October 20, 2013
One more (final) chapter. The Camino de Santiago ends, of course, in Santiago, where we arrived three days ago. For us, that was enough. However, some pilgrims continue on for three or four more days, to Finisterre (or Fisterra), on the Atlantic Ocean about 80 kilometers west of Santiago. A few others, like us, take a bus to the seaside town of Fisterra, and walk about three kilometers to the lighthouse, where you can gaze westward and understand why, before around 1492, most people believed that from this point they were looking towards the end of the earth ("finis terrae").
Looking beyond where you've always been, and what you've always done, can be terrifying, if we let it be. Fear can make you want to cling to the familiar. But sometimes we feel the need to stretch our self-imposed boundaries, even if only in small increments. Walking the Camino is certainly not the riskiest venture in the world, but for us, fear has been there, especially before we left home. But once we left our comfort zone, we quickly found a "new normal," and it's amazing how adaptable we became.
But now it's time to click our heels together and admit "there's no place like home!"