It is time to leave Vic.

​The sun was a warm blanket on the stones of Vic. Daniel sat at a small cafe table, a necessary espresso and a piece of sweet pastry his only companions. He took a moment to be still, to collect his thoughts before the day’s journey began. He had six more nights, six more stages. Six, he had mused, was two times three. Duality and unity. He was walking a path from two back to one.  

​He thought of the others on the road, the lycra-clad cyclists he saw as hollow, their bodies moving but their souls static. They were trapped in a cycle of their own making, a performance of self-importance. They were a vivid contrast to the journey he was on, a path of shedding layers that were "flimsy and easily torn". He thought of his sister, Emma, and her own brand of hollowness, her own performance. He had chosen, in a quiet act of grace, to love her still, "warts and all," and in doing so, he had freed himself from a different kind of performance—the need to placate her. He was no longer the "fool" or the object of his family's dismissiveness.  

​He had been walking for years, seeking a "feeling of wholeness" that had been missing since something "collapsed into a crumpled mess" over a decade ago. He was a wanderer and a wonderer on a journey that had saved his life. He had been told there was "no well under the cathedral", that he had to go to a "water treatment plant" to find what he was seeking. But he now knew better. He knew that the most important stamps on his pilgrimage were not on a piece of paper, but in moments of being fully present—like helping a girl clear up spilled patisserie. This simple act was a "sello," a mark of his journey, more true and lasting than any official stamp.  

​He had felt a sense of futility, he wrote in his memoirs, since he was eleven years old. A terrible, unending sob in his heart. But on the Camino, surrounded by people he was never lonely. He found a path out of pain and into joy, a path called "love". In the past, he had felt as if he was running under a moving object, or plunging from a high-rise into oblivion. But now, he was simply stepping into a new day of Camino experiences. The hot air balloon he had seen rising in the sky was a perfect symbol of his own journey, a quiet ascent above the chaos, a return to the unified source.  

​He was no longer a stamp collector. He was the stamp. He was his own living proof. And with that thought, he stood, put on his pack, and stepped out onto the path toward Montserrat.