Our daily walk is done. The daily pull of our bodies toward a far-away end is complete.
No more waking before dawn to smear lotion on our sore calves. No more wrapping my Achilles for the day. No more layering of two pairs of socks. No more Hoka One Ones (our space shoes). No more same outfit day in and day out. No more have to wash our clothes nightly and hope they dry on the line before morning.
No more.
No more step after step.
No more oats, corn, cows, manure, cafes, pilgrims.
No more-ness.
It feels surreal.
And, the feeling of no more (like really, no more?) is what I’m with right now.
A disbelief, a shockingly quick and final ending.
The walk is over. We still don’t know what it was for.
Perhaps the pilgrimage never ends.
There have been so, so many teachings along the way — most of which exists in my own head and heart, outside of this blog.
More than anything, I have the sense that something is always pulling us forward in life. It might be love. Something pulls us to keep walking.
After 20 days of nothing but footsteps, it’s a stretch to comprehend not walking.
But as my dad says, life itself is all a pilgrimage, a long walk. We don’t always know why we are walking, but we do it anyway.
Yesterday was the most gorgeous day of all the days.
We reached the sea and I could breathe in a new way.
My body pushed further than it has since Day Two. 18 + miles.
Today, my body is grateful for rest.
We arrived to our room at 10pm, went to eat fish in this stone beach town, and fell asleep at 1am until 11:15am. 10 + hours of rest!!!
Before sunset, we will walk the final final 3.5 km from town to the lighthouse. As the sun sinks down, we will see the ocean consume the blazing star.
Compostela means field of stars.
The Celtic-pagan original inhabitants of Fisterra built an altar to the sun to worship. It was destroyed by St James for being of a pagan cult.
But we will go to worship there.
Some photos of our walk to Fisterra yesterday. The mist. The trees. The amazing fish place we ate at for our two hour lunch (hehe, with two bottles of wine!) and a tray of fish for dinner. The port. The ocean.
