Day 098n: All the same Within … (July 21, 2019)
Soon thereafter I made it to the small village of Barbadelo, where the entire vibe of the Way dramatically & palpably shifts. It seems that this town marks the “official” 100km cut-off of the Camino de Santiago – the minimum distance that a pilgrim must walk to be officially recognized as such by the Roman Catholic Church.* And quite fittingly, the commercialization of The Way was now notoriously evident – and the quantity of walkers just as noticeably enhanced. In truth, it didn’t take but a few minutes after passing through Barbadelo for me to encounter my very first mass-group of walkers – a jovial group of young scouts from Barcelona. And yet even though they were indeed very young and even though they were surrounded by silliness-soaked friends, a solid handful of them who were straggling at the back of their column noticed my smock and had a good enough grasp of English to understand that something unusual was going on with my particular pilgrimage. And, to their great credit, they then had the courage to not only murmur in wonderment about the same, but openly ask me about the same as well – a glimmer of courage that allowed me to then astound (and maybe even inspire) them all with a brief telling of my Walk’s particular tale …
“The more I travel, the more I come to understand not only how different we all are from the outside, but also how similar we all are from within” ~ via Anamika Mishra
*While more than a few previous walkers had mentioned this membrane as a most unpleasant one to pass through, it didn’t really matter to me. Indeed, if anything more pilgrims meant – on paper at least – more of a chance to spread my message of Radical Kindness, though I was soon to find out that the apparent earnestness with which any pilgrim walks his journey seems to exist in direct proportion to how long he or she walks The Way.
;