Yesterday I became a pilgrim - Sat nite when we arrived at Saint Jean Pied de Port, France (St John at the foot of the mountain pass), we checked in at the Pilgrim Office.  It is a room with picnic tables and staffed with all volunteers. You fill out a form with name, nationality, and “motive for the Camino”.  You can choose from religious, spiritual, cultural, athletic, or other.  I checked spiritual and cultural.  I wasn’t ready to call it a religious pilgrimage.  They gave us a room assignment at the municipal hostel.  They gave us our credentials, or pilgrim passport, and stamped it.  We get it stamped at each stop along they way and present it at the end at the cathedral in Santiago de Campostela.

At this point, I had been saying I was a pilgrim, but I didn’t really know what it meant.  I certainly did not feel it.

We stared Sun morning at 7am, in the dark, in the pouring rain.  It rained and we climbed.  It rained and we climbed more. And so it went.  And the mud, and the mud, and the mud.  Our elevation gain was 2,000 ft.  That was 180 flight of stairs according to one app.  We had trained pretty well for the trip, but we were unprepared for this day.  At this point I had serious doubts that I wanted to be, or would ever qualify as a pilgrim.

After 16 mi and 7.5 hrs, we arrived at Roncesvalles, Spain.  We were soaked and exhausted. We were met at the door by more volunteers welcoming us in.  We were asked if we wanted to stay the night, and again filled out a form with our name, nationality, and motive.  Boots on the boot room to dry with newspapers stuffed inside. Roncesvalles consists of a really old church and a former monastery or convent.  It has been converted into a pilgrim hostel with 178 beds.  It was full that night.  Cost is 10 euro ea, plus 10 euro for dinner. During check-in we again had to identify our nationality and our motive.

At 6pm there was a pilgrim mass in the really old church.  It is served by 1 old priest and 2 really, really old priests.  The service was in Spanish.  The readings were in French.   We understood a few words. During the service the priest recognized the pilgrims in attendance and read their counties of origen - Spain, France, Italy, Germany, England, Wales, Iceland, South Africa, Brazil, Uraguay, South Korea, Japan, China, Belgium, Canada, England, and of course America.   There were  probably more.

At the end of the service they called all the pilgrims up to the alter for the pilgrim’s blessing.  One of the really, really old priests read us the pilgrim’s prayer, and then gave us the pilgrim’s blessing, and wished us well on our journey in at least 10 languages.  He might have said a swear word during the Japanese version because there was a little giggling.

It was then that it hit me.  That day there were about 200 people from all over the world, gathered in this small old church, in a remote corner of Spain. This happens every day. This is the slower season. They do the pilgrim mass every day.  They estimate 250,000 make the pilgrimage every year.  In 10 years there will be 2.5 million new pilgrims.  People have been doing this Camino for 1,200 years.  I can’t imagine how many million have made the journey.

It is really humbling to be a part of all of all the kindness offered, by so many perfect strangers, all volunteeering, to make this possible.

Today I feel I have become a pilgrim.