The Light that Stayed

My final reflection on the Camino de Santiago

May 09, 2025

After Santiago, something still shines

There are days when I still feel the Camino in my body.
Not just in the legs that once walked 800 kilometres,
but in the spaces between my thoughts, the ones I learned to trust again.

This is for anyone who has wondered if they could do it.
Or if they should.
For anyone who feels something inside them turning quietly toward the light, from a busy place, turning toward a different kind of living.

I was changed by what I found.
Not just by the plains and mountains or the friendships,
but by the simple moments.
Like this one.
A beam of light on a dusty wall in Santiago Cathedral.

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The Light in the Dust
(for Santiago, for love)

The light in the dust
that has floated a thousand years
lands softly on my face.
A testament
to a great found love.

Love that carried me
through valleys,
over mountains,
along dry roads,
in the silence
of your words.

The cathedral disappears
into her star-led eyes.
Grey jewels,
the ancient path
to a simpler heaven
where love becomes
the searching hands
of a shepherd in the dark.

Except I am not in the dark.
The statues have crumbled
like sandcastles
on some bright day in Galilee,
when He said,
follow me
and we,
gave ourselves
to the poetry of surrender.

Sunlight on a wall, Santiago de Compostella Cathedral

Some days after arriving back in Santiago (for I had been in Finisterre my turnaround place), I wandered the Cathedral alone. This last week of my Camino had been filled with the excitement of finally reaching the “destination,” but also the sadness of, as I felt at the time, having finished something big in my life.

I remember walking through the Cathedral almost as if it were a museum. I watched the other pilgrims who had just come in curiously, the wide variety of emotions they carried into the church for the first time. Some were in awe. I hadn’t been. Not entirely. I was more overwhelmed.

The Cathedral struck me as complicated, architecturally busy, full of straight lines and curved arches, golden altars, carved niches, gilded crannies, strange and wonderful sculptures. Each part was beautiful in its own right, but as a whole, the place felt too ornate, too layered.

Somewhere behind the altar, the bones of Saint James were entombed in a gilded box. He had been brought here after his martyrdom in Jerusalem, now resting far from the quiet field under the stars where legend says he was first laid and later found by a hermit monk. From that resting place, a great grey tree had grown, this Cathedral, this pilgrimage, this million-strong stream of sore feet.

And yet, the most beautiful thing I saw that day wasn’t carved in stone. It was a shaft of light, falling through a high window onto a grey wall. The light revealed the dust in the air, dust that must have floated there for days, maybe weeks, possibly even a millennia.

I imagined it brought in on sore feet, from every path and mountain and road. A universe of pilgrim motes, suspended, shining for a moment. Like stars that had always guided people, all around the world, to somewhere beyond.

I had already travelled beyond Santiago by then. My pilgrimage ended, physically at least, at Finisterre, a town 80 kilometres west, on the edge of the Iberian Peninsula. It was a sacred site long before the Romans and the Christians came. The quiet bay behind the hill where the sun altar still stands must have offered shelter to small ships coming from the Mediterranean, daring the Atlantic.

It was the edge of the world. It was the end of the old world.

I drifted there with Camino friends in search of rest, in search of silence. It was our gentle way of cooling down after our marathon journey, and perhaps, hiding from the coming return. A quiet time before going home to our families and other lives.

A Closing Reflection

I sometimes wonder if the Camino ever really ends. Or if, like the dust in that cathedral light, it stays with you, settling quietly into the clothes of your ordinary life.

The way you pause mid-walk to feel the sun if you are walking around that lake in your hometown.
The sudden tears while doing the washing up.
The strength to let go without bitterness to something in your past.
A faith that something new will come. The faith to follow.

We walked to the end of the world.
But it was the return that asked something deeper of us.

And maybe now, in your own way, you're standing at the edge too. Perhaps we always are. Always on the precipice of newness.

Whatever you do next, walk it gently.
Walk it as your own.

Postscript: The End of the Road (for now)

This piece marks the final post in a series of eleven that trace and reflect in a poetic way my journey along the Camino de Santiago in the spring of 2007.

I began walking on April 7th in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France, and arrived at Santiago de Compostela on May 8th. In total, I walked 764 kilometres over 32 days.

These reflections have helped me revisit the landscapes, silences, friendships, and questions that shaped that time in my life. They’ve reminded me how much of the Camino lives on in the way I walk through the world now.

If you’ve walked this path with me—whether in memory or imagination. Thank you.

And if you're dreaming of setting out on your own Camino, or another great journey of some kind. I hope these words have served as a lantern, gently lighting the road ahead.

Buen Camino,
Damian

The Camino Series:

1. Starting Out: On the Camino de Santiago
Leaving Saint-Jean with nothing but my breath, blisters, and the wide unknown, I began to discover that beginnings are sacred because they teach us how to simply keep going.

2. How a Bike, a Book, and a Broken Heart Led Me to Spain

Born from heartbreak, high blood pressure, and a yearning to live differently, the Camino became a natural continuation of the healing that began with a bicycle and a mountain road in Australia.

3. No Need for Longing: A Pilgrim’s Conversation

Through medieval towns, early blisters, and quiet mornings, I began to learn the rhythm of walking alone, where peace and clarity arrived not in words but in the mud and mist of Spain.

4. The Way of Less: Learning to Carry Only What Matters on your Journey

Stripped of technology and routine, my life shrank to fit a pack and a path, and in that simplicity I began to feel something both ancient and beautifully human reawaken in me.

5. Trust the Road: My Reflection on Fear and Freedom

Reflecting on instinct, risk, and ancestral fear, I realized that the Camino is not about the absence of danger, but the presence of trust, trust in the road, in others, and in oneself.

6. In the Company of Saints and Shadows

Crossing ancient monastic ruins and standing before sarcophagi and Civil War memorials, I began to feel the presence of history, not as something distant, but as something whispering directly to me.

7. Into the Lightness of Being

As I entered the vast silence of the Meseta, the noise inside me dissolved, and in that openness I encountered others, fellow pilgrims who arrived like quiet gifts along the way.

8. The Tao of Friendship

Friendship, I learned, flows best like the Tao, arriving not when you chase it, but when you are simply open, walking, and willing to listen.

9. Where the Meseta Ends and Something New Begins

Reflections on Days 17 to 24 on my Camino de Santiago journey - Late April 2007

10. Let Things Be Wild

In my time with a companion I cared for deeply, I found a kind of love that asked nothing, held nothing, and taught me the beauty of presence without possession.