The Call to Santiago

I’m told you’ll know when it’s time to go to Santiago because you won’t be able to get away from the idea of going…it will assault you from all sides making it almost impossibile NOT to go. Pilgrimages work that way. We don’t choose to go; the pilgrimage chooses us and pesters us until we succumb. I do think that I am on the brink of succumbing to the call to Santiago.

My first call did not feel like a call at all, but more like an ordinary suggestion of a hiking possibility. I was hiking along the old Spoleto-Norcia train tracks with Adriana when she mentioned her ambition to hike the 800 kilometer trekking path that winds up in Santiago, Spain. She’d always wanted to do it, but time and circumstance had never conspired to open up the right window. It would take a month, at least, and she would have to abandon her work as a realtor for the entire month and so would have to have some kind of boon beforehand that would pay the bills during and beyond the excursion. But maybe somehow all the Intrek hikers could aim to go on a certain date and work toward going, save up for it. That's what we'd do, we both agreed, not really imagining that we could.

I had in mind, as she spoke about the trek to Santiago, that it was the European equivalent to hiking the Appalachian trail: something that looms as the ultimate hiking adventure , one that the average weekend trekker often speaks of doing, but rarely does--yet the possibility comes to mind perennially to inspire and goad on: one never knows when quotidian walking might lead to one's true passion as adventure trekker. Perhaps we'd think about going to Santiago and instead wind up doing the Franciscan Peace Path. Now that was an idea--a trek near enough to home that we could certainly put it first on the Fall agenda.

But the week following my discussion with Adriana about the trek to Santiago, I found myself having dinner at Iolida and Paolo's with a woman named Giovanna whom Iolida introduced as “the woman who just got back from Santiago.” Iolida and Paolo are anti-church and not too enthused about any church-based traditions, so again the idea of Santiago was presented to me as just a hike, though I could tell by Giovanna’s irrepressible joy and eagerness to express the inexpressible that Santiago had been life-changing for her, but perhaps life-changing in the way the Appalachian trail can also be life changing by virtue of one's simply having had the stamina to accomplish it. Adriana was also present at the dinner with Giovanna and we both said in mysterious unison: “Oh, wow, we were just talking about hiking to Santiago...!” in response to which synchronicity, Giovanna's eyes went filmy with a kind of knowing. “Ah, you’ll go. You’ll see. Things will keep happening until you find yourself there.”

I had wanted to speak to Giovanna more about her experience but could tell that Paolo was wary of what might amount to religious zeal in Giovanna’s enthusiasm; the dinner conversation quickly changed to something else. I could not count on ever seeing Giovanna again as she was in town only briefly to visit her mother, Iolida and Paolo's next door neighbor. Because I dismissed the possibility of seeing Giovanna again along with dismissing the possibility of hiking 800 kilometers with three dogs and enough kibble in my backpack to last a month (2 enormous 6 kilogram sacks, I calculated) it seemed a small miracle to discover Giovanna a few afternoons later, in Perugia, waiting for the same train to Spoleto I was waiting for, standing by the binario alone with haloes flashing around her as though she were my own personal angel sent to urge me on. The clearing to sit together the hour duration of the trip was an obvious invitation to talk more about Santiago. There was nothing else we seemed to share; nothing else that came to mind.

For the journey one traditionally takes nothing but a walking stick and a conch shell tied around one's neck, the conch shell a kind of mess-kit to collect offerings of food and drink along the way. This is a “lilies of the field/take nothing for the journey” pilgrimage, the kind of initiation rite one finds in all religions--Native American medicine walk, let's say, though Christianity has its share. One entrusts oneself entirely to what happens; entrusts oneself to the breath of Spirit; entrusts oneself to God and enters a different state of consciousness in which everything is mytical. The people one meets are indeed angels, the serendipitous discoveries, the meals, the places to stay that arise as one wends one’s way along the path--all arrive precisely when you need to find them and are outright gifts. But ultimately the thing each pilgrim discovers and the transformation that happens between the first weary week and the final triumphant one are impossible to describe. I'd have to trust Giovanna on this--the trek was calling and I would find myself swept along by circumstance until indeed, even I would do it, though perhaps without dogs.

Friday Daniela and Zia Paola and I were doing our Giri della Rocca with all seven dogs when suddenly Paola was approached by a squat, friendly-looking man talking on a cell-phone. His face was a-dazzle with grins and glistening eyes. He waved at Paola to come talk to whomever he was talking to on the phone and we all stopped to eavesdrop on Paola's trilling and cooing while the man explained that his daughter was calling from the road to Santiago; she'd made it halfway. Some kind of aperture opened inside me as I watched Paola natter on--a rush of wonder as I thought about the likelihood of my walking along with Daniela and the dogs in Spoleto, and someone arriving with a cell-phone connection to Santiago: Talk about a call! A literal call from Santiago and here I was privy to it. Paola later explained that she had been the one to encourage the girl to make the pilgrimage. She'd been borderline anorexic after the break up with a boyfriend and clearly needed a change of scene, a change of heart. Paola's sister Carla, the doctor, had done the trek--the right way! With the walking stick, the conch around her neck. You could hear it in the girl's voice, Paola assured us all--she was in the presence of miracles, her spirit quickening, her heart alive. She had wanted to thank Paola for urging her to go and--how wondrous-- her father had run into Paola while talking to her on the phone. To think: the girl was calling from the road to Santiago!

That night I was again at Iolida and Paolo’s for dinner. I had ridden my bicycle from Spoleto to Campello, a feat that continues to amuse my friends--Cinzia "la Ciclista." Paolo remarked that in clearing out his office he’d found some maps of bike trails for me. He got up from the table to gather up the maps and brought back a bundle of them; I’m sure he had not studied them closely. I'm sure he was not aware that the map on the top of the stack was a map of bike routes to Santiago.

“You can bike your way to Santiago if you want to expedite the journey,” Zia Paola confirmed the next morning during giri, “but a pilgrimage is meant to be taken one step after another, by foot, with a walking stick and a conch around your neck."

I do want to believe I am heading to Santiago. I need to finish translating San Giuseppe first, need to save enough money to leave the dogs with Raffaela in Cannara. It's too hot to walk that far in August anyway. I keep thinking maybe October, but of course I have to teach or at least I think I have to teach--given school starts in September and doesn't end until December. But what do I know about the way miracles happen? If I'm supposed to go, I'll go. Giovanna assures me that, when its time, the way to go will arise and I will know.

Does anyone know where I can find a conch shell in land-locked Umbria?