faith! - Alex Hammond
At 14, Alex Hammond is an unusually well traveled teenager, but he has never visited a landscape quite like what he experienced on the Camino de Santiago this summer. Because his mother's family still lives in Italy, he has made multiple trips there to visit cities such as Milan and Rome, but big cities are very different from the rural landscape that much of the camino winds its way through.
Alex was one of 15 teens and 15 adults from St. Martin's who traveled to Spain in June to walk the camino, a 500-mile pilgrimage that the faithful have been traversing for centuries. The St. Martin's pilgrimage did not encompass the entire 500 miles, which can take months, but rather 75 miles over five days.
“I could see doing it again some day, but not the whole thing,” he said. “Five days is plenty. We saw pictures of people who made the entire trip and their feet were destroyed.”
Fortunately, Alex was up to the 75-mile challenge, and his feet survived the journey. “When I first heard about it, I thought it would be a great experience, a great way to connect to the youth group. I knew it would be difficult, and I knew I could get through it because I knew I would be surrounded by a good group of people.”
The first day of walking, Alex said, folks were fueled by excitement. But the third day, the charm had worn off.
“Everyone got really tired, and we weren't really feeling great.” Sore muscles and the reality that they still had two more days of walking to go, made for a hard day.
Pushing himself to walk the full trek – pilgrims can take rides to their nightly stops – Alex remembered what guides had told them at the beginning, “This is your camino.” He wanted to make the most of it so he decided he would walk it all even if it was hard.
“I like trying to push myself … to feel that completion. I wanted to be able to say that I did as much as I could."
Nighttime conversations led by St. Martin's youth minister Alex Cato helped provide motivation. Each night, they were asked to consider where they might have seen God that day.
Alex is sure he saw God in people he encountered along the camino. Once a shopkeeper didn't charge them for energy bars; another shopkeeper made sure they didn't set out on the wrong path after she saw them head down a road that wasn't part of the camino.
“Who knows how far we would have gone if that woman hadn't noticed us.”
Alex was also moved by the scenery along the trail. Most of his European experience had been in large cities so to see hills, pastures and open fields with ancient walkways, buildings and churches was a very different experience.
He also was shocked by how much manure they encountered on the trail. “There was so much cow poop … you would have to dodge it.”
Pulling out his phone, he happily shows pictures of the landscape, beautiful rolling hills, vast fields, tiny villages, and cows. He also has a photo of one of the camino's highest moments for him – when he entered the tunnel that takes pilgrims to the plaza in Santiago. It is here where pilgrims complete their camino.
“We heard the bagpipes, and then were onto the plaza. We saw a bunch of other pilgrims taking pictures,” he recalled. He even has a recording of the bagpipes ushering pilgrims into Santiago.
“That was a very high moment.”
Once standing on the plaza, Alex knew he had met his challenge, all 75 miles.
“I walked all of it, every day,” he said with a smile.
About Alex
Alex, 14, is the oldest child of Elisabetta Gasparini and Christopher Hammond. He has a brother, Zachary, who is 11.
Alex is a ninth-grader at A.C. Flora High School. The subject he enjoys most right now is math.
Alex is an acolyte at St. Martin's, and happy to be a part of EYC, which he thinks will be even more fun this year because of the trip this summer.
