Camino de Santiago - Day 26

Here we are getting ready to start the second to last leg of our journey on the Camino! Today, we travel from Palac de Rei to Melide'. It is gently raining outside and Terrie is ready for her walk. I send her off with a big hug and a promise to rest and keep my leg elevated. You can see - I am not suffering too awfully much!!

I received a note from a dear friend today describing her experience on the Camino many years ago. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I read her words ... I let myself feel the fullness in my heart and all of the texture and the sensations in my body that accompanied my tears... I didn't hold back. It was such a rich moment that I cannot find sufficient words to describe it right now. I will share some of this note with you. I think the gift for me was the profound recognition of feeling the richness of the entire Camino experience in these words ... I felt it in my cells ... the recognition that the Camino experience is not about a place, not about a time, but about my availability for my life right now - and this moment is all-encompassing - I felt the energy of 10,000 peregrinos fill my heart...

"I just wanted to share this with you as I hold the part of the Camino you are on in a close place to my heart. See, I took a bus there from Barcelona back in '03, not knowing anything about the Camino until I landed there. I ended up hiking the very last leg of the Camino to the cathedral at the end. I got this shell from a pilgrim on the path that told me what it was about. I remember standing in the cathedral and feeling the joy of a thousand pilgrims, despite the fact that I basically got there via the longest bus ride of my life and barely broke a sweat doing it. Lol! However, the energy there was striking. At that point in my life, I had spent most of the previous year in Europe finding churches and hanging out in them drawing and contemplating life. That one left me speechless and teary eyed with joy and humility. That was my camino, as short lived as it was, it has stayed with me for over a decade. The history there is palpable and I can still picture it in my mind. I've always wanted to go back there, as that part of Spain is a truly magical...."