Device-Free on the Camino de Santiago

Modern-Day Pilgrims and Their Bad Habits

Thanks to my husband’s gentle push, I left Paris last weekend to walk a portion of the Camino del Norte without a handheld device. For a week, I would take a mindful pause from screens, besides reading on my Kindle, which doesn’t have access to the world wide web. (On the Camino, it’s all about weight since you’re carrying everything on your back, and the Kindle won out over a paperback.) I was ready to take a break from everything and focus on the task of following yellow arrows across the Spanish countryside. Unfortunately, I can only control my own actions; the actions of those around me (and their relationships to their devices) are out of my hands.

The Camino has changed quite a bit in the twelve years since I walked from the mountains to the sea on the Camino Frances – and I don’t just mean the scenery, which is vastly different on the coastal northern route than on the pilgrimage’s main inland artery. Since 2007, many more people have decided to become pilgrims, so the pilgrim hostels and amenities set up along the way are getting squeezed. With lots of pilgrims scrambling to get spots in the albergues, it can feel a bit like a competition—the opposite vibe of the one I was seeking.
 
Then again, it’s July in Spain, so crowds are understandable. All of Europe comes down to the beaches of the Iberian Peninsula, looking to soak up some sun and seafood – a bit like Selena and I. We hadn’t signed up to be real pilgrims, in a way, because we were just doing a small section of the route – 71 miles out of the total 512 miles. But still, we put in the long hours of walking—and I have the blisters to show for it!
 
What surprised me more than the crowds, I have to say, were the smartphones. They were everywhere. Instead of chatting with other pilgrims when you arrived at an albergue after a long day of walking, many pilgrims turned to their phones. In the evening, before bed, once again many faces were illuminated by their phones. Back in 2007, this would have been the quiet time when most people would write in their journals or take a sunset stroll. In the morning, the first thing my fellow pilgrims would do was turn to their phones. On the trail, many used their phones as cameras and maps, tagging pics of their progress on social media, searching for their exact location, or listening to tunes while walking. 

“You’re going to hate this,” Selena said to me midway through the week, “but there’s an app for the Camino.” I scowled in response. Of course there is. 
 
When I did the Camino in September of 2007, the iPhone had been available on the market for less than three months. Obviously, other handheld devices existed at that time, but I can’t recall any pilgrims carrying one on the Camino—or using it as a guide instead of the yellow arrows that are ubiquitous of the pilgrimage, as one pilgrim on this Camino told me he did. I struggled to hide my horror. Those arrows are the reason I walk the Camino. I trust them to lead me to Santiago, better than any app can.
 
While I’d made the decision to be device-free on the Camino, I was alone in that decision. I was somewhat shocked to realize that none of my fellow pilgrims had made the same pact, including my walking partner and best friend, Selena. Somehow, I’d unconsciously and naively thought that my fellow pilgrims would do the same as me: use this time on the Camino to disconnect from their worlds and reconnect with themselves and the natural beauty around them.
 
I understand the need to keep up with family; I spoke to my husband twice during the week for brief updates. When I did the Camino in 2007, I didn’t travel with a cell phone. Instead, I wrote sporadic news-filled email updates to my family anytime an albergue had a communal desktop for use and called home about once a week from a phone booth.
 
This time, I enjoyed my break from the news cycle, my email inbox, WhatsApp groups, social media and podcast feeds. But I must admit that the ubiquity of smartphones on the Camino took a bit of the magic away from the experience. I felt that the pilgrims connected less with one another and allowed their phones to transport them away from the Camino—to the lives they’d left behind and the messiness that the internet invites into our minds.
 
The Camino is a time for slowing down. You could just take a train to Santiago de Compostela and be there in a few hours. Instead, the pilgrim chooses to walk for weeks. Also, the Camino is for simplifying life down to its basic elements: the earth beneath your boots, the muscles that carry you from morning to night, and the friendships that you make along the way. Why, then, would a pilgrim choose to remain attached to this device that rules so much of their everyday life?
 
As pilgrims, we live in a strange sync with one another, oftentimes literally waking up next to near strangers, and it was jarring to see up-close the hold that smartphones had on literally everyone around me, no matter their background or heritage. Seeing it from the perspective of an outsider, someone who could not check my Instagram or email even if I wanted to, the truth couldn’t have been more obvious: smartphones are an addiction—and an epidemic.