It was a little church. Off the main path. And you don’t see many “little” churches on the Camino. Most churches here are Gothic monuments. Stone gargantuans, with bells, towering medieval doors, and golden altars. 

This wasn’t one of those. This was a small stone chapel, squatting by the roadside. It looked more like an old barn than a church. There were a few pilgrims inside. There was a nun by the door, smiling at visitors. 

I crossed myself and took a pew. 

After 8 hours of daily walking beneath a Spanish sun, you learn to love churches on a more human level; to appreciate them for exactly what they are. Shelter.

I sit before the altarpiece. I bow my head. 

Ironically, at this exact moment I am here, Pope Francis’s funeral is taking place, somewhere a million miles from this dusty pueblo. 

There are pilgrims on the trail who are watching the funeral via cellphone because this is a major world event. At the Vatican, there are kings, queens and presidents in attendance. There are 130

national delegations, 50 heads of state, and 4,000 journalists from around the world, scrupulously covering the event so they may report to you internationally important details such as, which outfits everyone wore. 

But these little nuns are not in Vatican City. They are here, in the tranquil village of Rabé de las Calzadas. And they are focused on the here and now. 

And right now, there is a goofy American sitting in their pew. A pilgrim. Me. 

I am dirty, weathered, and I don’t smell good because nobody smells good after walking for eight hours. I am staring at the altar and thinking about why I’m here. 

Why. 

Because I am the same age my father was when…

We arrive in the city of Burgos after a 14-mile walk. Although it feels like 14 million miles. Today is hot. We are sunburned, thirsty, and our skin is covered in a fine layer of crystalized salt from evaporated sweat. 

Most pilgrims have chosen to stay the night in the metropolis of Burgos because the city is big, magnificent, and teeming with energy. Plus, it’s just too hot to keep walking today. 

Burgos is a sprawling cosmopolitan world, with pedestrians all wearing designer clothes and nice shoes. Even school children, lingering in the streets, are better dressed than most modern-day Methodists at a Friday night wedding. 

This is an uppity place, we can tell. Namely, because a few pedestrians on the sidewalk—this is true—actually plug their noses and sneer when I pass by.

“Do I smell THAT bad?” I ask my wife. 

But my wife cannot hear me asking because she is 500 feet ahead to avoid being downwind. 

So the Burgos Vibe is not the friendly, “Anthony Quinn” vibe we

have been experiencing throughout Spain thus far. Burgos feels more like New York City’s upper west side during a funeral procession for the former CEO of Louis Vuitton. 

The cashiers in shops and cafès do not smile at us. Many employees will hardly speak to us, although I am speaking Spanish to them. One woman at a bakery actually ignores me until I finally leave.

I walk into a downtown bookstore to find a book to read since I finished my last book. The bell on the door dings. Overhead, the radio plays, of all things, Jerry Reed. I ask the cashier whether they have any “libros en Inglés.” 

The man behind the counter will not even look at me. He is dressed in a Gucci sweater, with…

You do three things on the Camino each day. You walk. You talk. You stop to pee. 

Then you walk some more. Nobody tells you that while you walk, you will talk a lot. You will talk like it is your full-time job. Sometimes, you will talk even more than you walk. Or pee. 

Everyone talks. Even the most silent among us. 

Somewhere outside the quiet Pueblo of Atapuerca, not far from the tall wooden cross, erected atop the mountain sheep pastures, there is a lot of talking going on. 

“My mom is terminally sick right now,” said the 30-year-old Mexican woman. “All my

mom has ever done in her life is work. Her life has had so very little joy. Work, work, work. I am walking to Santiago for the miracle of her healing. But also to celebrate her motherhood.” 

The 23-year-old Italian boy. “I recently renounced my infant baptism in the Catholic Church. I do this in front of my mother and father and all the people because I

do not like the hypocrisy. I stood and formally declared I am an atheist. My mother cried so hard. I think you call it being ‘debaptized’ in English. 

“I walk to Santiago because I believe the apostles did not seek power, but love. And right now, in my life, nobody loves me. I wish God were real. He would love me.”

A 19-year-old South Korean girl. “I want to see the whole world before I marry and do all the cooking and cleaning and make babies and get fat.”

The 64-year-old man from Poland. “I walk the Camino because my wife always wanted to do it, and now she is gone and she will never have that chance.”

The young woman from Nebraska. “I…

We all stand outside the small market in Villamayor. There are about twenty-five, maybe thirty of us hapless, fatigued pilgrims. Sweaty and covered in grit. All wearing the same clothes we were wearing two weeks ago. 

Same pants. Same shirt. Same boots. Same outfits, washed in the same communal showers and sinks, each evening, over and again, then hung to dry on the same far flung hostel balconies, spreading our deadly b.o. fumes across the breadth of Spain. 

The pilgrims form a haphazard line outside Villamayor’s one and only market as we wait for the shop owner to arrive so we can all buy our individual suppers. 

Pilgrims are getting fussy. 

Namely, because the market’s sign SAYS the store opens at 5:00 p.m. and yet it is already 5:32. This is Spain, however, we have already learned. There are no “set hours” for siesta. Despite what Spanish signs advertise regarding daily hours of operation, siesta officially ends whenever the hell it feels like ending. 

So we are all a little concerned. Because no market equals no supper. No supper equals

crappy sleep. No sleep equals a tired walk tomorrow. And we have 350 miles left to walk. 

Then. A car. 

Everyone holds their breath as a car swings into a nearby parking place. It is a minicar, the kind common to Europe, about the size of a toddler’s roller skate. 

The car idles for a bit. 

We are all staring at the car like we are trying to unlock the doors using only our eyeballs. 

A woman and her son crawl from the vehicle. The woman carries jangling keys in hand. She smiles. 

“We are now open!” the woman says with a thick Spanish accent. 

All pilgrims applaud. Some pilgrims are hugging each…

Grañón is a small village dating back to 885. The stone streets are empty this afternoon. Siesta is underway, the Spanish world has shut down to observe their daily food coma. 

There are seemingly no rooms in all of Spain tonight. There are 40 percent more pilgrims walking the Camino, we are told, than there are beds. We could not find a bed, so we hiked onward to a hostel where we heard about nuns who would not turn pilgrims away. 

Jamie and I arrive in town covered in dust, with muddy boots, and mid-sized Toyotas strapped to our backs.

The centerpiece of Grañón is the 16th century church of San Juan Bautista. The stone structure stands like a prehistoric behemoth in the middle of the antique village. Pilgrims are relaxing in the church courtyard. Some are freshly showered, reading books, smoking, or massaging bare feet. 

I don’t see any nuns. But I see church volunteers. 

“How much to stay here?” I ask one volunteer. 

“Donation only,” replies the volunteer. 

We check into our lodgings.

We are immediately taken to a communal room full of individual high-school wrestling mats on the floor. 

“What are these mats?” we ask. 

The volunteer smiles. “You sleep on floor.”

We are informed that this is not a “hostel,” in the traditional sense of the word, but a 10th century “hospital.” Grañón, has been serving pilgrims this way for the last 1000 years. The volunteers who run this place maintain the old ways. 

They inform us that, in addition to sleeping on the wooden floor, as in the 10th century, we pilgrims are also going to prepare our own communal dinner. 

Before we begin cooking, however, we’re told we must first elect a chef. For this position, we’ll…

Six of us have fallen in together, walking side by side for the last several miles of the Camino de Santiago. 

We are all strangers. All pilgrims. From different nations. There is dust on our backpacks, mud on our boots, and we all smell like something a diuretic horse produced. 

Each of us walks with a forward leaning gait, which is a gait synonymous with backpacking pilgrims. We perpetually lean forward against the never ending weight of the individual loads we carry. Some persons’ packs are heavier than others. As in life. 

But at this moment, our individual paces have, for some reason, aligned. And now we are all together. Six unlikely people on a trail. 

Which happens a lot out here. Sometimes you walk alone; sometimes with people. Friends come. Friends go. People’s daily walks intersect, then diverge. You might meet someone and form a connection, then never see this person again. You might meet someone who could piss off Mother Teresa. You will see this person every day. 

The Spanish sun is hot. We

are covered in sweat. The sound of our feet on the trail sounds like many percussion instruments. 

Richard, from Cork, sees the fiddle on my back. He speaks with an Irish brogue. “Are you gonna be singing for us now, Sean?” 

“Depends,”‘I reply. “How badly do you want to throw up?”

Richard is young, tall and lean, with an auburn mass of curly hair. He keeps asking me to sing so I give in. I sing a Johnny Cash tune. I sing in rhythm with my steps, gasping for oxygen, recounting the eternal anthem of a male named “Sue.”

Everyone applauds when I finish because this is more polite than gagging. 

“Your turn to sing,” I say to Richard. 

We are walking through Navarrete on Easter Monday the moment Pope Francis dies. The bells of the massive church are ringing, non-stop. Locals are in a kind of reverential shock.

“El papa está muerto,” we keep hearing.

It is the first time in 1,300 years a pope has died on Easter Monday.

I walk into la Iglesia Santa Maria de la Asunción. I remove my hat. I take a pew. The altar is made of more gold than I have ever seen. There are older women in the pew beside me, praying. They are weeping. “Santa Maria…” they moan.

Soon, it is time to walk again. We walk the Camino beneath a white-hot Spanish sun, and many on the trail are speaking of the pope’s life.

“He was the voice of the poor,” one Argentinian man says. “He was a humble servant,” says a woman from Mexico.

An Irish woman tells me it was the pope’s words who first convinced her to walk the Camino.

She says, “The pope once said that

you can learn all things about God, just by walking. Nothing else is needed.”

And as these people speak, we realize we are all indeed walking. And it seems a holy endeavor suddenly. Moving one’s feet.

I am getting the sense that we were all designed for this very act. Walking.

In my life, I’ve never actually known what I was made for. As a boy I thought I was designed to be a starting pitcher. When I got older, I believed fervently that I was supposed to become a photographer for Sports Illustrated’s annual May issue.

As I aged, I drank the Kool-Aid of modern society and believed I was created for the purpose of finding a decent job. Other times, I…

The 83-year-old woman has been opening her home to pilgrims since before I was born.

Currently, she is bustling around her house, gathering fresh towels and soaps for us. We are standing in her doorway, drenched, cold, and looking about as content as wet Himalayan cats.

She speaks no English. But my six semesters of college Español courses are coming back to me. I am finally able to have Spanish conversations without stuttering or urinating in my pants.

Caring for pilgrims, I am learning, is a holy endeavor in Spain. Not just a hobby. Not just something you do on weekends.

From what I glean, the woman’s husband is dead. She has been aiding pilgrims since she was a young woman, because she feels this is her life’s purpose. Her children are grown now, and they also help pilgrims.

We shed our muddy boots at the woman’s behest. The woman’s son is soon on his knees, stuffing newspaper into our wet, stinky boots. His bare hands are deep inside our gross, massive stink factories.

I

tell him this is not necessary, he smiles and tells me it is necessary—the newspaper will help dry the boots.

I am humbled. This man is dealing with our mud-splattered, sweaty shoes without flinching.

Caring for pilgrims is their trade. In a way, their family business. Which is only an example of how seriously locals treat the pilgrimage. This is not a mere profession for, but a “vocación.” A calling.

Thank God for this calling. Literally. Because tonight all nearby hostels were full. There was no room at the proverbial inn. The proverbial Mary and Joseph would’ve been compelled to keep hiking onward until they hit proverbial East-Bumble Timbuktu.

The old lady took pity on us. She first spotted us as we trudged through the rain-soaked village, clutching our packs, wearing the same agonizing looks of those who have just lost the SEC National Championship.

We will start walking before sunrise. Pilgrims are lacing up boots in the darkness outside our hostel, on our way to Santiago. Many languages are spoken. No English.

It’s cold in these mountains. And windy. A guy sits beside me. He has a Southern accent, like I do.

“This seat taken?”

His name is Steve, from Chattanooga. We shake hands. He and I are so grateful to have someone to speak English with that we are talking blue streaks.

“Isn’t this amazing?” Steve says. “To be in a place where you don’t know anyone, and yet you feel so close to everybody?”

He’s right. It is strange. To feel deep comradeship with total foreigners. People you might otherwise never interact with.

But you’re speaking now. In fact, you do more than speak. You empathize. You connect. You complain about the weather. About the five-minute showers. You’re all in this together.

Breakfast is light. Steve has Cornflakes. I have coffee. I'm trying to coax my muscles into another day of abuse.

A Korean man at the table sees my cowboy

hat and is intrigued. He asks to try on the hat, communicating solely in hand gestures.

The hat is four sizes too big, and droops on his head like Speedy Gonzalez’s sombrero, but he is thrilled. The man poses for pictures with his friends, holding pretend air-pistols, saying to the camera, “I am Crint East-rood.”

Our walk begins.

The sun is not yet up. Pilgrims are on the desolate highway, trudging onward in the dark of morning. We are in the far flung hills.

There are no houses out here. No barns. No evidence of man. Just farm animals, kept captive without fences. Because where would they go?

It’s foggy, we can't see anything except our own feet.

Then the sun comes up. Sunrise starts slow, and intensifies. Like the second movement of a symphony. That’s when we realize we are…