Dissertation: Between, The Camino de Santiago
I figured I should upload this at some point or another...
Introduction
Everyone has that one thing they’ve always wanted to do. For many people, things like skydiving, eating at a Michelin Star restaurant, moving to a new country, or finally meeting one of their idols can encourage them to keep moving and living their lives, working toward that goal or experience. For me, I’ve always wanted to walk the Camino de Santiago.
I don’t remember how I heard about it, but since I found out about it, it was on the back burners of my mind daily. Though I’ve always loved the outdoors, being from a farming-turned-bedroom community in rural America, to undertake the challenge of walking 500 miles was more than the hikes I’ve done up and down small peaks and through protected forests when I was still living at home. Knowing my limitations, I decided to push myself. I decided to take a chance and see if I could handle it. To see if I could figure out how to “do walking” in a way different from walking around the city, to walk in different contexts requires different skill sets and mindsets (Shove and Pantzar 2005; Mauss 1973; Falk 1995). I didn’t realise the pain which would come with it, the continent sized blisters acquired by me and many other pilgrims, the bandages, wraps, braces, paracetamol, ibuprofen, creams, vaseline, and liquid courage it would take to make this body of mine walk every day for over a month. When you’re a pilgrim, you’re never alone, despite the fact that you will likely start your journey by yourself (Heiser 2021). You sleep in a room with 6 to 150 other people, you have meals with folks who were strangers not ten minutes before you eat, and you never, ever, walk alone. Looking at the relevance of the body in this situation, to examine embodiment, and thus what personhood means, is best studied within the context of the Camino. The interaction between a body and its pain, and the fact of a potent sociality being the centre of many of the factors contributing to this focus on the body and personhood make the Camino de Santiago an abundant resource for looking into this subject matter. Due to the fact of betweenness, or placelessness, being the centre of a pilgrim’s experience on the Camino de Santiago, and the origins of this placelessness being found in the actions and feelings associated with ritual, pain, play, and the digital, it can be said that one’s personhood and thus their embodiment becomes potent, and the sociality of the Camino de Santiago is something which exists within this personhood and embodiment, rather than acting as a factor of it or something outside of it. The experience of the body, in this case, is something which is moulded by sociality, and though it can be argued that the body is singular and personal, the experience of the Camino de Santiago is something which is then detached from this individuality, and an example of the body’s existence as a social object.
For these reasons, the intense amount of socialisation, the nearness, and the potential for friendships and communities to develop as one walks and spends 24 hours a day amongst others, I decided to write my dissertation on the Camino de Santiago. The question which I hope to answer is not why people walk the Camino, but how the Camino is done and what it means to engage with personhood and embodiment while one walks. Given my fascination with the digital, I’ve also found the Camino de Santiago to be extremely interesting given both the overwhelming presence and use of applications like Google Translate and Google Maps, as well as the nature of the Camino as acting as a severance between the nature of the walk, and regular internet use. What people post as they walk, when Wi-Fi and 4G reception are available, is also something to note. The methods by which pilgrims communicate with each other while on the move was also interesting to both witness and participate in. WhatsApp seems to be the Lingua Franca of online communication between pilgrims as they walk.
Given my experience walking the Camino de Santiago, I find that it’s important to note what the Camino de Santiago is, how it works, and some other background information regarding its history. The Camino de Santiago, in English known as St James’s Way, is a grouping of traditionally Catholic pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela, a city in which a cathedral dedicated to the Apostle James of the Christian Bible exists, where James’ remains are considered to be interred. The time period in which the Camino de Santiago experienced its first rush of pilgrims was in the Middle Ages, which allowed for many of the towns along the commonly walked French Way, or Camino Frances, to be built and supply food and shelter for those early pilgrims. Some argue that parts of the Camino are more ancient, potentially being walked by Romans or earlier cultures as a way to get to the sea, or cultural hubs. Regardless, this path which I have now walked is one which has been followed for a minimum of a thousand years. Though there were times where less than a 100 people walked the Camino de Santiago in a year, now thanks to media regarding the Camino and the internet, countless individuals have undertaken this route in the 20th and 21st centuries. The typical number of pilgrims per year can number around a quarter of a million, as of the last few years (Oficina del Peregrino). Given the fact that the Camino does heavily relate to Catholic and Christian themes, one would assume that many individuals undertake this route for religious reasons. In my experience speaking with my fellow pilgrims, I’ve found that religion tends to be something which people engage with potentially less than other factors which may push someone to undertake a 500 mile walk. In line with the idea of habitus from Bordieu, the structures on which the Camino were built should yield adherence to Catholic law, given that the path itself and everything on it is oriented towards these sets of religious beliefs (Bourdieu 2004, Rooksby 2017). Religion is arguably the core of the walk. Many of the albergues, or hostels, which provide shelter to pilgrims, are parochial, or run by people who encourage pilgrims to attend mass. There doesn’t appear to be any pressure to be religious, however. When one walks, they will be taken in at an albergue regardless.
With the discussion of religion and Camino comes the presence of ritual, liminality, and play. To undertake a great physical challenge like the Camino de Santiago, regardless of the reasons for which one may do it, ritual and aspects of play are consistently involved. This ritual is arguably a way to make one’s self, to change (O’Neill and Roberts 2019). Waking up when the sun rises, lacing up your boots, silently packing your bag, and slipping out of the hostel doors every day for a month is an act of ritual. Even the boots we wore were a ritual. Hiking boots are made for walking, and when they fall apart and break down, or conversely, keep a pilgrim going, is an indication of the fact that technologies such as these can shape everything, down to our gait (Michael 2000; Falk 1995, Ingold 2004, Amato, 2004). The daily movement, in a literal and metaphorical sense, becomes a part of you when you walk for a minimum of 15 miles a day. There is no way to uphold the same lifestyle one holds before Camino, while on the Camino. It’s also important to note how the Camino de Santiago is a liminal space for many individuals who are walking it: a space between their ‘before’ and ‘after’, if you will. People who walk the Camino are between towns and beds as they walk, and many of my participants were also between stages and places in their lives. The fact that the Camino de Santiago is around a month long can lead people who would typically partake to not walk it, given that it is a massive time commitment. People who walk the Camino typically have the time, as a result of outer life factors putting them in a financial and temporal situation to do so, which results in a place often in between a here and there. What is pertinent about this walk is the fact of its betweenness and thus placelessness, the fact that it is touched by liminality, and the presence of all of the factors I’ve described and will describe contributing to this betweenness. As we walk, we are also playing. The Camino de Santiago is often done for fun, as masochistic as that sounds. People laugh and talk as they walk. I sang songs with friends, told and listened to endless stories, danced in the streets of small Spanish villages, and taught and was taught curse words in countless languages. The people who you get to know on the Camino de Santiago come to be like family. We all had our rituals together, we experienced the between parts of life together, we ate, played, slept, and bathed together too. It’s the type of thing which cannot help but prompt an ephemeral ethnogenesis, a culture which exists within an ethnographic moment, but cannot be said to exist again after that short period of time where the togetherness is so potent. From this, it can surely be said that our dancing, walking, eating, sleeping, and bathing bodies could be a vehicle for sociality, rather than an isolated, individuated fragment of humanity.
While I was in the field, I spent time using various anthropological methods to better understand the culture of the Camino de Santiago and integrate myself into the social situations and environment. The method I employed and enjoyed the most was walking interviews. Speaking with people for hours a day as we walked countless kilometres was something which I both intended to do, and which came naturally as a result of how the Camino works. As I said before, you never walk alone, and while I was walking, I got to learn an incredible amount of bits and pieces of people’s lives. In the field, I also found myself using participant observation quite a bit. I attended church services, ate meals with people, went to the farmacia, and drank a few beers and glasses of wine with my fellow pilgrims. In the digital sphere, I also had the privilege to connect with many of my participants on Whatsapp and on Instagram. Through Whatsapp groupchats, direct messaging, and Instagram stories, my participants and I were able to remain connected for both our own enjoyment and for safety. Through Whatsapp, I also received and sent hundreds of images of the Camino. These images ended up being the base for a photo-voice methodology, showing each photographer’s perspective, and what it was they paid the most attention to while walking. This use of photo-voice, though non-traditional, was an excellent tool to connect with my participants in a mobile environment.
What I found while conducting this ethnography was a community in which exchange was an essential piece of participation within the culture. To be a pilgrim on the Camino de Santiago, the exchange of information, food, and support are completely essential. Though it’s very possible to walk alone, and many people do walk alone, the culture and conversation of the Camino centres around other people. What I was given by those I walked with kept me walking, and kept me ingratiated in the ritual process at hand. I gave away stories of my life, bites and sips of my food and drink, bandages, small change, advice, my privacy, PDFs of anthropological articles, and recommendations for any form of media one can consume. I received all of those things and more back in kind. When you walk, you walk in ritual, you keep people safe, and you ask everyone when they’re beginning their walk in the morning the next day so that you can encourage people to keep walking and stay in this placeless space, between what their lives were and who they were in the process of becoming.
The internationality of the Camino de Santiago cannot be understated. It is a place where people of all ages, from everywhere, come together and create a community with impermanence, yet with a heavy reliance on one another. The exchanges which take place, both through cultural exchange with others and the sharing of resources to continue on, are an undeniable act of closeness and indicate a temporary ethnogenesis which exists despite the varying backgrounds and ages of people who walk. When one walks for a month at a time, between places and life events, it becomes clear how the people around you are truly never that different from you, and the commonality of the walking as a factor brings people even closer than they could have been if there hadn’t been such a solid base for interaction. This sociality, and its impacts and interaction with the body, points to a picture of personhood being greater than the self, and embodiment being something which is built of not just of an individual, but by and within a social space. The question of what it means to be a pilgrim, and whether this microculture exists within every cohort of pilgrims who undertake the Camino de Santiago, or other pilgrimages and long hikes, is something which will require further study. Walking long distances results in a very present and potent atmosphere, which could be both useful and intriguing for anthropologists to examine in closer detail.
Walking for long distances in this fashion, as I have stated, can result in a placelessness, a type of liminal betweenness, creating the space for ritual action and the ethnogenesis of a microculture. The people who walk are subject to a highly social, arduous environment, which creates the potential for play in the way as described by Johan Huizinga (1998) in his seminal text on the ludic, or a place for people between lives to find a penance or peace and search for what is coming next for them. Walking 500 miles is a painful act, which those who walk it need to have and maintain a certain level of mental strength, as well as learned physical endurance as they go. It is a place to move, and be moved and cared for by the people who are walking with you. It is outside of the world of business and education, every type of person who walks it is different from each other, and different from the person they were before they began their walk. It is a place to disentangle yourself from your life and see it from the outside, with other people who are doing the exact same thing. It is between every one of these elements, and this betweenness is the centre of what it means to be a pilgrim. This betweenness is a fertile ground for interaction with embodiment, given the fact of this betweenness and placelessness making the fact of human influence and sociality being a factor in determining how the body is constituted and understood outside of the individual. Within the context of the Camino de Santiago, it is not just our bodies which replace the idea of the Catholic Church, as examined in the chapter Life Purpose in the book Ageing with smartphones in Ireland: when life becomes craft by Garvey and Miller (2021). It is our bodies and everything they touch, our minds, the existence of our lives and what it means to be alive becomes and is understood through betweenness in the form of ritual, pain, and play, in a way which parallels how the Catholic Church acted for some in the past. The Camino de Santiago, a once inherently Catholic undertaking, has become a reflection of this secular spirituality (Nilsson 2018). Looking into how people act in a secular ritual manner, play as they walk, and experience pain on the walk it becomes clear that the body is a piece of the wider picture of personhood which is a reflection of new religious ideas and ideals. Each one of the aforementioned factors have to do with the betweenness of walking the Camino de Santiago. Other scholars have indicated that what it means to be walking the Camino de Santiago in the present day is situated in different meanings, ones which are potentially unrelated to each other, but within this text my hope is that the betweenness of walking the Camino de Santiago, and then how the body can be best understood in terms of sociality and the extension of the self to others rather than mostly environmental factors, is what springs in a synthesis of all of the literature and the examination the data which I have collected.
Anthropology of Pilgrimage
The Camino de Santiago, or the way of St. James, is the pilgrimage to see Santiago de Compostela, the final resting place of several relics of the Apostle James. Thousands of people, from over 100 different countries, travel hundreds (if not thousands) of kilometres to make it to Santiago de Compostela. Many are doing the pilgrimage for religious reasons, others for their own personal spirituality, some for fun, and at least one person is said to undertake the pilgrimage yearly from the town of Flanders as a punishment for crime in lieu of a longer prison sentence (Knopse and Koenig 2022). So why do most people undertake pilgrimages? Is a pilgrim always like the eponymous Tannhauser of the Wagner opera, a sinner in the clutches of Venus seeking redemption? Something along the lines of one of the countless films about the Camino? Maybe a Don Quixote type? Or is a pilgrim simply a tourist by another name, using religion as an excuse to get away from it all and see the world differently? Pilgrimage is an undeniably complex phenomenon, weaving together individual desires, the pursuit of penance or a closer connection with one’s religious beliefs, and a massive physical and temporal undertaking. Kurrat (2019) states that pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago indicate five separate reasons for undertaking this journey, those being balance, crisis, time-outs, transitions, and new starts . Everyone who undertakes a pilgrimage does so for different reasons, and likely for more than one reason. However, what all of these meanings have in common is the fact that those who are undertaking the Camino are between one place and another. Farias et al (2019) highlights the fact that many atheists undertake the Camino de Santiago, a clear indication of the fact that it isn’t just a Catholic journey, and what may be the centre of the Camino is the fact of one’s liminality in that ethnographic moment. Looking at what it means to go through the process of becoming a pilgrimage, the physical act of pilgrimage, and the interactions between people with differing or competing reasons to become a pilgrim has the potential to lead to a deeply nuanced and complicated picture of contemporary pilgrimage. What is done, while someone walks within any context, can be described as “doing landscape,” shaping the land with one’s feet and maintaining a tradition, creating a place between places, reflecting what it means for the pilgrims’ to walk day to day (Ingold 1993; Olwig 2016). During my walk, I came to notice how the landscape was shaped by people’s feet, there were holloways new and old which had been carved into cliffs and mountainsides, paths expanded to wide walkways of dirt, just from pedestrian action. Elements of modern pilgrimage are influenced by new forms of devotion to the body and personhood itself. It has been argued that pilgrims are made by the fact that meeting the end of their pilgrimage will allow for some part of their lives to change, which I find to be the clearest definition of what it means to be a pilgrim (Abad-Galzacorta et al 2016; Maddrell 2013; Reader 1993; Turner 1973). For many people, pilgrimage is an act of seeking clarity (Schnell and Pali 2013). Looking into what is a mixed bag of individuals, engaging in a temporarily nomadic lifestyle, interacting with hundreds of other people in a relatively short time frame, hopefully has led to a wealth of ethnographic data from which a clearer picture of pilgrims today can be extracted.
Rituals, Liminality, and the Ludic.
In his book Homo Ludens, Johan Huizinga (1998) argues that all of life is play. Everything we have made is a method in which we play, and play is from what we learn our greatest lessons. The idea that life is inherently ludic is appealing, especially when it comes to the Camino de Santiago. In the Huizinga text, it’s clear that to play is not to be unserious, and that play itself means engaging with the world in a dynamic, creative way. To create fire and go to war is, in a way, to play. The Camino itself would then be a way of playing. It has been stated that atheists along the Camino also experience the value of ritual, and see the fact that they are engaging with this sort of play as valuable, despite their lack of ties to religion (Nilsson 2018). Victor Turner, in his article Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology (1974), argues that the difference for what it means to relax and work is a construction of the industrial capitalist age. He argues again for ritual being something in between it all, in every sense. It is a structure unstructured, a place where people can switch from being serious to unserious, a place where there are rules which are meant to be broken. The ritual, here, is liminal. Within the aforementioned Turner article, the interrogation and dissonance between sociologists Emile Durkheim (2018) and Max Weber (2012) is also touched upon, noting the question of whether or not religion exists within one’s belief, or within their demonstrated religious action. Durkheim’s concept of "de la vie sérieuse," as mentioned in the Turner text, notes that the work associated with ritual reaps benefits and the nature of religious belief exists within the material elements of said work. The Camino, especially when undertaken as a form of penance, can be said to exist within this framework. The Camino de Santiago is a physical undertaking of religious belief in many cases, a ritual, a place between the sacred and profane.
Tourism and Pilgrimage
Noting again the Huizinga (1998) text which argues for the element of play being foundational to what it means to be human, tourism can be argued to be a way in which we play. Escaping from the average day, then engaging with a new world and a new cast of characters, could be considered to be play. However, the boundary between what tourism is and what pilgrimage is could not be less clear. In an article by Anna Fedele (2014), it is argued that there is no true separation between what it means to be a tourist or a pilgrim. This is placed in opposition to the idea put forth in Tourism, Religion and Spiritual Journeys compiled by Daniel Olsen and Timothy Dallen (2006) which insinuates that the increase in pilgrimage globally could be a worldwide swing into older religious attitudes. However, the vast majority of the literature disagrees (Coleman 2014; Collins-Kreiner 2010; Turner, 2011; Eade and Sallnow, 2013; Margry 2008; Di Giovine and Choe 2018; Badone and Roseman 2004; Farias et al, 2014; Heiser 2021; Vilaça 2017; Nilsson 2018) with this idea and generally puts forth alternate hypotheses, in line with both qualitative research and some quantitative surveys. Although it can quite easily be argued, especially when noting the somewhat hedonistic tones which a vacation may take, that the religious element of pilgrimage separates it and elevates it from the profane nature of tourism, the profundity of being displaced has an effect on people, as well as the presence of countless sites of religious importance for countless systems of belief globally, leads to the boundaries between tourists and pilgrims becoming completely blurred. Fedele’s article looks into the Goddess movement, a new age religious movement, and the interaction members of the movement have with Catholic points of interest. Given the dissonance between new age thought like the Goddess movement and the Catholic church, from different perspectives these pilgrims can be argued to be present at these sites for very different reasons. To members of the movement, the experience is spiritual and sacred in nature, to those outside of the movement, their actions may be considered to be touristic or even appropriative in nature (2014). Defining what is being done by an individual who is intentionally displacing themselves is not a simple task, perspectives regarding one’s choices vary greatly, thus making what it means to be a pilgrim and what it means to be a tourist things which cannot be parsed.
The article Pilgrimage and Healing by Winkelman & Dubisch (2005) notes the changing dynamics of what it means to be a pilgrim in the modern world, specifically examining the admixture of tradition and the presence of new age spirituality. This dynamic of competing and combining old and new in the realm of spirituality is prominent when we note the fact that tourism and pilgrimage are not things which can be truly parsed, and are, in fact, potentially the same beast. When we look into a text by Salazar (2012), and see how the issues involved with tourism and its impacts on local economies and cultures are intertwined and extraordinarily similar to the impacts that pilgrimages may have on the same pieces of societies, this lack of dissonance between these two actions and modes of travel becomes even more present. It’s interesting to note the idea put forth by Peter Margry (2008), that pilgrimage itself can be secular, and not simply transition to being a tourist act if it is secular. What makes something “sacred” doesn’t necessarily denote that it is religious, see for instance the countless pilgrims to Graceland, the home of American rock legend Elvis (DiGiovine and Choe 2019). Graceland is, to many people (myself included), a sacred place, despite its lack of religious association. Nelson Graburn’s (1983) work on the anthropology of tourism generally aligns with this perspective, noting the fact that within tourism “ritual, play, and pilgrimage” are related to everything. His view of tourism seems to be that it is, in some instances, a form of pilgrimage. Yet, some may note that this is yet another kind of tourism, heritage tourism, based on consumption and the materiality of the action (Roseman 2004). These concepts touch on the body being the beginning of religious belief, yet they do not entreat the reader to look beyond just the body as being where people are coming from, experiences of physical reality are at the core of these ideas, healing the body and placing the body in new circumstances via tourism are more relevant than what is beyond the physical.
To be a pilgrim is to pass through rites of passage (van Gennep 2019), which can act as a form of play (Huizinga 1998), whilst also having the potential to act as a form of ritual purification, the liminal (Turner 1974) separating aspects of the dirty and the clean (Douglas 2003). The use of pilgrimage to parse the before and after, or to purify, is best explained by Mary Douglas’ seminal text Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (2003). She cites van Gennep’s text The Rites of Passage, saying that this dissonance and betweenness before and after is explained by the fact that the danger in life exists in the inbetween, the transitional states, the liminal aspects of life as dissected by Turner. It should be noted that the conception of self which is touched upon by Douglas (2003), Rose (1990), and Turkle (2005) is one of an individual self, rather than a self impacted by personhood and the interactions people have with others as the major factors in shaping this self, and this person. Making this state of existence more palatable is the existence of play, as dissected by Johan Huizinga in his text Homo Ludens (1998). This dirty, liminal stage, is altered and ritualised as play, as pilgrims move through space and interact with their personhood, through interactions with other people. To be a pilgrim, to be in the inbetween, is a way of playing with movement and space. It is, for many, an act of purification and an initiation rite into a new part of their life. Their lives, in these circumstances, involve their body’s interaction with the environment, but also a stepping outside of what it means to be in their normal life and usual social circles, and an examination of their individual personhood as well. Pilgrimage is affected by the normal factors of life, such as economics or politics, but it remains delineated from what a daily experience for an individual may be (Coleman 2002). The scholar van Gennep described this sort of action as a territorial passage; he says that this form of rite of passage allows one to “…find(s) himself physically and macro-religiously in a special situation for a certain length of time: he wavers between two worlds.” These two worlds, rather than just the world of the body, are relevant. Once again this betweenness defines the act of movement, and therefore the act of pilgrimage and all which can be associated with this particular form of ritual action.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1962) described the body as being part of a dialectic, the body being a subject and then the influence of the outerworld imparting meaning upon the subject and the subject’s perception of their life as a unique individual within time and space (Mooney 2012). This definition of the body places the body within a strata which I believe could be described as personhood. Ageing with Smartphones in Ireland (Garvey and Miller 2021) speaks about the body and it’s interaction with ritual and replacement of religion in a more literal sense, noting the physical fitness of the body a bit more than the dialectical relationship the body has with the environment and the larger sphere of personhood which I am introducing to this conversation. Andrew Strathern and Pamela Stewart (2011) note that embodiment is moreso referring to behaviour “inscribed upon the body” as analysed in the Pauline Garvey and Daniel Miller (2021) text. The definition of personhood, as explained by Strathern and Stewart as “...what people actually do, how they negotiate interactions in their lives,” which I feel relates more closely to the rituals and broader definition of life lived during the Camino de Santiago. Though the body is central to much interaction with religion, Durkheim (2018) would say that attending church is the mark of a truly religious person, this personhood which people interact with as they walk the Camino, and in some cases disengage with the Catholic Church, goes further than embodiment, especially within the sphere of pilgrimage.
Methodology: Breaking in my Boots
Throughout the duration of my ethnographic fieldwork whilst walking the Camino de Santiago, my methods were simple and consistent. Most of my day, every day, was spent being a participant observant, walking and talking with people as a form of walking as method and interview, and observing what my participants were posting online on Instagram or in Whatsapp groupchats. The information which I gathered from this set of experiences was vast and dense, but the themes which I have been able to extract from this set of data have been clear and consistent.
Walking as Method: These Boots Were Made for Walking
For the 31 days in which I walked the Camino de Santiago, I walked alone for maybe one or two of them. The rest of the days, I spent walking with people, and interviewing them as we walked. It has been noted that the dynamics of group walking are particularly good for fostering positive sentiments between people, even if their life experiences greatly differ (Macpherson 2016; O’Neill 2008). Our conversations were broad, and not without give and take. It wasn’t just me asking questions and receiving answers, to walk with someone for more or less six hours a day involves both listening to and telling stories. To tell stories assisted myself and my fellow pilgrims with understanding each other’s personal narratives, and cultural backgrounds (Moles, 2008). Walking with someone for so long and not contributing to the storytelling, especially while walking up hills and running out of breath on ascents and descents, is selfish. Often, the things which people chose to share were dictated by them, rather than me. I could start out talking about my original interview questions, and quickly the conversation would turn into what people were most comfortable chatting about.
As we walked, conversations began to centre around topics which I was hoping to work with, luckily enough. People’s motivations for undertaking the Camino were a central topic of conversation typically, and within that conversation came the question of whether or not people were religious or doing the Camino for religious reasons. It also became apparent through the walking and talking, that my participants enjoyed telling and hearing about the funny, intriguing, strange, and scary moments they had found themselves in while outside of the Camino. Conversations had the capacity to stay light and surface level, yet they often delved into topics and questions and stories which I would hesitate to share without permission. Walking as method also allowed for my participants and I to speak a lot of our surroundings, in acknowledging the natural beauty, upcoming physical challenges, and cityscapes which we encountered. This continually changing environment, and the fact of our frequent state of “betweenness” or placelessness, lent itself to more conversations regarding what it means to walk for so long, and the reasons for which any of us had the time to do such a hike. Conversations about our bodies, and our personhood and what it meant for each of us to exist within our own lives, were prevalent topics of conversation.
Participant Observation: Living the Camino.
While also conducting interviews with my participants, we were living the same life. Waking up and walking at the same time, stopping for sustenance, doing laundry, eating dinner, attending Catholic Mass, making music, sleeping in the same room, and more. Pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago participate in what Turner and Turner (2011) refer to as “kinetic ritual,” ritual oriented towards movement and participation. The presence of the field was something I felt twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. During this time period, I was a pilgrim in every sense of the term. I walked the 500 miles/800 kilometres required of me, and acted in the same way as every other pilgrim did. My day to day routine was all participation, and as much observation as possible. The reality of the Camino de Santiago is that you live this way whether or not you chose to do so, it is simply how you live given the flow of the Camino and the necessities of continuing the walk. Individuals undertaking the Camino de Santiago do the same rituals, and techniques of the body (Mauss 1934) as they walk. Some individuals cite these actions as being a reason for which to come back to the Camino, noting the ritual of it as being particularly meditative (Sallnow and Eade 2000). My participants’ physicality became adapted to the situation in which they were placed, one of my participants stated that the ways in which they cared for themselves had changed as a result of the flow of the Camino de Santiago. “Every calorie is a good calorie,” they said, in reference to the fact that the techniques du corps they had to undertake required consuming more food that they usually would have outside of this ethnographic moment. What was outside of this flow, however, was attending Catholic Mass. Catholic Mass, known as a Misa in Spanish and called as such by pilgrims walking the Camino, was something which many pilgrims chose not to attend, however those who did decide to attend often were happy to invite anyone and everyone to come along. One of my participants was not someone who regularly attended mass in her normal life, but she stated she believed, and felt comforted by the movement of it, the fact of the Catholic Mass being the same in her native France as it was in Spain, was a method she used to connect to her childhood, and to the techniques du corps her body was used to in her time going to Catholic masses.
At the end of the day, partaking in the daily showering and laundry became something which appeared ritualistic to me. Most pilgrims, upon arriving in the albergues after walking, would shower with immediacy, regardless of how much pain they were in or how hungry they were. Laundry was after showering. Many pilgrims, to save money, would ask others to split the cost of loads of laundry and put everyone’s clothes in the washing machine together. For some pilgrims, this was part of budgeting for the walk. This immediacy, and participating in the rush to the duchas, or showers, came to be second nature to myself and other pilgrims. My participation in this daily ritual came to be essential to my happiness and wellbeing while walking, and essential to preventing offending anyone’s sense of smell within my general vicinity. With this, it is also considered essential to wash one’s socks with immediacy as well. Other laundry is done at the same time typically, but socks are the priority. The smell which can come from the unwashed socks of a pilgrim has made me nauseous on more than one occasion; to not wash one’s socks with immediacy is an assault on everyone in the albergue’s noses, health, and mental wellbeing. Time reserved for eating dinner was also a situation which many pilgrims sought to share with each other and commit to having some sort of “place” for this act in daily life. I would eat dinner with my fellow pilgrims every night, typically whether I wanted to or not. Though we were all demonstrably between one place and another, these moments of togetherness within the liminality were a place to find peace in the chaos. Dinner often became drinks, and time to socialise. One of my participants stated that her favourite time of day was after dinner, since it was a place to reflect on the day, and have a moment outside of the betweenness, situated in the albergue among new friends, sharing a moment.
Digital Participant Observation: What’s Up on Whatsapp?
Being a pilgrim also involves a large amount of interaction with technology and digital communication spheres. While walking, both for safety and for fun, my fellow pilgrims and I would keep in contact using Whatsapp and occasionally Instagram. Whatsapp chats and groupchats were an essential piece of the walk, allowing for checking in on fellow pilgrims, for photo sharing, making jokes, and informing people about what is ahead or behind them on the path. Again, I find that my intentionality when it comes to engaging with these mediums was low. I did not assume that Whatsapp and Instagram would be the main methods by which people communicated as we walked, but they became essential to my understanding of how people get by while on the trail. Within Whatsapp itself, I found that people’s image sharing was strongly linked to their perspectives of the walk, and using Whatsapp to share images became a fully digital “photo-voice” methodology during my engagement with the platform (Sutton-Brown 2014). People used images to share where they were, to show how they felt, to show the food they ate, to rate albergues, and more. Fellow pilgrims would post daily updates showing the places they were, and the people they were with. One of my participants was between an undergraduate education and beginning a PhD, she posted so that people she knew back home would know that she was safe, and enjoying her time in Spain. Though her posts didn’t contain many words typically, she hoped that they insinuated her safety and the fact that she was having the time of her life, before she began what she expected to be a rather challenging new time period in her life. Her noting the fact of her being between one stage of life and another is yet another indication of the fact of the betweenness being central to what it means to walk the Camino de Santiago.
Another unexpected element of the Camino de Santiago’s digital side was the consistent use of Google Translate by most people who were walking. Countless people predominantly used Google Translate to speak with people in stores and restaurants to order food and do basic things, but Google Translate also took on a life of it’s own in the realm of creating friendships and letting people who speak none of the same languages communicate with each other. Though other translation softwares were used, like one built in Korea for Koreans travelling abroad, the fact of Google Translate’s popularity globally made it an essential tool for all pilgrims. Again, I did not assume that using Google Translate would become a method for me, but it was essential whether or not it was something I was interested in or not. Watching friends of mine make friends with people using Google Translate, hearing stories about how Google Translate had facilitated friendships, and using Google Translate daily myself led me to have a curiosity for the emotions and tendencies which the application evoked within people. One of my participants was particularly proud of the fact that he and two other pilgrims, who did not speak each other’s languages, were able to communicate relatively smoothly using Google Translate three ways. Another participant became close friends with a group of older French gentlemen, who had been friends for years already, all of whom only spoke French. They would speak to my participant through Google Translate, and eventually, they all decided to have a holiday together, despite the fact that they did not speak a word of each other’s languages. Their friendships were outside, and therefore between, different languages.
Findings: Pain, Ritual, Play, Digital, and Betweenness.
Pain & Ritual
Dealing with pain was the first ritual I was sharply aware of. Whether it is constant or sharp, the beginning and underpinning of this undertaking is one which is marked by the introduction of discomforts unlike those which many pilgrims have experienced before. Many people have not walked 500 miles before in their lives, the challenges which become part of what it means to walk such a distance are always influenced by body tone and the culture of exercise which they may have previously experienced. Talking with fellow pilgrims, one of our first topics of conversation was often which parts of our bodies hurt. I’d tell people how my knees were doing, and they’d explain their complex methodologies for dealing with their countless blisters. The techniques which we learned to deal with what was physically disturbing us were supremely relevant, and became necessary rituals which we relied on heavily to continue our walks (Falk 1995). We would exchange tips for dealing with the pain, explanations of our pain, and medicines and remedies for easing the pain. It became the consensus that the first 15 or 30 minutes of walking were the only time the pain was vividly present, after those minutes the body succumbs to the mind, and what is felt is not more than the rhythm of walking. The work "Ways of Walking" notes the fact that walking is not something which we “start” in the same way as we begin running a race, walking happens when we are past a certain point (Ingold and Vergunst 2008). It was a technique of the body, to push past this pain (Mauss 1973). At the end of the day, it wasn’t uncommon to see pilgrims massaging their feet wherever there was a place to sit down, bucking former social norms to deal with the pain. Blister popping and first aid could happen anywhere people were comfortable with it. No one hid the pain they felt, and in fact, I doubt the pain is something which could even be hid, given the 24/7 interaction with and presence of others as one walks the Camino. One of my participants, a few days into the walk, was nearly unable to speak due to a high level of pain while a group of pilgrims and I were looking for something to eat for dinner. His job outside of the Camino was highly exercise intensive, yet he was pained by the strenuous nature of the walk. Every day, when we would start walking, my participants and I would have a conversation regarding which parts of our bodies hurt the most at that moment. One of my participants became notorious for having a rather odd problem, his shoulders. People who knew him would always inquire as to the condition of his shoulders, while others who did not know him would eventually come to learn about his unique ailment. One gentleman with particularly bad knee issues became known for the stance in which he walked, his knee braces were restrictive enough that he was hobbling. He spoke about his pain as if it were something to push through, and push through it he did. He said “...I have my braces, I’ve taken medication, what’s left is to keep moving.” He did not complain with words. Instead of talking about the bad, he told me about his girlfriend and his cat, and the fact that he missed them, despite the fact that he was having fun.
With defining and understanding what ritual is, I find the core of ritual to be subjective. Another definition of what ritual is, put forth by Pierre Lienard & Pascal Boyer in the paper "Whence collective rituals? A cultural selection model of ritualised behaviour." implies that ritual is an attempt to avoid hazards and take precautions, which would make sense for some rituals, but given the nature of the Camino de Santiago, I find this definition too specific. When one walks the Camino de Santiago, they are frequently putting themselves in harm’s way, typically not for any larger reason than the fact that they would like to walk the Camino. More often than not, people experience pain while walking the Camino de Santiago, which is one of the ways by which our bodies indicate that some sort of danger or hazard to our health is present. This idea of hazard-precaution is further debunked when we examine rituals which involve harming the physical self, such as scarification, or even the “consumption of grief” in cannibalistic rituals as explained by Beth Conklin (2001). The Camino de Santiago, however, is an arguably Christian or Catholic undertaking, which could potentially fit this strata. The scholar John Dunnill in his book Sacrifice and the Body (2016) dispels this notion however, stating that sacrifice and religion are intertwined, even if it is considered taboo to note the presence of sacrifice in Christian religion. Sacrifice and what it often means to actually sacrifice oneself or something, and the fact of sacrifice’s presence in religion, and how religion is so intertwined with ritual, is the reason for which this theory is not viable. To sacrifice something ritualistically is to face a hazard, and not to avoid one.
In dealing with this pain, I consistently had the distinct feeling that I should stop walking. However, the people with whom I was walking wouldn’t let that happen. I wanted to keep walking, but I do not think I could have kept walking if there wasn’t always someone near me waking up at 5am. One of my participants and I had plans to start walking early, so she woke me up and made sure I was going to make it on time to keep going. Eventually, I had to take a rest day, and when I ended up showing up in the same town as her a few days later, she told me that she “...knew that we would really, truly be friends” after that moment. The daily ritual of seeing people was something which made it bearable. Edensor (2000) argues that walking, especially countryside walking, allows for people to connect with their “self” to a higher degree, and that it is the self which is most greatly expressed and understood as the relevance of recreational walking to the individual, however the undeniably social element of the Camino within this ethnographic moment is almost in direct opposition to this argument. What kept people moving was not the self, but the other, and what was between them and the end of the trail. My participants making sure I see them again is proof of that idea. Those with whom I walked told me that they relied on me to keep walking. One person said that “...when we talk, the time passes. I like to walk alone, but sometimes you just need to talk to someone.” We acted as motivation for each other. One of my participants fell behind for a day, and then decided to walk 64 kilometres in one day, pushing through extreme pain, to meet friends of his whom he wanted to finish out the Camino de Santiago with. This pushing past the pain, regardless of how I chose to care for and think of my body, became a reflection of my personhood. The jokes we’d make and the stories we would tell in moments of pain were a distraction from the hurt. One of my participants told a story about an odd dream he had, where another one of my participants had a blister the size of a skyscraper, and somehow, we all ended up in a waterfall of blister fluid. It was safe to say that most people who heard that story were both disgusted by it and humoured by it. My participant who had the dream said that he “...(I) blame Max (other participant) for the dream because he showed me a picture of that one blister which covered nearly his whole foot. It was traumatic!” In the heat, while walking across the Meseta, a flat landscape with not too much to look at despite its poetry, avoiding heatstroke and watching out for the physical and mental wellbeing of the people with whom one walks was incredibly pertinent. Making sure that people were drinking water, and smiling on occasion, was a duty which every pilgrim I knew was privy to. One of my participants seemed to require more water than the average person. If he wasn’t drinking his water, another one of my participants would often notice, and enquire as to why he wasn’t. He liked to walk fast, to “speedrun” the day, his pacing was quick and the rapidity of his movement made it so that he “...(I) need(ed) to drink so much, every time there’s a stop for water I have to refill or I’ll have to ask Sarah for some of her water again.” To be between places where hydration is possible and to know the weight of what it means to run out of water in these places is yet another element of the Camino which has indicated to me that ‘betweenness’ is the factor which makes the Camino what it is. Everyone with whom you walked became an extension of yourself and potentially a greater piece of your personhood, the necessity for one to care for themselves became something beyond their own bodies. If one pilgrim has trouble, everyone else does too. Two of my participants, a mother and her adult son from New Zealand, told me a story of how a gentleman they saw frequently had to stop suddenly one day. According to the son, the gentleman “...(he) was sick. I saw him sit down, and not be able to get back up. We waited there with him for hours while the ambulance came, I was nervous we’d be late for our hostel booking, but someone needed to stay with him. It was frightening.” In areas between towns, finding help would be near impossible, and slow if present, so this community effort to care for one another was essential in these circumstances. This fact of being between places of help reiterates the fact of betweenness being the centre of being a pilgrim. Especially on days where one may choose to walk over 35 kilometres, the strain and stress which a massive physical undertaking such as this requires truly begets social support and care from those around you. As I mentioned before, one of my participants undertook a day in which he walked 64 kilometres. It was essential for his fellow pilgrims to ensure that he ate and rested after what was likely one of the most extreme physical activities of his life thus far. People were an essential part of the ritual of pain prevention, especially when pilgrims are so far from home, between towns, and between this stage of life and the next.
Towards the end of the Camino de Santiago, just outside of Santiago de Compostela, one of my participants mentioned to me that she believed the Camino to happen in three stages. The first stage was about the first week, where a pilgrim feels like things are bright and shiny and easy. It’s a beautiful thing to undertake the walk in this time frame, one’s body isn’t yet hardened, and so much fun is to be had. The second stage, around the second week, was when people started to get frustrated and feel more pain. It was a time period in which socialisation may have dimmed, and frustration with the undertaking was to be more of a challenge. The third week, or stage, was when things become bright again, in her perspective. With newly refreshed mindsets given the proximity of the city of Santiago de Compostela, she found that everyone was happy again. Her idea of these three stages are quite easily transposable on the three ritual stages as theorised by van Gennep, separation, transition, and reincorporation. In the first week a pilgrim is separated from the world, then they learn and become used to the Camino in the second week, and in the third week they are made anew and feel the same positive feelings of the first week, while they complete and exit their journey. This awareness of ritual, and the overarching presence of ritual of which my participants were clearly aware, demarcates this time period in my participants’ lives as a place outside of their usual world and their acknowledgement of walking the Camino de Santiago as a ritual action, as postulated by van Gennep.
Ritual itself is central to a large amount of anthropological thought, and opinions of what ritual is vary from anthropologist to anthropologist. Throughout this ethnography, I have been touching on ritual as an element of new religious beliefs leaning toward one’s personhood being idolised, rather than the body, or the Catholic Church. I believe that a broader definition of ritual is essential to understanding what it is, and how much ritual impacts us in our daily lives, and on undertakings like pilgrimage. Catherine Bell, in the book Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (2009) defines ritual as a method by which we are separated from the mundane. Though I agree with this definition from Bell, I find that the structure put forth by van Gennep (2019) is also applicable, despite the fact that it can apply to everything. This applicability to everything, however, is something which I believe is inextricable from the concept of ritual, and now the new structures which are taking up space which the church has previously dominated. The scholar Robert Wuthnow (1989) noted the fact that things like watching TV can also have a ritual twist to them, and given the definition put forth by Bell, why is it not possible for something like watching the Superbowl to be a ritual activity, as visiting Graceland is a pilgrimage? Ritual is broadly applicable, and it’s roots run deep in all aspects of life, and in this instance, the Camino.
To wake up in the albergues while walking the Camino de Santiago is a ritual. Often, the rustling of bags being packed and paper sheets being ripped off of foam mattresses is an alarm clock of sorts, it’s either that or someone’s phone alarm which simply will not stop going off. Wakeup often happens between 4:00am and 6:00am, sometimes a little earlier or later. Whenever someone with whom I was walking decided to wake up, everyone in the beds around them would be woken up as well. It was an intentional choice, not just the natural ending of such close proximity. One of my participants told me that every morning she “...(I) hear(d) the sound of people moving, and then know I need to move, to get going, to make sure I don’t fall behind.” Everyone had their personal methods for maintaining the peace and trying not to disturb other pilgrims before the lights went up in the albergue. My participants and I would typically pack up our sleeping bags, and then bring our backpacks into the lounge or the bathroom of the albergue. Packing up for the day and ensuring that our packs stay light and carryable, for myself and other pilgrims, became an acknowledgement of the day to come (Lopez 2014). Plans for how far to walk, and when to stop for a cafe con leche were often made during that half an hour of peace before the walk began. During this time, one of my participants who was particularly leadership minded would book beds in the next albergue for whoever we were walking with. It was always a conversation, where my participants and I were going to sleep that night. It was almost always before, or during sunrise that most pilgrims would begin their walk. It wasn’t uncommon to see people pour out from the albergues onto the path, still preparing for their day as they began their walk. Those first few moments of walking also came with other small rituals, like asking people how far they were planning on walking, which parts of their bodies hurt, what they ate for dinner, how they slept, and what their “Camino wishes” for the day were. One of my participants would always state that his “Camino wish” for the day was to drink a cold Coca-Cola during one of our stops along the way. He almost always got his wish. Sometimes, however, there was silence, particularly when walking in the dark.
As we walked, one of the most interesting things which I had the privilege of experiencing was the stories which were told. These stories were a pilgrim’s acknowledgement of their lives outside of the Camino, and the place which they inhabited at that moment was a liminal space. Sometimes the stories were particularly funny, like one of my participants telling a tale of how he had convinced one of his friends from boarding school that he was in love with a fellow student, and sometimes they were about people’s past lives. I was told about how one of my participants began a career as an outdoor educator by training sled dogs in the Canadian wilderness, eventually going on to coach an award-winning sled dog team, the best in the world to this very day. I also learned about a participant’s time training as an opera singer, and how she parlayed this training into a career in film. Other times, the stories I was told were full of pain and tragedy, one of my participants walked the Camino for his deceased father, and he talked to people about his memories of his father and how his father had shaped him to be the man he is today. These interactions with people’s stories show the precedence of personhood in this ritual interaction, what is being spoken about often points towards an acknowledgement of the liminal space in which a pilgrim lives, and how their life is touched not just by what is interacting with their corporeal body, but what is far removed from it at that moment as well.
Though walking itself was a ritual, drinking cafe con leche and cola as one goes down the path is also an essential part of the ritual of the Camino. Typically, one makes a stop in the first town in the first bar they come across, sits down for a coffee and/or breakfast, and makes conversation with fellow pilgrims if they feel so inclined. This first stop of the day is a way of preparing for what’s to come. Many of my participants noted how they had made friends at various stops along the route, chatting over coffee before embarking on the rest of their walking for the day. Drinking a cafe con leche and taking in the caffeine was the perfect little bit of fuel to keep going for ten more miles. One of my participants told me that he considered drinking drinks with caffeine in them to be “doping,” as athletes do with performance enhancing drugs, so he typically abstained from this part of the ritual, while still having snacks and conversations with his fellow pilgrims. With this, being able to slow down or “catch up” with people allowed for the creation of more social situations. Many people re-established pre-existing connections with their fellow pilgrims at the bars, saying hello to people they thought had fallen behind them or who had passed them days ago. Typically after this first stop, the second stop of the day would be to drink a cola, or have a snack. Most of my participants mentioned that they weren’t big soda drinkers outside of the Camino, but during the walk, the allure of a cola was too much to resist. The caffeine and calories from both the cafe con leche and cola gives pilgrims a boost, and motivation to keep walking and get to the next town. One of my participants even staged a “bar crawl” during the final stages of his camino. Instead of drinking coffee, however, he drank many beers at every bar he encountered along the way to the town he was staying in that night.
Getting to the albergue after a long day of walking also involves a large amount of ritual upon arrival. Checking if the albergue has beds left, checking in, putting the paper sheets over the mattress, becomes second nature after a week or two walking. Often, it’s expected that your boots are left in a room designated specifically for boots, and your walking sticks placed in a receptacle designated for holding them. Younger people walking the Camino are often put on the top bunks if the albergue has bunk beds, most of my participants were under the age of 40, and generally expressed distaste with this situation. The top bunk is typically unwanted. All ages and genders are mixed together in the dormitory rooms, and oftentimes the bathrooms as well.
Another element of the end of a pilgrim’s day is mealtime. Every calorie is a good calorie when you’re burning an extra 1000-1500 calories a day, dinner and food between the start and end of the walk are completely and utterly essential both to maintaining a good mood and surviving the walk. Dinner is the meal which brings the most people together. There are two ways of going about dinner while on pilgrimage, either it’s a simple meal made by one or more pilgrims out of whatever they can find, or it’s a set pilgrim’s menu in a restaurant type setting where one often dines among only other pilgrims. Either way, the taste of the meal is almost completely irrelevant. After walking for so long, pretty much any food tastes like a Michelin Star meal. Making and eating a meal with fellow pilgrims often involves some sort of cultural exchange, given that the food people make is often rooted in the food they eat growing up and their cultural background. I had the privilege of eating many Korean meals as I walked, given that many of my participants were from South Korea. When we ate together, my participants were shocked by my incredibly high tolerance for spicy food. As we ate together, I think that eating very spicy food together brought us closer to each other. Many pilgrims I met took particular joy in sharing cooked meals. One woman from France taught me how her grandmother cooked pasta when she was growing up. We ate that pasta together and discussed the different people and places we’d come across during that day. Pilgrims meals in a restaurant setting also often gave me a jumping-off-point to speak with people and become closer with them. Many people say that if there’s no “vino” then there’s no Camino, and I concur. Wine, and how people drank it together, was something which was unexpectedly relevant during mealtimes, it was part of the ritual.
In some of the towns I stopped in, there was a nightly mass, or “misa” for pilgrims. Pilgrim’s mass often was attended both by pilgrims and locals. Pilgrims' misas were in Catholic churches and typically involved the same elements as a normal mass, but often referenced themes of pilgrimage more frequently. At the end of some masses, there would be a blessing specifically for pilgrims, where pilgrims would either be blessed as a group or individually. The blessings I had the privilege of attending and receiving also gave me and other pilgrims little trinkets to take with us, such as a paper star or a prayer card with Mother Mary on it. In one ceremony, the priest and some female church leaders spoke the blessing in three languages, Spanish, English, and French, so that the majority of pilgrims present would understand what was being said to them. At this blessing, the priest and the female church leaders called all the pilgrims up to the area near the altar, and one by one, had us come up to them, drew the sign of the cross on our foreheads, and prayed for us. Looking around the room, I could see many of my participants crying or getting teary-eyed, moved by the gesture of the ceremony. At another ceremony towards the beginning of the Camino de Santiago, pilgrims were given Catholic themed charm necklaces which were blessed by the priest, to keep them safe. One of my participants, an artist from Canada, wore her charm throughout the journey. She kept it on day and night, ran her fingers over it when she needed good luck or was in a tight spot, and told the story of how she got it to anyone who asked. It became incredibly important to her. Though many people who undertake the Camino de Santiago are religious Catholics, a huge portion of people who do the Camino are not Catholic. These non-Catholics still participate in many church services and attend blessings as well. The history of the Camino de Santiago as a Catholic pilgrimage is not lost on many pilgrims.
Sleeping while on pilgrimage is also completely essential, believe it or not. The rest one is able to get often defines their ability to walk the next day. In my time walking, most nights I was in bed by 9pm and asleep by 10pm. The sun often set right around the time I and other pilgrims were falling asleep, and rose as we were all waking. Trying not to make noise as one sleeps is one of the greatest challenges of the Camino. Paying attention to your snoring, rustling, the sounds you make trying to make your way to the bathroom while in pitch black darkness, and the light and sounds from your phone could disturb everyone in the room’s sleep. Being cognisant of others was key to making sure the peace is kept in the albergue. Oftentimes, however, people would need to set alarms to wake up, and these were incredibly obtrusive and generally unwelcome. While people are sleeping in an albergue dormitory room, speaking is also unwelcome. Generally, everyone who has been walking for over a week comes to understand the necessity of a good night’s sleep and the fact that letting other people sleep is what is most polite in any albergue situation.
Digital
Though it may be expected that the internet does not play a massive role in what happens during the Camino de Santiago, there is an undeniable need for digital technology as one walks. During my time walking, I found that the two most relevant pieces of the digital puzzle were Whatsapp and Google Translate. Both of these smartphone applications became channels through which pilgrims could make their journeys smoother and communicate with anyone whom they come across. Many of my participants told me how they would use Whatsapp to communicate with friends who were behind them or ahead of them, warning them of what was ahead or discussing the differences between the qualities of different sleeping arrangements. My participants would also check in with me, and other pilgrims, for safety. We would keep track of where people were to make sure that no one was hurt, and to let people know when and where crimes had been committed on the trail. At one point, two women were robbed, and shortly after pretty much every pilgrim on the trail within 40 miles was alerted by their fellow pilgrims. Most of my fellow pilgrims considered Whatsapp to be the most important application in their phone, almost everyone was reachable predominantly by Whatsapp within this ethnographic moment. This communication was also demarcated by the internationality of the community of pilgrims, these applications became a way by which cultural borders could be easiest crossed. Part of what makes the Camino so special is the fact of it’s liminal internationality, it isn’t an inherently Spanish or French place, it is a place where people from all over the world converge, mostly speaking English as they walk.
Whatsapp was the lingua franca of digital communication as we walked, used by everyone to keep in touch and ensure that they didn’t have to pay international messaging fees. Whatsapp communication occurred in the context of direct messaging and group chats. Through Whatsapp, people often were able to hear about what was happening on the trail, make plans for which albergues they’d be staying in, or simply inquire as to how someone they met on the trail was doing. People also used Whatsapp for communicating with friends and family who weren’t doing the walk. This contact with friends and family, and the separation between the reality of a pilgrim and the reality of their friends and family at home, allows for the pilgrim to step out of the moment, out of their embodied self, and into a perspective which accommodates their greater personhood, given the fact that they examine their lives from the unique position of being a pilgrim rather than engaging with every-day messaging. In groupchats, pictures taken during the day were often exchanged, frequently attached to messages explaining the circumstances or setting of the images, maybe even explaining how the images made them feel. Though the Camino de Santiago is generally seen as being one of the safer long hikes to do, many deaths over the years have made staying safe whilst one walks incredibly relevant. Using Whatsapp, especially when checking up on people you haven’t seen in a while, helps keep the walk safe.
Google Translate’s relevance cannot be understated as well; although most people walking the Camino seemed to have a high level of fluency speaking English, sometimes language barriers did become apparent. Using Google Translate for communication with the staff, servers, and cashiers of various establishments along the way seemed to be the most common use, however many people used Google Translate to make friends with fellow pilgrims who simply did not speak the same language as them. A pilgrim mentioned to me how him and two other people in an albergue were the only three people out of around fifteen who did not speak Italian, and instead of using Google Translate to try and speak with Italian, they all spoke with each other using Google Translate, in English, French, and Korean. Had they not had the ability to use Google Translate in this context, they would have been unable to befriend each other, and bond over being linguistically excluded by the strangely large tidal wave of Italians which had overtaken the albergue.
During the walk, some people made the choice to actively disengage with the digital and use their time on the Camino de Santiago to spend less time online. Others, while walking, were forced to disengage as a result of how their plans for mobile data were being spent as they walked. This group of people, however, was relatively small compared to the majority. Most people were engaging with the internet actively as they walked. Some people would post pretty much daily on their Instagram stories, so that friends from home could see what they were up to every day. Many people also had apps which tracked their movements, and let family and friends know where they were and if they were safe. Avoiding technology, even when walking 500 miles through many rural areas with less wifi and places to charge one’s phone than usual, seems to be a near impossibility.
Play
One of the pieces of the things which became apparent to me as I walked was the continued presence of play, in the sense of Huizinga, and the use of play as an element of religious belief centreing the body and personhood in lieu of a church. The Camino de Santiago is, whether it is seen as such or not, a recreational environment and activity. Though it is often undertaken for reasons more complex than just plain old fun, one is not paid to walk, and people walk the Camino fully of their own volition, which makes me believe that is something which is mainly play. Within the Camino itself, there are moments of play which end up propelling people and encouraging them to keep walking, such as telling stories and jokes, listening to music and singing, or even playing games as one walks. As we walked, we had moments while moving and in the towns and in the albergues in which we’d sleep, where we’d find ourselves dancing and laughing. It was, in every way, a playful time.
Towards the end of a walking day, especially during a day in which the expectation is that you will walk 40 kilometres or more, things start to get a little strange. Tiredness weighs on people. In my experience, it’s not uncommon to laugh hysterically, at anything, as you walk on. While I was walking with one of my participants, we once found ourselves laying in the grass right outside of an industrial park, almost too tired to walk on. My participant, trying to alleviate his exhaustion and potentially bring an ironic levity to the situation started to sing the song ‘Beautiful Girls’ by Sean Kingston - particularly the phrase “suicidal, suicidal” in the song’s chorus. He sung this part over and over in a humorous manner, and we found ourselves barely able to keep walking because of how hard this made us laugh. The end of the walking day can be miserable, the pain can be unbearable, but some of the moments which can spring from this fatigue can be unbelievably happy.
As I mentioned before, a common Camino saying is “no vino, no camino” implying that wine is pretty much essential to keep walking. Some take this phrase seriously, as if it were a religious teaching, drinking wine every night and whenever else possible. Many of my participants enjoyed speaking with me about the merits of drinking beer or wine while walking the Camino de Santiago, particularly regarding which of those beverages is better suited to the pilgrim. One of my participants was insistent that drinking beer was where many pilgrims failed, and made their journey that much worse for that. He believed that wine, especially red wine, was the way to go, since he thought it to have the effect of an anticoagulant. For many others, the phrase “no vino no camino” is a bit of a joke. Getting too drunk before walking the next morning is a nightmare of a situation. Although the logical solution would be to not drink at all for the duration of the Camino, given the necessity of a baseline health an individual requires to walk over ten miles a day for a month, the necessity of play and the fun of being a little drunk among new friends is something which can overpower the requirement for health. Wine along the route is also particularly cheap, with most bottles of wine costing under ten poundds, and often under five pounds too. Splitting a bottle of wine with someone after a day of walking is a quick and cheap way to get conversation going, and get to know them.
During the Camino de Santiago, it’s also important to note the presence of music. Some people choose to carry their instruments with them, while others will utilise the instruments which many albergues have. Most common are guitars, and many people I met could sing very well too. At the end of the day, though everyone is exhausted, folks come together and try to find songs which are well known enough in both of their countries to sing and play together. Through these sessions, I had the privilege of learning several songs in Korean, some songs popular in Australia, and a few from Spain as well. The music we all came together with was American country and folk music, songs from Johnny Cash and Creedence Clearwater Revival were what I most often heard from my fellow musicians. I’d assume that American country and folk music was most present due to the overwhelming soft-culture dominance the United States holds over the world. One night, I ended up singing and playing with several of my participants. The albergue in which we were staying had a guitar, and a professional country musician was staying there too. We all went down to the basement of the albergue, and sung everything we could possibly remember to sing. My participants expressed joy at the fact that this occasion had happened, one of my participants mentioned to me that this musical experience was cathartic. “I needed that after today. It was hot, I’m tired, and this made it worth it,” said about the musical moment we all shared. The feelings which are evoked from singing and playing music together has the ability to bind people in the space of a shared understanding of a song.
Betweenness
When one walks the Camino, I found that there is an unmistakable sense of betweenness which overshadows the tone of the walk, no matter the distance one walks or the meaning behind their walk, according to conversations and time spent with participants. While one walks, there are frequent periods of time where they may be between one town or another, between water and food sources, and between places they can get Wifi or cell reception. This betweenness isn’t the only betweenness which was present and prevalent in the lives of my participants during this ethnographic moment. Though this was not something I intentionally brought up in my interviews, many of my participants spoke about the fact that they were between one place and another, maybe jobs, maybe education and the work world, relationships, and more. The Camino de Santiago, in a way, is reminiscent of Stenger’s idea of collective thinking, and individuals experiencing the “unpredictability of opening ourselves to possibility” (Stenger 2005, Springay, Truman 2017). In other words, this betweenness, as expressed within liminality, can be regarded as a way in which people leave the door open. Most of my participants believed their lives to be in a transition period of sorts. The reasons for which an individual has a month to walk often lead to this kind of betweenness. Who else has a month to walk aside from someone who just quit their job? Someone who is taking a gap year? Someone who just got divorced and is enjoying their divorce settlement to the fullest? This space-between is not something which every person has, it is a betweenness which comes as a result of something which is not there.
At the end of the day, when the walking is done, another type of betweenness exists. When one is winding down, showering, getting their socks clean, and more, they are between the walk of the day and the walk of tomorrow. Taking the time to care for their possessions and their body given the aftershocks of the day, and the preparations for the next day place individuals in a strata where their lives are defined by when they are walking. When you are walking the Camino de Santiago, and not walking at times, what are you doing? Life on the Camino is dictated by walking, even when one is not walking. This is also another reason why I find personhood, rather then the body, to be the centre of what new religious belief is replacing the church with. If it were only the body which we had to take care of and worship as we walked, our preparations and care for ourselves in the time of betweenness would be more focused on how we physically feel. Personhood, in this circumstance, involves more than just the countless elements of physical care which we work with. Between the walking periods, people also took the time to drink wine, play music, and talk to their fellow pilgrims as much as possible. If it were only the body which replaced the church, things would be different. As we walk, we nurture our souls as well as our bodies, which extends into the realm of personhood. It is a different kind of worship. It extends beyond just ourselves, and into the lives of other people, just as the Catholic Church historically did and does. Church, by the nature of it’s being, is a social environment, and to centre the body as an element of religious belief rather than all encompassing personhood disengages the concept of worship from it’s social nature, which I believe to be a central piece of what it means to worship and hold any religious or spiritual belief. Other people are always involved in our spirituality whether we realise it or not.
Conclusion
As one walks the Camino de Santiago and undertakes the rituals necessary to push them to the end of the trail in Santiago de Compostela, their personhood is reflected back to them throughout the undertaking. To walk the Camino is arguably to participate in a self-imposed right of passage, placing people who walk between their past and future, and allowing for them to interact with their personhood, in the sense mentioned by Strathern and Stewart (2011). The body itself is impacted, and is central to this interaction, but bodily interaction with the environment in the sense of embodiment is less than what happens to people when they undertake the Camino de Santiago. Engaging with the trail is completely different from engaging with one’s typical life, walking the Camino is a place outside of the rituals of daily life. Being able to take a month and leave daily life while walking the Camino de Santiago leads to people who are between things, and have a month to spare, to be more likely to undertake this sort of journey. It is at times dangerous, and isn’t to be taken lightly. The body is engaged with by the individual throughout their walk, yet the body isn’t what they are as they walk. The body is a piece of the worship which comes with this type of journey and replacement of the Catholic Church. What becomes the centre of someone’s life as they walk is not their corporeal self, but every aspect of themselves. Anything that can be said about a person or impacted by their understanding of themselves is fair game for a new kind of worship. The origins of the Camino de Santiago being a Catholic pilgrimage, able to provide relief to people who ask for forgiveness and health from Saint James, translate well into what it is now, a place for people to find forgiveness or worth in themselves as they walk.
When else in life do we have the time to think like this? To have a month, among people who are also between lives, to think and talk and walk and focus on one’s self? This small piece of the world is an excellent example of what it means to replace understandings of Catholicism with not the reverence of the body, but of the self. Though the body is central to the self, embodiment does not begin to encapsulate the richness of this type of experience. Religion itself has never simply been about the body, the spiritual descendants of religious practice would not sensibly be only tied to what is embodied. Spiritual belief and practice is often touched by what is corporeal and what is past or future. The famous dissonance between what Durkheim (2018) and Weber (2012) had to say about what it meant to be religious, whether or not religion was something found more in the body or more in the mind, should be noted here. It has become clear that neither of them were completely correct, because the separation of the body and mind is not something which many consider to be a possibility. This is why personhood is more the centre of what worship is in the modern day as a replacement for Catholicism rather than embodiment. Embodiment, in my mind, implies all that has to do more with the body, but the body is more entangled with the mind and with the past and future than can be understood, religion is the same.
To walk the Camino de Santiago is to be between, to be in a unique type of liminality which involves more than a cycle. To be between is to experience a life within a life, a microculture, a moment where the body and rituals of the body become the centre of life. The Camino de Santiago allowed for me and my participants to look at our lives from the outside looking in, like staring through a window. Through the pain, things are put in perspective. Through the play, we keep going. Through the people we meet, we learn, we grow, we tell stories and express sides of ourselves that we don’t see or think about too much. What it means for a person to be between, and then jump into a situation where you walk between towns, pausing life and then resuming it, is something which I do not think scholars have examined enough. There are so many questions regarding how to define pilgrimage, whether or not it is something touristic or truly ritualistic, what’s more important, in my opinion, is understanding what it involves. There exist so many definitions of pilgrimage, so many opinions on it, and many religions tend to have pilgrimage as an element of their worship, however, what it does in a person’s life, and what it means to be a pilgrim in that moment seems to be a gap in the literature. We could ask people why they are a pilgrim and get countless interesting answers and avenues of study, however, what they are doing is also something important, especially in the case of the Camino de Santiago, where the type of person who embarks on this journey, and their motivations, vary more than can be encapsulated by qualitative or quantitative study. What mattered, when I was talking to my participants, was mostly what we were doing in that moment, rather than what brought them to that moment. To be a pilgrim is to be a pilgrim regardless of categories which scholars may come up with to define your motivations, and even whether or not you are a pilgrim. What a pilgrim is, is between. Pilgrims are between the beginning of their journey, and the end. They are between the life they had before the pilgrimage, and the life after. They are between towns, between meals, between coffees and colas. In their lives outside of pilgrimage, they are often between jobs, between periods of education, between marriage and divorce. What it boils down to, especially on the Camino de Santiago, is this different expression of liminality. This place, not non-place, where people come together to be apart from what their lives were and will become.
One of my participants told me that they thought the journey of the Camino de Santiago never ends, even once you reach Santiago. They thought that we keep walking, no matter when we think the walk technically ends. I think they’re right. When I visit my home, in the United States, I will be between my life in London and my past, and I will make a pilgrimage to Graceland.
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