Journal Entries from the Camino Fisterra (4/4)

October 21

The sun came out today and it felt like a miracle. It was new, it was creation, it was the very first act of God. I walked through 48 hours of rain, and the sunrise struck me like a blow. It made me think of Noah, and how he would have felt after 40 days of apocalyptic rain, when for the first time after, he saw the sun.

I stopped looking at the kilometer numbers on the waymarks today. They weren’t counting down to a goal anymore. Today was the goal, it was the reward. Every step today was beautiful. Green woods spangled with sunbeams and the ocean, the ocean from every angle. I’m at the end of the land now, the end of the earth, on the Coast of Death (really. La Costa da Morte), and I feel like this is the beginning and end of everything, like the entire universe and all of time is all happening in a single moment. Everything is now, and now is everything.

I’m getting sunburnt but I’m not ready to go back to the town yet and catch the bus. I can’t imagine going inside. Sunshine, open air on my raw feet, this warm rock that I’m sitting on, the sound of the blue and white ocean and of three conversations in three difference languages drifting from the other people clambering around here on this little peninsula.

I don’t think my toes will ever forgive me for the last four days, but the rest of me is deeply in love with right now.