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OPINION: You've got male - walking the Camino Pilgrimage in Spain a lesson in humility
Pilgrims can take many routes on the Camino that lead to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, where the remains of St James are reputedly buried.
SIX hundred kilometres behind me, about 200 to go ... sometimes you find yourself walking without another living thing discernible for as far as the eye can see.
It's when you are by yourself, in the heat or the rain, feet aching in the wheat fields of the Meseta or trudging up a mountain on a track fit only for goats, that you find you have tears rolling down your face, or you are laughing out loud, because of a memory.
The Camino, this ancient Spanish path, is paved with the triumphs and sorrows of countless thousands of people seeking meaning, redemption, understanding. Memorial plaques dotted along The Way remind us that some only found death. Most people have a very personal reason for doing this, and, as the kilometres unfold, they tell you their stories.
There was Ulysses, the Spanish logistics expert who works for Medecins Sans Frontieres.
He was power-walking over the Pyrenees to blow off steam after some tough times in refugee camps in Darfur and Turkey.
I walked for a while with Leon, a massive Russian who blew a knee early on but wouldn't give up. He worked in PR for the Moscow city government. He quit his job after trying to explain to his four-year-old what he did for a living. His boy listened to him outlining what a spin doctor does and summarised what he had heard. "So, you make up stories about Moscow?" It killed Leon's ambition to get to the Kremlin instantly.
Siobhan is still walking. Siobhan is still alive. She survived a murderous home invasion in London during which her flatmate was stabbed to death and she went close to the same fate. Last I saw of her she had shin splints. "I have a high pain threshold," she said, when I showed concern.
There was Dave from Limerick, heartbroken that one of the freckles on his young wife's face turned out to be a melanoma which has made him a single dad.
And then there's Wally, from Tasmania, at 48 one of the world's oldest cystic fibrosis sufferers. He just keeps walking, his lungs trying to drown him. He makes me feel worthless.
- Rory Gibson
- The Sunday Mail (Qld)
Pilgrims can take many routes on the Camino that lead to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, where the remains of St James are reputedly buried.
SIX hundred kilometres behind me, about 200 to go ... sometimes you find yourself walking without another living thing discernible for as far as the eye can see.
It's when you are by yourself, in the heat or the rain, feet aching in the wheat fields of the Meseta or trudging up a mountain on a track fit only for goats, that you find you have tears rolling down your face, or you are laughing out loud, because of a memory.
The Camino, this ancient Spanish path, is paved with the triumphs and sorrows of countless thousands of people seeking meaning, redemption, understanding. Memorial plaques dotted along The Way remind us that some only found death. Most people have a very personal reason for doing this, and, as the kilometres unfold, they tell you their stories.
There was Ulysses, the Spanish logistics expert who works for Medecins Sans Frontieres.
He was power-walking over the Pyrenees to blow off steam after some tough times in refugee camps in Darfur and Turkey.
I walked for a while with Leon, a massive Russian who blew a knee early on but wouldn't give up. He worked in PR for the Moscow city government. He quit his job after trying to explain to his four-year-old what he did for a living. His boy listened to him outlining what a spin doctor does and summarised what he had heard. "So, you make up stories about Moscow?" It killed Leon's ambition to get to the Kremlin instantly.
Siobhan is still walking. Siobhan is still alive. She survived a murderous home invasion in London during which her flatmate was stabbed to death and she went close to the same fate. Last I saw of her she had shin splints. "I have a high pain threshold," she said, when I showed concern.
There was Dave from Limerick, heartbroken that one of the freckles on his young wife's face turned out to be a melanoma which has made him a single dad.
And then there's Wally, from Tasmania, at 48 one of the world's oldest cystic fibrosis sufferers. He just keeps walking, his lungs trying to drown him. He makes me feel worthless.
