Heather Conn Blogs

One of countless poppies seen in fields as masses of red on the Camino

Before going to sleep in the evening at a nunnery-run albergue in Santa Domingo, I grabbed a heavy wool blanket from two stacks of them in a tall wooden cupboard. It stood next to my lower bunk bed, one of about a dozen in the room.

For two weeks, many mornings had been brisk on the Camino; I could see my breath when leaving in the early morning. This was an uncharacteristically cold summer in Spain; some said it was the worst in thirty years, colder than the previous winter. My thin nylon sleeping bag, chosen to cut down on carrying weight, did not provide enough warmth; I was always grateful to use the blanket provided by the hostels.

It was June 8, day 13 of my pilgrimage. Some people in the dark room were up at about 5:30 a.m., using their headlamps to pack up their belongings. Not long after, I got up and began to fold my blanket in preparation for leaving.

Three or four Spanish coins flew out of the blanket and onto the floor. Where did they come from? I knew they weren’t mine; I was always careful to keep my change in a zipped compartment in my fanny pack. Had they fallen down from the pilgrim sleeping on the bunk above? Unlikely, since the beds were tight against the wall, without space for anything to slip through.

This unexpected discovery made me smile. I wondered if one of the nuns had tucked them into the folds of the blanket as a sweet surprise. It made me think of the phrase “manna from heaven.”

Thousands of picturesque doorways appear
in Spanish villages along the pilgrimage.

The next day, at an albergue in Belorado, the same thing happened: I was folding my blanket and a few coins flopped out onto the floor. I checked my zippered fanny pack; there was no way that anything escaped from my wallet. I told the young Swiss-German hospitalero about it, but he shrugged it off and seemed surprised. Was this some random act of kindness that albergues practiced as a secret tradition?

I told a pilgrim buddy Eddie about my coin surprises. A writer from Ireland, he had walked the Camino numerous times and had not heard of anyone experiencing this. For me, it happened on only these two days, in roughly the middle of my walking along The Way. This repeated event intrigued me.

The following day, in an albergue run by monks in Carrión, I awoke in the early morning and heard a loud male voice utter a stream of words. All I could make out was something like “Vaia con Dios” (Go with God). Everyone else in the room had seemed asleep.

I assumed that this was the monks’ wake-up call, yet when I later checked my watch, it was only 4:30 a.m. It would have been about 3 a.m. when I heard that voice. That was too early for a wake-up call. Was it some spiritually minded drunk who had decided to appear outside the window and provide an odd blessing?

In a small village, this Spanish couple in their 80s were harvesting their garden produce.

In the morning, I asked others if they had heard anything, but they said no. Did I dream that? I don’t think so. I can’t explain it. Perhaps it was the ramblings of a wayward monk.

Whatever the source, I took the message as a nudge to loosen the hold on my ego and trust my spiritual Self more consistently. As for the coins, I thought: “Gee, money comes to me even when I’m not looking for it.” I needed this reminder.

Upon my return to Canada, a number of people asked me if walking the Camino had changed my life. They wanted to know some highlights. I found these questions difficult to answer. Rather than several outstanding events, the walk to me was a long series of small, but poignant or meaningful surprises, which came in many forms, from these unexplained moments with the coins and voice or a sudden realization in conversation to the appearance of a nurturing companion at the “perfect” time or a powerful encounter with nature or wildlife.

The U.S. pilgrim Michael Como, with whom I shared a memorable day on the Roman Road while seeing only two other pilgrims, shared the words of St. Augustine: “Life is a series of little miracles.” That’s how I like to think of my Camino experiences. Tiny miracles are waiting for us everywhere, if we’re open to them.