Memory at the End of the World

I walk to become ancient.

Finisterre, Galicia. Finis Terrae. The end of the earth. Northwestern Spain along a stretch of ragged coastline called, in the local language of Gallego: Costa da Morte. The Coast of Death. I don’t wonder why. The weather is, and probably always has been, a continuous series of storms. No matter the intervening conditions: clouds, calm, even sun—every twenty minutes or so a great blot of clouds builds up, then a cold spurt of wind and blast of rain. Watch the locals: they scurry from shelter to shelter during the lulls carrying umbrellas. Only tourists are foolish enough to be caught out during the squalls. Or pilgrims. But I have walked here from France and have only a couple kilometers left to the lighthouse at the end of the earth.

This moment hangs in time, in my memory. The spitting wind on the Coast of Death pushing at my pack. Pushing as if it’s trying one final attempt to make me give up. The feeling of a pilgrimage—the sense of journey, history, connectedness. Is that the same feeling a pilgrim from, say, twelfth century France would recognize?

 Alone, living in my van again at the edge of the road in Alaska. The road dead-ends just around the corner. Another kind of finis terrae. I try to conjure up the feeling by running my fingers over the sharp edges on a piece of shell. Snow flurries. I snuggle deeper into my jacket. Van idles so I can run the heat; I catch a whiff of exhaust and hope I don’t asphyxiate myself trying not to freeze.

This is the hardest part of traveling. Not living in a van, not the cold—those things are easy. Just a bit of physical discomfort. It’s the feeling that your life is out of context. Was it a dream?

“How was your trip?” 

I still don’t know how to answer after all this time. “Good. Spain was good.” I know they’re trying to be nice. But the expectation of “good”, full stop, takes away the possibility of a story. How do I express that feeling of a pilgrimage?

I walk to become ancient.

There is a thread that connects me with the Camino, regardless of distance. For a thousand years, an unbroken river of pilgrims have been walking the Camino de Santiago from all over Europe and the world to the tomb of Saint James the Apostle in Santiago de Compostela. Branches of the Camino flow across Europe, like a watershed, into Spain and all converge on the tomb in Santiago. The most popular route begins in St. Jean Pierre du Port on the French side of the Pyrenees and transects northern Spain for 784 kilometers (487 miles). In 2018, over 300,000 pilgrims arrived in Santiago.

According to the legend, sometime around 800 A.D. a hermit in Galicia, known variously as Paio or Pelagius, followed a star to the forest of Libredón where he discovered an ancient sepulcher. Rather astonishingly, the sepulcher was then declared by the nearby Bishop Theodomir of Iria Flavia (now Padrón) to be the remains of none other than Saint James the Apostle, though he had been beheaded by King Herod in Palestine eight hundred years prior. Another version of the legend says the body of the apostle was undecayed and still had his head intact.

The place became known as the “field of the star”, or in Latin campus stellae, an explanation for the origin of Compostela. Another possible etymology is from Latin “composita tellae”—a burial ground or cemetery. Sant Iago is the Old Spanish name for Saint James.

I guffawed when I first read this, as in, how could people be so gullible? A bishop declares a pile of bones to be Saint James the Apostle and a thousand years later people still walk across a subcontinent to see it? But a pilgrimage is bound, as is religion and other mythologies, to the concentric rings of story in a landscape. Stories here are older than our species; archaeological digs near the Camino outside Atapuerca found bones of Homo antecessor 850,000 years old. The beginnings of the Camino are rooted in a great turning point in the history of Europe and Spain—then, of course, not Spain but Iberia: a vast collection of kingdoms, empires, and tribes. In the year 711, the Arabic general Tariq sailed from Morocco to land on the rock that is still named after him, Gebel Tariq, now Gibraltar. The Muslim army quickly swept across Iberia’s little warring kingdoms from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. The Iberians called them “Moors”—a predictably derogatory term, derived from Latin maurus or “brown”. The conquest was astonishingly quick. Eight years after Tariq set foot on Gibraltar, the whole of Iberia essentially became Muslim territory. 

James Michener writes in his massive book Iberia that the caliphate in Cordoba kept a relic of immense power: the mummified arm of the Prophet Muhammad. An army with such a relic couldn’t be beaten: “…we know from documents that a kind of fatality overcame them [the Spanish] when without heavenly assistance they had to face the Muslims who had such assistance.” Imperialism doesn’t only require military technology—it requires myth. How did Spain become Christian then? Spain was eventually reconquered, but it took seven hundred years—and it took a pilgrimage.

The story of the Camino begins with a book. In the mid eighth century, long before the pilgrimage began, an abbot named Beatus, of Liebana (now Santo Toribio) in northern Asturias penned a massive tome about the Biblical apocalypse. Before Beatus’ writings, several documents chronicled St. James’ pilgrimage to Hispania: Saint James was said to have traveled to the peninsula and converted nine Iberians to Christianity and was visited by the Virgin Mary in Zaragoza. Beatus in the Commentaria In Apocalypsin refers to Saint James as the “cabeza refulgente de España”—the shining head of Spain. The seeds of the iconography of Saint James. The Commentaria became the ancient equivalent of a best seller for hundreds of years, carried on horseback to the bishops and rulers across Europe as far as Charlemagne. 

Out of these dry historical facts and circumstances emerge the myths of the Camino. The myths, naturally, tell us more about the people than the facts—what it was like to live at that time in that place. Specifically: the myths tell us what beliefs were possible for them. My English guidebook says, “According to legend… the body of the Christian martyr was said to have been miraculously transported from Palestine to Galicia on a boat steered by angels and then put ashore at Padrón.” A pamphlet published by the government of Galicia makes no mention of legend, saying simply, “[After] The discovery of the tomb of the Apostle in 1815… his disciples wanted to bring him back to Hispania after his death.” What is myth for one is reality for another. What is undeniable is the power of this story. 

You are the bishop Theodomir in a far-flung rural kingdom of Hispania. A strange religion is invading the land, brought by people with strange customs and strange tongues. You hear whispers of a miracle in the nearby Libredón. Perhaps you venture yourself to the forest to speak to the old hermit: he tells you of midnight visions, of a flaring star, of a visitation by an angel—he brings you to the sepulcher. 

You know the stories, you’ve read the books and scrolls. The Commentaria is a standard, its ideas canon. The earth would not revolve around the sun for many hundreds more years, the universe was still small and Europe and the Holy Land were quite literally at the center of it. Cape Finisterre was the end of the earth, Heaven and Hell waited at the periphery. Your lands are under invasion by the forces of evil and this is the miracle Spain has been waiting for. Perhaps it was not so unusual that the tomb of an Apostle of Jesus Christ would appear in your backyard, perhaps it was inevitable.

Soon after, Saint James made his intentions known. According to the legend, at the Battle of Clavijo in 844, he rode ahead of the Christian armies upon a white horse, swinging a huge sword and cutting down Muslim soldiers by the thousands. He became the symbol of the Reconquista: Santiago Matamoros. Saint James the Moor-slayer. There is still a famous statue at the cathedral of Logroño that shows him upon a rearing steed, twice as big as life, massive sword aloft, trampling the bodies of Spain’s enemies.

Nooteboom writes:

“The fiery resplendence of Santiago and all it inspired came about because people believed they had found the grave of the apostle James in that town….On that shadowy conviction… hinged a momentous European mass migration which gave successive generations of Spaniards the motivation and means to resist Arab domination, to reconquer the rest of Spain from Islam, and thus to turn a tide that could’ve swept all over Europe. For centuries a whole army was permanently on the move across Europe, where the foot was the unit of measurement.” 

“Army” is no exaggeration. In the eleventh century up to a thousand pilgrims arrived daily to the great cathedral in Santiago de Compostela. 

You are a medieval pilgrim from, say, southern France. Perhaps you have never ventured further than your village. You decide to leave your farm, your family, everything you have known and begin walking. Walking over mountains into a shadowy unknown country of myths, of saints and relics, of kingdoms and cathedrals, of bandits and plagues. Survival is by no means certain—and Santiago, if you make it that far, is only halfway. No return tickets, buses, planes. You must walk back, too; it might take years.

Spanish historian Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz wrote that, not only was Spain the barrier that kept Islam from conquering far more of Europe—it was the seven hundred years of Reconquista that prepared Spain for the conquest of the Americas: “Had the Moors not conquered Spain in the eighth century, the Spaniards would not have conquered America in the sixteenth. Paradox? No, reality.” 

The conquistadors invoked the same apparition of Santiago Matamoros riding into battle ahead of them and slaying Native Americans instead of Moors, Pizarro and his small band cutting through thousands of Incan warriors. This is the power of the story that was the Camino de Santiago—through-line of imperialism and myth. Imperial Spain needed the Camino as much as it needed armor, guns and horses. A pilgrimage creates and strengthens mythology and mythology is a kind of tool. Like any powerful tool it may be used and misused. Were the ancient pilgrims who arrived in the cathedral concerned with the conquest of the Americas? What is the myth now? Joseph Campbell wrote, “Mythologies are in fact the public dreams that move and shape societies.” 

What interests me is how that feeling of pilgrimage becomes a fulcrum in world history. The possibility that the trajectory of civilizations isn’t the lineage of kings or wars but half-dreamt yearnings in the minds of people, countless people moving slowly across generations. It is this feeling of pilgrimage that bridges us across a millenia. 

When I think of what this feeling of pilgrimage means, two images stand out, one from each of my Caminos. It’s not what you’d expect, they’re not of the cathedral in Santiago or of the rocks of Finisterre. The first is on the Camino del Norte, a difficult and empty road in the far north of the Basque country: October, not the best time to be on the coast. It was wet and cold, but most of the pilgrim hostels were closed and I couldn’t afford a hotel, so I camped instead. I was cold, exhausted and miserable. My Spanish had yet to bloom and it felt like I hadn’t had a meaningful connection with another human for years. It began raining one day and didn’t stop or even slow down for a week. At first I tried to dry things off at night but then gave up and put on everything wet each morning. My feet blistered and stank, my backpack grew flecks of mold. The world was mud and cold. I retreated into a tiny dry corner of my mind.

One dusky wet night, I came upon a dark stone monastery behind the curtain of rain. The path was made of large stone blocks, the centers of the blocks were worn down in a natural, uneven way, right where I placed my feet. Eons of pilgrims’ feet.

I knocked on the massive door, like rapping on a tree trunk. Silence. It opened and a white-robed monk admitted me. He led me silently through the vaulted Gothic church, through a somber courtyard and into a small room in the back. No words, no mention of payment. Six bunk beds, a small table and a couple other soggy pilgrims. The door opened again and white-robed monks entered as silently as if they had no feet, one with a large steaming pot of stew, the other with bowls, spoons, and a basket of bread. We fell greedily upon the food. Another monk came with a plate of small whole truchas, trout, and a stone carafe of red wine. For some reason, at the sight of those little fried fish, the whole week bubbled over; I had been so cold and miserable and now I was warm and dry and strangers were feeding me this lovely meal. Tears leaked down, I sobbed loudly and had to go to the bathroom to compose myself.

Later that night I stood in the empty courtyard. Aching rain turned the stone black and for a moment I had no idea which way time was heading. I could be anyone from anywhere at any time in the last thousand years. For a thousand years pilgrims came here; for a thousand years the white-robed monks silently fed them soup and bread, wine and truchas. The monastery was ancient, the monks ancient, the very soup, bread, wine and fish were ancient and the pilgrims—I too, was ancient.   

This is also the feeling of a pilgrimage. The curvature of a story. The misery and rain and doubt had been necessary for the catharsis. I had to be broken down to my lowest before a few fried fish could bring me to tears, which in turn brought me to the strange moment of suspension in the courtyard. This is why a pilgrimage cannot be made by plane or car. 

Since that night, and on my second Camino six years later, I have had a strong sense of belonging as a pilgrim on the Camino. In the autumn especially, you meet locals who are clearly burnt out on the endless stream of pilgrims, and really, you cannot blame them. One time, when my Spanish had improved, several of us were in line at a grocery store and a local Spanish woman behind us couldn’t hold it in any longer. “¡Peregrinos!” she blurted at the cashier. “¡La gente viven aquí!” People live here. I said slowly with a heavy accent, “Soy aquí por un mille años.” I am here for a thousand years. She stared like an animal or piece of furniture had spoken.

The second image is older still. It was during my second Camino at a pilgrim mass in the Catedral de Santa Maria in Burgos. The cathedral is titanic, rivaling in every way the great cathedrals of France, England, Italy, even the one in Santiago. This mass was in a small chapel attached to the side, two columns of pews with several dozen pilgrims. I stood in the back. I had not been to a mass in many years. The priests spoke Spanish but the gestures and sonorance were familiar. I felt awkward, like a trespasser: a nonbeliever or, at least, skeptic, masquerading. The ostentatiousness embarrassed; Nooteboom aptly describes the interior of the cathedral at Burgos as a “frenzy of stolen gold, an orgy of Spanish ornamentation.”

The priest lifted the golden cup, lifted the thin wafer and worlds slid again: I was outside my own culture and history, outside myself. You are an ancient traveler in a faraway land. You are attending a sacred ritual of the locals called mass. You shuffle in line, drink from the golden cup. The next woman in line sticks out her tongue to receive the wafer and you see a statue in Bali, a creature with lips pulled back and tongue protruding and the long-tongued formline carvings of the Maori. The priest lifts the wafer and you observe the look on his face. You recognize that face from an old photograph in an old book. It was of a Tlingit shaman named Skandoo from the Chilkat Valley in Southeast Alaska. He is dressed in his shaman’s regalia, holding up a tool like the Eucharist and on his face is that same look of intensity as on the Spanish priest’s. Sacredness is story. 

Here, at home, my task becomes clear: find the pilgrimage, find that feeling of continuity. To make the ground I walk on sacred. Walk to become ancient.

Snow whisks by, the van engine rumbles. The connections with Spanish history, that feeling of pilgrimage links me with that place. I carry it with me like a pilgrim’s shell. Slow movement across continents.

Once, a pilgrim—a complete stranger—told me, “The Camino is your entire life condensed into a single journey.” 

The difficult birth over the Pyrenees, youthful energy of Pamplona and wine country, solemn adulthood of Burgos and vast monotony of the meseta. A second birth and greening over the passes of Galicia. Along the way: friendship, difficulty, joy, boredom. More than once you wonder what the hell you’re doing here. Before you get there you see the end coming and there are tears, goodbyes. Then the great coast of death, the end of the earth. Finisterre.