Santiago... by BUS!!

Today, I caught a bus. 

That might not seem so momentous but I realised that this time on Camino is the longest period in my whole life that I have not travelled on some form of mechanised transportation.

As the bus drove through the narrow streets of Fisterra I couldn’t believe how fast we were going. I found it quite unnerving. Over the past two months I have travelled only at walking pace, the pace we humans were designed to move. It’s a pace that allows you to experience (see, hear, smell, feel and taste) things that you miss when you’re speeding through the world in the air conditioned comfort of a car, train or plane. You may be moving through but in a funny way you experience a place more fully.

I’m not denegrating these other forms of transport, though they have caused many problems for our planet, I wouldn’t be in Spain without modern transportation. But, it does make me think about what we miss and lose when we only ever use these fast forms. I hope I’ve been able to share something of this walking journey through the blog, to share some of the gifts and challenges of the world I’ve walked through. A world that has blessed me greatly. To quote from Mike Gaffney, another Camino tragic, ‘From windmills to waves, from the plains to mountains, from industrial outskirts to cobblestones, from bunks to bars, and now to the beach... what a treasured journey.’ Indeed it has been, and the great thing about a treasured journey is that it keeps giving. Already, I am looking back and savouring afresh some of the memories.

In today’s post, I thought I’d share a few of the photos I couldn’t include in recent posts. I’ll start with yesterday. Here’s one from the township of Fisterra as I walked in. Cool doors, hey!

And here are a few from Cape Finisterre as the sea mist rolled in.

And, from Muxia.

Olveiroa

In yesterday’s post, I mused on my own sense of being literally and metaphorically on a threshold and of being open (opened) to a new sense of things. In an email I received later that day there was a poem by Anne Hillman that seemed relevant to this and related themes that have arisen on the Way. I offer it for reflection and comment. Buen Camino, Neils 

We look with uncertainty

We look with uncertainty
beyond the old choices for
clear-cut answers
to a softer, more permeable aliveness
which is every moment
at the brink of death;
for something new is being born in us
if we but let it.
We stand at a new doorway,
awaiting that which comes…
daring to be human creatures,
vulnerable to the beauty of existence.

Learning to love.