I left Pontevedra slowly,
my body awake but my spirit still heavy.
As we prayed the Glorious Mysteries,
the warmth of the “morning people” beside me
began to draw me into the day.
Their laughter was its own kind of sunshine.
At the edge of the city,
an old house stood alone among overgrown shrubs.
I thought of older people
who have given so much of themselves to others
and now live with the ache of being forgotten.
I prayed for them and for the older pilgrims whose steady steps
I had seen along the Camino.
The house seemed to ask me
to keep seeing them.
A fallen chestnut became our football.
We kicked it along until Ariane,
a pilgrim from Texas, joined the game.
Afterwards, she told us why she had come:
to step away from a crowded schedule
and reflect on her life and work.
Each difficult day, she said,
was teaching her to trust herself
and her capacity to keep going.
I was grateful that a little play
had opened the way to her story.
Beneath a canopy of trees,
clear streams ran down the mountainside
and crossed our path.
Their flowing water recalled Jesus’ promise
of living water, always flowing.
Then the forest grew quiet enough
for its smaller sounds to reach me:
birds calling, pilgrims walking,
sticks striking the trail,
a train passing in the distance.
For a while, I simply listened.
At a stop along the way,
I met Michelle again.
She had attended Mass with us
at the monastery the evening before.
Waiting in line, she told me
how hard it had been to begin the Camino.
Though she no longer practises her Catholic faith,
she was glad she had come.
The words about entering the cave we fear
had stayed with her.
She was seeking Jesus
somewhere within this journey.
As she spoke, she said she had goosebumps.
In the cornfields, ripe cobs hung
among leaves already drying.
The plants had given food;
soon their bodies would return to the earth.
I thought of the pilgrims walking alone,
each carrying thoughts I could not see.
How much may be ripening within us
while we appear simply to be passing by?
At one junction, three paths opened before me.
The yellow arrow was faint.
Only when I paused and looked carefully
could I see where it pointed.
Caldas de Reis welcomed us
with its rivers, Umia and Bermaña and the ancient hot springs.
I imagined healing water rising
from deep within the earth.
We, too, had come, carrying tired bodies
and hearts in need of tenderness.
Yesteryears, kings and queens came to its springs,
Today, pilgrims are today’s kings and queens
who come to be healed.
We approached the source together—
grateful for those who sing and joke,
for those who walk quietly beside us,
and for the graces that keep rising
from depths we cannot see and river sources beyond our eyes.
