Another of the regular sightings on the Camino that I happened to personally appreciate were the various monuments, cairns, and memorials that a pilgrim was destined to see along The Way. Some of them were simple “I was here” or “This is the way” markers, some of them held a significance more mystical or spiritually majestic, and some were memorials offered to friends &/or family members &/or fellow pilgrims alike. Regardless of the Why of their creation, however, the vast majority of them had been obviously both built & maintained with heartfelt care – a care that led most of them to radiate a similarly obvious and equally Soul-calming beauty …

“Remarkable it was, if for nothing else, that so many of those who walked this path would leave behind them some monument, some structure of ribbon or stone or glass that still stands; so that even when the sun sets low and the later travelers retire, something irreducible of beauty and honor remained on The Path; not at every bend in the trail perhaps, and yet regularly and in enough of them that the route remains for me the route of those earlier times, and that walking now along its curves & undulations I am somehow in those times again. I suppose that is the nature of any monument, be it a pathside chapel or a mound of shaped earth or a mid-sized construction of stone. Few if any of them say that this or that man or woman walked there. No, and yet as long as said monuments are tended and stand, this feeling still rises. The feeling – the connection with travelers past, at least here … and there … it remains.” ~ inspired by Anne Rice

Filed under: Peace Pilgrimage #02: Walking HOME (2019) by Scaughdt