Day 29: It Is Finished | Alex Carruthers

We have arrived, St. James.  To the land of Milk and Honey.  The Promised Land.  The Paradise City where the grass is green and the girls are pretty.  The Big Dawg.  The Grande Perro.  The Walk of St. James, Sant Yago.  The Santiago de Compestella.  We have arrived. We have arrived.

There were times on this trip when I thought Santiago was not a real place.  These times included about all of the days.  But it is most definitely real.  Today, we walked a pure 20 kilometers.  It was one of our easiest days, and it was needed.  Our albergue (our final albergue) was a great one to end on.  It had good showers and good beds, which is really all you care about.  Yes, there was one last symphony, and we both luckily had our ear plugs to block out some of the beautiful, natural music.

Last night’s dinner was one of my favorites.  We ordered veal, fries, and salad, and when they served our food, they also brought out a searing cast iron skillet.  We were very confused, so we played it cool by looking around to see what everyone else was doing.  The men at the table next to us saw our confusion and told us to cut up the meat, put it on this cast iron skillet, throw garlic and salt on them, and let them cook for about five minutes.  It was divine.

This morning we awoke around 6:00 A.M. and hit the trail around 6:25. We arrived to Santiago around 11 and made it to the Cathedral.  The Cathedral is beautiful.  Or at least I’m sure it is beautiful, but right now, the outside is undergoing construction so a lot of the front side is covered in scaffolding.  But we are imaginative people, and so to us, it was beautiful.

There are a series of things pilgrims have to do when they get to Santiago: get your Compestella (certificate saying that you did the deed), attend the Pilgrim mass, and hug St. James.  We tried to get our Compestella around 11:00, but the line was an hour and a half long, so we decided to skip that and return at 7:30 in the night.

Then, we went to the Pilgrim mass at 12, and it was very cool.  It was great seeing all of the other pilgrims that we had been walking with for the past four weeks because we were finally done after all of the incremental suffering.  And we spotted Claus (the man that noticed my beard) on the other side of the Cathedral.  He gave us a thumbs up, and we responded with a double thumbs up.  We went over and talked to him.  He was shocked that we got in today.  He walked in yesterday and arrived in Santiago around 7:00 PM after walking a mean 42 km.  And that’s why Claus is our man. He has a lot of Memphis in him. If there were a 3rd Memphis Pilgrim, Claus would be he.

We hugged St. James after the mass.  No, not the real St. James.  He is no longer with us anymore.  Pilgrims hug a statue of him overlooking the cathedral.  It was one of the more awkward things I’ve ever done, but it was still a touching moment.  We had really done it.  We had really walked 800 kilometers to hug this man.  You better believe it was the best hug he’s ever had.

We’re both in shock that we have made it this far in our journey.  It seems like yesterday when Murray and I put the 20 pound dumbbells in our packs in the weight room.  It’s just crazy.  It’s a whirlwind of emotions. We were talking about how we felt about the walk concluding, and we decided that if -1000 is extremely ready to be done and 1000 is never wanting to leave, then we are at a dead 0 (-1000 + 1000).  I guess a flat 0 would be indifference, but it has a lot of polar emotions attached that make it certainly feel like it is not indifference.

But our journey is not quite over yet.  We have decided to bike to the End of the World (Fisterre).  It will be a 2 day trek on our bikes, and we will be biking to the farthest point west in Spain.  We are very excited.

Yes, you can expect another blog post.

Picture:  The Memphis Pilgrims with their official Compestella.