Chapter 9
Joy Among Strangers
“Where are you from?”
It was often the first question.
Not what I did for a living.
Not what I had achieved.
Not why I was walking.
Only where I came from, where I had started walking, and how far I was going that day.
On the Way, that was enough.
Two people could sit down beside each other by the roadside, share a little water, and know almost nothing about one another. Yet the conversation could be real.
When we got up, we said:
“Buen Camino.”
Then we walked on, often never to meet again.
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My pocket was empty after the Iron Cross.
I had carried the stone from the garden for almost three weeks and given it a task. Once I had put it down, the pack weighed about the same as before. My feet still had to walk, and my body still needed food, water, and sleep.
Yet something had been freed.
My hand no longer searched for the stone. My attention was freer to turn outward.
That does not mean I had walked alone until then. People had helped me from the first day of the journey. I had shared rooms, tables, roads, and conversations with strangers. Some of them have already found a place in this story.
But for a long time I had been preoccupied with my own task.
I was going to find stillness.
I was going to endure.
I was going to understand why I was there.
I was going to arrive.
The encounters could therefore feel like things that happened alongside the walk. Only later did I understand that they were not alongside it.
They were the Way.
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The day before the Iron Cross, I came to Rabanal del Camino.
I sat down beneath a tree in front of the church and waited for the hostel to open. Gradually there were about twenty of us in the queue. We had come from different places, at different speeds, and with different reasons for walking. At that moment, however, we all wanted the same thing:
A bed for the night.
When the door opened, we were welcomed by an English couple. They were serving as hosts on behalf of the community that ran the hostel. They made us feel that we had not simply been given an available bed, but that we had been expected.
In the evening they ate with us outside in the garden.
The woman had baked a large cake.
It was not a grand gesture. A meal, a garden, and a slice of cake. Yet it was precisely such things that gradually came to matter most. We were tired and dusty. Some had sore feet. Others had walked alone all day. Around the table, no one had to achieve anything.
We were allowed to eat.
We were allowed to sit.
We were allowed to be guests.
The hosts did not charge us. Each person could put whatever they could afford into a box. I put five euros in it.
The gift could not be settled.
I could contribute so that another pilgrim might receive the same welcome, but I could not pay my way out of the kindness. It had already been given.
◆
I had encountered this earlier on the journey.
In Viana, a French nurse had tended my infected foot. When I asked what I owed her for the help, she replied that she did it out of love, not for money.
The word confused me.
She did not know me.
I had understood that the evening was special. I wrote that the pilgrimage must also be a journey of love.
But the next morning I walked on against the nurse’s advice.
I had accepted the care without fully allowing it to change me.
First my body had to stop me. First the high plain had to teach me to remain. First I had to open my hand at the Iron Cross.
Then the earlier encounters could return with a different meaning.
The love the nurse spoke of was not a feeling she had to have for me. It was an action. She saw a foot that needed tending, and she tended it.
Perhaps it did not need to be more mysterious than that.
◆
On the final stretches there were more pilgrims on the Way.
Many had started closer to Santiago. Some were going to walk the last hundred or hundred and fifty kilometres. They entered the pilgrimage at a point where the destination could already be felt. The towns and hostels were fuller. There was more laughter in the groups and more attention to how many kilometres remained.
They had not walked through my first weeks.
They did not know the struggle to find stillness or the long days on the high plain.
They had not asked their shadow why they were there.
But their joy was no less real for that.
I could once again have made length the measure. I could have thought my pilgrimage more authentic because I had walked from Saint-Jean. The Way had already taught me how narrow such a thought is.
A person can meet the same Way at a different point.
Some meet joy first.
Others have to pass through silence and obedience before they become receptive to it.
Neither gives anyone ownership of the Camino.
◆
Nor was everyone happy during the final week.
In Triacastela I shared a room with a Dutch family—a man who, after ten years of walking the Camino in stages, was finally able to walk the last stretch with his wife and daughter. For him it was the fulfilment of a dream. For them it had become an ordeal, and in Sarria I found his wife in tears while the man sat alone with a cup of coffee, still turned toward the goal. The advice I gave was simple: let his wife and daughter set their own pace. It was enough.
I took a cup of coffee out into the garden.
The joy did not lie in having given wise advice. It lay in the fact that they had begun to see one another again.
One person’s joy can become another person’s burden when the goal becomes more important than the one walking beside us.
Community does not mean forcing everyone into the same rhythm.
It means allowing the other person’s steps to matter.
◆
The next morning I met a young man from Japan outside the guesthouse.
He asked whether we could walk together through the forest. He was afraid of the loose dogs along the Way. I had a staff, and it felt safer to be two rather than one.
We walked together for a couple of hours.
He was studying economics in Madrid and was the first in his family to attend university. His father wanted him to return home and take over the family’s small shop. The young man had dreams of his own, but also great respect for his father.
I listened as we walked.
We did not arrive at a solution. I did not know his family, the life he came from, or the life awaiting him. I could not tell him which path was the right one.
But he could say it aloud to a stranger.
Perhaps it was easier precisely because we were not going to share a future. We did not have to protect a relationship or defend earlier choices. The path ahead received the words, and our steps gave the conversation pauses.
When the forest opened, we said goodbye.
He walked faster than I did and disappeared.
I do not know what he chose.
Yet the conversation has stayed with me. It made me think about my own children and how easily a parent’s love can become expectations the children have to carry.
An encounter does not have to last long in order to continue.
Later I thought of Gadamer. A genuine conversation cannot be fully directed by either party; it can lead those taking part somewhere neither could have foreseen in advance. The conversation with the young man had no conclusion, but it continued to work in me.
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Toward the end of the journey, the brief conversations began more easily.
When I sat down to rest, someone else would often come and sit beside me. We asked where the other came from. We compared feet, distances, and hostels. Some said why they were walking. Others did not.
A particular kind of intimacy arose.
We knew we would soon part. That did not make the encounter superficial. On the contrary, it could make the words freer. No one was going to carry them onward into our everyday lives. We carried them for a while and gave them back to the Way.
I remember many faces without remembering names.
The older Dane who sat on the edge of the bed and said that good humour was vital, because otherwise you became sour.
The young German who had lost his job, his marriage, and his sense of direction, but who knew every morning where the path went.
The man from Canada who told me that the journey had begun before I myself understood it.
Some people were with me for several hours.
Others said only “Buen Camino.”
The greeting came to mean more as time went on.
It did not merely say: Have a good walk.
It said: I see that you are walking.
◆
In Palas do Rei I shared a room with nine others.
A woman from Poland said she was tired and felt unwell. I put my hand on her forehead and felt that she had a high fever. She was reluctant to make a fuss, but let me go to reception.
They called a doctor.
It took a few hours before he arrived. While we waited, she grew weaker. I asked whether she had been bitten by mosquitoes, because I had seen other pilgrims react badly to them. She showed me the bites on her arm.
The doctor examined her and said she had suffered an allergic reaction. It was important that treatment came quickly. She was given medication. The fever fell, and she slept deeply for the rest of the night.
She snored loudly.
The next morning she was ready to walk on.
I had not planned to help her. Nor did I have any particular role in the room. I was simply the person who was there and understood that something had to be done.
Earlier on the journey, the nurse in Viana had put her hands around my injured foot.
Now I put my hand on a stranger’s forehead.
Care had changed direction.
What I had received could not be repaid to the same woman. But it could be passed on.
Perhaps that is how a community of strangers works. No one keeps accounts of who owes whom. The person who can help today does so. Tomorrow the roles may be reversed.
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The next day I walked through mist and forest.
There were many people on the path. Whenever I sat down, someone would come over and want to know where I came from. I crossed old stone bridges and passed through villages that still bore traces of the pilgrims who had walked there before us.
In one forest there were baskets of raspberries. You could put one euro in a jar and help yourself.
I bought a basket and ate the berries as I walked among the eucalyptus trees.
Forty-three kilometres remained to Santiago.
Later I came to Ribadiso da Baixo. The hostel lay beside a stream and consisted of old stone buildings that had once been a hospital for pilgrims. Two young people sat on a step with their legs dangling toward the water.
The place was already full of life.
I had to wait outside with a large group hoping for a bed. A group of young Spanish men gathered around me and wanted to know where I came from, how far I had walked, and what I had experienced.
After four weeks I had a beard and perhaps looked older than I felt. Their attention amused me. I had walked for a long time alone with my shadow. Now I was standing in the middle of a group who wanted to listen.
I got a bed, showered, and bought dinner.
As evening came, people gathered by the stream.
Some had a guitar.
Others had wine and beer.
Some went swimming.
Some sang and danced.
Young and old were drawn into the same celebration. The languages were different, but the song did not always need translating. No one asked who had walked farthest or who had the right reason for being there.
We were there.
That was enough.
◆
The joy at Ribadiso was not quiet.
It had guitar, laughter, and voices far into the night. It was different from the stillness I had sought during the first week. Yet the two were not opposed.
Without stillness, the celebration might have been only noise.
Without obedience, I might have stood outside and watched the others.
Now I was able to join in.
Joy was not the reward for having completed the first weeks in the right way. Nor was it proof that pain and doubt were over. My feet were still sore. My body was tired. Some of the people around me were surely carrying grief, illness, and unease.
But joy did not require everything else to disappear.
There was room for it in the midst of what remained unfinished.
I had thought joy would come because I was nearing the goal. It did, too. The distance to Santiago could be counted in ever smaller numbers. But the deepest joy did not come from the countdown.
It came from taking part.
From being offered a slice of cake in Rabanal.
From a conversation through the forest.
From a hand on a feverish forehead.
From raspberries along the Way.
From people singing together without sharing a common past.
◆
When I later reread Kierkegaard’s discourses on the lily and the bird, I recognised this joy.
Not as a lasting feeling of happiness.
Not as a victory over what was difficult.
The lily and the bird receive the day. Their joy does not lie in having secured tomorrow, but in being present in what is given now.
On the Way, this became concrete.
One person held out bread.
Another poured wine.
Someone made room on the bench.
Someone listened.
Someone said “Buen Camino” and walked on.
I could not possess these moments. I could only receive them while they were there.
Perhaps that was why they had such power.
They demanded no continuation.
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I have since wondered why encounters between strangers can become so open.
At home, we often meet one another through roles. We know who is the professor, the student, the social worker, the neighbour, the parent, or the friend. Roles create order, but they also carry expectations.
On the Camino, much of this was left outside the conversation.
We were people with packs.
We needed water.
Something hurt.
We were looking for a bed.
That did not make us the same. Our stories, opportunities, and burdens were different. But our needs were visible, and help could be simple.
A glass of water.
A bandage.
Advice about the Way.
A place at the table.
Perhaps that is why I remember so many faces I cannot name. They met me before the explanation. I met them in the same way.
We did not have to know everything in order to matter to one another.
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The morning after the celebration in Ribadiso, we packed our rucksacks.
The guitar was silent. The bottles had been cleared away. Some were still asleep, while others had already begun to walk.
The community of the evening was not going to be organised or preserved. We formed no association. Most of us did not exchange addresses. Some would meet again later on the Way. Others were already gone.
Yet the celebration had been real.
What is brief is not the same as what is meaningless.
I had begun the walk as a man with a plan, a dissertation behind him, and a stone in his pocket. I had thought that the task was, above all, to be solved alone.
Now I knew that no one walks the Way alone, even when no one is walking beside them.
Someone has tended the foot.
Someone has baked the cake.
Someone has listened in the forest.
Someone has fetched the doctor.
Someone has sung through the night.
At sunrise, the community dissolved as quickly as it had arisen.
The joy was no less real for that.
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