Let go of your expectations.

A park in Santiago de Compostela. This will be the only photo
from Santiago, as most of this post concerns other places in
Galicia, but since we've used the oak leaf theme to open our last
two posts, this one seemed fitting. These are oak trees.

We decided to walk another portion of the Camino de Santiago, even though we technically “finished” it in Santiago de Compostela on New Year’s Eve. (Of course, one of the spiritual insights that pilgrims commonly have is that the pilgrimage never really ends. I didn’t expect it to, myself.) We wound up getting sort of stuck in Santiago for the entire New Year’s weekend. We intended to spend at least one day there, and then move on to some other site to explore a bit more of Spain. But since it was New Year’s weekend, many things were shut down for much of the weekend, and the fewer trains and buses running on Sunday were full. So, in addition to the pilgrims’ mass at the cathedral, we had some quiet strolls around town (including through the university campus, where I felt far more at home than in the cathedral), and that was about it.

I lied. We have two other photos Santiago...of
food. One of our followers requested food photos
in an earlier comment, so here they are. This is
Corvid pigging out on churros y chocolate, which
was the name of one her high school Spanish
textbooks, so she's especially amused. Also
note the scallop shell she's wearing on around
her neck. This is a symbol of Santiago pilgrims,
though there are various myths as to why.

This isn't quite food, yet. It's soon-to-be-eaten
seafood at a fancy restaurant in Santiago.
Seafood is what Galicia is known for, which
perhaps has something to do with the
scallop shell pilgrim symbol.
(We don't condone eating octopus.)

This down time provided a good opportunity to reflect on how the experience of the Camino compared to our expectations for it. At least two of my readers will be amused to know that the phrase, “Let go of your expectations” has come to my head more than once on this journey. I decided to make it the spiritual theme of this post, as this will also be a good way to review the highlights and lessons learned from the trip. But first, an update on what we’ve been doing with ourselves the last couple of days.

As we strolled around Santiago, we had lots of time to discuss what we’d do with our remaining days in Spain. The idea of Granada and the Alhambra was raised, which would have been a crazy trip because it’s just about as far away from Santiago as you can get in Spain. But there was the argument that who knows when we’ll be back in Spain again, and I felt drawn to seeing something with a strong Moorish influence to atone for the steeping in early Christian theology that I’ve had. But we had also been considering continuing on the Camino for a few more days. Many pilgrims feel that a more symbolic end to the walk is at a small fishing village called Finisterre (or Fisterra in Galician), the name of which stems from the Latin for “end of the land.” Just beyond the village is a cape that separates the open Atlantic Ocean from the Bay of Biscay. On the cape is a lighthouse and a cross, and apparently some pilgrims burn their clothing at that site to symbolize the death of the old self and the birth of the new. We’d also learned from another pilgrim that there’s a final piece of the Camino that winds north of Finisterre to another small fishing village called Muxia, and that this walk is particularly lovely.


...We tried to insert a map here, but the best I can seem to do is this link to a Google map.

The fishing village of Finisterre.

Fish buyers at the port in Finisterre. Perhaps
some of these fish make it to the restaurants in
Santiago. There was a very interesting museum
explaining the local fisheries as well.

Shoes that have been burned at the end
of the Camino at Finisterre...

...despite the warnings painted everywhere
around the cape not to burn anything.
Apparently a pilgrim started a wildfire
burning clothing recently.

In the end, because we got stuck in Santiago longer than we expected, we compromised and took a bus to Finisterre (which is apparently the choice of transport for about half of the pilgrims who go there), then spent the next day walking the 19 miles to Muxia, which is where we are now as I write this. It was a good decision. The walk was indeed one of the best sections of Camino that we’ve been on since Portugal, leading us through small, traditional Galician villages and over forested hillsides (though yes, they were forested with pine and eucalyptus plantations). It had been raining heavily during our night in Finisterre, and it’s pouring again this morning as I write this. But miraculously, it cleared up yesterday morning and remained cloudy but not rainy for our entire walk to Muxia.

Graffiti (?) on the side of
cement building in Finisterre.

Arriving in Muxia was more magical for us than arriving in Santiago. This place suits Old Bay and me far better than the holy city. It’s in a phenomenally beautiful natural setting, and yes, I’m perfectly prepared to admit that this is a matter of personal preference rather than a spiritual insight of some sort. It’s small and quiet and remote, much like the places we’ve chosen to live or visit for much of our lives. We couldn’t resist splurging and spending 40 euros (instead of the 5 each we would have spent for dorm beds in the pilgrim hostel) on a room in a pension overlooking the bay in front of town, then asking the hostess to prepare real, honest-to-goodness Galician paella with fresh local seafood. It really was a perfect end to a perfect day.

We don't know the name of this particular little town on the coast
that we passed on our walk from Finisterre to Muxia.

This is a good time to show you some of the very typical Galician
"architecture" we saw everywhere. These are mausoleums in
a churchyard. These are like small country church graveyards,
but with a more efficient use of space than in the US.

We still don't know what the Galician (or English) name for
these caches is, but they were very common in the small
villages, though not always this picturesque.

The caches were very occasionally filled
with what we presume was their intended
bounty--ears of corn.

But how often does that really happen in life, that your expectations for what will make you happy are fully met? A key point from the many conversations I’ve had with others about Eastern philosophies over the years is that many people suffer needlessly because they are too attached to their expectations or desires. I think that the Tao de Ching is in large part about letting go of the expectations of the self by dissolving the self into the Tao. Krishna explains in the Bhagavad-Gita that this cannot be accomplished through simple abstinence, because refraining from ones desires simply makes you angry. “The abstinent run away from what they desire, but carry their desires with them. When man enters Reality, he leaves his desires behind him.” Similarly, and very relevant to me and my life, “Work done with anxiety about results is far inferior to work done without such anxiety, in the calm of self-surrender… They who work selfishly for results are miserable.”

A very friendly guard dog.

A guard horse?

These can't possibly be guard sheep, though they could
be veal. Seafood isn't the only food of choice in Galicia.

Once again, I’ll now try to apply this to our Camino, but I am fully aware that analyzing and dissecting how our expectations were or were not met is in many ways completely contradictory to the spirit of these passages. One does not “enter Reality” through “paralysis by analysis” (shout out to stac here for this phrase). But maybe we can all learn something through the contradictions and paradoxes of being human and experiencing our lives through our limited senses and perceptions.

Old Bay at an overlook at the end of the Camino in Muxia.
(How many ends of the Camino are there, anyway?)
Sadly, we learned that this was the site of a major
oil spill on the coast of Spain in 2002.
There is much more we could write about this, of course.

So why did we do this trip in the first place and what did we hope to get from it? While the focus of my writing for this blog has clearly been on spiritual insights (which I still feel a bit silly putting into print), this was only one of the purposes of our trip, and not necessarily the main one. I never honestly intended to answer some deep spiritual questions; I just thought it would be interesting to see what I could learn from this very different way of exploring one’s faith—through a Catholic pilgrimage route. As with all things Catholic for me, this experience felt more like a cultural journey rather than a spiritual one. It seems that many young Europeans who make this pilgrimage do so not because it’s part of their Catholic duty but not just for the fun of it either. It has become a sort of cultural expectation, “new-agey” for European Christians in the same way that spending a few weeks at an ashram is for many American agnostics. So I got a small window into that experience.

Corvid contemplating the view from our room in Muxia.

More fundamentally, Old Bay and I like traveling to see new places and experience different communities. Moreover, we really like doing so as “independent travelers,” as this method allows us to experience the culture more authentically through things like public transportation rather than pre-arranged tours. And we’re hikers and cyclists. We like covering territory via human power. The Camino de Santiago helped us meet all of these goals. However, that being said, we probably won’t walk through populated areas like this again. We can envision returning to Europe to do a bike tour, perhaps, but when it comes to walking, we’d far prefer being in the mountains. I don’t need to go into detail about this, as I talked about the whole “natural nature” thing quite a bit before.

The village of Muxia.

Of course, our expectations are that we’ll enjoy every aspect of the traveling, but that’s never the case. Perhaps a spiritual pilgrimage isn’t supposed to be exactly enjoyable, and maybe you can in fact grow more by being physically and psychologically miserable, but that’s definitely not what we set out to do. And I suppose that it’s just as inappropriate spiritually to have negative expectations as to have positive ones. In any case, we had positive ones. It’s easy to imagine this sort of idyllic, utopian community in one’s mind before traveling to see the place, forgetting that people are people everywhere, and not everyone is going to smile at you on the street just because you’re a goofy American with a backpack. In fact, they could be less likely to smile at you because you’re a goofy American with a  backpack. That’s not to say that people were unfriendly, especially since we’re working with cross-cultural forms of communication here. They just didn’t seem to care much one way or the other. Indeed, I would venture to say that there’s a bit of tension between locals living along the Camino routes and the Spaniards and other officials who are promoting the Camino as a tourism development project. In some communities, like the one and only village with a  café between Finisterre and Muxia, pilgrims provide a large proportion of the business.

One of the beaches near Muxia.

In the Muxia harbor.

There are different aspects of traveling that we find individually more or less enjoyable. Take meeting new people, for instance. We both enjoy meeting people, but to put it bluntly, I’m an extrovert and Old Bay’s an introvert. He’d rather not get too deep with folks, whereas I thrive on the intellectual and personal stimulation that comes from deeper exchange with new people. This difference can clearly cause some tension in our travels, but we work around it. Indeed, practicing the art of compromise was one of the expectations we had for this trip as well. On the other hand, we tended to agree in our general distaste for hostels. About half the nights on the Camino, we stayed in pilgrim hostels, or albergues. I had read about these before we started. Indeed, these hostels were one of the reasons I suggested the Camino, so we wouldn’t have to bring camping gear and camp out every night. I envisioned cozy, friendly places where one would want to hang out at the end of a long day of walking. In reality, they are more like typical youth hostels, with lots of bunk beds, usually in one enormous room, a tiny shared kitchen and eating area (some of the more cynical among us theorized that this was to encourage pilgrims to go out to eat and support the local economy) , and really unpleasant stall showers. Sleeping was usually a challenge. Sometimes we pushed two bunks together and shared the bottom pair; sometimes we simply split up with me on the top bunk and Old Bay on the bottom. All in all, these were not cozy places where we wanted to linger. At least we agreed on that.

Our seafood paella. We were very torn about eating this,
of course, but this is one of those paradoxes. Do we support
the efforts of the local human community to return to a
sustainable fishery after the oil spill and honor the cultural
history there, or do we eat more bread and cheese? Hmm...

The only hostel that really met our expectations was the one I wrote about staying at on Christmas Eve. There were only three other pilgrims there, all of whom spoke English, which clearly also made thoughtful conversation easier. We spent several more days leapfrogging with these three, and in fact saw the German couple in Santiago on our last day as well. The majority of other pilgrims populating the hostels closer to Santiago were Spaniards, although there were also two young Japanese men, and one older Dutch gentleman. Beyond a few friendly exchanges (Old Bay wrung quite a bit of English out of one of the Japanese guys who has been traveling around Asia and Europe for over a year, which Old Bay wanted to hear all about), we didn’t converse much with other pilgrims.

Corvid being contemplative again, this time gazing at the
windmills across the bay from Muxia. We loved the windmills,
both for the interesting beauty they can add to the landcape
and for the "clean energy" that they signify, like perhaps
what powers the street lamp in the photo.

More superficially, I had some other hopes for this journey. I wanted to travel to a Spanish-speaking country for our holiday trip this year because I wanted to practice and improve my Spanish. Mission accomplished. Mi espanol es mucho mejor. It’s not that I learned much new vocabulary that will stick with me until the next time I have cause to use it. It’s more that the sound of it has become much more comfortable, so that I can distinguish individual words from each other when someone shoots a string of words at me. Not only was I able to talk to lots of native speakers to practice listening and speaking, but I also watched lots of Spanish TV, including a portion of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix dubbed in Spanish. I really love this experience. I see why it can become addictive to learn new languages. It’s utterly unbelievable to me that our hostess last night spent about five minutes telling me about an episode of a Geraldo-like TV show in which a young Spanish girl had an internet boyfriend in Mexico, and I understood at least 90% of what she said, enough to make sense of it all as a whole.

Finally, we had specific intentions for keeping this blog as well. We wanted it to inspire me to write and Old Bay to share his photos. For the most part, we’ve really enjoyed it, and it was worth the extra burden of carrying a netbook and planning in time to find a wi-fi hotspot and work on the blog. Old Bay especially liked that he has been able to share photos during his trip rather than having to wait to get home to give a show, though I’m sure he has many more photos he’ll share with those of you patient and interested enough when we return. As for me, I plan to dive into some more significant and necessary writing projects very soon, so I hoped that this blog would get my writing juices flowing. I have always found the experience of walking to be very conducive to writing. I’ve enjoyed writing for the blog, but I confess that it has been rather strange to have such a diverse audience and not be entirely sure how to tailor some of my comments. I think many of my musings have had the tone of being rough drafts of essays (perhaps overly-long) that I’m trying out on people. But it’s a little odd putting myself out there in that way, especially since I know there are many readers who aren’t commenting publicly on the blog. So if you haven’t yet, I wouldn’t mind if you dropped me a line or posted a comment.

Back in Santiago on the evening of January 5, we found ourselves
witnessing yet another holiday festivity--the parade of the three
kings, who of course arrived to visit Jesus on the 12th day of
Christmas. Apparently Spaniards exchange gifts on January 6.
In fact, we're actually in Madrid again now sitting in a train station so
we can poach wi-fi from a nearby restaurant, and we've yet again
been thwarted in our plans for Madrid for the day because many
museums and stores are closed for the holiday. Ah, expectations...

Dualisms and Paradoxes

Oak leaf with water droplets.

We have arrived in Santiago de Compostela, the destination of the pilgrimage. We neglected to make any blog posts about our entire five days of walking in Spain, for various logistical reasons that don’t need to be detailed here (though the smoke-filled cafés throughout Spain that appear to have the only wi-fi around are certainly one). We’ve done the best we can to strike a balance between experiencing and processing the experience to share it, but I do wish I had been able to share a bit more, since our last post prompted so many interesting comments. Thanks for those, and I hope to be in touch with those of you who would clearly like to talk more, especially those I haven’t spoken to in a while. In the meantime, be warned that this is an especially long blog post.

Our first close view of the Cathedral of St. James
through the trees of Alameda Park.

A more traditional view of the cathedral, from the same park.

I’ll begin at the end. The city of Santiago de Compostela is dominated by the impressive Cathedral of St. James, at which we’ve spent a lot of time in the last 24 hours since arriving in the city and finishing our 10-day walk at the cathedral doors. Early in our journey, another pilgrim pointed out that if we kept to the walking schedule in our guidebook, we would arrive at Santiago on New Year’s Eve. 2010 was an especially auspicious year to do so because it’s some sort of holy year of St. James. When we entered Spain, the number of pilgrims on the camino increased drastically, especially Spaniards, in part because this was their last chance to make the pilgrimage to Santiago and arrive during the holy year. (This is in stark contrast to the other long treks we’ve made before, like the Appalachian Trail, where there is a significant decrease in the number of “thru-hikers” the closer you get to the end.) 
There’s a special door into the cathedral that is kept open only during holy years, and it turns out that there was a ceremony and mass to formally close the door for the year on Dec 31 at 4:30. Many of the other pilgrims left the last hostel well before dawn on that morning so that they could arrive at the cathedral and enter through the door of St. James before it closed.

Inside the Cathedral of Santiago, Dec 31, 2010.

One of the small chapels
inside the cathedral.

As we didn’t care that much about standing in the hour-long line to walk through St. James’ door, Old Bay and I first found an apartment to rent for two nights so we could drop off our bags and clean up a bit before walking the one block back to the cathedral to check it out. We staked out a good vantage point inside so we could see most of the ceremony. The portion involving the closing of the door of St. James was outside; it was broadcast on TV monitors for those waiting inside the cathedral. Then the Archbishop of Santiago and all of his various attendants as well as what appeared to be local politicians processed inside for mass. I confess that we didn’t make it the whole way through the mass, which was of course in Spanish. Sadly, this meant that we didn’t get to see one of the largest incense burners in the world being swung from the high cathedral ceiling at the end of mass.

After dinner and a nap back at the apartment, we returned to the cathedral just as the fireworks were starting at midnight. While the pyrotechnics themselves weren’t the best I’ve ever seen, the setting was absolutely surreal, with the spires of the cathedral backlit by the sparkle and glitter of colorful fire and the crowd packed into the ancient plaza on one side of the edifice. One wonders what St. James would think. I’d be hard-pressed to say which was the better show—the gold-gilded altar inside the cathedral or the fireworks without. Even though I thought I had my fill of Catholic liturgy the night before, we decided to attend the daily “pilgrim mass” at noon on New Year’s Day. So we returned to the cathedral yet again, this time standing in line after mass to walk up behind the statue of St. James overlooking the altar then descend into the crypt where his remains are interred. As usual, try as I might, the pomp and circumstance distracted me from the divine rather than bringing me closer.

We can't figure out how to rotate this video sideways, but seeing as how we just spent 20 minutes uploading it while sitting in a cafe drinking lots of tea, this is just how it's going to have to be. :) Notice, if you have the sound turned on, you can hear Corvid exclaiming in the background.

Many spiritual guides emphasize the role of paradox in spiritual understanding. John Brierley (author of our camino guide) writes,

With all the great discoveries made within the sense-perceptible world of science, we have never been able to see the super-sensible. Not even the most powerful telescope on earth has been able to glimpse even the tiniest fragment of God. Knowledge of Higher Worlds does not come from exploring the physical universe within the laboratory of the mind, but in diving into the mysteries. Paradox is at the heart of the spiritual quest, and so the top of the mountain becomes a symbol of the wisdom often found in the lowest point of the journey and within the humblest of hearts.

In the garden of a convent in the city of Tui,
on the Spanish side of the border with Portugal.

In many eastern philosophies, a similar theme regarding dualities can be found. Much has been written about the tendency of rationally-trained Western minds to over-emphasize dualities and the ability of Easterners to think more relatively and be more comfortable with paradox. Here are two passages from the two representative books I have been carrying.

Carvings on a fountain in the city of Tui.

While Lord Krishna is educating Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita, he explains that Arjuna should work to “become free from the pairs of opposites,” which the translator footnotes with examples—“Heat and cold, pleasure and pain, etc. The seeming contradictions of the relative world.”

The second verse of the Tao de Ching reads:

            When people see some things as beautiful,

            other things become ugly.

            When people see some things as good,

            other things become bad.

            Being and non-being create each other.

            Difficult and easy support each other.

            Long and short define each other.

            High and low depend on each other.

            Before and after follow each other.

As I understand it, this passage captures the essence of the yin-yang symbol. 

A traditional camino marker with bags of trash scattered
behind it. This was in one of the most industrial areas
through which we walked. Dualism or paradox?

So the challenge of reconciling dualisms, or becoming comfortable with the mystery of paradoxes, has been on my mind during this pilgrimage. My usual route to accomplishing this goal is to interpret phenomenon on a spectrum or gradient (a particular shade of gray rather than black or white) rather than to accept that two categories that appear mutually exclusive can actually exist simultaneously (paradox). In addition, my rational mind is on a ceaseless quest to categorize things, whether into two dualistic categories or into some other typology (such as the identification of species—what is that orange-breasted, sparrow-like, lovely-voiced bird that we’re seeing EVERYWHERE?). Clearly, I’ve made some obvious contrasts in regards to the Cathedral of St. James, especially regarding the sacred (altars and masses) and the profane (fireworks set off from the cathedral roof). What are some of the other apparent dualisms or categorizations that have been especially challenging for me to reconcile on this journey?

One of the most beautiful views we had along the camino.
This is an inlet of the ocean between Redondela and Pontevedra.

One of the others that I’ve already written about is the divide between “nature” and “human.” One of the comments on the last post I wrote about nature noted that wilderness can only exist when there is a contrasting understanding of civilization. I don’t actually think that pure “wilderness” exists, or that pure “nature” or “human” exists. Hence the quotation marks. These are labels that we use for the convenience of talking about something and having a mutual understanding about what the words symbolize. And yet I can’t seem to shake the feeling that “natural” is somehow “better.” I feel better when I am in a biodiverse area, and science tells me that in general, the ecosystem is healthier when it’s more biodiverse, which I find morally desirable. So as I’ve already noted, this is a duality that is particularly difficult for me to reconcile. I can intellectually accept that cities and countryside or wilderness are mutually interdependent, but my perception is that countryside and forests make me feel healthier. That’s certainly just been reinforced on this camino. I enjoy visiting the ancient centers in these European towns and cities, but leaving a rural area to walk through the suburbs to get to them is fairly torturous for me. I suppose that for me, this is the painful challenge that a pilgrimage is supposed to bring, since I haven’t had a single blister or really any other physical pain of which to complain.

Corvid walking with several other pilgrims (some on bikes)
on a particularly busy section of the camino.

More directly related to the last five days or our walk, we have experienced many changes in our transition from Portugal to Spain, separate from the increase in pilgrims. It’s rather shocking to realize what different countries these two are, even though they’re neighbors in the European Union. It’s quite clear they’re not like los Estados Unidos. Language seems to have a lot to do with that. Of course, anthropologists know that language and culture go hand-in-hand. But it’s not fair to say that there’s a totally abrupt change at the border. In the Spanish state of Galicia, where Santiago de Compostela is located, a particular dialect of Spanish is spoken, which, to my untrained ear, sounds a bit like it could be a blend of Portuguese and Spanish Castellano. Regardless, it has been slightly miraculous to feel as though I can communicate again and gratifying to re-discover that I get along quite well in Spanish. Words come out of my mouth that I had no idea that I remembered. Miraculous.

But besides the language, there are other visible differences. The types of narrow village roads that would have been cobblestoned in Portugal are paved in Spain. While this does make for slightly more comfortable walking, it’s much less aesthetically appealing. Also, as I mentioned in my last post, the environment has changed a bit. There’s no question that the climate is different, and I’d really like to know why. We’ve had nothing but gray weather, some days with full-on rain in Spain. Of course, this is largely influenced by weather patterns, but the ferns growing all over the place, including in the trees, around the coast of Spain bespeak a much damper climate overall, which our guidebook author confirms as well. The northwest coast of Spain resembles the Pacific Northwest in the US, with smaller trees, and only a few species—the ever-present eucalyptus and pine, and some sort of small, scraggly but very charming oak.

(You’re experiencing one of the almost insurmountable challenges which is one of the primary reasons we haven’t been blogging as much as we would have liked—I insist on writing something different from a “first we did this, then we did this” post, but writing a logical essay and captions for Old Bay’s photos that at least somewhat relate to the text, at 8 o’clock at night after walking for 14 or more miles, is a bit loco.)

There actually seem to be a larger number of
friendly dogs in Spain than in Portugal, but
this Spanish dog had no interest in making
friends with pilgrims.

But perhaps the most obvious duality and most challenging paradox to reconcile is that of a relationship between two individuals in a partnership like marriage. On this journey, not only have Old Bay and I celebrated Christmas and New Year’s together, but we have also marked our fourth wedding anniversary, and our 14^th year together as a couple. Our togetherness has been no small part of our pilgrimage. A question came to me several days ago that I think captures the nature of the paradox of marriage: “Can two people walk the same path, have two completely different perspectives on it, and still find fulfillment in sharing it?” Sorry, I’m not going to explore this question any more deeply for you. Suffice to say that this blog has been a representation of that question, in that Old Bay’s photos represent his perspective and my words represent mine (though both aspects only scratch the surface, claro). I’ll leave it to you to judge whether we’ve integrated our perspectives effectively and reconciled our own paradoxes.

Painted on a wall in Santiago.

We still have almost a week left in Spain, as our flight from Madrid home is on Jan 7, so stay tuned for another post or two… 

Images of St. James abounded the closer we got
to Santiago, and they're prolific in the city and
cathedral. He apparently helps many Catholics
on their quest to find God.

Flora and Fauna on El Camino

Oak leaf the morning after Christmas.

First, a caveat—it’s winter here in Europe, of course. So it’s not the best time to observe flora and fauna. Regardless, and even while trying to cultivate a philosophy that nature can be found everywhere—even in the tiniest crack of a sidewalk or under our fingernails, I have been underwhelmed with the natural world I’ve been observing along the camino. The time has come for me to explore my observations and speculations about humanity’s relationship with other species, one of my deepest concerns in life. But here, as usual, my primary angle will be on the spiritual aspects of this relationship, or lack thereof.

The Rio Lima on Christmas morning.

One of the best days we’ve had walking so far was Christmas day. We woke up in the picturesque Portuguese village of Ponte de Lima to find a clear and crisp morning awaiting us. It was a relatively short day of hiking—11 miles—so we took our time having coffee at a café before setting off. (Yes, there were plenty of cafes opens on Christmas morning. The one we chose happened to have lots of single old men smoking cigarettes. A Christmas tradition?) Then we took our time walking out of town to begin our climb up cobblestoned country lanes and dirt paths through vineyards, past red-roofed stone houses and churches, to the highest mountain pass on our route. 

The Rio Lima and another medieval bridge
leading to a chapel--Capela de San Antonio
dos Capuchos and our pilgrim hostel for the night

Gradually the houses dropped away and we entered solid forest. At least the European version of forest. Nothing but some sort of pine. Lots of it, of different-aged stands. Our trail criss-crossed over eroded gravel tracks. This was clearly a forest plantation on a regular harvest cycle. The view from the pass back over the river valley we had just climbed out of was vast and lovely, if one ignored the regular harvest patterns and lack of diversity in the forests, and the broken glass littering the exposed rock at the viewpoint. We were in our comfort zone—walking through the woods and mountains—and yet I couldn’t help but feel a bit smug about these Portuguese forests. These are the kinds of pine plantations that made our eyes glaze over when we had to walk through them on the Continental Divide Trail in the Rocky Mountains of Montana to get to the “real” wilderness areas where diverse forest ecosystems are allowed to flourish on their own. Generally speaking, there’s just not that kind of wilderness in Europe. You don’t visit Europe to get close to nature. It’s easy to write off Europe as having devastated its natural environment centuries ago.

Traditional Portuguese village.

View from the high mountain pass at
Alto da Portela Grande (410 m)

So this may seem like an odd place to speculate on humanity’s spiritual relationship with other species. I came on the camino because I was curious about whether such a pilgrimage might allow me to explore some of my spiritual beliefs. I’ve referred to Quakerism, Catholicism, Hinduism, and Taoism in my various blogs. But I have quickly run into one of my most profound problems with all of these isms—a lack of an in-depth theology of interspecies relationships. Of course, I don’t know as much about Eastern philosophies as I do about Christian theology, so there could be much there to explore. But my frame of reference continues to be the Euro-American world, try as I might to break out of it. Speaking of the same world, Mary Evelyn Tucker and Brian Swimme write,

“Many Americans do not relate to the environmental tragedy

personally because we have been living within a modern political and

economic story which values personal freedom and individual

competition, and a religious story that values personal salvation and

relationship to a Creator outside of the world. The larger community

of life is left behind in these worldviews where particular human

interests dominate, especially economic growth and progress. The well

being of land, air, water, and species are not seen as fundamental to

many Americans – politically, economically, or religiously. Thus they

are in denial or oblivious to the fact that we are causing a mass

extinction of species, toxifying the water and land, radically altering the

climate, and contributing to the causes of poverty around the world.

...Many environmentalists are trying to address this issue by

following Aldo Leopold’s directive to extend our sense of value and

moral responsibility to the biotic community. How do we do this?

...A traditional Biblical cosmology, then, is no longer adequate for

our times and the recognition of this is what is causing Jewish,

Christian, and Muslim theologians to reexamine the Genesis story.

Many of them are involved in redefining the role of the human in

relation to the growing environmental crisis. The reconstruction of

the meaning of stewardship versus dominion is at the heart of these

discussions.”

(Tucker and Swimme, 2009, “The Universe Story as a Basis for Multicultural Planetary Civilization, from The Coming Transformation: Values to Sustain Human and Natural Communities, eds. Kellert and Speth)

One of the many stone crosses along the Camino de Santiago,
piled with "offerings" of rocks from pilgrims.

Who is guiding whom?

The world religions seem to me to focus on giving us guidance on how to live well with our selves and each other in order to become closer to the divine. While we can all use such guidance, what about how to live well with other species? I’m talking spiritual theology here, not the rational approach  of ethics or ecology. Where are the spiritual guides who can tell us how to walk well among our non-human neighbors on the Earth? There are more and more scholars trying to answer questions like these, but I want to see someone developing theology for this purpose that includes specific rituals, such as pilgrimages, to help us develop our spiritual understandings of our place on the planet. There are models, of course, such as traditional and indigenous knowledge systems and pedagogies, or even self-proclaimed pagan “religions” like Wicca. (Those wacky Wiccans. Who takes them seriously? No one I know.) Tucker and Swimme are leaders in this arena of Christian theology, developing Thomas Berry’s idea of a “Universe story” that unites scientific and religious understandings of human life on the planet.

Hiking through hard frost on the morning after Christmas,
our last day in Portugal.

As with all my blog posts on this camino, I’m just barely scratching the surface of everything that could be and needs to be said here. I’m just trying to use the journey and the writing as a way to probe what it is I want to explore more deeply. This post has returned to my guiding environmental interests in life, somewhat in reaction to the frustration I frequently feel with too much “navel-gazing” and to the guilt that I feel that I generally don’t pay enough attention to my spiritual health, at least through traditional religious practices. I’m giving it an honest attempt!

Crossing the Rio Mino from Portugal to Spain, with
the beautiful town and cathedral of Tui on the Spanish side.

In the meantime, we’ve left Portugal behind and crossed into Spain, and the small patches of forests have actually changed a bit, gotten more diverse. I believe this has more to do with change in the land and climate (we’re actually closer to the coast now) than in the political boundary, but there are noticeable differences in the human-built environments as well, so who knows? In any case, I have stopped trying to dampen my habitual process of trying to make sense of the environment around me in case it’s actually counterproductive to bringing me closer to enlightenment. I don’t really have any intention of changing my belief that we all need to know as much about the natural world as possible in order to behave better as members of the global environment. So, if that means I won’t ever experience enlightenment because I can’t let go of my attachments to wanting to see a healthy environment around me, so be it.