the conversation that changed everything: what a stranger in Sarria taught me about letting go

I wasn't planning to stop in Sarria. Not really.

My original intention had been to push through to Portomarín that day—another twenty-odd kilometers, the kind of stage that sounds reasonable when you're tracing your finger along a map in the comfort of your living room, but feels considerably less so when you've already covered five hundred kilometers with blisters that have developed their own blisters. This was my fourth time walking the Camino Francés, and I thought I knew what I was doing. I thought I had this whole pilgrimage thing figured out.

I was wrong.

The Final 100 Kilometers Problem

If you've walked the Camino, you know about Sarria. It's the point where the path transforms—where the steady rhythm of weeks becomes something else entirely. This is where the hundred-kilometer pilgrims begin, the minimum distance required to earn a Compostela. And there's an awkwardness in that transition, a strange collision of worlds I'd experienced before and thought I'd made peace with.

But that late afternoon, something made me stop. Maybe it was my aching knees. Maybe it was the particular quality of golden light falling on the medieval streets. Or maybe—and I believe this now, though I didn't then—the Camino had other plans for me.

I found a seat on the terrace of a small café near the Iglesia de Santa Mariña, ordered a café con leche, and watched the parade of freshly-minted pilgrims streaming past with their pristine backpacks and unmarked boots. I'm not proud of it, but I remember feeling superior. Smug, even. I had walked from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. I had earned my fatigue.

And then María sat down.

When a Stranger Asks to Share Your Table

She was somewhere in her sixties, with silver hair pulled back severely and the kind of weathered face that suggested a lifetime spent outdoors. Her Spanish was from Argentina—I'd learned enough over six Camino Francés completions to distinguish accents—and she asked, with what I now recognize as remarkable directness, whether she could join me.

The terrace was nearly empty. She could have sat anywhere.

"Claro," I said, gesturing to the chair across from me.

She ordered red wine (it was barely four in the afternoon, which I respected enormously) and we sat in what should have been companionable silence. Except I could feel her watching me. Not in a way that felt intrusive, but curious. Assessing.

"You don't want to be here," she said finally.

I started to protest—I was on the Camino, wasn't I? This was exactly where I wanted to be.

She shook her head. "No. You are walking. But you don't want to be here. Not in Sarria. Not with—" she gestured at the passing pilgrims "—all of this."

I opened my mouth to argue, but nothing came out. Because she was right. And somehow, within the space of two minutes, this woman I'd never met had seen something I'd been hiding from myself for over a month.

What I Was Really Walking Away From

I hadn't told anyone the real reason I was back on the Camino. Not my wife, not my adult children, not the various pilgrims I'd walked with over the past weeks, sharing wine and confessions in albergue kitchens and plaza benches. I told them I was celebrating a milestone birthday. That I needed a break from work. That the Camino "kept calling me back."

All true. None of it the truth.

Six months before I started walking, my mother had died. And six months before that, she'd been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, though the signs had been there for years—signs I'd refused to see because seeing them would mean accepting something I couldn't control. Couldn't fix. Couldn't manage into submission the way I'd managed every other difficult situation in my carefully ordered life.

I'm a planner by nature. I make lists. I optimize. I once created a spreadsheet to determine the ideal time to plant tomatoes based on historical weather data for my specific zip code (the tomatoes died anyway, but that's beside the point). Control has always been my response to fear. If I could just organize things properly, nothing bad would happen.

Except of course it does. And did.

So I came to the Camino with an agenda—not just to walk, but to walk my way through grief. To process on schedule. To allocate specific stages for specific emotions, like some kind of twisted spiritual project management system. I'd even written in my journal: "By Sarria, find acceptance."

María took a slow sip of her wine and said, "Tell me."

And for reasons I still don't entirely understand, I did.

The Art of Holding On Too Tight

I talked for probably twenty minutes. About my mother—her laugh, her terrible cooking (truly terrible; the woman once served us "lasagna" that was somehow both burnt and raw), her stubborn refusal to ask for directions even whilst driving us in circles through unfamiliar cities. About watching her disappear into herself over months that felt like years, the way her eyes would sometimes focus on me with perfect recognition and then, just as quickly, slide away into somewhere I couldn't follow.

About how I'd tried to control the uncontrollable. Researched every treatment option. Organized her medications with military precision. Created detailed care schedules. Installed cameras and monitors. As if I could somehow algorithm my way out of loss.

"And now you are walking," María said, when I finally ran out of words. It wasn't a question.

"I thought it would help."

"Has it?"

I wanted to say yes. I'd walked through spectacular mountain passes, descended into the Meseta's endless wheat fields, crossed medieval bridges and slept in monasteries and watched more sunrises than I could count. I'd experienced moments of genuine transcendence—that morning climbing out of Villafranca del Bierzo, when the light caught the mist in the valley and I felt, for just an instant, like I could see forever.

But the grief was still there. Unchanged. Unprocessed. Stubbornly resistant to my carefully planned emotional itinerary.

"No," I admitted. "Not really."

María nodded, as if she'd known this already. She probably had.

What She Said That Changed Everything

What María told me next wasn't complicated. It wasn't profound wisdom wrapped in mystical metaphor. It was, in fact, embarrassingly simple—the kind of thing you'd read on an inspirational poster and dismiss as cliché.

"You can't walk away from something whilst you're still carrying it," she said. "And you cannot put something down whilst you're still holding so tight."

I started to respond, but she held up her hand.

"I'm not starting tomorrow. I'm ending. I've been walking from home—Buenos Aires—for almost four years."

I must have looked confused, because she laughed.

"Not constantly. In pieces. Three weeks here, a month there. Across Argentina first, then other places. I started after my husband died. Forty-one years together." She paused, swirling the wine in her glass. "I was like you. Walking to escape. Walking to process. Walking with a schedule for when I should feel better."

"What changed?"

"Nothing changed. That was the point. Nothing changed until I stopped trying to make it change." She looked at me with an intensity that felt almost physical. "Grief is not a problem to solve. It is not something to manage. It is just... grief. And it stays as long as it needs to stay. Your only job is to let it be there whilst you keep walking."

I felt something shift in my chest. Not dramatically—not the kind of lightning-bolt revelation you read about in spiritual memoirs. More like a key turning in a lock I hadn't known was there.

"I don't know how to do that," I said quietly.

"No one does. That's why we learn on the Camino."

The Weight We Carry vs. The Weight We Choose

I've written before about what to pack for the Camino, about getting your base weight under control and leaving behind anything you might need "just in case." My trusty Osprey Exos 48 has accompanied me on every pilgrimage, and I've become somewhat evangelical about the importance of testing your pack weight before you leave home.

But there's another kind of weight we carry—the emotional kind—and it doesn't fit into any packing checklist.

María and I talked until the sun began its descent toward the hills west of Sarria. She told me about her husband, a carpenter who built furniture with such care that people would wait years for his work. About how she'd tried to control his cancer the same way I'd tried to control my mother's decline—with research and organization and sheer force of will.

"It's what we do," she said with a shrug that somehow held all the sorrow and acceptance in the world. "We think that if we try hard enough, love hard enough, hold tight enough, we can keep the people we love from leaving. But they leave anyway."

"So what do we do?"

"We carry them. But differently. Not as weights we're trying to put down, but as gifts we're grateful to hold."

It sounds so simple when I write it now. It wasn't simple at all in that moment. I cried—properly cried, not the dignified tearing-up of private grief but actual tears running down my face in a public café whilst tourists walked past oblivious. María didn't try to comfort me or fix me or offer suggestions. She just sat there, present, bearing witness.

It was exactly what I'd needed and hadn't known how to ask for.

What I Learned About Letting Go

The thing about letting go—really letting go—is that it doesn't mean forgetting. It doesn't mean moving on or getting over it or any of those well-meaning phrases people offer when they don't know what else to say. María taught me that letting go is about releasing the need to control the shape and timeline of our pain.

I'd been trying to grieve efficiently. Can you imagine anything more absurd? I'd set deadlines for different emotional stages like they were project milestones. By the time I reached Sarria, I was supposed to be at acceptance. Instead, I was still stuck somewhere between denial and bargaining, angry at myself for failing to process correctly.

María's gift was permission. Permission to feel whatever I felt, whenever I felt it, for as long as I needed to feel it. Permission to stop evaluating my grief against some imaginary standard. Permission to walk without destination—not just physically, but emotionally.

The next five days to Santiago were different.

Not easier, exactly. But different. I still cried sometimes—once, memorably, whilst passing through a eucalyptus grove near Palas de Rei that, for no reason I could identify, reminded me powerfully of my mother. I still had hours of that thick, gray sadness that makes everything feel muted and far away.

But I wasn't fighting it anymore. I wasn't trying to fix it or manage it or will it away through the accumulation of kilometers. I was just walking, carrying what I carried, letting the Camino be what it actually is—not a solution, but a container. A space where things can unfold without the usual pressures of ordinary life.

Why Brief Connections Matter

I never saw María again. We exchanged email addresses, promised to write, did that thing pilgrims do where we pretended we'd stay in touch. I sent her a message from Santiago. She never responded. Maybe she didn't want to. Maybe something happened. Maybe the connection was complete in that single afternoon, and trying to extend it would only dilute what had passed between us.

The Camino is full of these encounters—brief but profound, like shooting stars you happen to catch at exactly the right moment. I've experienced it on every pilgrimage, from my first nervous walk of the Francés to my recent exploration of the Espiritual Variant from Pontevedra. Strangers who become temporary soulmates, who see things in you that you can't see in yourself, who offer exactly what you need without knowing they're offering anything at all.

These connections work precisely because they're brief. There's an intimacy possible between strangers that's almost impossible between people who know each other—a freedom to be honest, vulnerable, unguarded. María didn't know about my carefully constructed life back home, my professional accomplishments, the image I'd spent decades curating. She just saw a tired man pretending to be okay. And she called me on it.

I'd encourage you, if you're planning your pilgrimage, to remain open to these encounters. Sit with strangers. Accept offers to share tables. Ask questions you wouldn't normally ask. The person you need to meet might be waiting in the most unexpected place—not the photogenic mountaintop or the ancient cathedral, but a random café terrace in a transitional town, on an ordinary afternoon, over a glass of wine you weren't planning to drink.

Sarria Reconsidered

I used to be a snob about Sarria. About the hundred-kilometer pilgrims in general, really—judging them for taking what felt like a shortcut, for arriving without having earned their exhaustion the way I had. This is embarrassing to admit, but I want to be honest: the Camino has shown me many unflattering things about myself, and this superiority was one of them.

María started her Camino in Argentina. Four years of walking, in pieces, because that was what her life allowed. Who was I to decide what counted as authentic pilgrimage?

And the people starting in Sarria—what did I know about what they were carrying? The retiree with the new boots might be walking to honor a dead spouse. The group of young friends might be seeking something they can't name. The harried businessperson might have carved out the only week they could manage, trading other obligations for this brief immersion in something larger than themselves.

We're all just walking. Carrying what we carry. Hoping that somehow, somewhere on this ancient path, we'll find what we're looking for—or learn to stop looking and simply be found.

Go in knowing this: the Camino doesn't always give you what you want. But it has an uncanny ability to give you what you need. Sometimes that's a physical challenge, sometimes a spiritual awakening, and sometimes—as I discovered in Sarria—it's a sixty-something Argentine widow who has the exact words you needed to hear without knowing she has them.

The Real Purpose of Pilgrimage

After eleven Camino completions across various routes—six on the Francés, the Portuguese coastal and inland variants, the demanding Norte, and my beloved walks to Finisterre—I've stopped trying to define what pilgrimage means. Every answer I've found has been replaced by better questions.

But I'll tell you this: the purpose isn't in the destination. It's not in Santiago's cathedral or the Compostela certificate or the final kilometers ticked off an app on your phone. The purpose is in the conversation that changes everything. The stranger who sees you. The moment of unexpected grace.

For me, it was María in Sarria. For you, it might be someone else entirely, somewhere else entirely, on a day when you least expect it.

Keep walking. Keep open. And when grief or pain or unprocessed emotion surfaces—let it. Don't manage it. Don't schedule it. Don't try to walk it away.

Just carry it, gently, like the gift it somehow is.

---

If you're preparing for your own Camino and wondering about dealing with grief, loss, or major life transitions on the trail, I'm always happy to chat. You might want to plan your Camino route with consideration for the kind of experience you're seeking, or simply start by asking questions.

And if you happen to find yourself on a café terrace in Sarria, with an empty chair across from you—consider leaving it empty. You never know who might sit down.

---

Try asking My Camino Guide:

- How do I prepare emotionally for walking the Camino?
- What's the walking experience like in the final 100km from Sarria?
- How can I stay open to meaningful connections with other pilgrims?