4. When I started my pilgrimage

Translated by Jolanta Czaicka-Kotlarczyk

When I started my pilgrimage, it was a chilly, foggy morning.  I walked along the coast – the idea was to walk this alternate trail along the coast, rather than the interior path, something I decided spontaneously and without a detailed plan.  The waves crashed and the wind blew. I was alone, with just the ocean. I would have walked like this until the end of the world if I could… There was no sand and I had to walk on small rocks which collapsed under my feet. Every meter of the trail dragged on terribly. Walking at this pace, I would have probably arrived at Santiago right in time for the end of the world.

I decided to take the interior route instead, but I was 40 kilometers away from it. How would I get there, without having a detailed map of the area? With unmarked trails and not being able to speak Portuguese?  I was neither in Lisbon nor Porto, where everyone spoke English.

I don’t know what it was that happened in such cases as this one.  It cannot be rationally explained, but always, when there is a question, an answer comes to it. It either a sign, or a helpful person, and sometimes it is an animal which brings some important details to one’s attention. (I would like to clarify: I did not go crazy and I wasn’t on any stimulants.) I was just walking, carefully looking for signs.

Sometimes the signs were hard to understand, and it took me a while to decipher them. Some of them could only be understood later. Once at a crossroads, I asked a grandma and her grandson for directions. The grandma showed the road to the right; and the grandson pointed the opposite way. They discussed something vigorously. The grandson laughed sneeringly, I assumed. I thanked the grandmother, turned right and shook my finger at the naughty boy. After a few hundred meters, I noticed another road, coming from the left and joining the one I took.

I walked, watching people working the fields.  I greeted them and they greeted me back. Women, dressed in black, looked at me with admiration and commented to each other: the older ones called me esta menina (this girl); the younger women commented esta senhora (this lady).  I also looked at them with admiration. I thought they were doing something extraordinary; they probably thought the same of me. Whenever I got lost, I asked for directions, using single words, facial expressions and gestures. I gave people a wide smile. They responded the same way: drew lines in the air, pointed in the right direction, or led me by the hand if they couldn’t explain in any other way.  They also gave me wide smiles.

One day, tired from walking in the heat, I decided to take the bus. The bus driver became my guide. When we were passing by something he wanted to show me (we were going through the mountains, and the views were breathtaking), he was slowing down, looking at me, and directing my eyes at the point of interest.  When he was sure I noticed the right thing, he smiled at me and drove by. When we got to my destination, he showed me the correct route by just looking in the right direction, said goodbye, and left.

For the first time in Portugal, I fully understood the phenomenon I had earlier sensed so many times in my interactions with the deaf. It was almost like an illumination:  I finally realized how much one can express without words, but one has to open up completely, get rid of stereotypes and hang-ups in order to make the message clear and possible to read for others.

I learned to sense people with my intuition, to understand their intentions from looking at their facial expressions, noticing certain looks in their eyes, and through their gestures. I let them guide me and I learned to trust them. They always appeared when I needed help, sometimes suddenly, almost out of nowhere, only to disappear abruptly. People I met in the Spanish Galicia were surely angels, because mysterious things happen in Galicia. Maybe the Camino eludes reality and is a fully metaphysical experience?

[caption id="attachment_69" align="alignnone" width="300"] Somewhere on the Route Caminho Portugues[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_70" align="alignnone" width="225"] Road signs – never too many of them,   Caminho Portugues, 2012.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_72" align="alignnone" width="300"] Winery on the way between Tamel and Ponte de Lima, Caminho Portugues, 2012.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_73" align="alignnone" width="225"] St Jacob’s Chapel by the road from Ponte de Lima to Rubiaes. / Caminho Portugues, 2012.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_74" align="alignnone" width="300"] Tui / Caminho Portugues, 2012[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_75" align="alignnone" width="300"] Padron / Caminho Portugues, 2012[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_76" align="alignnone" width="225"] A pilgrim on the road from Tui to Porrino/ Camino Portugues, 2012[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_77" align="alignnone" width="225"] A road sign by the road from Redondela to Pontevedra / Caminho Portugues, 2012[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_78" align="alignnone" width="300"] Road signs sometimes appear in some unexpected places. From Caldas de Reis to Padron / Caminho Portugues, 2012.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_79" align="alignnone" width="300"] When I returned to the interior route…
Camino Portugues, 2012[/caption]