Day 43: Cee, the Sea, and Spiritualism

My callused and blistered feet reaching the sea, at Cee/ Corcubion.

This is a delayed account, because I found myself unable to write about the sea while actually at the sea.  I was too busy feeling my mind go blank, staring dumbly at the waves.   (Like these, in Muxia.  I mean, oh my word.  Watching the waves explode against the rocks was like watching fireworks.  You could stare for hours:)

Waves in Muxia, on the rocks below the Santuario de nuestra Virgen de la Barca

As usual, the anticipation of the thing was almost as good as the thing itself.  The day of walking the last stretch to the sea was particularly long: 34 km, with the last 15 of it having no services at all, not even water.  I got a late start, as usual (somehow after Santiago my feet seem to be moving slower.)  So by the time I finished 20k and got to the small hamlet of Hospital, it was already 2 in the afternoon and the sun was blazing hot.  I stopped for a coffee at a cafe and debated stopping for good, staying the night, because the cafe owner told me she had a perfectly nice albergue right here, and then I could walk that last leg in the cool of the morning!  Her sign made the desolate stretch beyond look quite menacing: 

Smart advertising.  She got business.  

I eventually decided to keep going, and if all the beds were full when I rolled in late so be it ('late', in pilgrim terms, being anyone who starts walking after 6 am and is still walking after 2 - these pilgrims are crazy) but regardless, I was going to reach the sea.  I put one very good song on repeat, and started walking.  

Three hours later I'd hardly seen a soul.  

The trail was pristine, and deserted; the terrain changed slowly around me from tall eucalyptus forests to windswept heather studded with boulders, but though the soil occasionally seemed sandy, I still could not glimpse the sea. I thought: how much farther could 15 km be?  

Surely the sea must be around here somewhere.  Occasionally I thought I smelled it.  But still the rolling hills continued, hills and more hills, and I began to understand how - centuries ago - someone might have lived 50 km inland from the sea and never seen the sea.  On foot, with this being your fastest speed, suddenly everything in your world shrinks.  But at the same time, you see more details, so I don't think those long-ago people would have had less knowledge - they just had a deeper knowledge of one very local place, instead of a shallow knowledge of many distant places.  You could have lived your whole life within twenty square miles, and known its soil like your skin.

Anyway.  Eventually, I stopped to rest.  I thought: the heck with it.  I'm snacking here, not at my first glimpse of the sea as planned.  And then, wouldn't you know it, after a half-hour's rest with my boots off, I got up to continue onward and not fifty feet further around another bend, there was the sea.

 There it is!  The sea!  After walking all the way from the border of France, 900 km ago!  I hadn't recognized it, because in the shimmering heat haze and humidity the blue horizon of the water seemed to fade straight up into the sky.  But this is it!  This photo was the first view of the sea, where that slightly darker blue meets the hills.

Two coastal towns were the destination for the night: the picturesque sister towns of Corcubion / Cee.  

I walked into a humble-looking albergue.  When I asked if they had a bed or if they were full, the owner said Si, si, por supuesto tenemos una cama.  I was only about the tenth pilgrim in a hostel for 45 that night.  There were empty beds everywhere.  So it turned that, as has so often been the case, all my worrying was groundless.  

I made a trip down to the town beach and felt quite emotional, putting my now-callused feet into the sea.  I picked up scallops.  I stood in the water and grinned.  My feet made it.

Now, at this lovely albergue, the pilgrim dinner cost only an extra 6 euros.  They had a kitchen, but I must admit I wasn't feeling particularly energetic about seeking out a supermarket, though I do prefer simply buying groceries and eating alone.  I've been doing a lot of eating alone on windswept hillsides, and loving it.  But the few times I have eaten at pilgrim tables, it's usually wound up being with a dozen other interesting people and well worth the price for the stories.  So I thought, okay.  A communal meal.  With luck this will be painless, and the dozen other people will be talkative, but only to each other, and I won't have to say a word or draw attention to myself, only listen, and be completely ignored.  (This is what I prefer.)  

I was thinking, afterward, that a good theme for this trip might be something like, "Kali wants to be left alone; Kali does not get what she wants; Kali learns a very important lesson."  

When I showed up for dinner at 7:30 sharp, there were only 3 places set.  The owner's wife had made up lovely salads and pastas for the three of us eating.  But she wasn't eating, and neither was the owner.  It was only me and two middle-aged men, a Korean and a Spaniard.  The Korean spoke a little English.  The Spaniard spoke only Spanish.  Which meant that neither could talk to the other.  Only to me.  And both were extremely talkative.  

Luckily, the Korean was also very patient (turns out he'd studied with Buddhist monks) because the Spaniard talked a lot, animatedly, so it was often quite some time before I got around to (attempted) translating.  I have never concentrated so intently for any stretch of 3 hours in my life.  We talked about spiritualism, and metaphysics ('la metafisica,' as the Spaniard put it, because he started this whole conversation) and karma, and the Tao, and Buddhism, and reincarnation, and how to best live one's life with purpose and intent, and how the universe reflects back what we think and desire, whether positive or negative.  And - imagine it - BOTH these men heard of the Japanese scientist Dr. Masaru Emoto, who photographs water crystals, to prove that our thoughts harm or heal the physical world!  They both had!  Unbelievable!

This small dining table was such an unassuming place, to have such a vivid encounter:  

The next morning, I woke up quietly, thinking - with a mix of joy and wistfulness - that it was my birthday, and nobody here knew it but me.  Then, as I sat near two German women and ate my boiled eggs for breakfast, the owner wandered past and wished me a feliz cumpleaños (he'd actually remembered it from my passport)... and then, to one of the German women, a feliz cumpleaños as well.  We looked at each other.  Really?  Really.  She was turning 60 to my 29; her name was Gërlinde (sp?), and she was also walking to the lighthouse at the end of the world for her birthday.

In German, happy birthday is 'alles gute zum gebortstag' (I'm sure I butchered that); someone with your same birthday is a 'gebortstag kinder', and 'jetzt, wir gehen zum ende der welde', is...

Now, we're going to the end of the world.

Setting off that morning, I felt a curious reluctance leaving Cee behind.  It was to happen in every single little seaside town that followed.  In every one of them, I had this powerful feeling of: I could have stayed.  (Though I do not think I would get very much writing done, living by the sea.  My productivity seriously tanked when there were waves to watch.  I turned extremely lazy.  And so... blank.  I felt no need to go anywhere or do anything.) 

Halfway to the Finisterre lighthouse, I stopped at a picturesque and - impossibly - deserted beach, and swam.  This wound up being my only swim in the ocean.  I dubbed it 'birthday cove'.  The locals had put up a sign rating water temperature, and gave this only 1 out of 3 stars - barely satisfactory.  At first I thought Spaniards were just sissies, but then I got in.  

It was really cold.  

Now, on the approach to Finisterra and the 'end of the world', I was initially inclined to not be impressed.  This area has been revered as the Finis Terre since before Roman times.  It had - and still has - the Roman 'Ara Solis', an ancient altar to the sun, and supposedly even older sites of worship on this holy rocky headland.  But as enchanting as these sound, I'd heard it was getting overly touristy, and so busy that it didn't really feel like much of a spiritual anything any more.  

Then I rounded the peninsula, and got a view of Finisterre, and thought: ah.  I can see why tourists come here by the busload. 

 A full km of pristine sandy beach.  And that headland rising past the town is 2 km of rocky woodland jutting out into the sea - with sunrise on one side, and sunset on the other, the ara solis and sacred rocks somewhere on it - and the lighthouse at the tip.  The town of Finisterre wound up being crowded, but lovely.  

 I wanted to visit the lighthouse, obviously.  But even more intriguingly, the guidebook - and plenty of other guidebooks - also mentioned these 'sacred rocks that moved'.  Las piedras que mueven.  Las piedras sacras.  They are vaguely indicated on maps, but only as being up on top of that 2 km of rocky headland. Somewhere.  Supposedly, in the year 1500, a pilgrim wrote an account of these rocks and stated that 'horses by force could not shift them, but they can be rocked by a single finger.'  They've been constantly visited, before and since.  And according to some legends, in ancient, ancient times, pagan priestesses used to bring new initiates here, to test young girls at the rocks that move, to - somehow - see if they were fit to be priestesses.  

No idea what those ancient rites entailed.  But I thought:  this.  This is what I'm going to do on my birthday.  I'm totally going to find the priestess rocks.  With luck I'll find them at sunset, and I'll be there all alone.  

Well, I went to the lighthouse first, as per pilgrim tradition.  (There were people camping here in their RV's at the edge of the world; I could totally see my grandma setting up her RV at the base of a lighthouse.)

RV camping below Finisterre lighthouse

 And it was lovely, and I did indeed feel quite small and awestruck and emotional staring far, far down at the pounding surf pummeling the boulders, and realizing that whether I was here to see it or not, the sea never.  Stopped.  

Anyway, then I left and climbed up and up to look for the rocks.  

 Well, there were lots of rocks.  I was indeed up there the moment the sun set on my birthday.  And I did have what felt like the entire headland to myself - apparently, most pilgrims stay at the lighthouse.  

But I could not find those rocks that move. 

 There are supposed to be two: that's all I knew.  For some reason, I thought they would be marked.  A sign.  An informative plaque.  An explanation in several languages, and an arrow, and a worn trail beaten to them, with a crowd of people taking selfies. Instead, there was an abandoned power plant, old graffiti'd concrete pillars, dozens of footpaths and dozens of potential boulder piles in every direction, and it was getting dark.  

So I hiked back down to the albergue.  Then I decided to stay a second night to look for them, and I googled 'the rocks that move'.  (Totally cheating in my priestess test, I know.)  Google... did not yield much.  

I resorted to asking the albergue owner, but even she was rather vague.  She spoke only spanish, and was kind, and exuberant, and bubbly about everything else, but when it came to giving me concrete directions to las piedras que mueven, she turned hazy and simply said 'arriba, arriba' (up, up), which I did not find particularly helpful, then concluded with a fatalistic shrug: 'some pilgrims find them... and some do not.'

Well, I thought, I am going to be one of the pilgrims that finds them.  

That evening, I gave myself three hours.  I climbed with the attitude of taking any footpath - however small - that seemed to go up.  I wound up trekking through blackberry brambles, and stumbling across the ruins of San Guillermo: another famous site on the headland, and it was hardly marked at all.  Perhaps some of the overgrown elusiveness is due to the climate here, and how fast brambles and bushes overtake the paths.  Or perhaps Galicians just don't particularly want to help tourists find their sacred sites  (understandable.)  As it turned out, this ruined San Guillermo was a 12th century monastery built over what was believed to be the original Ara Solis.  The original Roman - probably even pre-Roman - altar to the sun.  And it wasn't even fenced off.  

You could just go sit in there, between these ruined cells of rooms built up against this looming hunk of granite with a cave beneath, facing directly east.  I ate honeysuckle beside the altar of the sun.  This was that shadowed cave built into the ruins and probably a holy site for who knows how long:

I wasn't entirely sure where the 'altar', specifically, was.  But just before leaving, I saw this massive slab of rock with what seemed to be a human figure carved into it - just a head and body shape, like a sarcophagus, but indented.  More like a space carved out for a human to... lie inside.  Somebody had left flowers in the head.  After a quick look around, I thought, gleefully, well, I will try to lie on this ancient rock.  Just, you know, see if it fits.  

 It totally did.  It fit perfectly.  I felt a lovely affinity with this rock, like I could lie there and stare up at the sky for hours, like I was communing with something ancient.

I found out later that this was the legendary ancient fertility rock, 'la piedra de la fecundidad'.  (Where couples come in secret to make love, and that any female who lies upon it is bound to get pregnant.  Ye gods.  The Spanish really should have these things more clearly labeled.)

Anyway, onward I climbed, in search of the stones that moved... and after an hour's trekking, I crested the rise and found myself right by the graffiti'd concrete poles again.  Exactly where I'd been the night before.  

I'd no sooner stopped and scowled to myself, annoyed, when a young man rounded the bend of another footpath, following his phone and looking confused, and asked me in broken english about the stones that move.  I gave him a helpless shrug.  I said I'd looked for them yesterday and was looking for them again today... and that I thought, maybe, by photos I'd seen online, they might be that distant rock pile over there to the right.  After some mutual discussion, he said he was going to call a friend who lived in Finisterre to ask her.  He wandered left; I wandered right.  In truth, I was glad to leave him behind.  I meandered along footpaths, heading toward the rock pile that was my best guess, where I figured I could start poking and prodding boulders, and with luck that guy would go in the opposite direction and I'd see no one the rest of the evening.  

A few minutes later, much to my consternation, he came jogging up behind me.  His friend said they were further in this direction.  

I rolled my eyes when he wasn't looking.  This was my direction.  He was interfering with my priestess-quest.  And, he was using a cell phone.  His friend had told him take the second dirt track to the left; it would be a tiny track.  When we reached the imposing rock pile where I would have turned, it was only the first left.  I thought that rock pile looked promising.  It was certainly the most obvious, and vaguely looked like a Google photo.  "But," he said, "My friend, she told me the second, the second left."  

The second left was a tiny footpath, that crested a small rise, out of sight.  And the rocks were... unassuming, at first.  Big.  I never would have thought I could move them.  They lay like two hippos, or something, on a flat bed of granite, two long boulders of almost identical size, vaguely rectangular, separated down the middle by a gap of several inches, like they'd long ago been split in two.

We looked at them for a moment.  He shoved one, from its short end; nothing happened.  I said, dubiously, "Well, at least there are two.  That seems right."  Then he moved away, and I took his place, and tried pushing from the long side instead, to rock it on the long axis, like you'd roll somebody lying down, and it totally moved.  So easy!  I tried rocking it with just one finger, like that pilgrim in the 1500's did, and you totally can!  These stones didn't even make a sound.  No scraping.  No crunching.  No knocking together.  But they're both perfectly balanced, somehow, perhaps cushioned by so many milennia of dust and moss now that it feels almost... soft, when you rock them.  

I whooped, positively amazed, and then rocked the other.  The guy tried for himself, and it moved, and then he went scrambling on his knees around the base of the rocks, peering beneath them, saying "I just don't understand it, how is this possible..."  

Turns out his name was Daniel (pronounced 'dough-nyel') and he was from Hungary, the first Hungarian I'd met.  Adding him to the list of countries I've met - along with a Russian girl I met yesterday - that makes at least 25 countries so far.  We had a delightful time photographing each other moving the rocks with a single finger.  (It really, really did not seem like those were rocks ten people could have moved; they looked firmly planted.)  

 Then he had to hurry off to watch the sunset from the lighthouse, per tradition; he'd also just finished walking the whole Camino Frances, but in ten days less time than me, and he had only one night in Finisterre before having to head back to Hungary.  I shook his hand and thanked him profusely, and told him I really didn't think I would have found these rocks by myself.  Then we wished each other buen camino, and he trotted away... and I had the rocks all to myself.

 For the whole rest of the evening.

The sunset was stunning.  

As the sun went down, and I rocked the stones again, more gently, each in turn.  (I decided not to post more detailed photos, lest they wind up on Google and ruin someone else's search, by making it too easy and not a quest at all.)  I realized my priestess lesson had been a clear one: no matter how much I may want to do a thing alone... sometimes, I obviously need help.   

Late that night - long after the sun set, as I picked my way down an overgrown trail while the moon rose - I found myself glad there was no sign marking those stones.  I hope if anyone tries to paint yellow arrows pointing the way, the locals scuff them out and keep the stones obscure and unmarked forever.  

 Then, the next morning:

The beach of Finisterre is the classic beach for pilgrims to pick up their own 'concha' (shell).  Before walking down to this beach, I'd feared that with so many pilgrims, all the shells might be taken. Then the day was drizzly, the beach was nearly deserted, and scallop shells coated the sand like gravel.  

I realized pilgrims could come here day and night and the sea would never run out of shells.  The ocean washes up more conchas than anyone could ever pick up.  There is an abundance here, more than we could ever pack away.

Wishing you luck on your own priestess quest, wherever it may be.

-mlj