Day XXVIII: San Xulian -> Ribadiso; 13.4mi.

I just sat down in a sunny spot on a beautiful bridge I ensured wasn’t part of a motor roadway. As I was listening to the birds and the river and finally settling into my spot, a man smoking a cigarette on the far end of the bridge made eye contact and, with a thick accent I later found out was Hungarian, motioned behind me and said “you are about to have big surprise.” I looked over my shoulder and quickly scrambled to my feet when I saw an entire heard of cows approaching, the leader approximately two feet from me. This, and a million other little things, is what I will miss about Spain.

I talked with my Hungarian friend for a few minutes and discovered we had both began this endeavor in the same town on March 28th, a few hours apart. We met each other for the first time this evening, two days before both of our journeys come to an end.

Now I’ve resettled into my sunny bridge spot and am anxiously looking over my shoulder every so often. I have an open invitation to meet a friend from Seattle and a friend from Norway for a drink at the sole restaurant in town anytime in the next two hours. As I write, I’m listening to a friend from Alaska and a friend from Ireland shriek and laugh in response to dipping their toes in the cold water beneath me. Tomorrow morning we have plans to meet our German friend in the next town for breakfast (at a chocolate churro place!). We’ll walk with her all day and spend tomorrow evening, our last evening before Santiago, with her and my Hawaiian lawyer friend who I’ve been in touch with but haven’t seen since Burgos over two weeks ago. I can’t really conceive anything more idyllic for my perfect-ending-seeking heart. I’m thankful to have that for this chapter.

Tomorrow I can say “tomorrow I have one more day of walking.” It’s surreal.

As I sit here, I can’t help but think of all of the places I’ve had the privilege of calling “home” over the years. I think of Fort Collins CO, Winter Park CO, York PA, Seattle WA, Bay City MI, Wellington CO and now Spain. I think of the various structures I’ve lived in; my childhood room, a beautiful lodge in the Colorado mountains, a kindergarten classroom, a dorm room with the best roommate you could ever ask for, the basement of one of the most beautiful churches I’ve ever seen and now hostels all over Spain – it’s been more of a vagabond home, but it feels like home all the same because I think it’s mostly the people that make a place feel like home. It’s my family and my childhood friends and the neighbors who watched me grow up, the friends who have stuck by my side since the community-oriented year I spent in Winter Park, the Pennsylvania baristas and firefighters and Walmart greeters, the aforementioned “best roommate you could ever ask for” and a huge handful of other college friends, two boys that worked at the grocery store in MI and the kindest couple with the most perfect dogs you will ever meet. And now it’s friends from all over the world who had the crazy idea to walk across Spain at the same time I did.

I’m learning and loving that home isn’t one place. But I’m also aching in a mostly thankful way because I’m certainly collecting a lot to miss.

“.. because I can’t pinpoint ‘home.’ It isn’t just an area code for me. It’s certain people and certain foods and certain feelings that I’ve had in multiple places. Because part of me is always missing somewhere, always missing someone and something. Of all that has been invited into my heart, I’m bound to forget some pieces and lose others here and there. I don’t think I’ll ever collect them all again, that my heart will ever be as whole or put together as it once was. And I’m ok with that.” – Unknown

🛏:6€.

🍴:(I ate octopus today!)

🎧:

“.. and I’m getting older, too.” (Landslide)