Pockets of joy along the Camino

What's the best way to visit a place? By making your way to all of its reputed churches, museums, and monuments and tasting the local cuisine? This is a question that the Camino de Santiago--and the concept of pilgrimage in general--can render difficult to answer, because when you're walking 10-15 miles on the Camino a day, the "place" isn't so much a specific geographic location as it is the journey. 

So, to answer my original question, the best way to visit a place when the place is the Camino (an expansive network of woodland trails, paved pathways, and marked village and city roads) is to begin each day with zero expectations of what you're going to encounter on that given day. The results may surprise you, as they did for me: 

The Camino renders the familiar unfamiliar, so encountering the types of animals we see all the time at home in Indiana is nevertheless a joy. This includes donkeys, dogs aplenty, cows, calves, sheep, and all types of birds.

This dog was all too happy to say hello to us as we passed by his home in the rain. 

I couldn't get over how cute this baby calf was. 

And, of course, more cows.

On our second morning, we saw this group of pilgrims doing some early morning yoga in front of the cathedral in Portomarin. How's that for some mixing of spiritualities? 

A few past pilgrims have been very diligent about leaving messages consistently along the Camino on the trail markers, and I've been keeping an eye out for the author of this one - in French, it says "va vers toi-meme," which translates to "go toward yourself." I liked the cryptic sentiment. See more below. 

Professor Gayk suggested that we try to memorize a poem to keep ourselves entertained while walking, so I chose to write out John Donne's "The Bait" on a notecard and have carried it with me along the way (and almost memorized the whole thing!). 

On day three, we came across this lovely little Christian hostel along the path that served as a rest stop for pilgrims. Inside, you could get free coffee, fruit, and beverages, and the owner sang to pilgrims as he stamped their pilgrim's passports. It was a lovely place. 

This café was entirely dedicated to beer bottles - the entire place was covered in them, just like this. 

Finally, another message from my French friend: "Open yourself, carry yourself with you, smile all the same."

The Camino is filled with little pockets of joy such as these - you just need to be open to looking for them.