The grateful pilgrim writes:

We arrived in Santiago de Compostela yesterday around noon. The walk seemed to end quickly--one minute we were gazing raptly down on the city from Monte de Gozo, the next minute we were striding into the vast square in front of Santiago cathedral and Carlos was embracing his wife Ana. And then, right after that, we presented our pilgrim´s passports--stamped in churches and pilgrims´hostels in every stop along the way from St. Jean Pied-de-Port, on the French side of the Pyrenees, to Arco do Pino, thirty-one days of stamps!--on the second floor of a church office and in turn received our Compostela, the official certicate of completion of the walk.

I was happy to have finally arrived, yes; but I also felt a little confused and melancholy, too, knowing that I´d come to the end of something important in my life, but not feeling quite sure of what it was, because, at least at the moment, it seemed still beyond my grasp.

We went to a pilgrims´mass today in Santiago Cathedral. It was packed--I saw Jan, the young Czech, and Ilson, the Brazilian, and Antonio, the lawyer from Saragossa, all met along the Camino. An American bishop from Tyler, Texas, officiated. I was finally able to say, Here I am. I´ve arrived. Thank you for my life and the people I´ve known and loved.

At the end of the service, they lit incense in a giant silver censer, which was attached to a thick rope from the cathedral ceiling. Then they swung the censer back and forth across the nave in an ever-widening arc. The censer is so massy that of course I worried that it would break loose and crash to the floor like some ecclestical Sputnik, but the censer swung safely in its giddy, astonishing, finally joyous arc.
- David Beaty

Photo: Carlos (left) and David

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Pilgrim's progress:

We're almost there. We've walked 724 kms in 30 days and we should arrive in Santiago tomorrow sometime just after noon.

At the moment we're in a town called Arco do Pino, watching football on television in a bar. It's too late and too hot to travel the final 19 kms to Santiago today. The bar is packed with football fans, Portugal is playing the Czech Republic.

The weather has been bright and sunny, so these days we start early in the mornings and finish in the early afternoons. I'm waiting until I actually arrive in Santiago before I try to comment on the meaning of the trip. I'm glad I've done it. I'd recommend it to others, but I wouldn't do it again, or so I think at the moment.

Carlos has been a great traveling companion, and I have a lot to thank him for. His wife Ana will be in Santiago to meet us tomorrow. Tonight we'll have supper with Antonio, a friend from Saragossa we met along the way, and then to bed by ten oclock, so we can be up bright and early. I'm walking slowly because of problems with my right foot. Also, I'm generally tired. I look with longing whenever a bus or a taxi speeds by, but so far I've resisted the temptation.

- David Beaty

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A pilgrim's progress:

As of today we´ve walked for more than three weeks and 560 kms. If all goes well we´ll arrive in Santiago eight days from now.

My feet are wrecks. I am, of course, no exception. An obsessive topic of conversation among fellow pilgrims is blisters, and what to do about them(the only solution: stop walking).

I´m in a town called Villafranca Del Bierzo; we´re still in Castilla and Leon, but about to cross into Galicia. Tomorrow we face the last big challenge of this walk: a climb straight up (it´s called The Ramp)into the hills, to a town called El Cebreiro. I look forward to this part of the walk being over.

Today we visited a church in this town dedicated to Santiago. In the middle ages, pilgrims too sick to travel on to Santiago, if they passed through the west doors of this church, would be absolved of their sins - or so the story goes. Today, the west doors of this church were shut and locked, so my hopes of limping through them on my blistered feet came to nothing. Now I´ll have to soldier on to Santiago.
- David Beaty

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The latest dispatch from David:

Tomorrow we will have been walking for fourteen days, covering over three hundred kilometers. I´ve only had time to think about the present moment. I presume that in the middle ages the very real presence of death on the Camino from disease, natural calamities and brigands lifted one´s mind now and then from blisters, heat, cold, and mud.

The best, the very best day on the trip so far happened a few days ago. We left Belorado at eight and began climbing a muddy trail under a low, grey, rain-heavy sky. At Villa Franca Montes de Oca we stopped for ham sandwiches and coffee at a little bar - a giant white dog playing with its puppy outside - and then started to climb a road that was in turns muddy and sandy, but always quite steep. It began to rain, a hard, cold rain with plenty of wind behind it. I was soon drenched from my boots to my shorts -the rest was adequately protected, for a while at least, and then the rain began to seep in everywhere. The world became very small, very wet. At a lull in the rain I stepped over to the side of the road and prepared to urinate, at which point three all-terrain vehicles with mud-spattered men driving and mud-spattered women on the back roared out of the storm and passed in review as I stood there with my mouth open and my hands fumbling with my rain gear.

I didn´t realize that the rain had stopped until I heard a cuckoo. The sky lightened, the air grew warmer, and we began our descent. We saw red-tiled roofs and a church tower. The sun came out, and below us lay a landscape whose colors had been washed clean by the storm. Every color seemed unbelievably fresh--the green of the fields, the blue of the sky, even the mud of the road. I felt like I was being given a reward for having endured such a storm.

And so we came to the tiny hamlet of San Juan De Ortega (pop. 22), named after the 12th century saint who´s buried in the church, which he founded. He was made a saint for his work on behalf of pilgrims going to Santiago. He founded hospices and hospitals for them along the Camino, and built bridges and roads.

We ate supper in a small restaurant, delicious morcilla de Burgos (blood sausage) and salad and asparagus, and drank a bottle of the local red. After that, at eight o´clock, we decided to attend a mass for the former priest of the church, who died last year, and was famous for his help for pilgrims on the Camino, and for the free garlic soup which he offered to all pilgrims who came to the church.

The church is one of the most beautiful examples of twelfth-century architecture that I´ve seen, open, full of light, yet powerful in its allusions to the military architecture of its day. I´m not Catholic, but I was glad to be at that mass in that church, cold as it was inside, commemorating such a man, and at one point, as I stood watching the service unfold, a thought drifted through my mind, curiously light, not startling or life-changing, but a certainty: I´ve been here before.

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A good day for hearing from far-flung friends. David writes from the north of Spain:

I´m in Santo Domingo de la Calzada tonight. It´s a hilltop town in Navarra with a beautiful medieval cathedral. So far we have walked 214 kilometers since we began in France eight days ago. It may not seem like much to you, but I have never walked so far in my life. I´m so under the discipline of this life that it´s hard to think of anything other than what I have to do next to continue.

I love what I´m doing, and love the countryside through which we´re walking, but I have to concentrate hard on the next step, the next kilometer, the next sip of water.

Remember mud? I hadn´t thought about it for years, and now I think about it every day. Mud is a part of my life on the walk to Santiago de Compostela. It´s a part of my clothes. It´s everywhere I go on the steep hilly trails of Navarra. Mud is powerful, too. One slip in the mud and I could twist an ankle.

A German woman has brought her pet ferret on pilgrimage with her. The other day I watched her take it for a walk around the main square of Los Arcos. Her progress around the square was slow; the ferret seemed to creep rather than walk. I couldn´t keep my eyes off it.

Two men on horseback passed us the other day, superb riders sitting high on superb horses, while we toiled in the mud. I saw why a man on horseback has always been such a powerful image, especially to those who have to go on foot.

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Just got an e-mail from my friend David in Spain:

Soon after my sixtieth birthday, I decided I should go on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. I can´t explain the decision--I´m not a religious person--other than to say I suddenly wanted to give expression to a feeling of gratitude for having been allowed to live for so long, and an inner voice said, "Better do it now."

So it was that on the late afternoon of May 9th, I met my friend Carlos near Gate 45 at JFK airport. We were both dressed in our hiking outfits; I was carrying a black overnight bag, Carlos a small paper bag containing two pieces of cake.

"Today´s my birthday," he said. He held up the paper bag. "My daughter made some cake."

We got coffees at Starbuck´s and sat at a counter. Carlos produced the cake, two paper plates, and two white plastic forks. He explained that today was a propitious day for him to travel. He had just turned 54, and we were leaving from Gate 45. "Four plus five equals nine," he said. "And today´s the 9th of May."

Outside, it was raining. I worried that my knapsack was too heavy. But, surely, I could share in Carlos´s good luck?

Takeoff was delayed. Our plane took its place in a line that inched forward in the rain. Television minitors bolted to the ceiling showed us our situation. We were more than 3,500 miles from our destination. Our altitude was six feet. Our speed was one mile an hour.

Perhaps to cheer us up, the airline showed a clip from the Dave Letterman show. Two college kids came onto the set with an overnight bag not much bigger than the one I was carrying. The kids exchanged humorous banter with Dave. Then, one of the kids, of course the taller one, squeezed himself into the overnight bag. His friend zipped the bag shut, and then, to great applause, lugged the overnight bag off the set. Dave smiled and clapped. He said, "Now they´ll only need one ticket to go on vacation."

I´ve begun the walk. The trek over the Pyrenees from France to Spain and the monastery of Roncevalles was beautiful and very, very difficult for me. It was easier for Carlos, and small groups of middle-aged women kept passing me on the slopes. I paid them no mind. All I was thinking about was the next sip of water and calling a taxi.

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