36k
The penultimate day and I literally have no recollection of that day’s walk.
Towards the end there was a Chinese guy who had decided on a whim to walk the last 100k to Santiago. His shoes were falling apart, his pack was heavy, and his spirits were high. At least I wasn’t that unprepared.
This night would be my last in an albergue and as a pilgrim on the way. The mystery, expectation, and excitement of that first night in St. Jean had been supplanted by angst and fatigue.
The unceasing desire to get to Santiago became an anticipation to finish. Blessings and honor and glory were far from my mind this day.
Had I lost the Way, somewhere along the way?
I would have walked all through the afternoon and night, except I didn’t want to. Instead I crawled into my sleeping bag and tried to nap the angst away while Raphael and Felicity went out on the town.
The singular bus I must take from Santiago to the Madrid airport departed the next evening. It was scheduled to arrive a few hours before my flight departed.
It occurs to me now that missing that flight would not have been the worst thing to happen. After all, I had no job to return to. Indeed, no one meeting me at the airport (Contributing to my angst was the realization that I was flying into JFK rather than Logan, which is not how I had been imagining it all these weeks).
Yet, the thing that propelled me was that flight. Did I need it in order to finish or did it distract me from walking into the mystery?
Goat anyone? 