Behind the Albergue Door: Inspiration Agony Adventure on the Camino de Santiago

Although we spent a good portion of the Camino with a few people in particular, there were still times when we were apart from them for significant amounts of time and it seemed as though every day brought something, or someone, new to the mix. Another fascinating part of it all was the way we were really able to pick and choose who we spent time with. Unlike at home, where certain activities take place in the company of certain people with precious little variation. You see your work friends at work, your sports friends at those sports, your drinking friends at the bar, your building’s caretaker at the seedy motel just off the highway during your wife’s Pilates class. And the only variation in the system is when you’ve drank too much and start making new friends or reconnecting with old ones from high school via creepy Facebook messages. And if you were to suddenly bring a work friend to your ball game and then sit apart, just the two of you, at the same bar as the rest of your team after the game, well, that would be strange. Or if you brought a girl you met at the bar on the weekend to work and gave her a chair so she could watch you do data entry. But everything was different on the Camino. All of your friends were “Camino friends”, they were all on their way to Santiago and, just like you, were all putting themselves through a considerable amount of pain and suffering to achieve a goal for reasons they couldn’t accurately explain. So basically what I’m saying is that it was a free for all. You could hike all day with two Swiss music teachers then sit down for dinner with the group of Asians you remembered from a few days back. Or settle into a four-bed dorm room with a French-Canadian couple with a passion for rugby then spend the rest of the afternoon shopping for breakfast food with the organic farmer from Oregon who really knows his stuff when it comes to cucumbers. Our last few days on the Camino were a confusing mess of shifting groups, fluctuating schedules, unrealized plans and found and lost friends, much like those first hilarious minutes after you light an animal shelter on fire.
    Despite some of those rather petulant descriptions of certain people we encountered I don’t think there was anyone we got to know on the Camino that didn’t have some redeeming qualities about them. It’s a strange thing being part of such a homogenous undertaking. Even though you couldn’t have created a more racially, nationally, linguistically and physiologically diverse crew if you were getting Tommy Hilfiger to help you cast the perfect family for a banking commercial, the fact remained that we all chose to be in that particular place, doing that specific thing, at that exact point in time, which meant we had at least that much in common with everyone we met. And whether we lived like family for days and weeks at a time, hiked side by side for a few hours, spent an hour sharing a meal or simply made some muffled small talk while brushing our teeth, inevitably we were always able to find some common ground – a joint admiration for the scenery of the day, a shared interest in football, similar views on how long food can be on the ground before you give up on it, or just simultaneously climaxing blisters.
    In fact, there was a real skill behind the subtle art of the nebulous friendship. It was all about knowing how to casually modify your schedule and avoid unnecessary commitment. You might decide to extend lunch for ten minutes after everyone else has gone, or maybe find out when a certain group is leaving for supper and ask them to wait up since you are heading out anyway, or even go against the grain and choose a different albergue for the night. Mind you, nice as most people are, sometimes there simply isn’t a sufficient amount conversation to fill an entire afternoon of hiking and you may decide that some time alone (or more accurately, apart) is in order. This is where you need to get creative. Stopping to take a photo, or several, struggling mightily with the normally straightforward process of retying your shoe, excusing yourself to heed the call of nature for an amount of time that will naturally dissuade anyone from hovering in wait, or going the other route - busting your lungs up a tough hill like this whole thing is just moving too slow for you, or skipping lunch with some mumbled words about “stomach problems”, simply putting in your ear buds, turning on your music and falling