{"id":335,"date":"2020-06-23T11:54:45","date_gmt":"2020-06-23T11:54:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/akanisi.me\/ro\/?p=335"},"modified":"2024-11-22T16:28:53","modified_gmt":"2024-11-22T16:28:53","slug":"a-lonely-beginning-on-the-camino","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/akanisi.me\/en\/a-lonely-beginning-on-the-camino\/","title":{"rendered":"A lonely beginning on the Camino"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

When I first heard about the pilgrimage to Compostela, it was from a friend of mine who had recently been there. We talked a lot about the pros and cons of traveling solo. It certainly seemed like a better alternative than homebound solitude, but I was still afraid of the trouble and discomfort I might expose myself to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know exactly what you need. A pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela,\u201d my interlocutor replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was disconcerted. On the face of it, his advice sounded to me like a sort of \u201cGet thee to a nunnery, Ophelia!\u201d I don\u2019t think I fully understood what he meant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can go safely by yourself. Everything is well organized, don\u2019t worry,\u201d he continued, eager to reassure me. \u201cBesides, you will have the chance to meet like-minded people. You won\u2019t be lonely unless you want to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps a pilgrimage was indeed a safe travel option for a single woman, as he argued\u2026 but where was the fun in that? The distance was downright intimidating\u2014the total length of the route, which starts in France and ends on the Atlantic coast of Spain, is almost five hundred miles. True, it is customary for the pilgrims to set out wherever they want and go as far as they can. But even so, what would be the point of doing nothing but walking for days in a row?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is how I became curious about the pilgrimage to Compostela, the famous Camino de Santiago leading to the resting place of Saint James the Apostle. Fortunately, the internet provided a wealth of information in this respect. There were detailed descriptions for each and every part of the route, together with explanatory photos and videos, as well as accommodation suggestions with useful comments and ratings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Milestone on the Camino with the sign of the shell<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some people were going for religious motives, others to overcome loss or trauma, and others simply for sport and recreation. Many were traveling alone. Many described life-changing experiences. The more I read about it, the more I was tempted to follow their example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Courage, Ophelia. Maybe this nunnery is not such a bad idea! <\/em>I said to myself. However, such an endeavor seemed far beyond my abilities, and I had plenty of reasons to doubt myself. After all, I wasn\u2019t quite the sporty kind. I had never had a strong body. To walk more than twelve miles a day, carry my backpack all the time, sleep in shared dormitories\u2026 such a spartan approach was unlike anything I had tried before. The mountain treks I was familiar with from previous years were not comparable in terms of effort. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there was also another reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the not-too-distant past, I had been infected with Lyme disease from a tick bite. I had struggled with the symptoms for a long time\u2014first with bouts of fever and then with lower back pain\u2014while trying various combinations of antibiotics to no avail. As the disease progressed unhindered, I contemplated the possibility that the treatment would eventually fail. Had the trend continued, the prospects were daunting. An acquaintance of mine had been infected with the same parasite and was no longer able to walk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt could be that the bacteria that caused the disease is resistant to antibiotics,\u201d my doctor had told me. \u201cThis happens sometimes when the tick comes from a farm animal and not from its usual host, the wild deer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had reached a point where I was seriously thinking that I might end up incapacitated. The pain was almost permanent, and I could barely stand. The side effects of the medication were becoming unbearable, so I had to pause the treatment, and there were no other remedies in sight. After nearly a year of suffering without signs of improvement, I was on the brink of despair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was deeply terrified at the thought of spending the rest of my life in that miserable state, getting worse by the day. Perhaps that was the reason why, right when I was about to lose all hope, something suddenly and mysteriously awakened in me. With the last remnants of its strength, my body somehow defeated the infection. I have no idea how it did it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the symptoms were gone, I considered myself cured, although I was still struggling with some of the aftereffects. And I felt an irresistible urge to take up the challenge. I had come out of my convalescence with a promise to myself that I would make full use of my mobility should I be lucky enough not to lose it. The Camino seemed like the perfect opportunity not only to test my new boundaries but also to work my way back to normality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To accomplish this, I had to overcome a plethora of doubts and fears. I was convinced that if I failed to get rid of them, they would imprison me forever. And I couldn\u2019t bear the thought of giving up before I even tried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, without pondering too much the possible impediments, I gathered my courage, booked my plane tickets to Madrid, and started packing for the Camino.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I had read that people trained for the Camino months in advance, which was said to be a must in order to cope with the effort. As far as I was concerned, though, I didn\u2019t even dare to test my endurance before leaving, to avoid being discouraged too early. The fact that I was able to stand on my feet and lift a bottle of water was already a hard-earned victory. I could only leave the rest to fate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After all, I\u2019m here for the experience<\/em>, I kept telling myself. I\u2019ll walk as much as I can.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was aware that I might not get very far in such a poor condition. Yet, for reasons that I could not explain, I stubbornly hoped that physical shape wasn\u2019t an absolute prerequisite for my journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The backpack was bound to be one of my biggest challenges, mainly because of the damage that Lyme disease had done to my spinal nerves. After countless attempts, I had managed to keep its weight under fourteen pounds. I wasn\u2019t sure I could carry that much either, but a more minimalist baggage would have been almost inconceivable. I only had two sets of clothes: one to wear and one to carry\u2014which I washed in rotation every evening and hung on my backpack to dry during the day. Good thing it was summer and the clothes were as light as they could be. The bottle of water was the heaviest, followed by the medicine box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I often tried to imagine what the Camino must have been like five hundred or even a thousand years ago. I thought of all those people who defied the weather and fate, some barefoot and penniless, others crippled by sickness or old age, struggling to reach Santiago in the hope of healing and forgiveness. I was sure that many of them, beyond ignorance or superstition, were driven by profound beliefs and motivations. Otherwise, they wouldn\u2019t have had the strength to get that far. I thought of the pains that they had to bear, the wounds they patched up as they went, the squalid conditions in which they ate and slept\u2026 and I shuddered. Some old cemeteries for pilgrims were still there, reminding us of how cheap life was in medieval times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compared to them, I felt like an intruder, barely dragging my feet over a fifth of the total route. But the thought of following in their footsteps somehow gave me courage. I felt as if someone had told me, as the song says, that I would be marching with the saints: Oh, when the saints go marchin\u2019 in…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I first heard about the pilgrimage to Compostela, it was from a friend of mine who had recently been there. We talked a lot about the pros and cons of traveling solo. It certainly seemed like a better alternative than homebound solitude, but I was still afraid of the trouble and discomfort I might expose myself to. “I know…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":627,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[29,17],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/akanisi.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/akanisi.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/akanisi.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akanisi.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akanisi.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/akanisi.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1386,"href":"https:\/\/akanisi.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions\/1386"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akanisi.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/akanisi.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akanisi.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akanisi.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}