Capturing Serenity on the Camino: my world at 8:00 a.m.

I took this photo precisely at 8:00 a.m., immersed in a golden field of sunflowers, their radiant faces basking in the early morning sunlight. This photograph, captured only steps away from a café terrace in the tiny hamlet of Moratinos, captures a moment of pure serenity.

Life on the Camino is full of moments like this, where the anticipation of the awaiting café con leche is mingled with the magnificent sight before me. Just an hour before, the first sight when I opened the curtains of my private room in a hostel had already heralded the start of a delightful day; have a look at this superb sunrise and imagine starting your day with this view:

In this tranquil corner of the world, the first pilgrims began to arrive from villages further east, where they had stopped for the night. Each morning, we embark on a shared journey, all heading westward toward Santiago, starting at different places along the route like the carriages of an 800 kilometers-long train that starts a new journey. And every day, the rising sun accompanies our footsteps, casting its warmth upon our backs, guiding us on our chosen path, and adding a thin extra layer to the 1200-year-old human history of hope and suffering along the Camino.

This morning, the sunflowers, our steadfast companions on the Meseta, welcome us with open arms. Unlike the pilgrims, they have turned their vibrant faces toward the sun, mirroring our own devotion to our route and destiny. If sunflowers would go on a pilgrimage, I am convinced they would all walk towards the east to the rising sun they admire.

I imagine them walking, mimicking the clumsy, stiff movement of Pink Floyd's claw hammers in The Wall, or like pilgrims getting up after a coffee when their blisters are most painful for the first hundred steps. But that is where the association stops; in stark contrast to the claw hammers, I see sunflowers as happy, summery, kind, and loyal. They are the Clyties of the planet, admiring the sun and walking towards it if they were given the chance. Van Gogh admired them, and as I wrote earlier in The Planet newsletter, dripping them in tomato soup is an insult to beauty and a blow to effective climate activism.

It is just minutes later, and I am back at my coffee and watching a steady stream of pilgrims arriving from the eastern horizon. An eternal bond, unity, and camaraderie bind us on this spiritual odyssey.

I briefly chat with one of them, Erin from Canada; she is on her way to Santiago, blister-free, radiant, and happy. And then I'm pleased to see Neil and Geoff again, two Brits that genuinely enjoy every minute of their journey. They share funny short videos of their adventures in our WhatsApp group, which they aptly named Camino Hangover; unfortunately, they'll go only as far as Leon. Our evenings may have been as different as writing differs from drinking, but our steps followed each other in the mornings, and seeing them will always bring a smile to my face.

I sip my coffee and continue writing on my iPhone, contemplating the ancient symbiosis between pilgrims and sunflowers. They watch us, or maybe even watch over us, while we draw inspiration from their radiant beauty.

The sunflowers stand as witnesses to our pilgrimage and constantly remind us of the motivation that propels us forward. The sunflowers' resilience inspires us to briefly stop on our trail and turn our faces toward the sun, embracing the warmth of each new day's journey and letting us briefly identify ourselves with a sunflower.

I am writing these last paragraphs on the train from Sahagun to Leon. It is just a short trip through wheat fields and sunflowers. The three days I gain by this move will be a gift to myself once I arrive in Santiago: an additional three days hike towards what has been known since the Roman times as "the End of the Earth," Finesterrae, Finisterre, or Fisterre. It brings my leitmotif on this pilgrimage, my worries about the end of our good living conditions on this planet, literally to the end of the Earth.

I feel sadness when I realize there can be beauty in the chronicles of the last years of the good life in the ouverture of the Anthropocene. Sadness, sure, but gratitude as well. More steps will follow, many more, and time to process all this and share with you.

The train slows down. It is 9:35. I'll look for a cafe at the railway station in Leon with wifi to share these morning thoughts with you, knowing quite well that most of you live across the ocean, the half of our planet that's now turned away from the sun, like the faces of pilgrims, walking west towards Santiago and the end of the Earth.

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