Do Activities that Force You to Stop Making Decisions
How walking predetermined routes like the Camino de Santiago can calm your mind
I haven’t walked the Camino, but I really want to, and this is why. I currently live in camino country, you could say — in Spain. There are multiple caminos that pass within miles/kilometers of my house, most of which eventually hook up with the main trail — the Way of St. James — leading to the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. I see a sign for one of the caminos at least once a week. Along the routes that go near here, there’s the Via Augusta, which starts from the main cathedral in Cadiz and follows the path of an ancient Roman road up to Seville. 45 minutes south of here starts the Via Serrana, a relatively new branch of the Camino that starts in the port city of Algeciras, right across the bay from Gibraltar, and leads through many white villages in the Sierra de Cádiz before hooking up with the way to Seville. I also spent some time in Porto, Portugal last winter, where the Portuguese way weaves right through the city, sometimes well signed, and sometimes just marked by some faint blue paint on a street sign or a hand painted arrow on the side of a crumbling building. I followed the route from the Porto cathedral out toward the edge of the town, and the practice of searching for arrows and clues to which way I was supposed to go instantly calmed my nerves. I love walking around and exploring cities, but having little signs and arrows that tell me which way to go was a relief. No decisions. Surely a good route. It’s a no-brainer — literally — and for me, it feels good to leave the decision making to someone else, especially when those geographical decisions were made a long, long time ago.
Pilgrims have been walking the caminos of Iberia for over 1000 years, since the 8th Century BCE when the remains of St. James the Apostle were first discovered in Spain. It’s believed that St. James preached in present day Galicia and on his return to Jerusalem, he was beheaded by King Herod in 44 CE. His followers are said to have transported his remains to Santiago where they laid undiscovered until 813 CE. The discovery of his remains in the 9th century led to the creation of a religious shrine which marks the beginning of Santiago de Compostela and the Camino de Santiago.
In 997, the first shrine of St. James was destroyed by the occupying Moorish army of Al-Mansur, but by the 12th century, the Cathedral of Santiago was rebuilt and once again attracting pilgrims from all over Europe. In 1140, the Codex Calixtinus, the first guidebook of the Camino de Santiago, was published. This multi-volume book, of which Book V is the only real travel guide, is a wealth of practical advice for pilgrims, informing them where they should stop, relics they should venerate, sanctuaries they should visit, bad food they should be wary of, and commercial scams, including in the author’s opinion, other churches who claimed to hold relics of St. James. This guidebook is widely interpreted as the first tourist guidebook.
Throughout the Middle Ages the Camino de Santiago remained as popular as pilgrimages to Jerusalem or Rome. Its popularity only began to decrease during the 16th Century with the Protestant Reformation in Northern Europe. Even fewer walked in during the period of European wars and revolutions in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, which highly restricted travel. For most of the 20th Century, the Camino de Santiago remained restricted to the Iberian Peninsula due to the First and Second World Wars, as well as the Spanish Civil War, which lasted from 1936 to 1939. It was really only in the 1980s that the widespread rediscovery of the Camino de Santiago began, mostly thanks to the parish priest and academic Don Elías Valiña Sanpedro, who dedicated the last 10 years of his life to way marking the Camino Francés for future generations of pilgrims.
Why walk for hundreds of miles/kilometers with no clear goal in mind? It may seem crazy to some, a monumental waste of time to others. But I think there’s value in doing something for a reason that you will only discover while doing the activity itself — if ever.
We do things like walking the Camino de Santiago so we don’t have to think. At least for a little while, the future is decided for us. I used to get this feeling from smoking a cigarette. Once you lit up, the next five minutes was determined. All you had to do was inhale and exhale. Nothing else had to be done. Too bad it’s so unhealthy.
When walking the Camino, the route, the accommodations, the practices, and even the stages, are decided for you. Even your meals are decided for you, because a simple supper usually is included in the price of the auberges, or hostels that line the route. What wine do you want to drink with dinner? We only have one to choose from, so there’s another decision avoided. Who are you going to hang out with that day or evening? Well, the person in the next bunk, the next seat over at dinner, or the person that happens to walk up to you on the trail — the person with the same pace as you. One less decision to make.
Sometimes it’s a relief to get out of your mind. To just not have to think. To not make decisions. When you’re on the Camino, you follow the trail, the signs, the way. Sometimes the trail goes to amazing places and sometimes it forces you to trudge up a steep hill in sweltering temperatures, or makes you ford a flooded stream in the pouring rain. Sometimes it takes you through boring and uninspiring places like endless flat dry farm fields, but at the worst of it, even when the trail seems endless, you know which way you’re supposed to go. Which is something most of us can rarely say about “normal” life.
Just follow the signs. Go where the arrow tells you to go. Don’t question it. It can be a thrilling experience.
Do you have a Camino experience, positive or negative? If so, let me know. And follow me on Instagram here if you’d like.