One difference between pilgrimage and a walking adventure is that while everyone may be treading the same physical path, the pilgrim is also on an inner journey: walking mindfully; living simply; accepting rather than avoiding challenges; being open to lessons along the way. On my first Camino de Santiago, walking mindfully along the eight hundred kilometre pilgrim way across Northern Spain, I was reminded that even the simplest of experiences can offer profound life lessons. Like watching a snail cross a road.
I was almost three weeks into a forty day journey and two weeks into my 71st year. It was yet another memorable walking day with glimpses of snow-covered mountains ahead, the magic of walking along a road built by Roman soldiers two millennia ago, occasionally crossing paths with familiar faces and, that evening, meeting the pilgrim mentioned in an earlier story about a musical interlude on Camino.
In the heat of the day, on the flat plain of the Northern Meseta, I stopped to watch this large snail sliding slowly across a rough gravel road.
Bending down to watch its painfully slow progress I wondered if it was uncomfortable on the rough gravel, and worried that it was vulnerable to being driven over, stepped on, or caught by some predatory rodent or hawk. I was about to practice compassion by carrying it to the other side of the road when a saying commonly repeated along the way came to mind: “Everyone walks their own camino”. After all, who was I to judge what was uncomfortable for a snail, what was motivating it, or where it intended to go? Who was I to interfere uninvited? I decided to simply wish it a buen camino, as is the custom among pilgrims on the way to Santiago, and ensure it reached the grassy edge without getting squished or eaten.
That simple moment got me reflecting on a personal fault. It’s part of my upbringing, and perhaps in my genes, to want to step in and help others. That may be well-meaning but sometimes people need to struggle in their own way, build their own resilience and grow through their own experience. Unless we are asked, or help is needed by someone who cannot ask, sometimes the best help is encouraging without interfering. After all, helping a butterfly in its struggle to leave the cocoon condemns it to being too weak to survive.
Societies sometimes do that too – deciding what is right for others and doing what may be well-intentioned but downright wrong. The shameful history of attempts to “help” North American “Indians” by suppressing their language and culture, and forcing their children into residential schools is one example. Never mind that in Nova Scotia, for example, Mi’kmaq had been flourishing here for at least a thousand years before Egyptians started building their first pyramid, and had taught skills to European arrivals without which they would not have survived their first winter. One would hope we would do better today, but sometimes we still find bureaucrats deciding what is best for those like the poor or homeless without consulting or empowering them. We would do well to remember the lesson of that humble snail.
Over the years many people have drawn inspiration from snails, and I’m not the only one to have noticed them on the Camino, as two of the pictures here prove. “By perseverance the snail reached the ark” wrote 19th Century preacher Charles Spurgeon. And in a comment that would resonate with backpacking pilgrims today, author Susan Cain observed that: “In our culture, snails are not considered valiant animals – we are constantly exhorting people to ‘come out of their shells’ – but there’s a lot to be said for taking your home with you wherever you go.”
For my part, crossing paths with that Spanish snail taught a personal lesson, reminding me to curb the urge to leap in and help someone before weighing the fact that “everyone walks their own camino” and in doing so we strengthen and grow.
Photos:
The first picture of a pilgrim and snail was taken by the friend of a friend whose name I do not know. My apologies. The second is borrowed from the website of writer and photographer Sherry Ott at https://www.ottsworld.com/blogs/postcard-from-astorga-spain/ It’s worth a visit.