Through the pages of her journal, InHabit Travel Studies Consultant Jennifer Wieland has been taking us along on her experience of the Camino trek. This month, we’re pleased to share a third excerpt from Jen’s travel journal. If you’d like to get caught up, you can read the first two excerpts here: First excerpt: Serendipity on the Camino. Second excerpt: Traces.
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A sense of belonging

It’s a late morning in July when I arrive  in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port — a port, a safe haven pass. I excitedly step through Porte Saint Jacques; the mediaeval gateway entrance for pilgrims walking the Camino to Santiago de Compostela. I am elated. After several days of walking, I end my journey from Le Puy-en-Velay; it is time for a few days of rest.

 At the southern edge of the French Basque Country, Saint-Jean-Pied-Port is my last place to explore before crossing the Pyrenees into the Spanish Basque Country. This distinction exists only slightly for the Basque people, their mysterious and unique culture and language so neatly intertwined. In his book, The Basque History of the World, Mark Kurlansky writes: 

‍“We live in an age of vanishing cultures, perhaps even vanishing nations…. We are losing diversity but gaining harmony. Those who resist this will be left behind by history, we are told. But the Basques are determined to lose nothing that is theirs while still embracing the times...They have never been a quaint people and have managed to be neither backwards nor assimilated.”  

I am fascinated by the history and curiously unknown origin of this people and land.  

With the many stories I have heard across the Basque Country, I make a collection in my heart. Because through listening to the stories of these unique people, this unique people group, even if I can’t really ever fully know them, I am welcomed in and consider my own experience of them. The Basque people have hosted me in their beautifully renovated and proudly named farmhouses; they have shared their wonderfully peppered piperade and salted codfish bacalao; and we have toasted life together with sweet pancharan, their homemade endrina berry liqueur. In so many ways, I love it here.

Kurlansky notes that the central concept of the Basque identity is belonging. For example, to this day, every Basque house has a special name, and there is a spiritual head of each house, a woman who looks after blessings and prayers for all the house members. And now I have the privilege of entering into another Basque family’s authentic home, where I will stay the night. I am welcomed by Iñes, her husband Iñaki, and her grandfather Aitor. They are speaking Euskara, or Basque, which linguistically has no direct link to any other known language; it is totally isolated from any other living language and may be the oldest in Europe. I am greeted with wide smiles and a loud “Ongi etorri nire!” which means “Welcome to our home!” I say thank you in Basque: “Eskerrik asko.” My hosts’ faces light up, as this magical and mysterious language penetrates deeply into our hearts.  

Enchantingly embedded

I am in luck. Today, Iñaki will play pelote basque in the town square in the afternoon and Iñes will sing and dance at the church in the evening. I am honoured to be invited. Iñes shows me to my cosy and beautifully decorated bedroom under the eaves. I immediately feel at home. 

I have time before Iñaki’s pelote match starts down at the village fronton, so I set out to explore on my own. I walk atop the walled ramparts to catch a glimpse of the Pyrenees peaks in the distance, and pass by crisp white stucco houses with contrasting green shutters and red roofs. I stop for a while, as the comforting afternoon sun bathes the town, to watch an eagle as it stalks a small creature below the citadelle, and then I meander down to the river and up through the narrow cobbled streets. As I walk up rue de la Citadelle, the central artery of the village, I look for the dates of construction carved into the lintels above the doorways. The oldest I find is 1510, when no permits nor architectural offices existed; it is a beautiful Basque masterpiece of human ingenuity. I see scallop shells embedded into the walls around the doorways and I am reminded of my fellow pilgrims who have walked here over the centuries. 

I wonder  how it is that these bold and tenacious people, when they have everything they know and love existing already within their homes and their family heritages, can be all at once so forward thinking, so genuinely kind, so open-minded and so hospitable. 

I think we get a glimpse of the Basque secret of life in the beauty found even in the utmost recesses of this geographical place itself. The people, their language and their traditions are all born from the rocks, the rich soil, the rivers, the trees; all of it is infused into a natural habitat worthy of the origins of humanity, so pure and defined, so fully real. This mysterious and unique place emits an energy and power over my whole being like no other place I have been. 

I touch the surface, receiving from this place and people only what graciously emanates out of their souls and into mine, and leave the rest.

Having been born in a different place and time, I touch the surface, receiving from this place and people only what graciously emanates out of their souls and into mine, and leave the rest. But I have become enchantingly embedded, gratefully accepting and appreciating its welcoming spirit. And their unique beauty, whether heard through their soulful Basque songs, or seen through their powerful pelote basque pitches, works me over with the piercing immediacy of concrete vitality: I come alive in beholding their beauty, intensely immersed in the here and now. 

After an amazing afternoon and evening, I welcome a restful night’s sleep and the blissful thought of not having to lace up my boots tomorrow.

Giddy adventurers

When I wake up, get ready and go downstairs for breakfast, I find Iñes has decided that today, since it is Sunday and she has the day off work, she will show me one of her favourite trails up through the hills surrounding the village. A real Basque woman, deeply spiritual and unabashedly naturalistic, she is incredibly strong and has this giddy adventurous spirit that is contagious. 

We set off after a hearty breakfast. Iñes tells me that since she was old enough to put one foot in front of the other and follow in her grandfather Aitor’s footsteps, she would venture up with him to Valcarlos to visit his lifelong friend Michel, and listen to legends and visit with his homing pigeons. Our destination today is Valcarlos, to have lunch with Michel and  Aitor, who will meet us there. I feel incredibly blessed, anticipating time with these amazing people.  

The walk out of Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port is gentle and Iñes assures me that the uphill through the forest is gradual. Along the way, she continues to recount her adventures as a young girl. After their visits with Michel in Valcarlos, she and her grandfather would often continue up to the top of the pass to visit the wild ponies, and as they climbed, he would insist on telling her the stories of the Spanish invaders and the legends of Roland and Charlemagne. She knows every inch of the terrain, as well as all the forest creatures. She knows the wild ponies by name. When she was young, she learned to tame the small animals so she could ride them bareback through the mountaintop meadows. She knows where all the best endrina berry bushes are, and she knows the best swimming holes. 

Her home, I realize in a moment, is not just the house I stayed in, her home is all of this, all of this on the mountainside and beyond.

This is her land, her earthen footage, her soil, her cave, her grotto, her nest. The sound of a rushing river grows louder and louder as we near the outskirts of Valcarlos. Then a waterfall appears and we giggle freely and frantically like young girls as we peel off our boots and wiggle our way down the slope to the fresh cold rumbling ripples. Her home, I realize in a moment, is not just the house I stayed in, her home is all of this, all of this on the mountainside and beyond. She belongs here, her soul is housed here in this fertile and profound land, and with all of her family and extended families of all the different houses, like no other people in the world. This is their Basqueland.  

I never really know where the Camino will take me, but I am now assured of what it will save me from — resignation and a drowsiness which is not a form of wisdom; withdrawal into myself, and  the isolation that sometimes accompanies this. The Camino is never bitter, it restores to me what is serious and sweet in me, and remains my giddy adventurer.