I count it as perhaps the best book about the Camino that I have read. I read it in English, as translated by
@Rebekah Scott. Here's the review I wrote for Amazon:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Great Westward Walk
Reviewed in the United States on August 2, 2017
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The Great Westward Walk: From the Front Door to the End of the Earth
By Antxon (Bolitx) González Gabarain (Translation by Rebekah Scott)
For more than eleven hundred years pilgrims have been walking across Europe to the tomb of Saint James in the city of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. During that time, many books have been written describing this journey. However, because of the recent re-birth and popularity of the network of pilgrimage routes collectively known as the
Camino de Santiago, there has been an explosion of new books, memoirs, journals, and blogs published which recount the authors’ experiences along this road. As a veteran of this journey, I have read and enjoyed many of them. But for me, The Great Westward Walk: From the Front Door to the End of the Earth stands head and shoulders above the rest for one reason – the depth of the author’s understanding and insight into the history of the
Camino de Santiago. He has the uncanny ability to make the Camino come alive, as if it were a living thing, and that by walking this pathway, he becomes one with its essence. And, oh yeah, he’s a fantastic wordsmith as well.
Antxon González Gabarain was a native of Spain’s Basque region; he lived his life along one of the major variants of the route, and walked several of the others starting in various places across the Iberian peninsula. This book focuses on a journey in 2008, when he one day walked out the door of his home in the northeastern corner of Spain and followed the Ruta del Túnel (the Tunnel route) to Santo Domingo de Calzada, then on to Santiago via the Camino Francés (the French route). As I read this book, I could sense that the soul of the Camino was in his DNA as he masterfully wove the day-to-day experience of this, his final walk on the Camino, with anecdotes from the history of the ancient pilgrimage route, from his own life, and from his previous experiences on the other routes to Santiago. It seems to the reader that with each of the million-plus steps he takes on this journey, he both leaves a piece of himself in the dust and mud of the trail, while at the same time he picks up a piece of the lingering spirits of those that preceded him.
Ask anyone who has walked the
Camino de Santiago about their experience, and all agree that it was an inward journey as well as an outward one, and that somehow their life has been changed as a result. However, few authors have been so aware of and attuned their personal experience and able to describe it in such a beautiful and soulful manner as González Gabarain. For him, the Camino Francés in particular (which he calls the “Great French Way”) has a “strange, powerful current” that possesses a soul of its own which is made of “the sky, wind, and wide-open space.” It becomes a transcendental experience in which he shares the footsteps and feelings of the hundreds of thousands – perhaps by some estimates, millions – of pilgrims who have trod this path over the centuries. While he may not have consciously realized as he walked that this journey would be his last, he certainly knew it by the time he wrote the poignant epilogue which described the end of his journey at Finisterra, out past Santiago where the land meets the sea. Here is where he envisioned his immortal soul sailing westward across the vastness of the great unknown like the wake of a ship sailing on the ocean beyond the cliffs, the booming surf, and the lighthouse at the end of the earth.
This book is definitely not a guidebook or a how-to book for one planning to walk the
Camino de Santiago. In fact it is probably best read after one has completed this walk and seeks greater understanding and appreciation of what they have seen and felt, and what the meaning of that experience is and continues to be in this journey we call life.
I highly recommend this book, not only because of the way it captures the spirit of the Camino but also because it’s simply a great piece of literature.
UPDATE (11/2018): I recently re-read this book, and liked it even better the second time. While it's great read for anyone interested in the
Camino de Santiago, I still believe those that have completed the Camino, and especially the Camino Francés, will appreciate it in a more personal way because they can put themselves in the author's shoes and imagine themselves in the same places and the same situations that he so brilliantly describes.
