FINISTERRE
The Finisterre lighthouse is a massive, austere building that sits in solemn majesty high above the sea. It is perched on a 800 foot hill, at the end of a peninsula, towering over the ocean on three sides. At its foot is a marker declaring that this spot is kilometer number 0.00. The end of the trail, at the “end of the world,” is another beginning.
The lighthouse is at the apex of, and the opening to, the worlds of the Romans, the Celts, the Spanish, and the endless stream of mariners from all lands who have traversed the skin of the sea here for millennia, often vanishing into waves and tears. It hears all day the howling of the sea, of the damned, of those lost in shipwrecks and lost to history, and those from the Other World whose presence seems to envelop this place. In my mind, the lighthouse in this sacred place is a far greater monument than the Santiago cathedral.
The Celts worshipped the sun here, where so little sun is found. They also revered it as a place teeming with fertility. They sacrificed and burned offerings here, and their tools and the artifacts of their ancient creed are buried in the flinty, surrounding soil. In a fitting continuum of that history, this is also the place where modern pilgrims traditionally burn their boots, or some other article of their clothing, symbolizing an end to their prior lives.
Just beyond the lighthouse, where the land slopes sharply down to the sea, is a fire, surrounded by small seashells, and next to a plain stone cross. I can see bits of boots, hats and fabric in the smoldering flames. I watch silently for a long time, buffeted and nearly blown away by the thundering winds coming off the Atlantic. The solitary lighthouse, the consuming flames, the ocean seething below, and the distant western horizon all cast their spell. We stand here at a crease in time, an opening that leads . . . somewhere.
A more prosaic thought arrives. I decide that I am not going to contribute to the fire. I will hold onto the few clothes I have brought with me on this journey. It’s cold in the UK in October, and I will need everything I now have. I snap a few photos, then turn and go. I am walking east, for the first time in six weeks.
On the slow dry trek back, a sliver of sun peeks through the clouds. I detour to a beach directly facing the wild Atlantic. It is a vast stretch of white sand, surrounded by a sky and sea that are at once both luminous gray, and touched with flecks of gold from the dying light. I watch the sun sink into the horizon and head to the other side of the world. This last spit of land on a far-flung peninsula feels more like my home than the vast continent lying at the far end of this ocean, the place to which I must someday return.