PSU Magazine Fall 2013

By Dan Johnson Dan Johnson, professor of geography, first visited Spain in 1986 on a six– month sabbatical at the University of Seville. An expert in climatology, Johnson was there to study climate variability and drought in Andalucia. That experience sparked a fascina– tion for him in the geography and the history of the country, which he has nurtured through subsequent trips over the past 15 years. None of those visits can compare to Johnson's experience last year as he and a friend pedaled through northern Spain on a route established centuries ago by religious pilgrims. 14 PSU MAGAZINE FALL 2001 Prof finds the Way on an ancient pilgrim's path across Spain. uen Camino!" It was not the first time, nor would it be the last that we received this bless– ing as we cycled across northern Spain. This time it was bestowed on us by a friendly policeman in the busy indus– trial city of Ponferrada after he tested his halting English against my halting Spanish. We had lost our way, and the familiar yellow-arrow route markers were nowhere to be seen. But direc– tions from the policeman allowed us to e cape the city and continue with our modern-day pilgrimage on El Camino de Santiago, the Way of Saint James. My friend John Rosenberg MA '91 and I were in Spain in May and June of 2000 to travel the most heavily used road in all of Spanish history. John, a Lutheran minister and history gradu– ate, has frequently taught the course The Historical Jesus at Portland State. We blended our secular and theologi– cal interests in order to follow an ancient path that once drew the faith– ful from all corners of Europe to the city of Santiago de Compostela in the far northwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula. There, according to one of the most enduring legends in Chris– tianity, reside the remains of Saint James the Apostle, encased in a silver reliquary behind the altar. The zenith of the pilgrimage was in the 11th through the 13th centuries, when an estimated half-million pil– grims arrived annually to receive indul– gences from the church and forg iveness of their sins. A map of their routes resembles a complex river system as pilgrims streamed from their homes, traveled through France, and crossed the Pyrenees into Spain. The 459-mile Camino, for the most part, is a journey through peaceful and unspoiled countryside, a land that is har h in summer, but which displays its best colors in the late spring. In partic– ular, the long, solitary trek across the Many wayside crosses, including this one leading into Astorgo, mark the El Camino. Article author, Prof. Dan Johnson, is pictured at left. Meseta, the high tableland of north central Spain---often one of the most difficult sections for both medieval and modern pilgrims because of its sheer monotony-was almost idyllic, with green cereal crops (barley, wheat, and oats) bending under a gentle westerly breeze and a profusion of wildflowers marking the trail and road edges. ohn and I, on our heavily laden mountain bikes, were among the approximately 40,000 modern-day pilgrims that year who would earn the compostela, the certificate of com– pletion issued by the Catholic Church. While this number pales in compari– son to the foot traffic of the late Mid– dle Ages, it represents an astounding increase over the past 20 years. It was interesting to discover that as recently a the 1970s the pilgrimage road was little more than a curious .