I have never heard the term "Trail magic" but I have come across the phenomenon many times in the backcountry, most recently last summer in Banff National Park in Alberta. I had walked over Pulsatilla Pass, my avatar picture was taken that day at the top of the pass. It was a lovely walk, but by evening I was facing some challenging trail finding as floods the year before had obscured or destroyed the trail and washed out many bridges. I broke my hiking pole at a tricky stream crossing and arrived in camp at twilight to find many other walkers there. As I shared their fire and described my day, I mentioned the incident. In the morning, one of the previous night's group came to me and offered one of his pair of hiking poles for my use. I could send him some money when I got home, he suggested. I gratefully took him up on his offer and paid him on the spot, with the usual polite argument as I insisted that the pole was worth more than he asked for it. After he and his group left, it became apparent that the stream was going to be very challenging for me to cross. The sturdy bridge which had been there my last time through was gone. Three very small, sagging poles replaced it. Another couple who had share the camping space the night before offered to help me cross the stream, and with hands out to me from one of them on each end of the sagging poles, I made it across safely. Later, in Lake Louise, I met the man who had sold me his second hiking pole, and he was happy to see that I had finished the trip safely. This type of event is so much a part of backcountry walking that I tend to take it for granted. I am as often a giver as a receiver. I think that the source of this type of generosity and mutual care is the fact that we rely on one another when there are no other resources available, usually two or more days from a trailhead.
I am pleased that a similar sense of communal caring exists on the camino. If, as so many threads emphasize, don't take anything with you that you don't absolutely need, because the camino is not the backcountry and you can buy what you need along the way, then there must be another reason why this impulse to help seems to be frequent. Is it the pilgrimage?