The Pilgrim Trail in Spring

Smell is powerfully evocative – after all Proust wrote “A la Recherché du Temps Perdu” based on the associations arising from the smell of a Madelaine. Smell is also restorative. I often plucked a sprig of lavender or fennel to smell as I walked along.

Closer to Santiago the trail passed through wet eucalyptus plantations. For Australians, the smell of wet eucalyptus leaves underfoot and of crushed leaves in the hand is evocative of the Australian bush.

Then there are the colours of spring, with an abundance of flowers of all kinds – poppies, thistles, yellow flowers, brilliant sky-blue flowers growing on small weedy plants. Pink-red bell flowers. Pink flowers. Lilac flowers from bulbs or maybe orchids. There were really tiny ones that you had to stop and enjoy from close up.

Near Santiago there were brilliant red cherries ripening on the trees. Other trees had orange-red leaves, transparent in the morning sun. Early on, some shrubs had masses of dense white flowers that fell in the wind and were blown into tiny snow drifts on the path.

Higher up in the mountains, the shrubs and flowers were smaller. Looking across the valleys on the climb up to O’Cebreiro, the opposite hillsides glowed with patches of yellow flowers.

Stone walls along the path were often thickly covered with lush green mosses, often with the tiniest flowers peeping out.

At Finisterre, mosses and lichens and small flowery shrubs clung to rocks and crevices to survive the fierce Atlantic winds.

Don’t forget the sounds of spring either! Every field and hedge was alive with birdsong. Leave the iPod at home and just enjoy what nature turns on for free. Listen to your feet on the stones, the wind in the trees, distant bells, sheep. Hear your own breathing. You will almost burst with happiness – or maybe song!

So Why Did I Walk the Pilgrim Trail?

In the course of our lives, as on the pilgrimage itself, we arrive at many forks along the way. Choices have to be made.
Often the choice is easy, familiar and entails low risk: do I choose the blue shirt or the green one? But occasionally we are confronted with difficult choices, whose outcome cannot be certain, and where the risk may be great: should I quit my job?
One of the abiding lessons of my pilgrimage is that it is usually better to choose the difficult way; to walk upon a thin, stony track through the unknown forest of life’s course, rather than to tread easily along grassy paths through, verdant meadows.
The rewards of the difficult, uncertain way (though scary) are often greater than the easy rewards of familiar habits.