five. Upon reaching the albergues in the afternoon, what I’d done only a few hours ago seemed like another day entirely. Even more distant was my life in Morocco, which felt impossibly out of reach. While walking, I could barely picture my former daily routine of working from home, grocery shopping at the nearby market, spending weekend afternoons at the beach. This was normal, according to Camino forums and experienced pilgrims, who reiterated that the Camino keeps you in the present.
Spanning nearly 500 miles/800 kilometers, from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port at the foot of the Pyrénées to Santiago de Compostela in Northwestern Spain, the Camino Francés is the most popular route for first-time pilgrims. I had first heard about it several years ago and it stayed on my radar ever since, filed under the category of “things I’d like to do one day”. After switching to freelancing full-time at the end of last year and having more flexibility in my schedule, I could finally begin planning my Camino. Per usual, I planned the bare minimum—booking only my round-trip flight, a train ticket, and two nights at the hostel before I started—and showed up in Saint-Jean with the notion that all I had to do was follow the yellow arrows that marked the path. In many ways, this was true: each day, I would wake up, put on my backpack and shoes, and start walking.
A typical day on the Camino involved an early-morning wakeup and departure from the albergue any time between 5:30 and 7 AM, depending on the weather and the distance I planned on walking that day. Most days, the route passed through at least two or three towns, so I would walk for an hour or two until finding an open café where I’d stop for breakfast. Afterwards, I usually had another four to six hours of walking, broken up by snack breaks and occasional stops at historical sites. Upon arriving at that night’s albergue, I’d grab lunch, shower, do laundry, and either journal, chat with other pilgrims, or take an accidental three-hour nap, depending on how the day had gone. Many restaurants offered pilgrim menus of three-course dinners for a fixed price, and sometimes a group of us would coordinate to cook dinner together if the albergue had an equipped kitchen. After dinner, an early bedtime — hoping there were no snorers in the room — to rest before another day of walking.
One of the biggest factors in feeling fully present while walking was that hardly anything needed to be planned. With few exceptions, pilgrims don’t need to book accommodation in advance. Most days, I’d walk until I felt ready to stop and wouldn’t have any issues finding an available bed. I could decide each day how far I wanted to walk, and if I grew tired earlier in the day or felt as if I could push on for another few kilometers, there was almost always a town on either end in which I could stop. The nature of the Camino is to go with the flow, with everything always working out, even if it happens in unexpected ways.
As the common Camino saying goes, “The Camino provides”. Many albergues contained donation bins where pilgrims could leave unwanted items for others to take as needed. Locals in towns the Camino passed through were quick to redirect pilgrims if they accidentally lost sight of the yellow arrows that marked the path. Servers in cafés filled up our water bottles, often with a generous scoop of ice, and sometimes offered us an extra treat to take on the road. While the daily routine may sound monotonous, the beauty of the Camino was that each day went differently.
During my first week, upon ascending a steep hill with a couple of new friends, we ran into a nun standing outside a small church. She gestured for us to come in to take a look and we walked right into an ongoing Mass service. A priest conducted the service in English and a woman in the front pew sang a Latin hymn, notes reverberating off the high ceilings. At the end of the service, the priest removed his robes to reveal hiking clothes underneath, and it turned out everyone in attendance were pilgrims who had been invited in by the nun for the service. Afterwards, the nun told us to go up to the bell tower to ring the bell — gently, she said, so that we could hear the full echo of each ring over the surrounding hills.
On several occasions, the path gave way to donation stands offering assortments of fruit, biscuits, nuts, and coffee. These often appeared as if out of nowhere, and usually when I was in need of a pick-me-up. The volunteers who ran these either lived on-site or drove in for the day with a car full of supplies. A donation box sat unassumingly on the tables: take what you need, and leave what you can. Volunteers contributed to many other services on the Camino, including working in hostels and at towns’ pilgrim offices. Many of them had previously walked the Camino themselves and returned to volunteer.
In these days of walking, when I no longer had to use my mental energy to plan ahead or think about what was next, I could focus on what came up in the present. My mind was free to wander as it liked in the meditative state of walking. Often, it felt as if the Camino was pointing me in a certain direction — to enter inside a holy space, to stop to take in what was in front of me, to sit for a little while longer before continuing on.
