The Camino de Santiago de Compostela

1000's of people walk the Camino every year with Santiago de Compostela being their destination!

In his poem "Santiago", David Whyte writes,

".....walking as you did, in your rags of love and speaking in the voice that by night became a prayer for safe arrival, so that one day you realised that what you wanted had already happened long ago and in the dwelling place you had lived in before you began, and that every step along the way, you had carried the heart and the mind and the promise that first set you off and drew you on........"

For this song I had the absolute pleasure of working again with composer and producer John Walsh.

Caminante, son tus huellas

el camino, y nada más;

caminante, no hay camino,

se hace camino al andar.

Al andar se hace camino,

y al volver la vista atrás

se ve la senda que nunca

se ha de volver a pisar.

Caminante, no hay camino,

sino estelas en la mar.

(Antonio Machado - Spanish Poet)

In English:

Wanderer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more; wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking. By walking one makes the road, and upon glancing back one sees the path that must never be trod again. Wanderer, there is no road— Only wakes upon the sea.

I once heard heard the poet David Whyte introduce this poem which he wrote for his niece

after she had told him about her experience walking the Camino.

He explained that when she arrived at Santiago she had the option of continuing on to the final destination of Finisterre, to the cliff edge. When a pilgrim arrives there it is custom to write a letter and burn it, in keeping with the art of letting go, and leave something of yours behind. When she got to the very end she emptied her bag , did the customary things and decided to leave her walking boots that had brought her the 500 miles to her destination and left the cliff edge in a pair of light sandals. As she walked back she saw her shadow on the water and hence the poem FINISTERRE was born! "...and to abandon the shoes that brought you here right at the water's edge, not because you had given up but because now, you would find a different way to tread, and because, through it all, part of you would still walk on, no matter how, over the waves....". Isn't it true that sometimes to get to our final destination we need to abandon the path we are on.

FINISTERRE

The road in the end taking the path the sun had taken, into the western sea, and the moon rising behind you as you stood where ground turned to ocean: no way to your future now but the way your shadow could take, walking before you across water, going where shadows go, no way to make sense of a world that wouldn't let you pass except to call an end to the way you had come, to take out each frayed letter you had brought and light their illumined corners; and to read them as they drifted on the late western light; to empty your bags; to sort this and to leave that; to promise what you needed to promise all along, and to abandon the shoes that brought you here right at the water's edge, not because you had given up but because now, you would find a different way to tread, and because, through it all, part of you would still walk on, no matter how, over the waves.