There is a word in Galician, almost identical to its Portuguese cousin, that I have never been able to translate properly into Italian, English, or any of the other languages I speak. “Saudade”.
It is the quiet ache of missing something that is still partly with you. A place that calls you back even though you never really left. A version of yourself you keep meeting on the road and who, every time, has something more to teach you.
I learned the word on the Camino. Of course I did.
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I was fifteen when I first dreamed about doing the Camino de Santiago. I had read something, seen something, heard someone say something. The way these things happen. A seed dropped into the soil of a teenage mind, and then forgotten. It took me fifteen more years to actually start walking.
In my head, the Camino was a slow, generous summer. Two months in Navarra, La Rioja, Galicia. Wine, food, conversations with strangers, the occasional silence under a tree. I postponed it three or four times, for reasons I could no longer name.
When I was thirty, the stars seemed to align. I was closing my time in Scotland and had a window of a couple of months before starting my master at Harvard. I decided to walk the entire French Way, from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Santiago. For me, that was the only real Camino.
Then a friend of mine, who later became a partner in Better Ipsum (but that is another story), came to me with a sentence that rearranged the whole plan in two seconds: “I am getting married.” The wedding was exactly twenty-three days after my supposed start date – the same day I was flying out of Scotland.
I was torn. The route I had imagined was forty-five days, maybe more. Splitting it across two summers felt wrong. Skipping the wedding was not on the table. So I made a decision that, in hindsight, defined my relationship with the Camino forever: I would walk the entire French Way in twenty-two days.
It later became nineteen and a half.
It was a totally different experience from the one I had wanted, but it was exactly the one I needed. A brutal, physical, suffering experience that emptied my mind and forced me to reconnect with my body. Every day was longer than it had any right to be. Every night I fell asleep before my head touched the pillow. And somewhere along the way, I learned the lesson that has stayed with me ever since.
“The Camino gives you what you need, not what you want.”
After Harvard, I went back. Santiago II.
The main reason was that the first time I had done it on my own. I told no one. Not friends, not colleagues. I called home once a week, said I was fine, hung up. My parents and relatives were quietly surprised when I reached Santiago much faster than they had imagined. They never asked too many questions. I think they understood, on some level, that I needed the silence more than they needed the updates.
So I thought of reversing the narrative. What if I wrote a blog this time? The first one had been about pushing through. The second one would be about listening (curious? You can find it here)
It was not an easy decision. That choice irritated almost everyone close to me. The reactions were not enthusiastic: “It is not good for your health.” “It is not good for your work.” And the main one: “What will people think about you?” I remember answering, with the calm that arrives only when you already know the answer: “I really don’t care. I know it is the right thing to do.”
That Camino was hard. Because of the blog. Because of the route (twenty-two days, eight hundred kilometres, in the middle of the Spanish summer). And mostly because of the ghosts of Santiago I. Lesson learned: each Camino is different.
I thought it was over. It was not.
In my first two routes, I had missed Muxía and Finisterre. The two coastal extensions beyond Santiago, where the road meets the ocean and pilgrims used to burn their clothes as a symbol of rebirth. Without them, my Camino was a sentence without a final word.
So I went back. Santiago III.
Then my girlfriend at the time was curious. Or maybe it was just me wanting to share with her what the Camino meant to me, because happiness is better when shared.
We walked together. Santiago IV.
Then we split. And there was nothing better than the Camino to walk the breakup off. Santiago V.
I guess by now you know the rhythm. I came back, and back, and back. Different stretches, different seasons, different versions of myself. After a while, I stopped counting the miles and started counting the lessons.
For a long time, I asked myself what kept dragging me there. The first answers were the obvious ones. The silence. The new people. The sense of meeting destiny on a dirt road. The simple living, with a bit of sacrifice. The reconnection with my animal side. The chance to sing my songs out loud in the woods. The detachment from a materialistic, dirty world. My love for the Iberian Peninsula. And the most obvious one of all, the spiritual side.
The deeper answer took a few more years to arrive.
“The Camino is my master.” Or, as I prefer, “El Camino es mi maestro.”
I have had teachers, mentors, instructors. A handful of them I deeply respect. But a master is a different thing. A master does not just give you information. A master gives you back to yourself, slightly less confused than before.
Every important decision of the last decade of my life was clarified on the Camino. Writing my second book. Leaving the law firm I was working for. Going back to the US. Closing a relationship. Starting Better Ipsum. Don’t get me wrong: the Camino does not tell you what to do, and it does not help you do it. At all. What it does is remove the noise, so we can finally hear what we already know. Then it is up to us to go home and do the hard things.
After the tenth, I felt the apprenticeship was over. I told myself “Okay, I am ready”. On the last day of Santiago X, before entering into the Ciudad Vieja, I remember seeing all my Caminos at once, vividly, and feeling the ten entrances to Santiago piling up inside the last one. I told everyone it had ended. Because I truly believed it.
Then I came back for the eleventh. Unexpectedly.
Lesson learned: nothing is certain, do not take anything for granted, destiny may surprise you. Santiago XI.
I do not know if I will go again this year. If it happens, fine. If it does not, also fine. But one thing is certain. The Camino has saudade in it.
Or maybe the Camino is saudade.
Epilogue
On Santiago II, I had dinner with a small group of pilgrims one night. Someone told me a story I have been carrying ever since.
A Hungarian truck driver did his first Camino, the entire French Way, at fifty-seven. Another French Way at sixty-one. And then, for reasons only known to him, he walked the French Way twelve times in a single year, to honour each one of the apostles.
When I heard the story, I laughed. Then I stopped laughing.
I said to myself, with the kind of quiet seriousness that I usually reserve for the choices that matter: “You know what? Twelve is a good number.“
