Josh in the albergue before leaving in the morning

As I get ready to leave for Spain and the Camino de Santiago de Compostela tomorrow, a memory of my first night on the pilgrim road...

In July 2010 my son Josh and I walked for four days on the Camino and stayed in pilgrim hostels, or albergues, along the way. The evening before our first day's walk we arrived in Roncesvalles, a tiny town in the Pyrenees on the Spanish side of the border with France. Many folks doing the Camino Frances--the route from the Pyrenees in the East to Santiago de Compostela in the west near the Atlantic Ocean--start there.

There are just a handful of buildings in the town (population 24), all hundreds of years old and encrusted in lichen and moss. There's a charming stone chapel, a small rustic bar that served food and drink and had internet, and the albergue, then located in a 12th century Romanesque church, as it had been for the past 800 years. The building was severe and solid and starkly beautiful. More than a million pilgrims had probably stayed the night there over the years.

The showers and toilets, a rudimentary kitchen, and some meeting rooms were downstairs, but the sleeping area was the cavernous nave of the church. There were 60 bunk beds lined up in rows, and the night we were there all 120 spaces were taken. We arrived around 7 o'clock in the evening, signed in and got our pilgrim cards, were each given a pillow and a towel, and were told that the doors closed at 9:45 PM and lights out was at 10 PM.

The huge space, with tall stone walls that dwarfed the bunk beds, was resonant. And as 10 o'clock approached it was loud in there. People were organizing backpacks, arranging and getting into sleeping bags, and talking to companions. At 10 sharp the lights dimmed and a recording of early vocal music played for about three minutes. It was very calming and the collective mood changed. It was time for sleep.

What followed was a John Cage kind of music. I was too wired to sleep so I listened. At first there was the shuffling of bodies in sleeping bags trying to find the right position, scrunching and re-scrunching of pillows, and some scattered whispering among friends. After 15 minutes or so the sounds evolved: deeper breathing, snorts, snores, farts, the sounds of sleep. Multiplied by 120 the combination of sounds was something else, and it struck me as beautifully musical, with changing cadences and rhythms. All the while the volume was going down as if a steady hand were turning the knob. After around 45 minutes or so, even the bodily sounds quieted and the air was peaceful. After that I was able to go to sleep.

Coda to this story: Two years later a new albergue opened, with modern and updated facilities, and the church only houses pilgrims when the new albergue is full.