Backpacker Culture ~ Featuring this week’s traveller, Eriko Imada
It was the spring of 2005 and I knew it would be now or never. I put on my mother’s clothes, hiking shoes and backpack and set out.
I was planning to travel, on foot, a 900 km pilgrimage called “El Camino,” which runs across northern Spain.
My pilgrimage had begun in the previous year, when my mother was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and brain tumours.
She would live three months without chemotherapy, and six months even with it. Considering options, we chose to rely on remedies at home.
The growing brain tumours rapidly crippled her body and she soon lost her speech. But she still tried to move from her bed to the dining table and washroom on her own feet, with our help. She used to love to hike.
One evening, I put a book on the table in front of my mother after supper. It was written by a Japanese female haiku poet who walked the Camino.
My mother couldn’t sit for long periods by then, but she turned every page through the end. She seemed to have read that book before somehow.
I said to her, “we would walk that road next summer.”
I knew I was telling a lie.
El Camino (“The Road” in Spanish) isn’t a single road. It is rather many branches of roads, which ultimately lead to one destination, the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela.
Today, people travel this road for a religious reasons, like they did in the Middle Ages. But also for other spiritual pursuits, or a purely athletic experience. Some people travel on bicycle, some use vehicles along with walking.
Along many routes to Santiago de Compostela, the most popular one is the “Camino Frances”, the French Road.
This route starts from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port (SJPP), a small town at the foot of the Pyrenees, on the French side.
This route is very well accommodated to the needs and safety of pilgrims.
There are pilgrims’ hostels along the road every 10 km or so. The route is marked with yellow arrows painted on everywhere, like on trees and rocks.
I was planning to start from SJPP. But before that, I wanted to stop at Ortez, a small town, to see the house of a poet.
There was a bus to go to SJPP from there, but the service seemed to be sparse and inconvenient. So I decided to change my initial plan and started to walk from Ortez to SJPP, which is 80 km away.
It didn’t seem that far.
My first day of pilgrimage, I was not on the popular route, and it was not easy.
The roadmap I bought the day before didn’t guide me well. There were few arrows on the route.
To make it worse, I met a shower while I was walking on the roadside of highway.
Still a novice pilgrim, I felt very out of place and uncomfortable. I thought I probably looked like a crazy idiot from the passing cars.
But later, I found many people walk wild routes like that, sometimes the routes which are not at all meant for pilgrims.
I met at least a few Dutch people who had walked literally from their doorsteps to Spain. Alois, a Dutch I walked with later in Portugal, had walked 400 km from Lisbon to Porto along the national road.
One gentleman from Holland whose white wavy hair made him look like a long-legged Einstein told me that once you came to Europe, you must spend at least a year travelling around, carrying a small tent.
“You know, people are not supposed to refuse when a stranger comes to their door, asking for a glass of water or a permission to put up a tent in their yard. It is even written in French law,” he said.
I don’t even know if it’s true or if he was just teasing a little lone pilgrim from the far East.
I kept walking on the rolling hills of golden wheat fields adorned with red poppies and blue cornflowers. The grapes along the road grew day by day.
I walked through cities and deserted villages, where houses were crumbling under the scorching sun.
I saw tiny stone chapels and magnificent cathedrals. I went through dry areas, rainy areas, rich regions and poor regions.
On the Camino, you walk with someone for a certain period of time, but can’t keep doing that as everyone walks at a different pace.
Some people walk 30 or 40 km a day, rushing through each village.
Some people spend half a day sitting on a hill or visiting chapels.
Some prefer to spend the afternoon at local bars.
Some have to walk slowly because they have bad knees.
Some prefer to start early in the morning to avoid the heat and secure a bed in the next hostel.
Some prefer to start late.
The Camino is just like life itself.
