Stones

How is it that Elephants can walk across the Namibian desert every year knowing where to go, following the same path? Or million of birds, without compass, can go south in the Winter and north in the Summer, returning every time to the same nest left months before? But we, human beings, need signs, maps, guides, and GPS to not get lost? Usually on Pilgrimage pilgrims follow yellow arrows, they mark at every intersection the way to go. They are a great help, a great comfort to all of us that walk, and very soon they turn into friends that at every corner wait patiently to you to wave where to go. How in the ancient time pilgrims could do without them?

Probably the biggest fear for a pilgrim is to get lost, and also the most common thing people ask about a pilgrimage: “did you follow a trail? Was it well marked? Did you get lost? Was it hard to find your way?”

                               My partner Tom - Following Saint Francis's Footprints - Spello, Italy, 2009

Paths are marked. Mostly very well marked. And rarely one gets lost. When you are in these kind of situations, when you rely mostly only on yourself, on a guidebook and on a path to follow all your senses awake, little signs that before you will never have noticed now will not passed unnoticed. On the first couple of days you still find yourself reading over and over again your guidebook, but after a while, you put it away in the backpack. And you just start to trust yourself and the path.

The funny thing is those fears will come back on the last days of your pilgrimage when you will start wondering how you will cope once you return to the ‘real’ world, where the signs that you have to follow are not longer simple arrows, gentle friends waiting at the corner to wave to you. 

But like on a trail also life is full of signs for us, the problem is that we have become almost immune to seeing them. We often miss the signs that have been in place for generations to show us, to guide us the correct and honorable way to go through life. They are around us, but somehow we keep missing them. And when it happens, the rare times that we let us be guided by our intuitions, we call it: coincidences or luck instead of giving credit to ourselves for having recognized a sign and have follow it.

We are also afraid to adventure all alone. We prefer to follow others. We call them hero or leaders, they are the ones who adventure into unknown territories, the rest of us are the seconds, the pack that prefers to take the backset.

When you walk on the Camino of Santiago you cannot miss to notice neat piles of stones placed on the edge of the path, you can soon figure out that this is part of a ritual in which almost everybody participate. The stones are not placed to show you the path, although they help you to understand that yes, you are following the right direction. The real meaning of those little minarets is different. It is said, if you pick up a stone and put some of your sorrow into it, when you place the stone down you leave your sorrow behind. And leaving your sorrow on the Camino you create more space in your heart for love.

                                                           Camino de Santiago, Spain 2007

One year later when I was walking in Madagascar on the mountain of Zafimarany I noticed the same piles of stones. I stopped and show them to Tom, who had already noticed them and wondered what they meant, I asked to our guide if he knew what they meant and told him the Spaniard belief. The meaning here was different.

Malagasy belief in the existence of close ties between the living and the dead. Malagasy peoples have traditionally accepted the existence of a supreme God, known commonly as Zanahary (Creator) or Andriamanitra (Sweet, or Fragrant, Lord). The dead have been conceived as playing the role of intermediary between this supreme God and humankind and are viewed as having the power to affect the fortunes of the living for good or evil. The spirits of our ancestors populate our lives. They live all around us and influence our lives. When you walk on the top of a mountain you are more likely to meet them. They most of the time do not like you disturb them by passing by. So you hold in your hand a stone and start talking to them, letting them know that you come in peace and that you will leave them in peace, then you put down the stone on the path as symbol of peace and leave it behind you.

                                                                       Madagascar, 2008

I picked up a stone, and started to converse with my ancestors. And like other before me I put it down leaving it behind. After this very simple gesture I felt light. The day was a beautiful sunny day; the breeze on the top was refreshing, flowers were everywhere, the mountain was very green and the view was just unbelievable.

We continued to the poorest village I have ever visited. I was not expecting that day in that village I would have met and felt such sadness in my heart.

The level of poverty, the lack of everything: education, hygiene, privacy, respect for life and development of it was overwhelming. I felt the situation was hopeless, and that day, that beautiful sunny day, full of blooming flowers I felt such sadness in my heart.

On my way back I took another stone in my hands… this time I did not asked to any ancestors permission to pass I, instead, try to put all my sorrow into it to leave them behind. Unsuccessfully.