The coming of the light

Almost every morning I walked in the dark, my head lamp illuminating the way ahead, but just barely. In Spain, even as early as late September when I started the 500-mile Camino Francés, dawn came later than I was used to. By the third week of October, as I was nearing the end, the sky didn’t lighten until close to 9 am.* And I was walking west, facing the darkest edge of the sky.I am unaccustomed to walking without fear in the dark. What woman walks without fear in the dark? Some inky mornings I would walk for an uncomfortable distance without seeing the familiar waymarker, that bright yellow arrow announcing I was headed the right way. Some mornings, walking out of small villages into the black pre-dawn, I would see up ahead a dim light, the head lamp of a pilgrim in front of me. That sense of being alone but not alone was one of the core experiences of this journey. To be both solitary and connected, self-sufficient yet dependent. It’s hard to recapture that now, yet it was my everyday life then.Occasionally, especially navigating through city streets I would get lost. Getting out of Burgos, I was spectacularly lost. I was without cell service, without maps, both a terrifying and a liberating experience. When I finally did come upon an embedded shell-marker in the pavement, my relief was so overpowering I believe I may have cried.Sometimes I was so intent on looking ahead into the darkness, of navigating the uncertainty, of needing reassurance that I was on the right path, I forgot that the dawn was happening behind me. And then I turned, and there it was: a soft gray flannel rim to the sky, or lemon yellow streaks, or once the pale blue and pink of a baby’s room. And boom. If that is not a life lesson, my friends, I don’t know what the hell is.It took some time to learn to embrace these mornings. But after a while, the pre-dawn hours were the most glorious, empowering moments of the long day.I write about this today, Winter Solstice, the latest dawn, the longest night, reminding myself, reminding us all, about the coming of the light.*Spain's clocks have been set to Central European time since World War II, which means the sun rises considerably later compared to countries in its region.