I shrugged off my backpack and sat on a nearby bench, drawing in a long breath before taking in my surroundings. The slope I had just climbed was framed with conifers, which followed the path all the way down to the base of the mountain, giving way to the expansive pastures where cows grazed, clanking the enormous bells that hung around their necks. Having just emerged from the silence of the countryside, I was now enveloped by a cacophony of voices, chattering along excitedly in German, French, Spanish, Korean and English. Some sipped tea, others smoked cigarettes, but each seemed united in the fact that they were cherishing this brief break in the morning sunlight before attacking the mountain once more.
I loosened the laces on my hiking boots and wrestled them off my feet, laughing to myself as a thick steam escaped from the tops of them. As I rummaged around in my backpack, trying to find my map, I mentally calculated how much farther I had to walk. “Well I’ve been walking straight uphill for basically three hours,” I reasoned. “I must be at least halfway there.”
That morning I was beginning the Camino de Santiago, a trail that, each year, leads thousands of pilgrims from southern France into the Pyrenees, through northern Spain towards the end point, Santiago de Compostela: roughly 800km away from where I now sat.
The evening before I had boarded a train in Bayonne, France, which had slowly made its way to St. Jean Pied-du-Port, the traditional start point of the “French Way” of the Camino. The train had snaked southward through lush valleys and quaint villages, passing by fly fishermen on placid rivers and past ancient monasteries perched on jagged mountains. On that small train I had sat beside an Englishman named Jim, who was beginning his second trek onto the Camino, and across from Jorge, a Frenchman born to Spanish parents who had fled Spain during the Civil War in the 1930s. However, I would not meet either of them until days later, and none of us made eye contact or spoke a word to each other for the entire three-hour journey to St. Jean.
And so, after a good night’s sleep at Maison Itzalpea in St-Jean, I had trudged out of the village in the early morning sunlight, taking my first steps of a journey that would extend about 475km on foot, taking the better part of May to complete. A mere forty-eight hours prior, I had vacated what had been my home for three months in Arras, and now I found myself 1000km south, climbing a slope into the Pyrenees Mountains. Having finally fished my map out of my bag, I realized that I was nowhere near halfway to the first stop of my pilgrimage. In fact, now sitting in Orison, France, I was barely a third of the way to my destination for the day.
Looking back on it now, I am very thankful that I was as fresh and ambitious as I was that first day. Surprisingly, for that time of day, I was also in a tremendously good mood. Those 28 or so kilometers between St. Jean and Roncesvalles, Spain, contain the roughest terrain of the whole Camino, guiding pilgrims through mountain passes for most of the trek, and then sharply dropping off on the other side. My mood and general exuberance carried me most of the day, buoyed by the pastoral beauty of the cattle and horses grazing on the rolling hills and the spectacular views from mountainside vistas.
Of course, my mood couldn’t do all the work. My body bore the stress of the steep inclines and would later feel the punishment of the constant drag and pull of my heavy backpack as I trodded over the kilometers. The enthusiasm I felt that morning reminded me of many other instances in my life where I had taken on a new challenge or headed down a new proverbial path. Many times I have undertaken new commitments to growth in many facets of my life, be they relational, physical, academic, intellectual, spiritual, etc., and often I face these tasks with a new outlook, attitude and ambition. Overtime, however, that novelty wears off. Blisters form in relationships. Excessive ambition gives way to lethargy and avoidance. People irritate me with their quirks and I allow my attitude or temperament to change. Negativity oh-so gradually slips in, growing without me noticing, all the while bringing me further and further from where I want and need to be.
This type of gradual slippery slope, caused by passive inaction or indifference, can only be reversed by renewed resolve to change and growth: a new commitment to take back what we have lost, step-by-step. Only this time, we have to fight and claw just to get back to our starting point, to override what we have become desensitized to, to lose the biases that our own passivity has allowed us to build up. Only enduring a steep, painful climb, persevering through bumps and bruises, and standing back up every time we fall will allow us to progress.
On this day, however, my literal climb is still new and fresh to me; my major challenges and bumps in the road were still far in the distance. I am astonished by the powerful winds that whip around the tops of the hills and mountains over the course of the day. I am surprised by a hillside full of daisies, (which always remind me of my Mom) this early in the spring. I am shocked when the descent from the mountain is actually much more difficult than parts of the climb. Overall, it is a day filled with new experiences and pleasant surprises. At some point during the climb, I cross the border into Spain, and as 300 or so pilgrims descend out of the mountains and invade Roncesvalles (a village with about 30 residents) I am all too happy to find a bed, to shower the stress out of my shoulders and rush peacefully into sleep. And there was evening, and there was morning. The first day.
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