June 28, 2025, Final Entry
- joevellutini
- Jul 1
- 4 min read
May 10, 2025 I walked into the plaza in Santiago de Compastella, 1,114,117 steps since starting in St Jean Pied de Port on April 18, 2023.
I have needed time to compose this final post about my journey. I thought that somehow I was going to sum up the entire trip in a neat package with a concise bow on the day I walked into plaza, but it has left me with additional questions that required almost 2 months to think through.
Since my completion I have had a mixture of feeling and opinions to think about. As I began to walk, I didn’t expect the end to be that different from Forrest Gump when he stopped running. But while leaving Casanova, I spoke with a woman that had walked the Camino many times. She awoke in me some of the emotions that I would come to feel when I arrived. I started to look at my 2 times walking the Camino as a whole, not part one and part two, and definitely not as a trip that ended in my injury. I stopped telling people about my fall unless they probed me for additional information about why I cut my first trip short. And, while I had not planned to apply for my Compastella, I did, and I asked that I be made out to reflect entire walk.
I needed almost 2 weeks to acclimate back to non-Camino life, it was harder than I expected. I had read about this but thought that people were perhaps being a little dramatic. Life on the Camino is fairly simple, something that many of us do not enjoy on a daily basis.
At first I thought that I would never walk the Camino again, I think that this was from the wear and tear that I inflicted on myself, but at around the 2 week period after my walk, I started to feel that I missed the daily walking and interactions with people. Now if I were asked if I would return, I would say I hope so.
I did not find the answers to the universe, but the long walk across the Maseta gave me time to think about things in my own life and formulate my own changes. Many people skip the long, straight and flat Maseta, but it became my favorite section. I came to appreciate the Camino saying “the first third of the Camino is for your body, the second third is for your mind and the final third is for your spirit”. The Maseta is definitely a time to think.
For me, the thousands of interactions with people and the places were the highlights of the journey. Every time I would greet someone with “Bien Camino”, I would not know how much I may end up interacting with that person over the weeks to come. Interesting thing though, outside of Malcolm, Garret and Ryan, I have no contact information for anyone I met while walking, they are in my memory and possibly, I am in theirs. It was exhilarating to reach the plaza with the crowd of other pilgrims, hearing the bagpipes as I got closer and seeing the spires in between buildings of Santiago in the distance.
There is a simplicity to the life on the Camino that cannot be completely replicated upon getting back home. The day is filled by walking, eating, talking, showering, washing clothes and sleep. With time, most pilgrim become used to this new normal, those that don’t accept this miss out. While walking I never listened to music, podcasts or audiobooks on my phone to pass the time; it never felt needed as I was always busy looking at the sights and listening to the sounds and people around me. On my last night in Santiago we heard a local group playing and singing La Tuna music, it was a highlight, and I did listen to them on my train ride leaving Santiago. Ruela 8 felt like they could be the sound track of my trip.
I had an injured pilgrim, limping along, tell me a few things that the Camino taught him. The first was to listen to other pilgrims so that you don’t have to listen to your own pain. He probably heard it from someone else and after hearing his first teaching I didn’t listen much to the rest.
To boil it all down to what I learned:
Learn to listen to yourself. Your body will let you know when to find a place for a coffee or a bed for the night. To push through is to invite injury or worse, take an extra day or two off.
While we should try to be kind to others, don’t forget yourself too.
Set expectations of others and yourself aside. You never know what is around the corner on the Camino or life in general.
Don’t get overly wound up with the tragedies that are thrust upon us every waking moment; we can only really affect things in our own backyard.
Lastly, it is always easy to expect the walk uphill to be difficult and we pat ourselves on the back for completing the walk that day, but in reality, the walk downhill is more difficult on us and we usually don’t feel the same sense of accomplishment.
Special thanks to Malcolm, Garrett and Ryan for joining me. Thank you for following along, until next time.
