By Jasmine Sykes.
Content Warning: Mention of Eating Disorder
pilgrimage—
a journey (usually of a long distance) made to a sacred place as an act of religious devotion; the action or practice of making such a journey
(Oxford English Dictionary)
5.45am and I’m awoken by the sudden fluorescent glare of a flickering halogen strip light. Momentarily forgetful of where I am, I open my eyes to the sight of a rather overweight and topless middle-aged man in his boxers, rummaging ferociously in the bottom of an enormous rucksack and rattling off a boisterous Italian monologue, between noisy mouthfuls of chocolate biscuits. “Fuck”, I think to myself, “what the hell am I doing?” Today is May 8th 2022: the day I set off to walk 900 kilometres on my own across Spain, to Santiago de Compostela, and then onwards to the Atlantic ocean- armed with two pairs of clothes and my shoes, a notebook, a camera, and a Nokia brick phone.
At that point, little did I know that such encounters would become utterly normal for me; that I would come to be completely unperturbed by nights in bunk beds on foam mattresses topped with disposable sheets, in dormitories sleeping sometimes over a hundred people; or that the thought of walking up to 37 kilometres in 40 degree heat, without a guaranteed place to stay at night, wouldn’t faze me in the slightest. I had no idea that I would meet people of all ages, from all across the world, and all walks of life, who would share with me some of the most intimate and troubling parts of their lives – and I definitely didn’t expect to share mine with them too.
I had long wanted to walk the Camino de Santiago – the ancient pilgrimage across Spain to the relics of St James in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. In part, romantic notions of wanderlust were to blame – Don Quixote inspired whims of tracing the footsteps of ancient travellers in a foreign land, subsisting on rations of stale bread and hides of mead, and sleeping under the stars. Of course, the modern Camino is nothing like that: the route is well-established and signposted, I could always find a bed for the night and I certainly never went hungry.
Yet there remains something tantalisingly beautiful in the concept of pilgrimage; something deeply and intensely human. I study philosophy – so perhaps I’m biased – but, for me, the lure of the arts and humanities has always been its capacity to capture something of a very essential mystery: that of the human condition. The sciences explain how we live, the arts explain why we continue to do so – they give us something to live for. The notion of pilgrimage is so beguiling because it captures something of that elusive, nebular, and distinctly human essence. What exactly does it mean to be human? What precisely is that glorious and wonderfully Delphic little kernel at the crux of our being that – I’d like to think; indeed I pray – distinguishes us from the rest of the natural world?
A pilgrim’s journey is not a constitutively necessary one; but it is driven by real need – spiritual need: a fundamental desire for the sacred. “A journey…made to a sacred place as an act of religious devotion”. I met very few people for whom “religious devotion” constituted anything close to the worship of ‘God’, and even fewer whose “sacred place” was in fact the relics of St James. Yet almost everyone I spoke to, walked with, ate with, laughed with, and even cried with, was bound by the same craving to transcend the immanent reality of their lives; and what is that if not deeply religious and sacred? We were all there to find our way, along The Way of St James. For myself, three years of anorexia and bottomless, pitiless, abyss-like depression had left me confused, lost, and without the slightest idea of who I was – let alone who I wanted to be. I was out the other side – luckily – but I felt so defined by my past that I was unsure how to even begin to move forward; in fact, I questioned whether it was even possible.
Crouched in the dirt at the side of a dusty track just beyond Santo Domingo, under the beating heat of the midday sun; and peeling off sweat-drenched socks to reveal my heavily blistered feet rubbed red-raw; such rarefied musings were not exactly at the forefront of my mind (which at this point was actually rather clouded by a caustic migraine over my left eye). But often physical pain is the most potent and tangible reminder of one’s existence. Several times in the previous years I had seriously questioned whether I would continue to go on at all. Yet here I was: wincing – as I probed a particularly tender blister in between my big and second toe – but alive. Remarkably, gloriously, and incandescently alive.
Six weeks and 900km after taking my first steps out of the small French town of St Jean Pied de Port, I was standing at the ‘Kilometre 0’ monument in the small fishing town of Muxía, on the north-western coast of Spain, watching the sun set over the Atlantic Ocean. The Camino finishes, officially, in Santiago, but the route is probably a Christianisation of a much older pagan pilgrimage towards the setting sun in the west, so many pilgrims choose to walk the further 100 kilometres to the ocean. I had done the same, and so, finally, I was finished. There were no bolts of lightning, no miracles, no voice of God from the sky. My “act of religious devotion” had lacked the drama of a Pauline conversion, but slowly a metamorphosis had taken place. In the beautiful monotony of putting one foot in front of the other; in the simplicity of doing the same thing each day; in the kindness of others and the generosity of their stories; I had found the “sacred place”: me. I had made the journey back to myself.