To the end of the earth and back

Today I travelled the better part of 200k by coach in order to visit Muxia and Finisterre, the true terminal ends of the Camino.  Muxia is famous from the Sheen/Estevez movie, The Way, where the father scatters his son's ashes.   It is a stark and bleak place, where today a sudden rain squall drenched most of us before we could get back to the bus.  Like our own Peggy's Cove in Nova Scotia, it is compelling to see the waves breaking over the rocks (and there are no safety warnings!).  

In 2002, a shipwrecked oil tanker polluted the Galician Coast; a huge stone monument commemorates the event and subsequent cleanup.

Finisterre (Fistere in Galician Spanish) is the customary end of the Camino. There is a kilometre 0.0 marker, a lighthouse, and a mast near the high water mark on the rocks.  

When I began my pilgrimage, the widow of one of my friends asked me to leave her late husband's cross from his Cursillo (literally a 'short course' for Christian renewal) Cross at the end of the Camino, thinking of the Cathedral in Santiago.  But when I saw the mast down on the rocks, I phoned Cheryl and asked her permission to leave Mike's crucifix there. I crawled down the rocks and scrambled up the mast to wrap the woolen rainbow lanyard around the steel girder.  I have worn this cross or carried it in my purse for 38 days; placed it on the table when we celebrated mass; and despite it weighing only a few grams, I miss having it with me more than the brick that I carried to the Cruz de Fer.

Today's Music:  St Patrick's Breastplate (the verse that describes the "old eternal rocks" - this is one of the "thin" places on earth where earth and heaven touch each other)

Today's Paces:  18,801

Tomorrow's Prayer Intentions:  all those pilgrims who suddenly remember that reality begins after you get your Compostela