Walk along any of El Camino’s numerous routes and you’re bound to come across one at some point or another. No, not a cross or a church or any other number of the religious paraphernalia one would expect to encounter on a pilgrimage, though there are plenty of those to be sure, but rather, a scallop shell. Adorning everything from T-shirts to buildings to the human body (tattoos of the shell were common), one could argue that the symbol has become nearly as inseparable from the popular pilgrimage as the saint who inspired it. Despite its omnipresence though, we never really grew tired of seeing depictions of the shell for each one was a reminder that we were not only on the right path, but following in the footsteps of countless other pilgrims that had walked down that same path before us. And it is this interpretation of the scallop, as a symbol of the many roads one takes while walking on El Camino, that it draws its most significance. For, just as the many lines on the shell travel across it only to eventually converge at its base, so do the many routes and pilgrims of El Camino travel across Europe only to eventually become one in Santiago.
Below, a sampling of some of the many shells we came across during our time on El Camino.
Read on for a poem by Kate:
The Shell
Look —
Each line
bursts down
like inverted sun rays
convening
at the calcified cathedral.
Straight paths,
everyone of them.
Feel —
Tracing the indentations,
each bump and groove
is a hill, rock, river traversed,
beer, blister, dinner shared.
Listen —
Not to the ocean
or the rush
of circulating blood,
but to the stories
centuries of pilgrims are telling.
Worn Out Shoes 