New Beginnings

It’s hard not to compare the first day arriving in Irún, the starting point of the Camino del Norte, with the first day arriving in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, the start of the Camino Francés two years ago. Getting off the train into town, I wasn’t surrounded by the swaths of pilgrims of two years ago. There was no signage signifying where to go for the Camino, and there was no line to the pilgrims’ office. There were no other people in the streets with large backpacks and walking sticks in hand—just me, on my own, walking down the streets of Irún with the locals of this Basque town going about their day. A far cry from what I experienced two years ago, going from a town seemingly built from the Camino to one that seems to hardly acknowledge it exists.

Arriving at Albergue Jakobi, the only albergue in Irún, I finally ran into other pilgrims who, like me, were eager to start their Caminos. Now a more experienced pilgrim, I found myself asking the question that seemed so ridiculous the first time I heard it two years ago: “Is this your first Camino?” I asked others, no longer surprised at their responses if it wasn’t. A man from Chihuahua, Mexico proudly said it was his fifth, and a man from within the region shared it was his seventh, others their firsts, and myself my second.

Though vastly different, the day wasn’t void of nostalgia from my first Camino. As the doors opened to the albergue, I quickly found the basket of shells, picking one out just as I had two years ago, and tied it to the space where the shell of my last Camino had occupied. Shortly after, I completed the ritual that kept me so present two years ago: making a bed, shower, laundry, dinner with pilgrims, and now writing this entry—and soon after, bed. Excited, but also a little intimidated for what’s to come, wondering who these other pilgrims—now strangers—will end up to be to me by the end of the Camino, and who I will be to myself as well.