Of Pine Trees and The Sea

We took the bus to Finesterre yesterday, Andrea and Tristan and I, winding through the hills until we reached the coast.

Seeing that first flash of blue through the grimy plastic windows washed over me like a homecoming -- the sea.  But we were only an hour into what we thought was a three-hour bus ride, which on the map was about the location of the large lake.  And the water was so still -- we decided this must be a lake, and our hearts quieted with disappointment.

Then the lake kept going and going and going.

And suddenly we were in Fisterra, the town just outside Finesterre.  We rejoiced at the shorter bus ride and renewed permission to get excited by the ocean and then there out the window were Jemima and Mattias!  A most longed-for reunion!

Eventually they got on the bus we'd just left, and the Three Musketeers set off for the end of the world.  We got boccadillos to go, bought snacks at the grocery store, went on a fruitless search for the Jemima-recommended German bakery (but found a panaderia with fresh-baked cake, so all good!), and headed up the hill toward the lighthouse.

Walking along the edge of the highway, in the brush and thorny raspberry bushes, cars zooming by, we saw the gregarious woman from León and her silent friend from Martinique whom we'd passed on the trail weeks before; and there walking down on the other side of the highway were the British boys who'd gotten in a Call Me Maybe battle with Adam and Emmy at Albergue de Jesus.  We had said goodbye to so many people on the Camino expecting never to meet again, and yet we felt no sadness in parting, as if we had always known that we would find them on the side of a mountain by deep green pines flanking the still blue water.

We reached the Faro de Finesterre drenched in sweat and walked past the cheap trinket stands and public art mosaics and lighthouse itself until we came to the rocky point, and all around us was sea.

I climbed down to where lizards darted and the rocks were charred from the pilgrim's tradition of burning something at journey's end.  Mixed with the silence were mournful gulls, the wind that whipped up and tussled my hair, boistrous German tourists.  I threw a coin as far as I could.

We tossed our expensive but cheaply made bocadillos to the gulls and ate cake and oreos for lunch, sitting on the rocks.  Before catching our bus back, there was ice cream, and the hike back down, and we collected sea glass and put our hands in the Atlantic, and I realized that this whole time walking across Spain I had really been bringing my pilgrim's shell back home.