Forks in the Circular Road
I prefer the word branch. As in the branch of a tree. One tree, same wood, just a different shape from the trunk. Somehow, to fork, or split, or (God forbid) divaricate, implies the taking of a wholly different way. Experience has shown me there is only one path, a consistently circular one, though appearances might suggest otherwise.
“Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’” — Isaiah, 30:21
It is May 2016, and I’m walking across the Spanish Meseta, a mostly flat, expansive high plain that occupies 225 kilometers of the Camino de Santiago in the midst of its 800-kilometer French Route. It is a heavenly place, with expanses of emerald-green grasses and new-growth wheat rippling in the springtime breeze, all under a fluid sky that’s as big as the whole world. Across the emptiness to the north I see the Cantabrian Mountains, snowcapped and beckoning, though far too distant to approach. In the romance of the moment, I give them voice. They call me child and promise wonders beyond my wildest dreams. They seem wise and immortal and eternal, and so I believe them.
Not far beyond the city of Sahagun, I find myself at a place where the road branches. One path leans to the southwest, and one to the northwest, rejoining about 30 kilometers beyond. I’d known about this place before setting out today, yet the direction my feet would eventually find had eluded me. I walk northwest, the notion of choice noticeably absent, more an act of following.
As I walk the plain, I often gaze north toward the mountains with a deep curiosity about what it may be like to journey through them—an incipient longing, one could say. But for now, I walk the road before me, which, as it happens, is a Roman road. It was first laid during the time of Jesus, when it was used to transport gold from the mines of the Galician region across the Iberian peninsula. And so now there is the matter of time to be pondered as well. Also circular.
The surface of this road is actually but the substrate of the original, made of a mixture of coarse dirt and pebbles along with embedded stones that are a little smaller than a baseball. The events of time have removed the surface stones, leaving not a trace. Walking on it creates a full-bodied crunching sensation underfoot that travels through the soles of my shoes into my legs, finding its home in memory, still recalled with ease. That feeling, that sound, seared into my most essential place—forever things, and so now sealed away from the passage of time.
Near the end of the walking day, I arrive in what may be the loneliest place I’ve ever known: a village situated 8 kilometers from the last and 17 kilometers before the next, the distant mountains north, and nothing discernable to the south save for the horizon. It is siesta time, and I am alone here. I find my way to the southern edge of the village, remove my pack, and stare off into the void. Somewhere out there is the parallel branch I left behind, and a kind of sweet, benign grief wells up from all the possibilities there that would never come to be, much like during the joyful onset of new romance. I hear a faint train whistle carried on the wind from the high-speed railroad running between Palencia and Leon, too far away for me to see. My heart hurts with aloneness and the beauty of the great plain mottled by the shadows of fair-weather clouds. I’m left to wonder about who lives here behind the doors and shutters, and the love they must have for this place to transcend its isolation. I shoulder my pack and set off to find the accommodation my guidebook lists.
It is perched on the northernmost edge of the town, and my room offers an unobstructed view of the mountains. Perhaps my romantic sense is at work again, but there is an ineffable quality about this village and where it lies. I could envision living here, and even though I’ve journeyed a very long way along the Camino, I have not felt like this about anyplace else. As I sit at the window, I dream of a writing desk before me, words just rolling across the plains from the wise mountains directly onto my page. It has become a holy place.
The innkeepers are a married couple; the woman is softspoken and warm, her husband, gregarious and quite boisterous. I’m drawn more to the former, and during a quiet conversation later in the day, she confides a deep concern for the sustainability of their hotel on this northern spur of the Camino. For reasons she cannot understand, it seems most travelers are walking the other path, but as a couple, they remain committed.
“I feel we’ve been placed here,” she tells me.
“I feel exactly the same way,” I reply.
***
I had not written an artistically driven word in nearly thirty years. In my defense I can only say I’d become distracted with the noble effort of providing for a family, yet over time I wondered what happens to an ability left unused, an aspect of the soul unexpressed. Must such negligence be punished? Is there any hope for a return? My wondering had been a passive, idle thing until I came home from pilgrimage in late spring, from all the myriad branches that had been placed along its way.
Almost immediately, suggestions began to arrive in a rhythmic, repeated fashion through a series of seemingly chance encounters with several of those who’d known of my walk, suggestions that it was indeed time to place some words upon a page. A commotion ensued that compelled me into action. In what can only be framed as an act of faith, I returned, or, more correctly, was returned. The first of those words began with a question, a wondering about the workings of time, about when anything really does begin. Time, as a theory, has a way of collapsing.
Four years later, from my imagined writing desk on the vast Spanish northern plain came my first published work, a tale of that very journey—time and distance and place left irrelevant. The words came steadily from the mountains, and at the end of each day’s work, I’d review the words that had arrived with the sense of being the first person allowed to read them. The mountains are great. The writing voice through which the words appeared had been at rest for decades, but it woke as if no time at all had passed. The mountains are timeless.
***
Though I can’t recall the source, I once read that the human experience in linear time unfolds as a series of roughly seven-year cycles. The idea seemed unremarkable, maybe even suspect, but for some reason it stayed with me...
It is the springtime of 2023, and I’ve been immersed in a period of reflection. A discreet-yet-persistent thought about one more ramble in Spain has risen. Another commotion is afoot. I envision two walking routes with two distinct intentions, two ways of rounding out this reflective chapter—one route through mountains, and one to the ocean. Perhaps in the interest of variety, I also see this as an autumn pilgrimage.
The ocean route immediately presents as a walk from Santiago de Compostela to the Atlantic at Finisterre, then up the coast to Muxia—a four-day, 120-kilometer trek with the intention of acknowledging grace. It feels settled, a perfect way to conclude the pilgrimage. But the other route is elusive. I contemplate walking the Camino Ingles from Ferol to Santiago but am feeling unenthused about it.
While messaging about this with a friend on Facebook, who, coincidentally, was introduced to me by a reader of my first book, he asks if I’ve ever considered walking the Camino San Salvador. It is a lesser-known route that tracks north from the city of Leon, traverses the Cantabrian Mountain Chain, and ends at the Cathedral of Oviedo, a distance of some 125 kilometers over five or six stages. He describes it as a stunningly beautiful route, but challenging as well, for crossing those mountains requires negotiating an elevation gain and loss of nearly 10,000 feet.
I feel as if I’ve been presented with another branch in the road, and I remember my old friend Isaiah. The voice behind me speaks, suggesting that walking here would perfectly fulfill my intention of penitence, and as if to offer a final punctuation, while viewing images of this lonely, often isolated route, I weep.
Flying into Spain from Ireland in early October, I arrive in the city of Bilbao. The following day, I board a high-speed train and cross the Meseta bound for Leon. The sterile view from my seat brings a longing for the walk, for the thick crunching sound underfoot on the Roman roads, the windswept plains, the biggest sky I’ve ever seen, and for the distant mountain view. After departing the station at Polencia for the final leg of the trip, the train is cruising along as I hear the whistle sounding, and in that moment I’m returned to the loneliest place I’ve ever known, if only to hear its echo.
Dawn unfolds as I walk the two blocks from my hotel to Plaza San Marcos in the beautiful city of Leon. From here I am to begin the Camino San Salvador, starting at the feet of a statue on the plaza that depicts an exhausted medieval pilgrim at rest. I take a moment to consider what brought me to this place, at this time, this age, this condition of spirit, all of the various branches taken since those steps outside Sahagun seven years earlier, and all the branches that had led me to that one. This statue sits at the intersection of my first Camino and the one I’m beginning now. I’ve been here before; this medieval pilgrim is an old friend. Then, I’d headed west to Santiago. This morning, it’s north to Oviedo.
On the first day, I move through foothills to the town of LaRobla and meet a walking companion along the way. Early next morning, we walk along the darkened streets and out into the countryside for a mostly level trek until reaching the village of Buiza. Under a clear autumn sky, the first of the mountain climbs begins, and soon we’re transported to an otherworldly place of high meadows, craggy peaks, and mesmerizing views.
At the highest elevation of the day, we pause to rest. I take some steps away from my friend and turn to face toward the east and south. Before me is a vast, open valley, the mountain peaks continuing beyond. Past them lies the great Meseta, where I know pilgrims are walking their way, likely gazing north toward these mountains. Will some of them wonder as I once did?
Two days later finds me alone in the mountain village of Pajares, having bid a fond farewell to my companion, who needed to press on. The day before me begins with a steep valley descent, then a climb out. Seems simple enough, yet from the very first steps of the path down, a vague fear simmers.
There are many moments on pilgrimage when the road itself becomes personified. It insinuates itself in feeling, in thought, in word, and in action. I’ve even suspected this is likely a constant thing, that those moments are provided for the traveler to be aware of what always is. There is a crossroad ahead, and I intuit that the Camino may have a thing to say about this. A moment of reckoning is upon me.
I’ve allowed myself to run dangerously low on water and foodstuff, and still have 11 kilometers to go before reaching the day’s destination, the town of Campomanes. After I leave the village of Llanos de Semeron and find no water there, the branch of the road presents. I knew of it even before I left home. At that time I’d decided to disregard the highly difficult mountain option and play it safe by staying on the road that courses mostly through the valley below. But now, I stand frozen here, staring at the single-lane path leading into the woods and up. I feel tears coming...the Camino’s preferred language.
It is without mercy. Absent of words the voice speaks, conveying something like this:
Are you penitent, or are you not? Do you walk in faith, or do you not? Imagine for a moment, dear pilgrim, being home months from now after having walked the valley instead of the mountains. You looked toward the mountains long ago...did you not?
Sobbing now, movement returns and I take to the mountain route for the crucible that is to follow. In summer-like temperatures, I climb and sweat and thirst and hunger and bleed. I collapse and seriously wonder if I can go on. I come to realize I am becoming either a new man or a dead one. And with a little more than one kilometer remaining, I stagger into a hamlet ̶—where I find a gush of cold running water. The Camino is as knowing as it is unmerciful. Alchemy delivered, the walk simply continues on to Campomanes and some blessed rest.
***
For the entirety of the Camino San Salvador in north-central Spain, I walked under perfect, clear skies and very warm temperatures, but because I know the various climates of the country, I’m aware that this is about to change. My walk to the ocean begins in Santiago de Compostela, capitol city of the region of Galicia. In mid-October, the weather here shifts into frequent, if not constant, rain, remaining that way for weeks. Still, the day of my arrival is sunny and warm, continuing through the rest day that follows.
On the day of my departure from Santiago, I awaken to the sound of wind-driven rain pelting the window of my room. I smile and say out loud, “Ah, Galicia. As it should be.” Instead of dreading what lies ahead, I am delighted. It’s good to begin a walking contemplation of grace by feeling this way. In fact, it is perfect.
Grace is sometimes hard to find. It has a way of concealing itself within this world of appearances. Sheets of driving rain could be seen as a distraction, but pilgrimage has taught me to notice more deeply. After a couple of kilometers, I clear Santiago’s city limits. The storm has moderated somewhat from a torrential downpour. As I enter the forest, grace appears as the aroma of eucalyptus, now released by the Galician rain. Sweet and clean, it fills me to my depth. It will be with me for the remainder of the route, for eucalyptus trees are as ubiquitous here as the rains.
On the third day of this walk, (still) walking in a steady rain, I glimpse the Atlantic at last just before descending a hill into the fishing town of Cee. I’d been here on my first Camino, electing then to bus in from Santiago and walk the 13 kilometers from here to Finisterre. Passing the bus stop, I have the sense of completing a seven-year loop, a return, a continuance. After I stop for food and rest, the walk to Finisterre unfolds over familiar ground.
Cabo Finisterre reveals itself as it did before. From a point high above a long beach, I see the great finger of land pointing out to sea. Known as Fisterra in Gallego, the language of the region, it translates to end of the earth. After that first pilgrimage, I’d come here for nine days to walk and contemplate—to perhaps understand what had happened as I’d trekked across Spain from the Pyrenees Mountains of France. This time, though feeling nostalgic and planning to spend a day here, I’m mostly passing through. Another crucible awaits.
The notion of walking in a contemplation of grace along the Atlantic coast of Spain had an idyllic ring to it when it first presented as the focus of this walk. And by grace I mean everyday grace. Grace defined as the divine touch, the anointing of worldly life by its very own being, or source, or primal intention, its execution and timing nothing less than perfect; grace filtered out into the coarse, wild world from the unspeakably fine. Pure energy, sometimes as pleasant and gentle as an aroma, sometimes terrifying, always awe inspiring.
Windows rattle ominously in the hotel dining room, and the rainfall is a torrent. Before me I have a 31-kilometer walk up the Costa da Morte to the end of this pilgrimage at the village of Muxia. Grace it is, then.
Setting off with the heavy-duty poncho covering my 48-liter backpack, I look like a humpback hiker, lumbering along, ungainly. Adding to this is the effect of the wind gusts that stagger me as the pack acts like a sail.
My first stop, a detour, is on the moors of Castrominan, where I’d spent some days during my last time here. It is a pilgrimage within the pilgrimage. Then, these moors had been a refuge, a source of delight and inspiration, a mystical place that held revelation. But today that place is virtually uninhabitable in the storm. I return to the Camino route, an offshore tailwind pushing me away.
Later in the day, perhaps halfway to Muxia, the ongoing storm worsens. The wind is bending the treetops parallel to the ground and stripping bark; the rumbling howl of it is turbine-like and terrifying. Never before have I walked in the midst of something even remotely similar. In all of this there is a fear, not of death or injury, but of the message I know I’m being sent about my relationship with the very act of pilgrimage, a full-circle message in every sense.
Finally, I arrive in Muxia soaked and exhausted and a little angry, the day’s walk and this October trek now finished, though pilgrimage is, of course, unending. Too tired even to eat, I get clean and dry, then fall into a defeated sleep.
Dawn’s light bleeds through the windows, a brighter light than I’ve seen in days. The wind has laid down, now a mere breeze, and the rain has paused. The world has stopped yelling. I’m spending the day here before returning to Santiago by bus tomorrow for the first of two flights home. After breakfast, I walk to the northern tip of the peninsula that is the town of Muxia. Reconciliation awaits.
I’ve settled into a nook among the boulders and ledges that make up the land here. The great Atlantic pounds ashore, the winds at the point noticeable but not overwhelming. I allow the sight and sound of it all to soak me through. The upheaval of yesterday’s walk melts into peace and a clarity of thought reminiscent of the mountains’ quieter moments. Through the choir of salt air, the eternal sea, its thundering waves, and the echo of every wayfarer who ever ended their pilgrimage in this place, I hear but one word spoken: goodbye.
There is a sculpture here commemorating an epic environmental disaster that occurred in 2002, an oil leak that wreaked devastation upon virtually the entire Atlantic coast of Spain. Named The Wound, it is composed of two large stone monoliths placed close together, the space between them seen as a jagged crack, open at the top. Certainly, it is the crack to which the attention is drawn, but for me there is something else.
I see two paths rising from the ground, a branching, and, for now at least, a departure. The alchemy of penitence has delivered a grace-filled goodbye to the idea of repeating the Camino, a dissolving of the external journey. In the end, it was always but a reflection—miraculous and luminous, but, still, a reflection.
Moving now into my final chapters, I’m ready to close out seven decades of living. Possessed of good health, optimism, and a rich, vibrant interior life, there is great promise ahead. Alchemy rendered, I am new. Grace delivered, I am returned.
I rise from my nook in the rocks and make the turn for home as any pilgrim should.
Stephen Drew lives in a bucolic lakeside community in northwestern Connecticut. In addition to Around the Forever Bend, he also authored the memoir Into the Thin, A Pilgrimage Walk Across Northern Spain which was his first published work. Stephen practices a minimalist lifestyle which includes daily walking, mostly on the roads and paths near his home. Hiking there and elsewhere serves as a centerpiece of contemplative living and an ongoing awareness of Being. Visit him at: authorstephendrew.com