Day 13 -- Arca to Santiago de Compostela

17.5 km
Friday, June 15

I rode into Santiago de Compostela (St. James of the Field of Stars) on a wave of rain and fellow pilgrims. Since Km. 100 the number of pilgrims has swelled, the vibe on the camino has changed (not as much fellow feeling, more garbage and grafitti), and pilgrims seem anxoius to get to their destination. Those who´ve been walking five or six (or more) weeks are ready for it to end, while those doing the 100-km minimum are still fresh.

I had mixed feelings--both wanted to hurry to Santiago and slow it down so it wouldn´t end.

This last day was harder than I expected. The rain made me want to walk fast and keep my head down, and there were a lot of ups and downs on the trail. Plus I have blisters on the bottom of both feet, kept flat by a technique of sewing a piece of thread into the blister and leaving it there, so the ampolla can´t close up and fill again with liquid. It makes it so you can walk but it doesn´t feel great.

There were plenty of emotional ups and downs as well, as I approached the (supposed) reason for my pilgrimage, and as we made our way from an almost entirely rural camino to the heart of a mid-sized city with suburbs spreading out on all sides.

About an hour into this morning´s walk (about 7:30 am), I got a taste of what was to come. Walking uphill through a clearcut field, I heard a sound I hadn´t heard since Bilbao: a plane taking off. I was approaching Lavacolla, where medieval pigrims would wash and purify themselves before heading into Santiago, now the site of the city´s airport.

Soon I came across a field of black polyhedrons on tall metal poles, next to a candy-striped structure than looked like an open concrete parking garage without the horizontal slabs where the cars go. A hurricane fence cordoned off this futuristic Stonehenge, with signs reading Keep Out and Sensitive Area. It was like coming back into a civilization that I couldn´t read at all. I have no idea what these structures were. Then came a sign of civilization I know well: a traffic circle. Trucks and cars negotiated their turn under skies that had seemed a clean rainy gray but now seemed industrial.

There were still some meandering paths and rural lanes to walk down, but soon we were passing factories, suburbs, and even a tv station. I say "we" because I was hardly ever alone on the trail today. One person joked that the clumps of pilgrims were like the clumps of bicylists that form during bike races. Everyone seemed in a hurry; many of us were trying to make it to the midday pilgrim mass.

The Monte de Gozo (Mount of Joy), which used to give pilgrims their first glimpse of the cathedral towers, is now marred by a huge tourist/pilgrim complex, and the view down the valley to the cathedral is obscured by soviet-block style apartment buildings, construction cranes, and a snarl of freeways. It´s all part of the camino, I guess, a long haul through our beautiful and butt-ugly fallen world.

I made it to town in time for the midday pilgrim´s mass, where the priest reads off how many pilgrims from each country have arrived and applied for their compostelana, the certificate of completed pilgrimage. They mention starting points and nationality: From Roncevalles, 13 Germans, 7 French, 1 from Belgium, 2 from Puerto Rico, one from the United States, 3 from Madrid, 4 from Barcelona, etc. At the midday mass tomorrow I´ll be mentioned and I´ll see how many others arriving this afternoon and tomorrow morning began, like I did, in Astorga, and if any of the them are from the U.S.

It´s strange to be here, and I think it´s going to take some time to let it all settle in. I still have to go hug the saint (he´s only huggable in the mornings and late afternoons), but I did deliver my prayers, my own and everyone else´s, which was an emotional if not religious experience. When I think of the objects and prayers people entrusted to me, I feel very close to you all, almost as if you were here with me.