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Time: a relativity on the Camino

alexwalker

Forever Pilgrim
Time of past OR future Camino
2009-2022: CFx6, CP, VdlPx2, Mozarabe, more later.
Not meant to be a provocative thread, but:

What is your perception of time on the Camino? And I mean PERCEPTION.

We are talking about days to go from there to there, time constraints, skipping parts of it, and so on...

But: The time on the Camino is time away from your everyday world.: Busy? No time to think? Just work 24/7?. Or completely new reflections upon your life?

What is time? Your life, or your life with others? Is your life better alone, or is it better with others.?

Is your life fulfilled on your own or is it better spending time interacting with other human beings, giving from yourself?

Difficult questions, I know, but I am looking for compassion here: Understanding my fellow pilgrims, and trying to help them understanding the Way, for their own best, meeting beautiful people along the Way, proving that life is much more than those things and valuables we left behind.

Because we start out from everyday life, and the Camino is something completely different: Only you, your backpack and you. But then again, you will find people that are just like you, on the Way, and you connect in possibly lifelong friendship.

And time is relative: You can spend a long time with yourself, lonely, but a short time being a samaritan, seeming like a long time.

Just some thoughts on a deeper feeling of the Camino.

Edit: I should add, about time, for many who walk in pain, for whatever reason: Shared joy is double joy. Shared sorrow is half sorrow. I know from experience that it's right. And get an "in vicario pro" sign on your Compostela in Santiago, for your loved and lost one. If you are there from May 20th-June 3rd, I will help you, as I will be working in the Pilgrims Office in that period.
 
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St James' Way - Self-guided 4-7 day Walking Packages, Reading to Southampton, 110 kms
I have found that my inner clock and perception on Camino is similar to long wilderness backpacking trips over many weeks. Which makes sense.

I am more detached from clock-time and tend to function based on body rhythms and needs. I just sorta get focused internally with thoughts and scenery and the senses, that I just go and go and go until it is time to stop for something: hunger, bladder, rest, etc.

In fact, I tend to wear a watch on these types of prolonged walks. Not so much to keep on a rigid schedule as to help me keep track of my needs.

I like to take in snacks and food at a certain interval in order to not allow my self to get depleted into energy reserves. The same with hydration; I cannot rely on the feeling of 'thirst' to regulate fluid intake. Thirst, as a marker for anyone for fluid is wholly unreliable and occurs when one is already partially dehydrated.

I also use my watch to keep my walking time without breaks and rests in check. Again, I do worse with my energy regulation if I rely on when I FEEL tired to take a rest break.

The watch doesn't inform me of what to do, it only assists me in doing what I must do to stay healthy and in good shape on the trail or Camino. Oh, and when I have left to begin walking in the early morning pre-dawn dark, which I do not enjoy and which makes time just seem to drag and drag, my wrist watch is a friend that lets me know when I will begin to see nautical dawn and the glorious new daybreak.
 
I am in a very fortunate position. I live in the UK and so travel to Spain and the rest of Europe is comparatively cheap and quick. I also have few home commitments which means that I can travel at short notice and for long periods. Those freedoms mean that I can set off on a Camino at a time of my choosing without setting an end date or booking my transport home. So until the end of my Camino is metaphorically in sight - perhaps 3 or 4 days away - I do not concern myself with the numbers of days or the distance left to go. I tend to think mainly of the next day and the following one just to be sure that the stages are practical for me. The bigger picture will just happen automatically.

These days my walking in Spain is mostly in winter and on quieter routes. For example I recently walked about 400km on the Camino Mozarabe from Malaga to Merida. With no competition for beds I feel no pressure to arrive early at my destination or to leave before dawn. I rarely note the passing of time with two main exceptions: checking the time now and again to see if my arrival in town will coincide with meal times in bars :) and making sure that I have enough time to reach a stopping point before dark. Apart from those "clock time" has little relevance for me as I walk and the hours will pass quickly or slowly as my mood, personal fitness, weather, landscape or other variables dictate.
 
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I notice the sun as it comes up, begins to pass zenith, and goes down.
And where it comes up and goes down, so I know what East and West are.
And shadows. If I'm still walking and they're getting long, it's high time to stop for the day.

Time just becomes now, now, now...and I'm either completely present for that...or not.
Sometimes now is full of whinging. Or joy.
Sometimes now is solitary. Or not.
Sometimes now is a sharing of stories. Sometimes it's silent.
So many moments, flowing on.

One of the blessings of the Camino is that we are free to surrender to those moments, however they flow.
Without having to go anywhere else or do anything else.
 
During the past years
on every camino there were timeless stretches which seemed to be in another world. Past were the hoards of camera-clicking tourists and/or pilgrims as well as any urbane atmosphere with a bar at every corner. All was reduced to simple basics; I was alone on a seemingly endless gravel path beneath the vast dome of an immense sky. The only sound was the companionable crunch of my boots and perhaps distant birdsong.

Happily for me while tramping along and alone I often sensed that special moment when everything 'clicked' realizing that this was, indeed, MY way and that all was and would be good. ...Perhaps such secular transcendence felt while walking might be akin to what runners call 'the zone'. Your body can handle the task while your spirit glows with the effort. Neither easy, nor impossible; all simply is. ...Thus, thankfully you continue.

PS. I first began to walk the CF when I was 65. In a few weeks I shall be 80. Age and time have taken their toll but hopefully my personal memories will endure. Physically I may not be there, but sentimentally as long as I live I will always "wear" my shell. And whenever my life may end it is reassuring to hope that this beloved route will continue throughout the centuries to come.
 
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For me time on the Camino consists mainly of the now, sometimes as far as tomorrow nights bed. The weird situation of 'every day is the same' and 'every day is different'.
I notice when its getting too hot, and I know I need to stop at the next village.
I notice bright sun umbrellas and plastic chairs, and think breakfast or coffee, and who will I meet again and chat with.
I notice when the day turns into evening and I test my washing to see if its dry.
I notice that my shoes have not yet dried and I need to find an open shop for newspaper. ( its odd stuffing my shoes with news in a language I dont speak, at home I would get distracted and read it, on Camino, newspapers are a shoe-drying tool)
Its not until arriving in Santiago that i start to think of time in the usual increments


In my non Camino life I work in media for a large corporate, some days just about every minute is mapped out, with deadlines and responsibilities.
Stepping out of this world into the Camino world is literally stepping into an alternative universe, where the days seem longer, and I not only dont know what day it is half the time, but I dont care.
Its wonderful.
 
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Get a spanish phone number with Airalo. eSim, so no physical SIM card. Easy to use app to add more funds if needed.
What is your perception of time on the Camino?
My first time taking a bus was a wake up moment on the difference between the Camino one step at a time and transportation. There is something in each of us that wants others to feel things the way we do, say the joy of carrying one's backpack. When that hubris is abandoned and the essential aloneness of life is accepted, I have found the one-step approach very satisfying.
 
My first time taking a bus was a wake up moment on the difference between the Camino one step at a time and transportation. There is something in each of us that wants others to feel things the way we do, say the joy of carrying one's backpack. When that hubris is abandoned and the essential aloneness of life is accepted, I have found the one-step approach very satisfying.
Yes I got a shock when we took a taxi to Finisterre - he seemed to be driving dangerously fast - but I had just became used to life at walking speed.
 
The one from Galicia (the round) and the one from Castilla & Leon. Individually numbered and made by the same people that make the ones you see on your walk.
I spend 8-10 months a year surrounded by 6000-7000 other people in a floating steel box where everything moves non-stop 24 hours a day, every hour of the day choreographed and scheduled. Stepping on to the Camino gives me the one rare opportunity to turn off everything to do with time. When I’m at work sometimes I catch myself daydreaming about that state where you lose yourself in the rhythm of motion that becomes so automatic you can sink into yourself and lose all track of time and effort, the sensation of floating across a landscape viewing yourself in the 3rd person. In those few moments I can hear my steps on the gravel path, feel the sun on my face and even the pull of my pack on my shoulders.... and even though I’m not in Spain I feel rejuvenated and I know for those few minutes I was on the Camino.
 
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From airports to SJPP
Luggage from SJPP to Roncevalles
Time (and space) are strange concepts. I started doing long distance walking just around three years ago. Until then I rarely walked longer distances than from my front door to the car door and back. I was used to the faster means of transportation by car, plane or train. When you travel like that, every time you look up or out, something has changed; you are looking at new landscapes, new cities, new streets all the time. It was a great frustration to me when I started to walk –I walked and I walked and nothing seemed to change or only change very slowly. It seemed it took forever to get from one place to another. Slowly that feeling began to disappear and today I am surprised at how far I can get on my feet in say 6-7 hours, and I have come to value the way that things only change slowly around me when I walk. This is something that feels especially strong when I am on the Camino. So in a sense walking has given me a new perception of both time and space.
 
Started walking to my job after cancer op sometime in ´12 and went on my forst camino in ´14.
Since then I have felt the same joy of pacing time as I did when I was a student in Scotland and walked a whole month in the Easter holidays and later took to walking the coastline of Ireland entire in the late 70s...

I feel time is being streeetched out for an entire walking day and then all of a sudden I am there, where I want to spend the night...It seems like the concept of time vanishes and the day just passed seamlessly ..

When I later contemplate how the day was spend, I am sure I have taken photo snaps in my mind of the steps I took, because any picture I see later, when I return home, I recognize the surface of the path, turns on the road, stones by the roadside, like a timelapse film...
But I do not remember the steps taken. If I start off in the morning with a sore summat, it is forgotten soon after and my physical self is more or less left out of this recording of the whole day.
But it may have been because I have not suffered anything serious ! Yet!

This floating through the landscape leaves me utterly happy and yes transported out of my usual frame of reality...
My co-workers wonder why I want to relive this grueling and taxing exercize day after day for an entire month, but I cannot explain to them how time flies, but is actually experienced by single frames, as it were, and I so look forward to do it all over again tomorrow ...!

Walk, Eat, Sleep, Repeat is just a sick joke to them, but true reality to me !
 
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The focus is on reducing the risk of failure through being well prepared. 2nd ed.
Not meant to be a provocative thread, but:

What is your perception of time on the Camino? And I mean PERCEPTION.

We are talking about days to go from there to there, time constraints, skipping parts of it, and so on...

But: The time on the Camino is time away from your everyday world.: Busy? No time to think? Just work 24/7?. Or completely new reflections upon your life?

What is time? Your life, or your life with others? Is your life better alone, or is it better with others.?

Is your life fulfilled on your own or is it better spending time interacting with other human beings, giving from yourself?

Difficult questions, I know, but I am looking for compassion here: Understanding my fellow pilgrims, and trying to help them understanding the Way, for their own best, meeting beautiful people along the Way, proving that life is much more than those things and valuables we left behind.

Because we start out from everyday life, and the Camino is something completely different: Only you, your backpack and you. But then again, you will find people that are just like you, on the Way, and you connect in possibly lifelong friendship.

And time is relative: You can spend a long time with yourself, lonely, but a short time being a samaritan, seeming like a long time.

Just some thoughts on a deeper feeling of the Camino.

Edit: I should add, about time, for many who walk in pain, for whatever reason: Shared joy is double joy. Shared sorrow is half sorrow. I know from experience that it's right. And get an "in vicarto pro" sign in Santiago for your loved one.
The writer of Ecclesiastes informs us that there is a time for everything under the sun. In Camino context there is a time to walk and a time to rest. There is a time to wish that time will speed up as one's fatique and discomfort with blisters or sore musles are in your face and immediate longing for things to come to an end for that day. There is however also a time when one wants to slow things down as you get into a new day's walking or stretching the vinho tinto that goes with your dinner in the company of other pilgrims. The relativity of these matters are central to our being ane becoming. Our task is to give thanks in all things as we walk and talk our way though what has been created for us to enjoy. To God be the Glory. There is nothing relative about that. Let time enter the eternal momentarily as we walk along the Way. Let the eternal be our guiding light in matters temporal. Be in the moment. Be in space. Be relatively anchored to the road less travelled for now.
 
Time is such a difficult concept. I was able just to be. The daylight was my only directive, so I could see. What I took back to my non Camino life was not to be five steps ahead, but when driving to work just doing that and enjoying it. Step after step and every time my head runs ahead of me I stop. It’s incredible relaxing.And the funny thing is, it should be more time consuming, but it’s the opposite.
 
During the past years
on every camino there were timeless stretches which seemed to be in another world. Past were the hoards of camera-clicking tourists and/or pilgrims as well as any urbane atmosphere with a bar at every corner. All was reduced to simple basics; I was alone on a seemingly endless gravel path beneath the vast dome of an immense sky. The only sound was the companionable crunch of my boots and perhaps distant birdsong.

Happily for me while tramping along and alone I often sensed that special moment when everything 'clicked' realizing that this was, indeed, MY way and that all was and would be good. ...Perhaps such secular transcendence felt while walking might be akin to what runners call 'the zone'. Your body can handle the task while your spirit glows with the effort. Neither easy, nor impossible; all simply is. ...Thus, thankfully you continue.

PS. I first began to walk the CF when I was 65. In a few weeks I shall be 80. Age and time have taken their toll but hopefully my personal memories will endure. Physically I may not be there, but sentimentally as long as I live I will always "wear" my shell. And whenever my life may end it is reassuring to hope that this beloved route will continue throughout the centuries to come.

This resonates with me on many levels. Those moments when "everything clicked.....your body can handle the task and your spirit glows". Beautifully expressed. Those moments, we get too few of in daily life, where there is no other place, physically or emotionally, that could be better or more rewarding. Every step we take provides a future resonance. Especially for those of us sliding passed the 75 year mark;) Nicely expressed my friend. Thank you.
 
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In NYC I feel bound to move quickly on foot; no leisurely strolls down Broadway. In Los Angeles flying down the freeway full throttle is a matter of self preservation. Drive the limit and you’ll hold up traffic or God knows what else.

Yet, on camino all the speed goes by the wayside. I can slow down.

I leave albergues late, 8ish or so. Rarely do I stop for breakfast and sometimes skip lunch. Not because of bed race but I enjoy my quiet unbroken stride. I love the cadence: step, step tap the ground with pole, I only use one, then go again. Over and over.

For reasons unbeknownst to me, folks both on and off the Way confide in me. In my day to day these truths are sometimes wearing on my spirit. But, on the pilgrimage I can hear story after story without fatigue setting in.

I can listen because I have the time. I am not chatting on phone with the thought of my next task, or the tv show coming on, or, or, or.

On camino intimacy is formed between pilgrims because you have the time to share and care.

Repeated times on camino have become some of my life’s best times.
 
It came as a bit of a shock the first time I took a bus and realised that what took me a day to walk, could be done in half an hour by bus. But there was absolutely no comparison with the quality of the time spent on the bus with that spent walking.
 
It came as a bit of a shock the first time I took a bus and realised that what took me a day to walk, could be done in half an hour by bus. But there was absolutely no comparison with the quality of the time spent on the bus with that spent walking.
Exactly.

The concept of time changes when you are doing a Camino. But it takes some time: One week won't cut it. The perception of time changes by living slow for a long period. Maybe that's why it is so difficult to explain the Camino to those who haven't done it: People do not understand, because they constantly live in a hasty world. Maybe it also explains why so many people, on their death bed, regret all what they haven't done. Too late...

I'll stick to a long day walking rather than that 1/2 hour bus ride. Quality time.
 
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It came as a bit of a shock the first time I took a bus and realised that what took me a day to walk, could be done in half an hour by bus. But there was absolutely no comparison with the quality of the time spent on the bus with that spent walking.
When on a high speed train in Spain with my son after our camino, I figured that a day's walk on the camino took 4 minutes on the train.
 
I remember somewhere around day 15 or so someone among the group I was walking with asked what day of the week it was. I was struck by the strangest feeling of not knowing the day of the week for the first time since being a young child and simultaneously realizing that it didn't matter. Also, I would get pilgrim amensia and not be able to remember the name of the town I stayed in two nights before as if it had been a life time ago. I will never forget those feelings. I often miss them.
 
St James' Way - Self-guided 4-7 day Walking Packages, Reading to Southampton, 110 kms
Path ways roads streets are truly remarkable. You find remnants of these very old paths all the time on the Camino.
Mesolithic or mabe Neolithic carving everywhere along the roads just telling us that 30000 years ago people already walked here.
For me it’s a feeling of consolation and endurance everytime I sit in an old church at an old ford or walk our roads. If you look at them from above they only make sense because the do not cover as the Roman did construct the shortes distance but they follow very ancient routes. And they are still in use. So we truly walk in time.
In my home town the found shards from import Greek vessels around 450 BC, trade way before the Romans , who never reach our town. More in the south you find Amber beats in graves so people travelled from the Balticum in prehistoric all times. So us with our maybe 100 years on earth we are such young souls. So in another 30000 years people may muse like we do now.
53600
 
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The camino is a parallel universe for me. It is like having a chance to lead a second life. This is so hard to explain, but I think many others feel something similar. Once on a Swiss camino a local, who was excited to see a pilgrim, stopped his car when he saw me and wanted to share about his camino experiences. He put it somehow like this:"I take pilgrimages to prolong my life. I don't mean I gain actual years but I feel my life is longer." I understood instantly because that is exactly what the Way does to my concept of time. Another experience with time and camino walking is how I see my fellow travellers. If the Way is seen as life itself, we all are on the same path BUT we can really only share the present moment with the ones who are walking the same stretch or sleeping in the same albergue. On the Camino and in the real life I really try to appreciate those who are in my life right now.
 
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Sorry, I had to return. This is a good discussion, makes you think! You know all those shadow selfies many of us take? That also has a lot to do with Camino and undertstanding time. That really is all that we are. We are just a passing shadow, a momentary foot print in the dust, soon to be wiped away with wind and rain.
 

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I remember the first time the CF went over a motorway and I stood staring at the cars and lorries hurtling in a neverending stream below me, and thinking that they were part of a world that I was usually part of too, and I had a profound sense of the way I had stepped out of that world for a while and could see it dispassionately and this sense of an enriched perspective that alternatives exist to our 'normal' way of life is something I value so much from my pilgrimage.
 
Good question, Alex!

For me, I'm always rushing around, catching a bus or picking up kids from school, or taking them to one activity or another. In Ferrol about to start the Camino Inglés, I went to the supermarket and then was walking fast back to the hotel, like there was a deadline to be there. I heard a voice nudge me, "Where are you GOING? Why are you RUSHING??" And I had to stop, look around, and think, "Why *am* I rushing? I have nowhere to be, and no time limit to get there!" So I started walking as slowly as I wanted to, a luxury not often there with normal busy life schedules. And that slowness carried through the rest of the Camino - and it was so nice and refreshing. These days if I'm just out for a walk, with no immediate deadline, I remind myself to walk slowly and enjoy it.
 
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On Camino, time/place/distance had no meaning for me. It was light and I walked. I was hungry and ate. I was tired and kept walking or could stop for the day. We did make bed reservations due to lots of walkers and fewer beds.

Laying in bed in a small village, not knowing what day it was or how many days I had walked, not caring about how many days of walking was ahead. I did not know where I was, just on the path. Not knowing did not matter.

It's very hard to explain. I felt free and at peace.
 
Returning to the Q at hand once more, I seemed to remember Kierkegaard saying smthng on the Time/ Eternity concept.

In searching the net I found this article, stating that when we are in awe, time perception changes. Time does appear to expand:

//www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-awe-stops-the-clock/

I too have had to backtrack in a bus to fetch some articles left behind, that were too dear to let go of, and also felt the crazy speed going back the 25 kms and feeling it a betrayal of my mission....

I think being in a vast landscape and committed to a pledge to fullfill a mission ( ie in my case, to walk every step of the way) leaves me plenty of time.
I have a framework to work within, this gives me joy & freedom and makes me feel happy, leaving me with plenty of time...
 
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Returning to the Q at hand once more, I seemed to member Kierkegaard saying smthng on the Time/ Eternity concept.

In searching the net I found this article, stating that when we are in awe, time perception changes. Time does appear to expand:

//www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-awe-stops-the-clock/

I too, have had to backtrack in a bus to fetch some articles left behind, that were too dear to let go of, and also felt the crazy speed going back the 25 kms and feeling it a betrayal of my mission....

I think being in a vast landscape and committed to a pledge to fullfill a mission ( ie in my case, to walk every step of the way) leaves me plenty of time.
I have a framework to work within, this gives me joy and makes me feel happy, leaving me with plenty of time...
Thank you for the article link: I think many of us can relate to it. It makes sense.

Maybe that is the reason we stay in this forum, or are going back to the Camino: The vastness of the Camino induces awe, and brings up the time relativity I started this thread about.

I remember the words of the Danish poet Piet Hein, standing over a newly filled grave:

"So this was where you were going, you hasty one...".
 
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The focus is on reducing the risk of failure through being well prepared. 2nd ed.

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