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. That start date, by the way, was the day after the AC/DC concert on the Rock or Bust tour. The plan was: go to the concert, fly out of Scotland the next day, close the backpack, do the additional vaccinations for the US, and start walking the Camino. Because why make life easy when complicating it is so much cooler?
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. A conversation with a friend who had completed the same route in twenty-six days, plus the story of a marathon-running couple who had done it in twenty-three, was enough to convince me to try it the hard way.
It later became nineteen and a half.
Believe me when I say that 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? A blog about the harshness, the beauty, and the unique aspects of the Camino? (curious about the outcome? You can find it here)
It was not an easy decision. Mostly because 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 (my then-girlfriend helped me with daily postings and some edits, but everything was on my shoulders). 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, this time from Vigo. 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 from Porto. 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 dirty 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, and it arrived while I was walking.
“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. Moving places. 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 you can finally hear what you already know. Then it is up to you to go home and do the hard things.
After the tenth, I felt the apprenticeship was over. I told myself “Okay, now 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.
The Master had one more lesson to teach me: nothing is certain, nothing can be taken for granted, and destiny always reserves the right to 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 walked his first Camino (the entire French Way) at fifty-seven. He did it again at sixty-one. Then, for reasons known only to him, at sixty-three, he walked the French Way twelve times in a single year, to honour each 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.“
