In a rock and roll bar in Hornillos ‘Turn Your Lamp Down Low (Baby Please Don’t Go)’ by Muddy Waters played over the speaker. The line “before I be your dog” repeats and catches my attention; I wondered if it had stood out to Iggy Pop in the same way. It’s 10:03am and a man had joined us at the bar. We had passed him moments earlier walking his donkey along the pilgrim track. Up close I could see that most of his facial hair had turned grey, his slouch hat was a few years past ‘well worn’ and the edges had begun to split and fray. The tattered handkerchief tied around his neck was in even worse disrepair. He looked a seasoned pilgrim who had found his way many times before, his donkey taking a familiar trail, waited unmoored outside the bar. The man stood out to me in the steady stream of polyester-blend hiking clothes and legionnaire hats. We greeted him ‘hola’ as he had entered the bar, but even in his mother tongue he offered few words. I wondered what the old pilgrim’s story was for a moment, before deciding I didn’t need him to tell me – in any case, he wouldn’t. He was the most interesting person I had seen in weeks and he made me want to write again.
Walking the Camino is often retold by pilgrims as these lightning strike moments. In extreme cases they are epiphanies, the more moderate, simple moments of clarity. Twenty days – lightning had not struck. In an unforeseen turn, the clarity I had once felt had seemed to desert me along the way. I didn’t know why I was walking the Camino and the question seemed to sour each time it was asked.
The song ended and the brief silence quickly replaced by ‘When The Music’s Over’ by The Doors. An artwork I had made at university came to mind; a series of Lino-prints influenced by the lyrics of ‘Roadhouse Blues’.
“The future’s uncertain and the end is always near.”
A line loaded with the frank existentialism expressed by the stoics – but delivered like a shot of whisky. Even then, there was something in their music that felt like a homecoming. I had visited his grave twice in Paris. The revelation to do this had come to me as a high school student with distinct clarity. Perhaps that was my first real pilgrimage.
You don’t get to choose what you receive from a pilgrimage or even why you embark on them in the first place. That’s not the way these things work. In fact we have no real control over our idols, and none whatsoever, over our epiphanies. All I had was this single moment where I finally felt a sense of belonging, like I was in the right place, at the right time. I could already see this place as a memory; the tiny rock and roll bar in Hornillos, the old pilgrim with his donkey and Morrison’s voice over the radio. I waited for the song to finish before I picked up my pack. I was ready to walk again, this time in search of nothing, only the next moment.
teaghantique 
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