One of the best things about Oxford University is surely the time that we’re not at Oxford—the university lets out for long five week breaks that punctuate the three eight-week terms that make up its academic year. With these long and luxurious breaks on my mind heading into my year at Oxford, I knew that I would want to travel—ideally to places a bit off the beaten path and harder to reach.
What I didn’t anticipate is that I would spend a good deal of the vacation from Oxford on a religious pilgrimage. And yet, for two weeks in March that’s exactly where I found myself, making my way westward from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France, on the Camino de Santiago. The decision to go happened very casually: a friend mentioned that she was planning on going, described days of walking through rural Spain, staying in cheap hostels in small villages, and walking hard every day. To me it sounded less like a religious pilgrimage and more just an excellent trip; I asked to come along, and it was settled. On March 18, we struck out at 8 a.m. from Saint Jean. I would walk as far as Burgos, but my friends intended to walk the entire pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, 500 miles away on the west coast of Spain.
So from the start, it was not your standard religious pilgrimage. I was only going half the way and then leaving for other pursuits. We numbered two Episcopalians—one born and bred, me, a more recent convert—and an atheist. I had a Canon camera slung around my neck and an iPhone in my front pocket. From the start, figuring out just how exactly a religious pilgrimage was supposed to look, feel, and play out in real life was troublesome. Prior to setting out, pilgrims for me meant morose-looking New Englanders with buckles on their hats—not three college kids with Gore-Tex, Nalgene water bottles, and copious amounts of Vaseline for blisters. But there we were, and by definition, we were religious pilgrims. That felt like a very heavy label to take up, religious pilgrims. We weren’t monks, we weren’t walking on our knees the whole way, and we didn’t stop for prayer five times a day. I didn’t feel like I was dignified, serious, or saintly enough to apply it to me—and since I was going only to Burgos, I felt especially fake in thinking of myself as a pilgrim. Starting out, I was just walking, so I focused on that instead.
Walking was good, and walking was hard. We would rise at 6 a.m., pack our bags quickly so as not to awake the people in the other bunks, slam breakfast, and hit the trail by 8 a.m. Mornings were best while walking. Little chance of seeing anyone else on the way, birds singing plaintively, and no shortage of silence. We would start in twilight and let the sun come up around us, streaking the sky in bright pastels. Of course, the other draw of walking in the morning was that everything had not yet begun to hurt—muscles were still limber, feet not sore, and blisters complained only softly. As the day wore on, muscles tightened, tendons began to strain, and the pace slowed. In a sixteen-mile day with a full pack, the first eight miles came quickly and the second eight came arduously, hatefully, painstakingly. Arriving in a town for the night felt like returning from a war—only to start it up again the next day. And so the days went by.
As the miles stacked up behind us one by one, I found myself less and less reticent to think of myself a pilgrim. Walking is work, whether you’re wearing long woolen robes and a giant wooden cross, or tennis shoes and a cotton t-shirt. What distinguishes pilgrims from walkers is not attire, fervor, or zeal but simply the destination—a holy city in a material sense, and a closer relationship to the divine on a spiritual level. Those things don’t come lightly, but they don’t require a special license to earn.
So even though I was perhaps an unlikely candidate, I felt myself more and more a pilgrim with each day. I may not have made it to Santiago this time, but I have every intention of doing so as soon as I can again. Until that time, I remain a pilgrim on the way—a highly errant pilgrim, and making extraordinarily slow progress. But having begun the journey, it must continue until it’s complete.
Tucker Cholvin graduated summa cum laude in 2015 with a major in international political economy from the Walsh School of Foreign Service. He participated in the Berkley Center's Junior Year Abroad Network while spending the 2013-2014 academic year abroad at Pembroke College, University of Oxford.
