I first reached the end of the world in 2004. I was excited, but also a little sad. After all, Finisterre, Spain marked the conclusion of my first Camino leading students, and so as the waters churned below in an unrelenting fury, my thoughts threatened to do the same, until I took a breath and opted to savor the accomplishment, instead of ruing its completion. Over the years, I have returned to that end of the world plenty of times. It’s still a dramatic sight, for sure, but the edges are worn down by those repeat visits, by that growing familiarity.
In another sense, I first reached the end of the world in the final days of 1999, when a certain subsection of Americans panicked about Y2K, stockpiling supplies for the apocalypse that would follow, in the great tradition of millenarian conspiracy theories. Or maybe 1989, when the Berlin Wall, if we think about the end of the world in an REM sense–that is to say, the end of the world as we know it.
I’ve never been to the French end of the world, Finistère, in Brittany. Today, though, I finally reached the Italian version, Finibus Terrae, perched high above the town of Santa Maria di Leuca, church and lighthouse sitting side by side. A kind nun welcomed me in, providing a stamp and my testimonium certificate, prepared with exacting care. She used different colored pens to fill in my personal information, and then painstakingly confirmed that the ink was dry, tamping it down repeatedly with blank pieces of paper. She proceeded to roll it into a tube for safekeeping, once again making every move in a considered fashion, packaging it in a way that would facilitate its safe removal later on.
A grand staircase descends into Leuca, split by a waterfall that would be spectacular, I’m sure, if there were any water. Even as a dry, rocky tumbledown, though, it’s a dramatic sight. As I traveled through the end of the world, I found my hotel, complete with a balcony overlooking the roaring sea. Then I descended to the water’s edge, where I watched surfers ride waves towards the rocky shore, bailing out just in time to avoid crashing onto the rocks. After that, I got gelato, after having come up empty in similar pursuits over the past three days. All of that is to say, there are kind nuns, soft ocean breezes, surfing, and gelato at the end of the world.
A walk to the end of the world, whether in Spain or Italy, has certain similarities. After having spent some time in open countryside, with few settlements of any significance, humanity begins to cluster more consistently. Towns, big and small, begin filling in the map. For whatever reason, we want to be near the end, close to the edge, like moths to a flame. Whereas most of yesterday’s walk passed through fallow fields, today’s was urban hopscotch, plunging ever more deeply into the life of Don Tonino. With rain showers passing consistently overhead, and standing water doing more damage from below, I passed through Specchia, the large town of Tricase (where I got a particularly fancy chocolate croissant), Alessano, the birthplace of Don Tonino, Ruggiano, Barbarano del Capo, and Castrignano del Capo, before finally enjoying one last stretch of agricultural splendor as the ocean suddenly broke the horizon. All around me were sunken gardens, shallow quarries that were long ago converted from cutting to growing.
Whereas Spain’s end of the world begins with the town and concludes with the lighthouse, with the church oddly having little to say about any of it, in Italy the lighthouse and church come first. There’s no way station before the end, no opportunity to freshen up and lighten one’s load for the final approach; it’s abrupt and definitive.
I’m a veteran, I suppose, of facing the end of the world. I’ve learned one thing in the process. When you reach the end, there’s really only one move you can make. You have to turn around, retrace your steps, seeing exactly how you ended up in that position in the first place. And then, you have to find a new way forward.
