Nature Along the Way: Landscapes and Wildlife on the Camino Frances

“Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”

Mary Oliver, “Sometimes,” from Devotions

Learning to Notice on Our First Camino

Long before walking and observing nature became inseparable parts of our travels, we set out from Saint Jean Pied de Port on our first Camino. We were not yet experienced long-distance walkers, nor were we keeping careful records of every bird, plant or animal encountered along the way. We had come to the Camino Francés largely because we needed to regain a sense of balance in our lives. Everything about the journey was new: carrying our belongings on our backs, sleeping among strangers in albergues, following yellow arrows across a country and allowing the routines of long-distance walking to determine the shape of each day.

Years later, after returning to the Camino many times and walking thousands of kilometres on trails across Canada and Europe, we revisited the blogs, journals and photographs from that first pilgrimage.  Partially out of a desire to reminisce, and partially to remember what we had experienced and seen during that formative trek.  Surprisingly, the natural record they contain is modest. There are no detailed bird lists and relatively few confidently identified species. Yet the landscape is present and dynamic throughout – a recounting of mist covering the Pyrenees, large snails appearing after rain, lizards warming themselves on old stone walls, vast agricultural fields, vineyards, forest paths and enormous stork nests standing empty above village churches. 

This shorter reflection does not attempt to turn our first Camino into a journey that it was not. At the time, we were learning how to be pilgrims, often concentrating more on our feet, our packs, the next yellow arrow and whether there would be a bunk at the end of the day rather than on recording nature. What survives in our journals is valuable precisely because it is incomplete. It reveals the scattered moments when the world around us broke through our mixture of excitement and worry and reminded us to stop, look up and breathe.

Mist Across the Pyrenees

Beginning the Frances, the character of the Camino and its natural wonders announced themselves almost immediately. Leaving Saint Jean Pied de Port before sunrise, we climbed into a cool, misty morning. At first, we were disappointed that fog hid the mountains we had travelled so far to see. Gradually, however, silhouettes emerged through the cloud and the obscured landscape took on a beauty of its own. Yellow gorse, blooming flowers, huge banana slugs and snails bordered the path while sheep, cattle and wild horses grazed across the hillsides.

Rain changed the mountain again. Water collected on cobwebs like jewels, snails climbed fence posts, while slugs moved across wet roads, amid which fine mist descended over the slopes. The sounds of livestock bells carried through the cloud even when the animals themselves disappeared from view. Near Orisson, wild pigs rubbed their snouts against a Camino marker while horses moved through the surrounding fields. These were simple observations, but they became part of our introduction to pilgrimage: the route could be difficult and beautiful at the same time.

The following morning brought more fog, rain and wind as we continued over the mountains toward Spain. Forests emerged and vanished in the mist, their presence making the old path feel secluded and mysterious despite the procession of pilgrims climbing around us. We had expected the Pyrenees to be a physical test. We had not anticipated how strongly the weather and landscape would shape our memory of the crossing.

Nature also helped reduce the intimidating scale of the day. Instead of thinking only about an entire mountain range, we focused on damp horses alongside the trail, droplets on spider’s webs, and the sound of birdsong in the next stand of trees.

Forests, Rivers, and Learning to Stop

Beyond Roncesvalles, the Camino weaves through wet forests and small villages such as Zubiri before continuing onward to the city of Pamplona. Throughout this stretch, much of our attention remained practical. We were still learning how our bodies responded to walking every day, how much water to carry and how to recognize when our packs needed adjusting or a break was required. Yet the path repeatedly offered moments that interrupted this concentration on logistics.

In Zubiri, we removed our shoes beside the Arga River and sat eating apple cake with our hands. Nothing dramatic happened. We simply stopped moving, cooled our feet in the water and allowed ourselves to be still. In our journals, the moment became connected to the question that had helped bring us to the Camino in the first place: why had it become so difficult at home to make time for moments such as this – moments of silence, rest and places where nothing was required of us?

Walking brought these moments back into daily life. A riverbank became somewhere to sit rather than scenery passed from a car. A forest track offered shade as well as a route forward. Sunrise over a field could delay us for a few minutes without needing to be justified. We had set out hoping to restore balance, and the Camino began doing so not through a single revelation but by repeatedly simplifying what each stage asked of us and what each day gave us the opportunity to enjoy.

The route of course was never entirely pastoral. We passed mining towns, forestry cuts, alongside highways, industrial sectors outside of cities and expanding suburban neighbourhoods. These altered landscapes belonged to the journey as surely as the forests and rivers did. Their presence made the shaded tracks and rural village edges more noticeable and more appealing while reminding us that the Camino – like life - crosses inhabited and worked land that is regularly disturbed rather than traversing a continuous peaceful wilderness.

Lizards, Snails and Roadside Life

Many of our clearest wildlife memories involved creatures small enough to be overlooked. After rain in the Pyrenees, roads and railings seemed alive with slugs and snails responding to the moisture. Near Puente la Reina, succulent plants outside of the albergue were covered in snails. Their slow movement felt oddly appropriate beside a pilgrimage route - although at the time we were still learning how difficult it could be to resist hurrying each stage and through the journey.

On another early morning, dozens of tiny lizards emerged along old stone walls to warm themselves. They varied in colour and disappeared quickly when approached. We did not identify them beyond recognizing them as lizards, and our journals do not support a more precise claim. What remained memorable was their abundance and the way the first sunlight brought the walls to life.

Later, in Bercianos del Real Camino, we found a tiny tree frog in a village park. Later we spotted goats balanced on old walls near mountain communities, and immense flocks of sheep and goats sometimes crossed the path around us. Donkeys, cattle, horses, dogs and farm animals were constant reminders that much of the Camino passes through working rural landscapes in which human and animal lives have long overlapped.

These encounters were not rare wildlife spectacles. Most involved common animals living close to farms, villages and pilgrim paths. That ordinariness is part of their value. They helped us understand that noticing nature did not require reaching a remote reserve or identifying something unusual. Focus and attention could begin with a snail on a wet railing or a lizard on a sun-warmed wall.

Vineyards, Fields and an Agricultural Camino

Through Navarra and La Rioja, the Camino moved among vineyards, wheat fields, hedgerows and enormous stacks of hay. Rows of grapes followed the contours of hillsides, while sunflowers beside the path had sometimes been given faces by passing pilgrims. The cultivated landscape was not separate from nature, but neither was it untouched. It reflected centuries of decisions about food, labour and settlement in northern Spain.

Weather and heat also increasingly shaped how we experienced these places. Forested sections offered relief, while open fields and roads demanded earlier starts and careful attention to water. We rested in the shade of hay bales, removed our boots beside wheat fields and wondered what the countryside might look like before the fall harvest, when crops stood tall and moved in the wind.

At the time, we lacked the language and attention we later developed for describing habitats. Even so, our journals repeatedly recorded transitions: mountains giving way to vineyards, vineyards opening into broad fields, and cultivated land gathering around rivers and villages. Walking made those changes gradual and more evident. We did not arrive in a new landscape all at once; we watched it form around us over several days of steady walking.

The fields also revealed the difference between emptiness and peacefulness. A landscape without dramatic mountains or dense forest could still hold movement, life and beauty. That lesson became most important on the Meseta.

The Apparent Emptiness of the Meseta

Before reaching the plateau between Burgos and León, we were repeatedly told that the Meseta was flat, monotonous and best crossed quickly. Some pilgrims planned to bypass it by bus. We entered it expecting an ordeal and instead found one of the most memorable landscapes of our first Camino – and indeed any of our subsequent hikes.

The Meseta’s scale changed our perception of distance. Harvested fields, sunflowers, dusty tracks and distant church towers stretched beneath an enormous sky day after day.  A village that appeared close could remain on the horizon for hours. Shade became precious in the heat of the afternoon, water sources shaped the day, and small changes in light or cloud became visible across the open land – influencing both the light and temperature of the stage.

Our later reflections mention many birds and lizards along this section, but our journals rarely name the birds. We should not pretend to know more now than we recorded then. Their presence survives as movement and sound across the fields rather than as a reliable species list. A note that even in this empty and flat-seeming place life thrives.  In village after village, we noticed great stork nests balanced above church towers. Most were empty at the time of our walk. Yet their size made the absence itself conspicuous and encouraged us to imagine the villages in another season, when the birds might return.

The empty nests became part of the Camino’s seasonal nature. Pilgrims often describe a route as though it is a fixed experience, but the landscape changes according to rainfall, harvest, migration and temperature. We walked through scorched late-summer / early fall fields and vineyards heavy with grapes. Someone travelling in spring would encounter the same path within a different living world.

In all of these ways, the Meseta provided the mental space and peacefulness we had been seeking. Its apparent simplicity reduced distraction. Days settled into walking, eating, resting and searching for shade. The expansive horizon gave our thoughts room to meander and clarify without demanding that they reach immediate conclusions. Far from being empty, the plateau taught us how much becomes visible when the landscape stops competing for attention.

From Open Plateau to the Green of Galicia

West of León, the character of the route changed again. The flat agricultural expanses began rising toward forested hills. Heather, lavender and gorse appeared beside the trail, vineyards climbed rugged slopes, and villages increasingly featured stone walls and hedgerows. The transition confirmed something we had been learning since the Pyrenees – that walking allows one landscape to become another slowly enough for the change to be both seen and felt.

The tough climb toward O Cebreiro returned us to dense fog and mountain forest. We walked through lush vegetation in the early light while mist obscured the higher slopes. When sunrise finally broke through, it illuminated the hillsides so dramatically that we stopped for almost half an hour trying to photograph what we were seeing. Our images could not reproduce the experience, but the attempt shows how completely the moment had captured our attention.

O Cebreiro appeared through the mist with stone buildings, slate and thatched roofs, and smoke rising from chimneys. Farther west, Galicia brought green fields, cattle pastures, rivers and worn paths beneath trees. Near the end of the Camino Frances, we explored a eucalyptus forest outside O Pedrouzo during the afternoon rather than missing the experience as we passed through it in darkness the following morning. The scent, filtered light and empty afternoon paths created one of the top memories of nature in our final days on pilgrimage.

Fog accompanied us repeatedly through Galicia, whether we were crossing villages, forests or hills. It recalled the beginning of the journey in the Pyrenees, but by then we were different walkers. The uncertainty that had felt intimidating during our first days had become familiar routine. We had learned that a landscape did not need to be fully visible for us to appreciate all of its subtle wonder.

What Nature Contributed to Our First Camino

Our first Camino Francés was not a birding expedition or a carefully documented natural-history journey. We did not carry detailed checklists, and our journals contain far more about albergues, friendships, sore feet, food, churches and the excitement of being pilgrims for the first time. Any account suggesting otherwise would misrepresent what drew our attention in 2016.

Yet nature was never absent. It shaped the weather crossing the Pyrenees, provided shade during hot afternoons, determined the agricultural communities of the regions we crossed and offered places where we could take a break or stop for the night. Mist transformed familiar landscapes, rivers cooled our feet, forests quieted our thoughts, and the open Meseta gave us room to reflect. Lizards, snails, slugs, livestock, a tiny frog and empty stork nests entered the story because, for a moment, we stopped worrying about what came next and noticed what was beside us.

Looking back, this may be the most honest connection between the Camino and the journeys – both across Canada and around the world – that have followed. We did not suddenly become naturalists on the Way, nor did we yet understand how central nature observation would become to our travels. We were learning something more basic: how to slow down enough for the world around us to re-enter our lives.

The Camino Francés helped restore the balance we had been seeking by reducing life to what we could carry and the distance immediately ahead. Nature contributed to that restoration quietly. It was present in mist on the mountains, sunlight on stone walls, birds moving over fields and green paths leading west through Galicia. We did not record everything, but we noticed enough for those moments to remain with us years later.

See you on the Way!