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Writer's picturecherylmurfin

17. Following the Arrows


Shells and arrows guide the Camino

If you don't like history, skip this post. But I was so amazed by how the Camino de Santiago is mapped, that I named this blog after one of its markers. I wanted to explain the why of shells and arrows.


Pilgrims walking the Camino look for these two symbols along the road to insure they are going the right direction and not heading for, say, Madrid or Barcelona or, God forbid, backwards toward France or Lisbon.


You don’t really need either of the symbols to get to Santiago as one of our hostel hosts, a yoga guru named Mincho, pointed out.


"Just you need to look up at the sky and go west toward the sun setting," Mincho said. "You can't miss."


Spain's coast is rather long so I wouldn't say you can't miss Santiago, but I suppose that's one way to get there. For those of us less navigationally inclined there are the shells and the yellow arrows. There are also a lot of apps to navigate the road, but that's cheating.


The scallop shell is two signs really. First, hanging off a backpack, coat or hat, it is the symbol to the world that the wearer is a pilgrim -- which along with a pilgrim passport or credential gets you cheap meals and into hostels only for pilgrims. So most pilgrims pick up a scallop shell at their starting point and wear it with pride as they walk.


Camino purists and know-it-alls, however, don’t carry the shell. That’s because they've read that in the most traditional approach to the Camino — the one followed in the 16th, 17th century and beyond — the true pilgrim continues his walk beyond the Saint Jame's purported burial site in Santiago and on to the sea the end of the Earth (Fistera, Spain). There he picks up a shell that he carries with him his whole life as proof that he completed the pilgrimage.


In the old days, having this shell pinned to your hat or cloak gave you certain respect and benefits. You might be given a free meal or bed as you traveled through a town for example. Today wearing the shell from the start helps the Spanish people in the towns along the Camino and pilgrims themselves identify who is on pilgrimage and who is simply staking a stroll on vacation.


Not to mention, if you are wearing a shell and are a lone female along the trail, you can be targeted by very old Spanish. They are prone to pulling young women over, kissing both your cheeks and making the sign of the cross. This, as a young woman we met on the road, can feel like either a blessing or an attack. I guess I am no longer a young woman. This happened only once to me; my young friend got the treatment several times.


The entire distance from the starting point of any of the Camino trails to Santiago is marked every 10 to 100 feet by shell markers in the forms of tile plaques, brass floor plates, painted signs. Every region and almost every city has its own version of the shell. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the hinge of the shell points in the right direction. Usually. The many, many keepers of the shell markers did not really coordinate themselves until the mid-20th century. So every now and then you’ll run into a shell marker with the hinge pointing east instead of west. If you don't get lost at least once on this road you are doing something wrong.


The second and possibly more prevalent sign on the Road is the painted yellow arrow.I didn't count them. But there must be a special place in heaven for men and women who out on the road year-round to repaint the many thousands of yellow arrows pointing to Santiago.


As I said, they paint them on anything that will be standing for a while: garages, homes, barns, fences, troughs, curbs, you name it. Because the Road is long, it meanders along and through all sorts of walking conditions from pavement to cobblestone to gravel and dirt to boulders. You may find yourself literally walking through (between the vines) of a vineyard or a cemetery.


The yellow arrows have saved me daily when I thought to turn left instead of right and three paces later saw an arrow facing the other direction. Most of the arrows are not municipally painted with stencils. They are hand-painted. Walkers supplement the painted arrows in the rockier areas by making arrows our of stones directly on the path. It’s an amazing mosaic of a mapping system.


But why are the arrows yellow you ask? I’m so glad you did because it’s a nice story. The yellow arrows on the Camino only date back to the 1980s (the shells have marked the way for centuries, usually on the doors of locals who were willing to take a pilgrim in and feed him).


The arrows were the mission of a Catholic priest, Father (Don) Elias Valina Sampedro, who believed in the spiritual healing power of the Camino and worked tirelessly to restore interest in the Road (the Fence Way in particular) at a time when very few pilgrims made the trek.


In the early 1980s only a couple hundred people walked the path each year. Don Elias made the The Way of St. James his focus of study, writing many historical articles and his dissertation on the history of the Road. He also wrote the Guia del Peregrino , the first modern pilgrimage guide for the main Camino road.


Lore has it that in 1985 the priest begged his local municipality to let him have any unused yellow road paint so he could continue his work to improve the path. With that, he got in his Citroen car and drove the entire French Way, stopping every few feet to pain a yellow arrow on the path.


There is one anecdote shared by many hostel keepers about Don Elias, highlighting how is vision became a reality:


When Civil Guard officers posted in the Pyrenees saw the priest as he was marking a mountain crossing with yellow arrows, they became suspicious. The crossing was also a favorite of the Basque separatist organization ETA.


The guards asked Don Elias what he was doing. The pastor make a joke indicating he knew the pass was known for nefarious purposes:


"I'm preparing for a big invasion!” he told them.


Little did he know.


In 1986, less than 2,000 people finished the walk and received a Compostela, the coveted certificate of completion for the pilgrimage. In the late 1980s the Spanish government and the Catholic church made an agreement to work together to encourage people, especially Catholics, to make the journey. Soon the crowds on the Road swelled. Last year more than 300,000 walked the Camino de Santiago.


Don Elias' vision of a vibrant, bustling pilgrim road was fulfilled just a few years after his death in 1989, making him either a seer or a should-be saint for the Catholics.


Like Santa, Don Elias inspired a lot of little helpers. These are the people, invisible, thousands of them I am sure, who continue to walk various stretches is the Road regularly to repaint the yellow arrows. They add new ones at spots where pilgrims regularly get confused. They still use the same yellow road paint.


There is no one department or national government agency tasked with the arrows. It is the work of the people who live on The Way.


"It's a work of many," our friend Nacho, a tour guide on the Camino, told us. "Nobody owns the Camino but everyone takes care of it."

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