The pilgrimage, the cat and the momentary lapse of atheism

[cbayer]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/oct/05/pilgrimage-cat-atheism-camino-de-santiago?newsfeed=true

Jessica Reed
guardian.co.uk, Friday 5 October 2012 03.30 EDT


Pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago walking to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Photograph: Alamy

Here's my theory about walking pilgrimages, or any endurance feats for that matter: they take such a physical and mental toll on the participant that when bizarre thoughts start popping up in our heads, we tend to take them very seriously. Some people get a life-changing revelation. The Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho walked the Camino de Santiago trail, and was given a rather grandiose epiphany when he realised he needed to be a writer (if this was an act of God, I question His literary tastes). I have just walked the same trail, but all I got was a small betrayal of almost all my atheist principles – but more on that later.

I have just walked for two weeks through southern France to northern Spain, along the pilgrim route. There are hostels all along the route for pilgrims to sleep in dormitories, where the morning routine is soul-destroying; I'm not sure anyone could claim they liked the experience with a straight face. Here's what the daily life on the Camino looks like: light comes flooding through before 6am. Groggy and disoriented pilgrims then try to jump safely off their bunk beds without breaking their legs. Most of them will not have had more than a few hours of rest: sleep becomes a rare and precious commodity when one shares one's smelly accommodation with dozens of other people, half of them happily snoring the night away, from time to time farting in deep contentment while the rest hopelessly stare at the ceiling wide awake; I've learned way more about nocturnal bodily functions than I ever wanted to.

By the third day, I was already fantasising about strangling my neighbour in a fit of insomnia-fuelled rage. I had to remind myself that the experience was supposed to be formative: it teaches you to humbly share your living space with people you wouldn't dream of sharing your bedroom with otherwise. Besides, people had to put up with my bad moods, too.

Then comes the daily grind: a hastily eaten breakfast (toast, margarine, industrial jam), followed by eight or nine hours of gruelling trekking through the countryside. Corn fields succeed each other with no end in sight. At times, however, the beauty of the landscape takes your breath away; a short-lived sunrise over the Basque country makes the aches and pains bearable, a rural sky inundated with the brightest of stars makes the adventure worth it. Most often than not however, the pilgrim mumbles about how heavy her 20lb backpack is, and grins and bears it. Talking to total strangers who later become friends along the trail – about everything under the sun, but seldom, I have found, about religion – usually helps.

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