Day 14: Azofra to Grañon (14 miles)

The brown-eyed young Italian pilgrim speaks not a word of English. Clasping my hands, he is earnestly wishing me something in words I do not understand.

But the energy of his wish infuses me from head to toe. Something deep behind my eyes receives it. And then I find words in my own language, and I send all the love in my heart back into his eyes.

We hold each other’s gaze until the moment is full. And then we embrace and burst into full-hearted, soul-filling laughter.

I have never seen this young man before. And I will probably never see him again. And even though I didn’t understand a word he said, I will carry his wish for me forever.

I arrived in the medieval fortress town of Grañon in the middle of the afternoon, after walking 14 miles from Azofra in the heat.

My calls and entreaties to hostels and hotels along the Way had been universally met with a crisp “Completo.” Full. Booked up.

But I had heard that the 500-year-old Church of San Juan Bautista in this town of 200 has never turned a pilgrim away. And that it is a donativo — that you pay only what you are able to give, rather than a set fee.

And that they offer you dinner. And breakfast. All in exchange for helping to cook … and being willing to sleep on the attic floor.

That’s more appealing than sleeping in a field, I think. Or walking through the night, chased by my own shadow.

I’m opting for the attic floor tonight.

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I swing open the door at the back of the church and climb a worn stone spiral staircase. The stairway emerges into a light-filled space with ancient stone walls, a fireplace, shelves crowded with books, and a piano. A wooden staircase leads to a loft overlooking the room.

The space is already milling with more than a dozen pilgrims carrying on conversations in different languages. “Hola,” I greet the woman who seems to be in charge. “Do you have room for another pilgrim this evening?”

“Yes, of course,” she replies, and gestures back to the entryway as more pilgrims stream in. “You can leave your boots back there.”

I am handed a mat and told to find a place for it in the attic loft. The floor is hard and the mat is only minimally soft, but I carve out a spot amid the other sleeping bags and backpacks.

I head back down the stairs, where dinner preparations are about to get underway. The hospitalera is speaking in Spanish to the group, which has already swelled with a few more pilgrims since I arrived. Then she repeats the message in English.

“This is your home tonight,” she says. “Here, we prepare dinner together. Nobody is a guest, and nobody is a servant. We all have something to give.”

Someone hands me some tomatoes and a knife. The young peregrina next to me is mincing garlic. Another is slicing a loaf of freshly baked bread. A few of the Italian pilgrims are in the kitchen debating what to put in the pasta sauce.

Laughter peals from across the room. I’m hearing jokes in a half-dozen languages.

I could swear that all of these people have known each other forever. Even though I watched many of them, like me, walk in the door all by themselves.

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After dinner, the hospitalera tells us that it is time for a very special ceremony. She leads us through a door and into a narrow stone passageway. Soon we are standing in the upper choir area of the medieval church, under a stained-glass window depicting a pilgrim on the Way.

There’s a semicircle of wooden seats built into the wall behind us. Some of us sit in the throne-like seats, while others choose to stand.

The lights are low. The hospitalera holds a candle. She invites the pilgrim standing next to her to turn to the pilgrim at his side. “Tell him what is in your heart,” she encourages. “It does not matter what language you speak. Send him your wish for his Camino, and for his life.”

One by one, each pilgrim begins to share, taking the hands of the pilgrim next to them and speaking into their eyes. At first, the blessings are quiet, polite and earnest, as each pilgrim turns to the next, speaking to each other in tongues I do not understand.

Then one pilgrim rises and addresses his neighbor with such urgency and passion that he is almost dancing as he speaks. His effervescence cracks something open in the rest of us, and each subsequent blessing grows even more heartfelt and passionate.

I am transfixed; the whole world seems to exist within this moment. My entire life feels like it has led me here: to these souls, each of us no longer separate, but vibrating in unison with love and intention.

My Italian friend speaks to me in words I do not understand … but in a language I have known since before I was born.

And when it is my turn to return the blessing, I respond in kind. I wish him every good thing on the Camino, and in his life.

And then I tell him the truth about who he is, and I ask that he always remember it.

I don’t know his name. I don’t know his story. I don’t know where he has come from or what he is carrying. But suddenly, none of that seems to matter.

I look into his eyes and tell him the same thing he told me.

“You are love,” I tell him. “You are Love.”

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Camino de Santiago, a 500-mile pilgrimage route across northern Spain.

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Day 13, Navarrete to Azofra (13 miles)

I am usually the last person to leave the hostel in the morning, toddling out at the mandated departure time of 8 am. Since I haven’t had trouble finding places to stay until now, and I don’t tend to be ambitious about covering a great deal of distance each day, I’ve seen no point in rising before dawn to rush back onto the Way.

Today is different.

Somehow, all the accommodations in this region of Spain are getting booked up days in advance. I am not exaggerating. It’s a combination of the 2023 post-COVID Camino surge and the Spanish holidays.

This happens to be a three-day weekend, and, as I have observed, the Spaniards have a lust for life that they sate through travel, dining, and partying at any opportunity. The locals booked their rooms for this extended holiday a long time ago, squeezing out the Camino pilgrims who tend to search for rooms on the day-of.

The result: many pilgrims cannot find beds anywhere this weekend. Some are catching cabs to expensive hotel rooms many miles away. Others are sleeping on church floors — or even outside.

I’m not set up for that at all. I want a bed. a shower, and safety each evening. My survival instincts have kicked in and I realize I will do whatever is necessary to secure a bed for myself each night.

Today, that means rising at 4 am to hit the Camino in the pitch-black night and walking 13 miles to reach the municipal albergue in the town of Azofra.

Municipal albergues (hostels) are run by the towns in which they are located. They are very basic, but their one virtue is that you generally can’t reserve them — they are first-come, first-served. So, even pilgrims who fail to plan ahead (which used to be every pilgrim, before the current glut) have a hope of obtaining a bed each night, as long as they can reach the hostel early.

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I do some quick math. Afroza is 13 miles away. The hostel opens at 12:30 pm. I walk just under 3 miles an hour. I will need to stop several times to cool my heels, eat, and answer nature’s call.

So, I’ll need to walk for five or six hours. And I want to arrive at the albergue at least two hours before it opens up to new arrivals, to absolutely guarantee myself a bed.

That means starting my walk no later than 4:30 am.

And so, I depart my hostel in Navarrete as the silent town slumbers.

It feels vaguely romantic, at first, to move through the darkened village as a pilgrim, my walking poles clicking lightly through the cobblestone streets.

But as I head onto the road out of town, it quickly turns eerie. I am alone, on a dark road, in the early morning hours, in a foreign country.

Rarely have I felt so vulnerable — and more so with every step as the Camino route leads me through the blackened countryside.

I nearly miss a turn into a dark field. I use my map app to guide me through the night, trying to make sure the blue dot that is me stays on the nearly invisible path.

No one’s necessarily lying in wait to attack a solo female pilgrim, I rationalize with myself. Everybody else is sleeping right now. Nobody even knows I’m here ….

It’s true. I realize with a chill that no one has any idea where I am. The friends I left behind in Navarrete know I’m heading for Azofra, but they won’t be checking to see if I arrive. It would be days before anyone would realize that I had disappeared.

I only need to panic if I hear footsteps behind me, I remind myself.

The field around me is eerily silent. But I am well aware that that could change in an instant.

I listen carefully, all my senses on high alert. There’s a vineyard up ahead, with a light to the right of the path, illuminating a long shed in the field to my left. As I approach the vineyard, I see my shadow on the shed’s wall.

And then I see a shadow following me, even longer and darker than my own.

I barely breathe as I try to make out the form. It’s carrying a huge backpack, and it’s coming up quickly behind me.

It makes no sound, and neither do I. My heart is pounding; I am shocked at how someone could be so stealthy and so fast. How did I not know someone was following me?

The figure keeps pace with me, and quickens its pace the closer it gets.

It is just inches away now, and as it moves to overtake me … I stifle the scream rising in my throat.

Because suddenly I realize: there are not one but two lights illuminating me, casting two separate but synchronized shadows against the wall of the shed. I gasp in relief.

Even so, I don’t breathe fully until the sun rises and the landscape is visible again.

I walk 7 more miles without encountering another soul to reach the town of Najera, still silent at 9:30 am after a festival the previous night.

Nearly four miles later, at 11:15 am, I finally reach Azofra, the tiny town with the municipal albergue. I am the very first person in line for a bed at the bright, clean, and well-organized hostel. Success!

I won’t be sleeping in a field — at least, not tonight.

— April 30, 2023

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Day 12, Logroño to Navarrete (8 miles)

I am bumbling around the streets of Logroño this morning after a night of tapas-and-wine-infused revelry. The good life!

I’m remembering the chicken croquettes particularly fondly. My only regret is that I wasn’t able to eat more.

But now it is morning, and as I hoist my pack onto my back I have a much more pressing concern: I have no idea where I will sleep tonight, none at all.

I call one hostel after another. “Completo,” each hospitalero replies briskly when I ask if there’s room at the inn.

Completo. At first, I think that means something like “Of course, peregrina. Your wish is completely granted. Would you like chocolates and turn-down service on your bunk bed and sleeping bag this evening?”

It does not mean that. It means that they are completely booked for the night. Every hostel and hotel for the next 15 miles — completo. Full.

I start to panic.

Until now, I haven’t had any trouble finding a place to sleep. I have woken up each morning, decided how far I was going to walk, and found a hostel with a vacancy on Booking.com. And even when the website has shown “no vacancy,” proprietors have found a bed for me when I have called. There’s a saying that “the Camino provides,” and I have found that to be true thus far.

But the Camino has gotten busy all of a sudden. It’s a three-day bank holiday here in Spain, and the people who actually live here are on the move too. They’ve booked their beds well in advance, and now the pilgrims who normally occupy those beds are scrambling.

I’m hearing about pilgrims walking 40 kilometers — 25 miles! — to find a place to sleep.

A tight, wretched feeling starts to burble in my chest. I take a few deep breaths to calm myself.

I’m on my own here, I realize. There’s no one to figure this out with, no one who will be waiting for me at the end of the day. No one who will be relieved to see me arrive.

It will work out, I reassure myself, uncertainly. I might have to spend the night on a floor or in a field. But I do have a sleeping bag. And I have spent nights on floors and under the stars before. It will be OK.

Just keep walking, I tell myself, as I search for the Camino marker at the fork in the road. The Camino will provide.

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I’m trying to find my way out of town when I see two peregrinas walking toward me from across a square. Where have I seen them before?

“Rebecca!” they call, just at the moment that I remember who they are: Karen and Gai, sisters-in-law from Australia, whom I met on my very first night in Saint-Jean back in France.

We hug like long-lost friends.

“How are you?” they ask, and it feels like they really want to know.

“I’m OK,” I reply. It feels so good to see these familiar faces right now. “I just … I don’t know where I’m going to sleep tonight. But I’m sure it will work out!”

“Oh!” replies Karen. “Well, we’ve booked a quad room in Naverrete. We have an extra bed in the room. Would you like to stay with us?”

I gape at her for a second before I can reply. “YES!” I cry, nearly falling to my knees in relief.

“It will be fun to stay together!” Karen says, as if she hasn’t just rescued me from sleeping in a ditch. “We’ll have a good chance to catch up!”

As we resume walking and chatting, it takes a few moments for my nervous system to realize: I have a safe place to sleep tonight.

And then I realize something I truly had not registered until now:

I walk alone, but I am not alone. Ahead of me and behind me are people who care.

The city recedes behind us as we find our way out of Logroño. It turns out that Karen and Gai have met some of the same people I have, including a priest from Arizona and a man with a terminally ill wife. It strikes me: the web connecting all of us is smaller and tighter than I may have realized.

We pass a facility apparently overseen by a large metal cow as we leave the suburbs of Logroño behind.

Soon we return to the calming Camino landscape: vineyards, farmlands, footpaths and bridges back through time. Finally we reach Navarrete, another history-soaked Camino village perched high on a hill.

We stop in the town church. Inside, it is quiet and dark, as sleepy as the rest of the town. Karen places a euro in a coin box, and suddenly, the altar is ablaze.

I am nearly blinded by the display. There is more gold concentrated here than I have ever seen before. Dancing demons, pious saints, delicate flowers, ivied columns — all competing for space. I goggle until the light fades.

Emerging from the church, I watch pilgrims trudge through the town and continue walking dispiritedly, finding no beds to spare. How far will they have to go tonight, to sleep safely? I wonder. I want to help them in some way, but I can’t think of anything to do.

Tonight, the problem is solved, for me, anyway. But I’ll face it anew tomorrow.

I grow steely with determination. I decide to be the first peregrina out of the gate tomorrow.

If I have to hit the trail at 4:30 am to find a bed for tomorrow evening, then that’s what I am going to do.

—April 29, 2023

Next week: A Woman, Alone, In the Dark

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Day 11: Viana to Logroño (6 miles)

Oh, oh, oh … Logroño!

How did I not know about the wine-and-tapas capital of northern Spain? This is Spain’s “la dulce vida,” supercharged.

This is tapas town. This is drink-wine-and-stroll-on-narrow-cobblestone-streets-and-consume-as-many-tapas-as-you-possibly-can while cathedral bells peal and throngs fill the main square and waiters bustle to serve the patrons filling the endless outdoor cafés.

This is bring your baby, your grandfather, your small children, hell, even your dog, and crowd the tapas bars and sing and laugh and eat and drink late into the night. This is the first town in Spain that I feel I could live in (after I make some Spanish friends with whom to enjoy these delights).

After several weeks of a rather limited diet — glorified sandwiches called “bocadillas” and a quiche-like egg-and-potato pie that gets away with calling itself a “tortilla” — my palate has expanded in Logroño to embrace a wildly new and creative cuisine.

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Tonight I met up with some pilgrims that I met just yesterday in Viana, courtesy of an introduction by another peregrina friend, Sarah, whom I had met just the day before. We strolled the famous Calle de Laurel Pinchos street to sample the tapas at the numerous eateries churning out the most tasty and creative small plates imaginable.

We hit at least three tapas bars before I begged off. At the first one, I inhaled a sizeable plate of mushrooms soaked in garlic butter. The second tapas bar tempted me with a meltingly delicious ham-and-cheese quesadilla. Further down the street, I selected a plate of tiny chicken croquettes dipped in wasabi sauce.

I could only handle three tapas, sadly, because about an hour before dinner, I had caved to temptation and enjoyed a flan pie with vanilla ice cream at a sweet Victorian café I discovered on a side street. Dessert first!

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I didn’t come on this pilgrimage to lose weight. But between you and me, I seem to be dropping pounds on this Camino faster than I ever thought possible. I haven’t stepped on a scale, but the pants I bought just weeks ago at REI are already hanging off me. I figure I am burning about 3,500 calories a day, just by walking.

Up until, well, today, I have only been consuming about 2,000 calories a day, if that. That’s a weekly deficit of about 10,000 calories. Wheeeeee!

This is completely out of my realm of experience. I’d accepted a long time ago that in this area of my life at least, what goes up does not come down. Ever.

And I’ve gotten to be OK with that. But this feels pretty OK with me right now, too.

I know this trend will not continue when I am not walking eight hours a day.

But right now, being able to consume pretty much anything I want and still lose weight is a post-menopausal woman’s dream come true.

—April 28, 2023

Continue to Day 18: No Bed for You

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Day 10, Sansol to Viana (7 miles)

“Rebecca! You don’t recognize me, do you? It’s Bridget!”

Bridget?! But …. this woman is clean. Without the glasses and tight ponytail, I do not recognize her at all. Her hair is loose and flowing and she’s wearing a blouse you’d see at a nice restaurant. She doesn’t look the slightest bit like the pilgrim I met yesterday, sweating on the trail.

And now she is beaming at me as if I were a treasure that had been returned to her. I stare as her features come into focus.

“Bridget?” I gasp.

I am holding back tears — not only because I’d cut her off yesterday, while we were in the midst of one of the most meaningful conversations I’d had since beginning the Camino.

But because, even as I was kicking myself for letting her go without really saying goodbye, a certainty had fallen over me: I will see her again.

Some part of me, the same part that knows the sun will rise and the rain will stop, knew that we would reunite.

I wonder: What else do I know, that I don’t yet know?

*******

Bridget leads me to her table, where she has pulled out a seat just for me. She introduces me to the other two British women at the table: Lucy, a 60-something peregrina with a sparkling laugh; and Sarah, an earnest 39-year-old academic from Bristol.

Sarah is talking about her adventures around the globe. She had spent her 20s and early 30s traveling and teaching English in a variety of countries.

“And now I want a partner,” Sarah says wistfully. “And a child.”

I look at her sympathetically. I remember how I, too, had wished for a family with all my heart.

“But I do still want to travel,” Sarah says. “I just have no idea how to make it all work. I feel like I’m running out of time.”

Lucy tops off our wineglasses without being asked.

“Well,” Lucy says, “I never stopped traveling. My husband hates to travel, so I bought a camper van and put the children in it and took them all over Europe by myself. Croatia, Italy, Finland …. we went everywhere.”

“How many children do you have?” I ask.

“Four.”

“You put them all in the camper van?” I say in disbelief.

“Yes,” Lucy laughs. “You can understand why my husband wanted to stay home!”

Sarah leans back, a smile spreading across her face.

“How hard is it, to drive a camper van?” she asks.

*******

We laugh and linger at the table long after the dining room empties. As the conversation starts to wind down, Bridget excuses herself. She’s walking nearly 20 miles tomorrow to the town of Navarette, on the other side of Logroño. She needs to get an early start.

I, on the other hand, am planning to walk just seven miles, to the village of Viana.

It’s unlikely I will walk with Bridget again — on this Camino, anyway. But my heart isn’t hurting anymore.

It just feels extremely grateful.

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I wake the next morning and pack with a sense of ease. It will only take me about three hours to get to Viana, a 13th-century town perched high on a ridge overlooking the Ebro River valley.

Setting off into the cool morning air, I climb a roller-coaster series of hills. I am in the notorious “knee-wrecker” stage of the Camino.

But one of the hills has a surprise for me. As I enter the grove of trees at the top, I see a magical sight: tree branches festooned with hundreds of colorful ribbons and ornaments, waving gently in the breeze.

Underneath them is a veritable forest of cairns, more than I can count. A fairyland of tiny mountains, some with photos tucked between the rocks, others with messages inscribed in multiple languages.

“Pray for Joan,” one says. No reason given, nothing to indicate whether Joan is still here to be prayed for. I say a prayer for Joan, then gather three stones from the Camino path to build a little cairn of my own.

Off in the distance, I hear the strains of acoustic guitar. I think it might be my imagination, until I draw closer and discover a lone troubadour in the woods, serenading pilgrims as they pass.

The guitarist is really quite good. I watch pilgrims arrive, pause, drop a few coins at the guitarist’s feet, and then move on.

I decide to linger. I unwrap the chocolate croissant I purchased yesterday and sit down to let the music wash over me.

I compliment the musician in my broken Spanish. He smiles and hands me his guitar. “Juega,” he says.

I strum his guitar while he checks his connection to his amp. I stay until he begins to repeat the songs in his repertoire, and then I carry on.

Finally I reach Viana, a charming village with a colorful pedestrian promenade. I check out its gorgeous, ornate cathedral and wander onto the promontory at the western edge of the town. Below I can see the city of Logroño, some seven miles in the distance. Beyond that, another endless horizon, the Camino extending into it.

I check into my hostel and am assigned to a small, crowded room and a creaky upper bunk. As I settle my things, the door to the room opens. It’s Sarah!

Yesterday I had resented the Camino’s capriciousness; I was angry at the way it was giving me people only to take them away. But apparently, it can return them to you as well.

Sarah and I decide to explore the village together. On a side street we discover a pilgrims’ cafe, where volunteers offer us tea and snacks.

“Would you like a foot bath?” one of them offers.

I glance at Sarah. She pauses, and then nods.

We remove our boots, and I see that Sarah’s feet are riddled with sores and angry blisters. My own soles are calloused, rough, and red.

I see my feet every day in the shower, but I had not noticed them like this before. Cracked, dirty, and strange.

Pilgrims’ feet. In every bump and wound, a prayer, a longing, a regret. Things I would not expose to others. Things too humbling, too rough, and too tender for others to handle.

I lay them bare to be touched, cleansed, soothed, and cared for.

— April 27, 2023

Continue to Day 17: Welcome to Tapas Town

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Day 9: Azqueta to Sansol (13 miles)

Crunch. Click. Crunch. Click.

It’s a rhythm that can carry you into eternity.

The more you walk, the more your body remembers that you were designed to walk. Your body wants to walk. You can walk all day if you want to, every day of your life.

That is what my body is remembering right now.

I am walking 13 miles today, through olive groves and vineyards, to Sansol, another Spanish hill town.

As I walk out of Azqueta, my legs settle into an increasingly familiar rhythm. My body is starting to feel like a vehicle that moves of its own accord. The click of my hiking poles soothes me like a metronome.

Crunch. Click. Crunch. Click.

Several hours have transpired, and I have not spoken a word. My thoughts and worries pass through me like a breeze. Forty-five minutes ago, I was feeling anxious about something. Now I can’t remember what it was, and I don’t even care. Placidly, I walk on.

A trio of female walkers cruises up behind me. Snatches of their conversation break into my trance, and I am suddenly wide awake to what I am hearing.

Because one of these women — the youngest one — is talking about how she hiked the 2,000-mile Appalachian Trail last year. She’s also mentioning her kids. But she can’t be more than 40, so her children must still be fairly young.

Wait. This woman is a MOM? And she walked the AT while she still had kids at home?

The AT had once been on my bucket list. But I shelved the idea after my daughters were born. Now it feels like something that I might have done at one point, but never did.

I really want to know how this woman pulled off a six-month hike in the middle of her parenting years. That would be the right time, physically, to do it; her body is still young and strong. I just have to find out: Who took care of her kids? Did anyone shame her?

Even if they did, she did it anyway. That’s pretty badass, I think. I’m impressed.

I sidle up to her, hoping to work my way into her conversation, but she and her friend speed off, and soon I’m left with the oldest of the trio.

“Buen Camino!” I say to the elder peregrina. “I’m Rebecca.”

“Buen Camino,” she responds briskly. “I’m Gigi.”

Gigi’s walking faster than me, so I let her do the talking. She tells me she’s a retired lawyer from New Jersey. “I left my job two years ago,” she says. “It was during COVID. And then I had to do something physical, or I would have lost my mind. So I started hiking.”

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“That was a good thing to do, during COVID!” I say. “To go outside and get some exercise.”

“And then I decided to hike the Appalachian Trail.”

“Wait,” I say. I’m already out of breath. “That was your first backpacking trip?”

“I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t even know how to set up my tent the first night. That’s when I met them,” Gigi says wryly, pointing to the other two members of the trio, now far ahead. “They’re my ‘tramly.’ My trail family. When we finished the AT, we decided to walk the Camino together.”

“You did the whole Appalachian Trail? How long did it take you?”

“Five months.”

Five months? I had never heard of someone completing the AT so quickly. Two thousand miles, up and down mountain ranges. Camping every night. Much harder than the Camino.

“I have a cousin who tried to do it,” I say. “He had to stop, because he got so famished.”

“Women take better care of themselves,” Gigi says matter-of-factly. “The guys skip meals, or they don’t bring the right food. And then they just try to muscle through it. You need to take the time to cook and eat. A lot of the men who started the AT with me didn’t finish it. But most of the women that I met on the trail did.”

I take a closer look at her. I still want to ask her about the young mom. But I also need to know: “How old were you when you did this?”

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“67,” Gigi replies.

Her trail sisters are now far ahead, and she quickens her pace to catch up with them.

“If you can walk the Camino, you can hike the Appalachian Trail,” Gigi tells me as she speeds off.

It’s high noon by the time I reach Los Arcos, the one town between Azqueta and Sansol. It’s there I find Henry, the 50-something Irish pilgrim I met a few days ago in Uterga.

Henry lights a cigar over our shared pizza and tells me all about his 22-year-old girlfriend back in Dublin. He blows his smoke sideways and I try not to gag, but do so anyway.

I say goodbye to Henry, hoist my pack, and saddle up for the remaining four miles to Sansol.

The afternoon stretches before me, along with the path. It’s an unshaded gravel track running parallel to the main road. My body continues to move automatically, even though I am aware that I am weary. I start thinking about all the people I have met thus far on the Camino: Lynn. Anne. Crystal. Eileen. Steve. Karen. Bridget ….

So many people, so many conversations. All gone.

But if there is one that I wish I hadn’t let get away, it’s Bridget. We’d met in the middle of nowhere yesterday, when I was as irritable and petty as I’d ever been, after a snub by a fellow American.

Then I met her on a dusty stretch of the Camino, and the entire day changed. Another midlife woman pondering the meaning of it all — womanhood, motherhood, menopause, and whatever comes next. I could have talked to her for hours.

But I stopped to wash my feet in a stream and I let her walk away. I didn’t even get her number or her last name.

And now she’s gone. Even though we had so much more to say. My heart starts to ache again, and I walk purposefully until the longing subsides.

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Crunch. Click. Crunch. Click.

I’m walking on pavement now and finally Sansol appears from around a bend, and not a moment too soon. I’m hot, sweaty, and tired, and all I want now is a shower, dinner and bed.

But Sansol itself is another thoroughly charming hilltop village. It perches over the Spanish countryside, which now seems much more bucolic when viewed from above.

And my hostel, the Palacio de Sansol, is a restored palace indeed, beneficiary of a huge investment by a private citizen who simply loves the Camino and wants to support it. This albergue is clean and spacious and bright, and it’s teeming with pilgrims rejuvenating at the end of a long day.

I enter the dining room for dinner, which will be cooked by the owner himself. The dining room is crowded and warm, and it echos with chatter and laughter.

I look around. All the tables appear to be full. So be it. I’ll sit with strangers again tonight. And maybe they, too, will become friends. For the evening, anyway.

I scan the room. A woman is gesturing me toward a table with an empty chair. She seems to be the owner’s wife; she’s wearing a fashionable, clean blouse and freshly styled hair.

She is beckoning me to a tableful of women who are also smiling widely at me. I don’t recognize any of them. But sure, I’ll sit with anyone tonight.

I draw closer and smile uncertainly. Whoever this woman is, she is smiling back at me so warmly that I could cry. And I do. I feel a sob rise in my throat and tears well in my eyes.

She opens her arms and pulls me into a hug.

“Rebecca!” she cries. “You don’t recognize me, do you? It’s Bridget!”

— April 26, 2023

Continue to Day 16: In Every Wound, a Prayer

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Day 8: Cirauqui to Azqueta (15 miles)

I’m sitting with a half-dozen people who are studiously ignoring me.

They are all talking animatedly to each other, and as much as I try to catch their eyes, contribute a comment, or ask a question, none of these pilgrims are giving me the time of day.

The British guy to my right wants to practice his German with the two German pilgrims across from us — even though all three of them speak English.

And the American woman to my left is clearly looking to make friends, just not with me. She’s pulling out all the stops to charm the two British women sitting across from her. She’s certain that these two peregrinas are her people … and that I am not. That’s why she has literally turned her back to me.

So here I sit, in the otherwise charming stone-cellar dining room of the Albergue Casa Maralotx, smiling slightly, but roiling with irritation and insecurity and feeling very much alone. I push my chair back abruptly as soon as I finish my dinner and leave the table. No one says goodbye.

I resolve to get out of here as early as possible tomorrow morning.

I return to the dorm room to get ready for bed. The room is filled with older Europeans, all of whom seem tired and cranky. I make what I think is a friendly comment to my lower bunkmate, and he looks at me as if I have lost my mind.

Well, they are missing out, I sniff. I had woken up today intending to be the nicest pilgrim on the Camino. I had literally made a resolution: to be friendly, compassionate, humble, and kind. I even offered to lend money to a Canadian pilgrim who had lost her wallet. (She declined.)

I’m not going to waste any more energy on people today, I decide. I pop in my earplugs and climb into my bunk bed. I fall into a dreamless sleep — until it’s pierced by a vile smell wafting up from the bunk below. Beans. We had beans for dinner. I pull my sleeping bag over my face and try to fall back asleep.

Moments later, it is dawn.

I hoist my pack onto my back and leave before the sun has fully risen, hoping that the path I am following is in fact the Camino, since the way-markers are invisible under the darkened sky.

The indigo sky yields to cobalt, then violet, then the faintest wash of rose. The light spills onto the hills, painting them green and gold against the emerging dawn.

One bird starts to sing, then another, and another, as I amble over a 2,000-year-old Roman bridge.

In my haste to leave the albergue I had skipped breakfast, so I stop at a café in Lorca, the next town on the Way, for tea and bread. From my table inside, I can watch pilgrims as they pass through the town.

I see the American woman who’d turned her back on me last night walk past the café. Her two new British friends are at her side.

She got what she wanted, I think.

I drain my cup of tea, grab my poles and backpack, and return to the Way.

I’m on my own again, really and truly. My initial Camino friends are either far ahead of me or already back home in the U.S. The Australians with whom I had connected in Pamplona two days ago have also gone poof.

I am free, in a way I almost never have been, since my 20s. I can be whoever I want to be out here.

I can be friendly and say hello to everyone I meet. Or I can keep to myself, concentrating on my thoughts and anything else that calls to me.

It’s my choice. I get to walk however I want.

I am following the Camino through a freshly planted field when I hear footsteps behind me: a fast-moving peregrina, wearing glasses and ponytail.

“Buen Camino!” I offer as she passes by.

“Buen Camino!” she replies in a friendly British voice. “Are you enjoying your walk today?”

“Hi!” I say. “Well ... yes. Sure!”

She slows her pace to match my stride.

Her name is Bridget, and it turns out that she and I are the same age. Mothers of young-adult children who are leaving the nest. Married for the same number of years.

And it also turns out that we are doing the Camino for many of the same reasons. Something about finally feeling free enough to do something for ourselves. No longer identifying strictly as wives and mothers. Heeding the call from within to stride back into the world.

The kilometers tick by. We discuss the epic challenge of navigating our children’s adolescent years. We realize that we, too, are struggling with the same disorienting question as our offspring: Who are we now?

“They get to decide who they are,” Bridget declares. “It is entirely up to them. It’s our job to accept them, no matter what we believe, or what we think or feel.”

“I know,” I say. “But you think you know them, and then they turn into entirely different people. It hurts sometimes. Why is that?”

“Maybe because we’d like a bit of that freedom for ourselves?” Bridget ventured. “A bit more permission to explore our identities too? And acceptance and celebration for that?”

I pause to reflect on that.

“And why aren’t women our age celebrated for doing that?” I ask. “Why is that so often seen as a threat?”

We are quiet for a minute, thinking about the barriers we face in our own lives.

Soon we move on to other topics: the power of womanhood, and why it is so vastly undervalued in our world. And menopause.

“It’s happening to me right now,” she says. “And it’s making me feel anxious.”

“Why do you think that is, for you?” I ask. “Because menopause actually made me feel powerful. To be past the birthing and child-rearing stage! I feel relieved, stronger. Look at us! I’m here! We’re both here!”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I’m feeling an anxiety in my body, and I’m not sure why.”

“Is the Camino helping?”

“I think so,” Bridget says. “The first few days, I was really trying to articulate why I was doing this. I felt like I just had to figure out my reason, even before I had walked. Then I met a young man, a very young man, who told me that the Camino doesn’t happen in your brain, it happens IN your body. Your mind is making your body do this, but your body is having the experience. So you don’t have to will it — your body will remember, and the meaning will come later.”

I reflect on that. It certainly would be nice to not force myself to articulate the meaning of this experience. It feels like work that my brain would rather not do.

“Thank you for that,” I say.

“Well, it wasn’t my idea,” she says, laughing. “It was that young man’s. I don’t know if it’s true or not! We’ll see!”

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My phone buzzes. I remove it from my pocket. I’ve been posting about my Camino on Facebook, and I feel that familiar tug to see if anyone has responded to my latest update.

“Are you posting?” I ask her.

“Oh God, no,” she replies. “I don’t want to make other people feel like they are missing out. ‘Look at what I’ve done, where I am, what a great time I’m having!’ I’m here for ME. I don’t want to waste my time and energy on that. This is such a precious opportunity!”

I feel a little sheepish. How might this Camino change me, if I stay off my phone and remain entirely in the moment? I need to think about that.

“Look, there’s a stream!” I call to her. “I think I’m going to take my shoes off and soak my feet for a bit.”

Bridget stops up short, looks a little surprised, and maybe even a little hurt. Does she think I am trying to lose her? I’m not trying to lose her; I just need to think. She’s given me a lot to think about.

But I don’t know how to answer a question that hasn’t been asked, so I just sit down and take off my boots.

“OK, I’ll carry on then,” she says. “Hope to see you down the road!”

And I suddenly have the feeling that I might have just lost a really good friend.

I stay at the canal for a while, cooling my feet in the gently flowing water. A young Italian walker arrives. He points to the small fish swimming in the canal. “Pesci,” he says. He too removes his shoes and bathes his feet. We sit silently together for a while.

I think about Bridget and the unexpected grace of meeting a kindred spirit in the middle of nowhere. I hadn’t gotten her contact information. I am so sorry to have let her go.

The ache in my chest opens up again, and I can’t quite close it. Our connection feels too real to disappear.

Maybe I will see her again, I think wistfully.

A quiet feeling of certainty comes over me:

I will.

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Eventually I get moving again. Onward, through Estella, where the Camino becomes a sidewalk on a city street, then a parking lot around a gas station, then a road through an apartment complex. A mile or so outside of town is another iconic Camino site: the free-flowing wine fountain at the Bodegas Irache monastery, which has served wine to pilgrims for centuries to fortify them for the journey ahead.

I fill one of the used plastic glasses near the fountain and pour the wine down my throat.

Fortified, according to tradition, I continue another four miles to the tiny medieval village of Azqueta. I ascend a wooded trail and pass vineyards and farmlands awash with yellow blooms.

I push open the door to the hostel I’ve booked for the night, La Perla Negra, and find myself in the front hallway of someone’s 400-year-old home.

It’s too early to check in, so I drop my backpack in the hall and wander outside to find something to eat. It’s the end of the day, and the minuscule town is quiet; all the pilgrims seem to have already passed through.

I find the town’s one café and order a diet Coke and a piece of cake.

Suddenly the door to the café swings open. And the woman who had turned her back to me the previous night walks in.

She’s alone. Tired, sweaty, and a little bedraggled, with that unfocused look that all pilgrims seem to have at the end of the day. Her eyes dart around the room and meet mine.

I gesture to my table.

“Hi. I’m Rebecca,” I say. “Join me?”

—April 25, 2023

Continue to Day 14: What My Body Is Remembering

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Day 7: Uterga to Cirauqui (9 miles)

I have decided to take it a little easier on myself. Not just on my body, but on my mind.

I walked just 9 miles through the Spanish countryside today, from the tiny Camino town of Uterga to the equally minuscule village of Cirauqui. It was my second “easy” day after my rest day in Pamplona. I have now walked 62 miles.

This novel approach of being kinder to myself seems to be working! Without pushing myself so relentlessly, my pack did not feel quite like the burden that it has been. And this is only my sixth day of walking. This bodes well!

And last night’s communal dinner at the hostel in Uterga quieted that cryptic ache in my heart, for the evening, anyway. Even though I barely experienced any sleep or privacy in the dorm room afterward, it was good to be with people again. I am realizing that even if I walk alone, the pangs of loneliness don’t bother me so much if I can connect with others at the end of the day.

And I am also realizing: I can do this.

I would not have said this even three days ago, but I have discovered that even at 57, I am still strong enough to accomplish this journey. My legs are still sturdy, and — this is no small thing — my unblistered feet are still in shockingly good condition. The glove-like toe-sock liners that I am wearing seem to be doing their job of preventing skin-on-skin friction on my feet. Many of my fellow walkers are suffering from severe blisters; I know at least one who has had to see a doctor for the infected sores on her feet. But not me.

In fact, the only physical issue I can complain about are my tired soles, and they are feeling less tired every day. I am very fortunate.

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I am also embracing something that used to make me feel self-conscious, but that I now realize is just a fact: I am American, and I was brought up in a culture that encourages you to take the initiative with others.

I was not always willing to claim this. When I was traveling through Europe as a college student some 35 years ago, I was always a little embarrassed to be identified as an American. I somehow thought that a cool European reserve was superior to the American propensity to smile at everyone, laugh a little too loudly, and speak without reserve.

Americans, I had sniffed after only a few months in Europe, were nearly uniformly loud, clueless, insensitive and naive.

Americans can be that way. But after all the global trauma we have all experienced, as well as the challenge of simply getting on in life, I now feel that anyone who sneers at a friendly smile is either someone I don’t want to engage with, or too repressed to reciprocate.

The fact is, I do know how to say “thank you” in multiple languages, and I also know when to keep my mouth shut and listen. So I will embrace that “American” quality of being a little too eager socially. And I will temper it with sensitivity and curiosity, and regard it as a strength.

I have also rediscovered the positive side of traveling alone — the sheer freedom to decide exactly how much social interaction I want to have, and with whom. I do not have to get trapped into socializing with anyone I don’t want to.

And, as a midlife woman who has often disappeared into the roles and structures that I was bred for, I am having the refreshing sense of presenting as an individual, rather than as someone’s sidekick or parent or the “quiet” one in a group. I am not battling anybody’s preconceived notions or fixed view of me. And I don’t have to argue with anyone about the distance to cover or where to have dinner.

I just get to be myself, without negotiation or pressure.

That shouldn’t feel like such a remarkable experience at this point in my life. But it is.

I still want to forge connections with others, and I hope I will have some meaningful interactions in the weeks ahead. But today, I have decided that it just might be preferable to walk on my own.

Because I still had all sorts of warm exchanges today: with Julia, the 21-year-old American college student who was (finally!) able to help me understand why “dad jokes” are funny. With Henry, the friendly Irishman who kept me laughing while doing laundry at the hostel in Uterga. With Hannah, the young Canadian woman walking mindfully with her elderly father. And with Andrei, the burly Romanian guy who has hiked the Camino nine times and who told me at dinner last night that I will finally understand why I wanted to do this walk when I arrive in Santiago.

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And with a young Croatian guy named Leon, who walked briefly with me, stopped to nibble some rose hips, exclaimed over some flowering thyme on the side of the Way, and tucked a sprig under my pack strap, saying the scent would fortify me as I walked.

Leon endeared himself to me when, instead of asking me what I did professionally, he inquired: “What makes you happy?”

My response: "This. Hiking. Walking. Being outside."

When I returned the question, he talked about his interest in herbs. I told him that if he used them to help others, he could nurture healthier people and a healthier planet.

He was quiet for a moment and then thanked me. “I like the way you said that,” he said, before dropping away to go bathe his feet in a nearby lake. He’ll sleep in a hammock tonight, as he does every night; no albergues for him.

The Way today was truly beautiful, and between these interactions, I walked alone. But it was OK! Birdsong filled the air the entire day. Poppies burst through fields of yellow canola flowers. I passed vineyards and meandered through numerous small towns: Muruzabal, Obanos, Puente la Reina with its famous bridge, and Maneru, before reaching Cirauqui, the medieval hill town where I will spend the night.

I followed the Way markers throughout, searching for the signs and yellow arrows at every intersection. Sometimes they were obscure, but I always found them, and felt a settling calmness when I did.

The Way forward can be subtle, but the signs are always there.

—April 24, 2023

Continue to Day 14: Not the Nicest Pilgrim

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Day 6: Pamplona to Uterga (13 miles)

“You got this.”

I hate pop-culture clichés. But here I am on a deserted street in Pamplona, stuffing a croissant into my mouth and uttering that line like a character in a fast-food commercial.

My “Camino family” has vanished and I don’t know how to find my way back to the trail. What the hell am I doing here? There is no point to doing this.

I search for shell markers, yellow arrows, errant pilgrims … anything to lead me out of town, so that I can find my way back to the Way.

No signs whatsoever. The streets of Pamplona are quiet. All the other pilgrims seem to have left town. And it’s only 8 am.

Five days ago, I began this Camino with the excitement of a teenager who’d just been set loose in Europe. Today, I’m a lonely and exhausted 57-year-old who foolishly thought that walking 500 miles by myself would be easy and fun.

Forty miles in, it is neither. I’m tempted to call it a Camino and go home.

But with a sinking feeling, I realize that even if I stop walking now, I won’t go home the same. Because there’s an ache inside of me and it isn’t going away.

If I stop walking, it just sits there and hurts. If I walk, at least I’m moving. And that’s better than just sitting with that pang.

Finally, I spot a tiny Camino sign near the edge of town and find the trail: a long, ordinary road that could lead anywhere. I set forth, my hiking poles clicking like a metronome, and head west.

The rhythm is soothing and the path slopes up into the hills, through vast fields of yellow wildflowers that pierce through my solitude and momentarily take my breath away.

But the damn ache returns.

I spot a female pilgrim ahead of me. She tells me she’s from Ireland and that she’s also walking alone. We chat for a few minutes, but then she drifts away. I try to spark a conversation with a father-and-daughter duo from Canada, but they don’t respond with the same interest, so I let them go too.

Then, ahead, I spot Steve, part of the Australian trio I’d shared dinner with the night before! My shoulders sink with relief to see a familiar face, one that I know won’t turn me away.

We fall into step, but the trail heads upward, so it is a bit like trying to have a conversation in the middle of a workout. So after a few words about the weather, the scenery, and the distance yet to travel, we walk quietly, and a bit self-consciously.

But a tentative feeling starts to come over me: he is my friend.

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Steve and I arrive in the tiny town Zariquiegui, a single winding street of stone houses. He’s done for the day, so he’ll wait for his companions and spend the night. I can’t find a place to stay in this village, but there’s a hostel with a bed for me in Uterga, a few miles away.

So Steve and I part, which is how it seems to go on the Way … you just say goodbye, knowing there’s a good chance you will never see each other again.

The trail leads steeply upward to ascend the Alto del Perdon, the “Hill of Forgiveness.” I pass under an archway of trees, their branches forming a cloister for reflection or repentance.

But what greets me at the top is not a confessional or a shrine, but the endless sky and the wind. And the massive view — from the Pyrenees receding in the east and Pamplona down below, to the horizon in the west, disappearing into the distance.

I can see the Camino path as it unspools and fades into this infinity, and I pause to let it sink in: as I walk beyond that horizon, I will be rounding the curvature of the Earth.

Before me is an image I’ve seen a thousand times: the Monumento al Peregrino, the iconic sculpture of pilgrims through the ages.

I’d seen this sculpture in the Martin Sheen film about the Camino, The Way. I feel starstruck … and then I realize that I am now the one on the stage. I pause to bow to whatever force is spiriting me forward.

I am really doing this, I think. I am walking the Camino de Santiago.

I pick my way down the Alto del Perdon. The loose stones are tiring to my feet, and for some reason, piles of them have been gathered into cairns everywhere.

I notice that some stones have the same message written on them: “Philip + Lina, 4/20/23. Sending love to you all. Buen Camino.”

I feel a small surge of love for Philip and Lina, because that love actually means something to me out here, walking by myself. I pause to let it fill me.

And then I move on.

Outbuildings start to appear, then a street, then what looks like another very small and ancient town. I’m in Uterga.

I find my hostel, the Albergue Casa Baztan. The hostel is noisy, has only a couple of toilets and showers, and my lower bunk sags like a hammock. It also offers a communal dinner, which I eagerly pay the 13 Euro to partake in.

At the meal, I find myself dining with a Pole, a French Canadian, a Romanian, a Brazilian, and an Irishman. The discussion is warm and lively, and carries on well into the evening.

The Romanian has done the Camino nine times. I ask him why. He turns the question right back onto me. I say I don’t really know why I am doing this.

“You will know why when you arrive at the Cathedral in Santiago,” he promises.

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My bunk will sag all night. I’ll have zero privacy, and people will be snoring all around me.

But right now, I feel like I am precisely where I am supposed to be.

Because I’m no longer lost, and I am no longer alone. And tomorrow, I know exactly where to pick up the trail.

I got this.

As my chest rises and falls, the ache within it subsides for now, and I drift off to sleep.

—April 23, 2023

Continue to Day 13: An American Pilgrim on the Camino

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Day 5: Pamplona (0 miles)

I wake at 5 am, alone and disoriented, feeling unmoored and distressed at the prospect of walking the remaining 460 miles of my Camino alone.

I post my fears on the Facebook group for solo female pilgrims, Camigas. I am trying hard to put a positive spin on it.

“Made it to Pamplona! But after an amazing first four days, the little ‘Camino family’ that I formed is already breaking up. I am sad to see my new friends go, but looking forward to making some new connections. I am taking a rest day today, so let me know if you are in Pamplona and would like to connect. Perhaps we can walk together toward Puente la Reina tomorrow?”

I fall back asleep. By the time I wake up a few hours later, the responses have rolled in:

“It happens, but the Camino will provide. You will meet new Camino family. Stay positive.”

“It’s sad when that happens, but you will make new friends along the way.”

“I’m sure others have said this, but you might run into them again. Or not. And there are new people you haven’t met yet. It’s all such a beautiful journey. Enjoy.”

Enjoy? I’m actually a little irritated. Nobody from Facebook is going to make this experience “enjoyable” for me.

I realize that if I am going to enjoy this journey, it’s going to be entirely on me.

So I am newly resolved: Be present. Be friendly. Make the effort. Start conversations. Assume that others want connection and companionship as much as I do.

And make the biggest leap of all: assume that others will like me.

My phone buzzes again. A female pilgrim who saw my plea for friends on Facebook has messaged me to tell me that she’s staying in Pamplona for a few days. “Want to meet for a cup of coffee?” she asks.

“Of course!” I eagerly write back. We make a plan to meet in the massive, cafe-lined Plaza del Castillo that is the beating heart of the Pamplona community.

Within minutes, I am registering our differences.

“Where are you from?” I ask.

“Texas,” she responds.

“Oh, and how do you like Texas?”

“Oh, it’s GREAT! As long as you’re not a Democrat!”

I stare at her for more than a few seconds. “I’m a Democrat,” I say.

She stares right back.

Right then, I resolve to be curious and compassionate (as opposed to self-defensive and judgmental). That’s the spirit of this journey, right?

We talk about motherhood, our children and her grandchildren. She talks wistfully about her recently deceased mother, about how they were both single moms, and that she is now walking in her mother’s memory. She tears up a little.

I tell her that my mom is still alive, but that she is not so soft with me. I explain how I can recognize my mother’s trauma, but still find it difficult to be close to her.

We agree that our mothers taught us some confounding lessons about love — and that we can revisit, and maybe even revise, those lessons as we walk the Camino.

We actually hug as we part, and I realize that I would be happy to meet this person, who’d initially seemed so different from me, on the trail again.

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I say goodbye to my new friend and begin wandering the old part of Pamplona. It is like time-traveling through a medieval maze.

Gothic churches and Baroque buildings stand proudly beside trendy tapas bars and utilitarian pharmacies. Cafés spill onto side streets worn smooth by centuries of war, pilgrimage, commerce and bull-running.

I’m not really a tourist today, but I’m not really a pilgrim, either. And I shouldn’t buy anything, because I’ll only be adding weight to my pack. So I do the only thing I really can do, which is to buy and eat not just one but three chocolate croissants at a café. Because I will surely need the calories for my 12-mile walk tomorrow. Right?

I continue wandering until I reach the Camino museum, where I watch a short movie about the Way. The film references the “bravery” of pilgrims past and present, and the burdens that they carried.

I hadn’t thought of myself as particularly brave, nor had I thought my burdens were much to speak of — just a backpack stuffed with half the inventory of REI.

But maybe we are brave. And maybe we can make the pack even lighter. I decide to abandon a few things before I hit the trail tomorrow: my winter hat, my running gloves, and some toiletries that now seem oddly superfluous.

Maybe every ounce I discard will make me faster and lighter. Or at least less ponderous.

The notes of a brass band ring out from nearby street. I turn the corner and I not only hear it but see it: a raucous, exuberant, midday dance party. The entire street is dancing for no good reason, except that it is a Saturday afternoon in Pamplona and there is music in the air.

I forget my prior thoughts and stand transfixed. I watch couples twirling each other, women dancing together, parents hoisting children onto their shoulders, young people flirting and laughing and swaying as they try to catch each other’s eye.

The locals seem to be drunk with the joy of life. Or maybe this is just normal here. The music swells, and I weave through the crowd as it capers and whirls around me.

My feet ache. But all I want to do is dance as well.

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My phone buzzes. I’ve been invited to dinner! The Australian trio with whom I crossed the Pyrenees is wondering if I’d like to join them at a restaurant on the Plaza del Castillo tonight.

The light is falling as I return to Pamplona’s main square, and the energy within the plaza seems to be building toward some primal crescendo. The Spaniards seem even more inebriated with joy than they were this afternoon: dancing, singing, chanting, spinning and shouting, as if the local football team had just won the World Cup.

They haven’t. This is just another Saturday night in Spain.

We find a taverna and trade stories about our families, travels, and irrational reasons for doing the Camino. We share pictures of our adult kids, their weddings, our lives at home. And I feel another layer of friendship settle between me and these fellow travelers.

By the time I walk back to my hostel, it’s after 10 pm. And yet the square is growing ever more alive as the locals continue to flood in. Wine is flowing, glasses are clinking, and laughter is ricocheting around the square. Nobody seems to be in any hurry to turn in.

Tomorrow morning, I will shoulder my pack and walk west, back into the countryside and over the Alto del Perdón, the “Hill of Forgiveness.” I hope to walk at least 12 miles, maybe more.

I have no idea where I will be staying tomorrow night, and I don’t know who, if anyone, will walk beside me.

But my pack will be a little lighter than it was yesterday.

And so will my heart.

— April 22, 2023

Continue to Day 12: ‘You Got This’

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-

As crazy as it sounds, I suddenly realized that I didn’t need anyone
or anything else to be at peace.

We’re back again this week with our Camino Stories, our series exploring the Camino de Santiago from different perspectives (read the last post here). Every fortnight or thereabouts we’ll been meeting up with a different guest to explore their personal journey along the Camino de Santiago and find out what they learnt from their experience.

It’s my hope that these posts provide nostalgia and reminiscence for those of you who have walked this path, and inspiration to those of you who are tempted by it.

Today we’re walking with Rebecca. Rebecca is a journalist and editor who walked the Camino Francés in 2023, and has been writing about the experience ever since at her Substack, Walking the Earth: A Camino Journey.

Over to you, Rebecca. 👣

Thank you for being here! First of all, what inspired you to walk the Camino de Santiago, which route did you take and how did you decide on your route?

I first learned about the Camino about 15 years ago, when a friend handed me Walking Home, a book by a spiritual intuitive named Sonia Choquette. The book included captivating descriptions of the Camino Francés, as well Choquette’s eerie sense that she had some sort of past-life connection to the Camino, perhaps having been burned as a witch in the reputed Sorcerers’ Woods near Roncesvalles!

I wasn’t so sure I had any “past lives” to discover in Spain, but I was nonetheless intrigued by the Camino itself. I’m a history buff and I love to hike and travel, so the Camino sounded like the perfect way to experience Europe. I told my husband: “I’m walking that Camino someday!”

It seemed improbable at the time, as we had two young children to raise, and I couldn’t take that kind of time off work. But eventually my last child left for college, and shortly thereafter I was offered a buyout by my employer. Suddenly, I had the time and opportunity to walk the Camino ... and in 2023, that’s just what I did.

What was the most unexpected challenge you faced along the way, and how did you overcome it?

I was caught off guard by the depth of the attachment that I would feel toward the people I met on the Camino, and the degree of sadness I would feel when we had to part.

People are very open on the Camino. With nothing to do all day except walk, talk and eat, conversations tend to get deep very quickly. You can soon come to feel that these people are the best friends you’ve ever made. But nobody can keep perfect pace with each other for 500 miles, and inevitably someone either walks ahead or falls behind.

Fortunately, technology helps you keep in touch. And then there is “Camino magic” — the tendency to run into those friends later on the Way, when you least expect to! It was always a joy when that happened.

I drew a larger lesson out of this: that even though those connections can wax and wane, they never fully disappear. Three years later, I am still in touch with a number of my Camino friends. The love is still there, even as we continue on our own paths ... just as we did on the Way.

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Was there a specific moment on the Camino that changed your perspective or left a lasting impression on you?

There were so many moments of kindness and beauty, and I think the accumulation of those moments is what changed me into a more open, accepting and connected person. But my most powerful moment didn’t involve other people at all.

I was having a down day just before I reached the Cruz de Ferro. I was walking alone, had slept poorly, and was coming down with a cold. And after about a month on the Camino, I was really starting to wonder why I was doing this.

Then the path entered the woods and started heading up into the mountains. And all of a sudden — literally in a flash — I felt a surge of connection between myself, the Earth, and spirit.

As crazy as it sounds, I suddenly realized that I didn’t need anyone or anything else to be at peace. It felt like a message of comfort from beyond. And that message — that I am already whole — continues to comfort me whenever I am feeling alone or lonely.

What was the most surprising or memorable encounter you had with another pilgrim or local during your journey?

I sat through a communal dinner one night, between two groups of pilgrims who were completely absorbed in their conversations. I was feeling very left out.

I left the albergue the next day a little dejected. But I made a very conscious decision not to feel sorry for myself. Instead, I reminded myself that every day on the Camino is a new day.

Later that day, I was alone on a nondescript stretch when I heard a pilgrim come up behind me. We began chatting and soon discovered that we had so much in common. She was at a very similar point in her life, and she had been pondering many of the same questions. What followed was one of the best conversations of my Camino, and a real soul-to-soul connection.

That day I learned something important: that if you dwell on a negative experience, you might not be open to the amazing thing that’s about to happen next. That’s another invaluable life lesson that I took home from my Camino.

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Tell us about one item you carried in your backpack that you couldn’t have lived without on Camino?

My Anker power bank! I tried to stay off my phone as much as possible on the Camino, but I did use it for certain important things: taking photos, staying in touch with Camino friends, and finding my way. Over the course of the day, those activities can drain a phone battery down to zero.

And that posed a problem at the end of the day, when I had to locate my accommodation for the night. That’s when I REALLY needed Google maps... and when my battery tended to run out! But having a fully charged power bank reassured me that I could always charge my phone no matter where I was.

What advice would you give to someone considering walking the Camino for the first time?

The Camino gives you space and time to reconnect with yourself in ways you might not have done in a very long time. It can be very disconcerting to come home as a more authentic version of yourself, and to realize that your loved ones don’t really know that person. You may feel very out of your element.

Don’t panic. Understand that it takes time to integrate such a powerful experience. In the meantime, it’s good to reach out to others who understand — your Camino friends, others who’ve walked the Way, and online Camino groups.

There’s also an organization in the US called American Pilgrims on the Camino, and it has many local chapters. See if there’s one in or near your community. They often organize hikes and other activities.

It’s a great way to meet past and future pilgrims who understand the Camino experience, and who are eager to hear all about yours.

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Is there anything else you’d like to share?

You’ll hear it often on the Camino, but it’s true: Listen to your body! Don’t try to rush through it.

I saw people walking 30, 35, 40 km a day. Maybe they only had a limited amount of time to walk the Way, and maybe that’s why they were walking so quickly. But those were also the walkers who found themselves struggling with aches and strains, and who sometimes had to cut short their Camino as a result.

If you only have a limited amount of time to do the Camino, don’t try to do the whole thing. Instead, walk at a pace that works for you. The destination truly is not as important as the journey.

The Camino has been there for over a thousand years. It will surely be there when you are ready to come back. And you’ll definitely want to do so, as long as you don’t wreck yourself trying to finish it the first time.

Thanks again for sharing your story Rebecca!

Rebecca shares her Camino experience — the joys, the challenges, the friendships, the food, and the transformations — in her Substack journal, Walking the Earth: A Camino Journey. Walk along with her, step by step, here: rebeccalindell.substack.com

PS If you’d like to share your story of the Camino as part of this series, get in touch!

Buen camino,

Louise x

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Day 4: Zubiri to Pamplona (13.5 miles)

I am exhausted. Cranky. My legs are throbbing, my eyes are crossing, and I am just staring at the wall after walking another 19-kilometer day.

It didn’t start out that way.

This morning, I eagerly met up with my new friends Lynn and Eileen in Zubiri. We set forth from the village, chattering brightly as we passed through the rolling green farmlands of Navarre.

There were some steep upward climbs. A streamside path. A 1,000-year-old bridge. A few quiet villages, and a couple of cafes where we rested for far too long, mistakenly thinking we could linger over cafe con leches and get to Pamplona in good time. We passed an industrial plant that was jarring to observe after just three days in the countryside.

It should have been thrilling to enter Pamplona’s medieval gate. But the city has utterly assaulted my senses. Cars and buses roar past; the smell of exhaust has replaced the scent of pine in the forests. People are rushing past me without so much as a “buen Camino.” After days of birdsong, cowbells, and enchanting stone villages, the streets and noise and commerce and traffic of Pamplona feel overwhelming.

I was miserably hot and sweaty by the time we arrived. It seemed to take forever to get to the city center just from the town’s outskirts. And I had no idea how to find the hostel where I was to stay.

After walking 40 miles in four days, I was stumbling around on aching feet as if I were punch-drunk. All I wanted to do was sit and not get up again.

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In addition to being exhausted, I am sad that everything will be changing tomorrow. I am taking a rest day here in Pamplona, but Lynn will be walking directly to Puente la Reina, the next stage of the Camino, tomorrow. She booked all her albergues ahead of time, and I think she is now feeling frustrated that she cannot just go with the flow. Nor can she take a rest day, which we all badly need right now.

Meanwhile, Eileen’s husband is joining her to walk a few stages with her, also starting tomorrow. And then Eileen will depart with her husband to go back to the US.

Four days ago, Eileen, Lynn and I had been total strangers. Now my heart literally hurts to think I may never walk with them again.

I do not know where my other Camino sister Anne is, and the three Australians with whom I have also been walking are also completely exhausted and have disappeared into their hotel. They have begged off a farewell dinner that we have organized at Cafe Iruña, the restaurant frequented by Ernest Hemingway after his beloved bullfights.

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I liked it better in the small Camino villages, where I was continually running into so many of the people I started with. Everyone looked familiar. Everyone had the light of the Camino in their eyes.

But Pamplona swallowed all of us.

It’s big and urban and I feel like just another filthy, sweaty, tired, and anonymous pilgrim here.

And now I will have to build an entirely new Camino “family” the day after tomorrow, when I walk out of Pamplona and head back into the countryside. I will be forced to be friendly and to take risks. It has been a comfort to travel within a Camino bubble; we have all been looking out for each other.

That bubble pops tomorrow.

I guess this is when the adventure really begins. And yet, for some reason, I’m feeling petrified. Not about walking by myself.

But about BEING with myself for the next 460 miles.

—April 21, 2023

Continue to Day 11: The heaviest thing I carry

This post is part of a weekly series following my walk on the
Camino de Santiago, a 500-mile pilgrimage route across northern Spain.

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Day 3: Burgete to Zubiri (12 miles)

After the euphoria of the first two days of the Camino — the massive effort to get over the Pyrenees, the swooning over the Basque landscape, the giddy delight in making so many new friends — I spent much of the day walking alone.

I walked 12 miles today, from Burgete, Hemingway’s favorite fishing haunt, to Zubiri, the Basque “village of the Bridge.” The bucolic terrain was a dramatic change from the hike through the Pyrenees the prior two days: streams, pastures, and paths through shaded groves typified the Way today.

I passed through three or four tiny villages, following the shell markers — the symbol of the Camino — at every intersection. Though I mostly walked alone, I shared the path with many other pilgrims, and I grew increasingly comfortable offering friendly greetings.

In turn, I found comfort and fellowship in their friendly “buen Caminos.”

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I had started the day walking with Anne from California, with whom I had begun my Camino in Saint-Jean. She was walking much faster than me, so I let her go on ahead.

Then I sidled up to Crystal from Wisconsin, whom I’d met the previous night in Burgete. I liked talking to Crystal, and I was enjoying her irreverent humor … but as an introvert, I found myself feeling a need for quiet. So I let her go on ahead too, and slipped off by myself.

So I got to experience myself, alone, on the Camino, for the first time … for nearly 12 miles.

Be careful what you wish for! Without conversation to distract me, I was much more aware of my discomfort: my tired feet, a twinge in my hip, the weight of my pack, which somehow felt much more burdensome than it had while climbing nearly 5,000 feet over the Pyrenees.

The miles stretched on and on and on and every time I saw a distance marker, I was surprised — and dismayed — by how much more ground I had yet to cover.

It dawned on me: This is what I’ve signed up for. And this was only day 3. Another 475 miles to go.

I know: “Duh, Captain Obvious! What did you think you were getting into?” I love hiking, but believe me when I tell you: this is clearly something different.

This is not a day hike, with a destination and a car ride home and a day of rest the next day. This is steps. Step after step after step after step.

All day, every day.

And the next day. And every day after that.

I realized: there is no “destination,” because reaching that day’s destination only means I get to get up and do more of the same the next day. And though the Camino is beautiful, it is also uncomfortable.

And repetitive. Because all I am doing is walking.

And becoming a little too well acquainted with the thoughts in my head.

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They are the same thoughts, over and over. They are my inner narration, on a loop. And while I may walk with others and hear their thoughts for a time, eventually I am going to have to return to listen to my own.

Over and over and over. Ugh!

And yet I guess that is the point. To walk and walk, through the discomfort and monotony, to bear the weight, and to try to distract myself with the beauty in the world. To somehow find a way outside of my head.

There is no destination; each step is the destination. There is no point in rushing, because reaching the end point means the journey is over, and as uncomfortable as I am physically, as daunted as I am to realize that I will be doing this day after day, I don’t want this to be over yet, not for a long time.

Because right on the Camino path, hundreds of tiny sheep suddenly appeared, led by a shepherd who ushered them right past me.

Because even on the notoriously steep, jagged and slippery descent into Zubiri, strangers are smiling kindly at me, and I am realizing that we are all going through some version of the same thing.

Because at the communal dinner at the Albergue Suseia in Zubiri tonight, I found myself dining with a bunch of older guys who already seemed to know each other. I fully expected to be patronized and excluded.

Instead, they turned out to be a traveling band of retired military chaplains, who prompted a philosophical discussion about pain, war, meaning-making, joy, beauty, and music … with me. (A woman.)

Together we all talked, debated, questioned, and engaged each other well into the night. Another one of my preconceptions, shattered.

As the discussion wound down, one of them took a guitar down from the wall and we began singing songs from The Sound of Music. As the last note hung in the air, we all realized at the same moment what a marvelous Camino anthem “Climb Every Mountain” turns out to be.

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And then, after nearly a full day of walking by myself, I returned to my room and found a half-dozen texts from people I had met during the past two days, all inviting me to walk with them tomorrow to Pamplona.

After spending almost an entire day inside my own head, I’m grateful to realize that there are other people out there.

People who not only remember me, but who seem to want to spend time with me again, too. — April 20, 2023

Continue to Day 10: Crashing into Pamplona

This post is part of a weekly series following my walk on the
Camino de Santiago, a 500-mile pilgrimage route across northern Spain.

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Day 2: Borda to Burgete, 12 miles

I’m staring at a large pool of golden urine.

Not a puddle — a pool. It looks deep. And it’s clearly been here for a while.

It’s the “WC,” according to the letters on the other side of the low rock wall encircling the pool. And it’s just steps from the food truck that is the one source of food on this 12-mile pass over the Pyrenees.

I really need to relieve myself. But any of the dozens of pilgrims gathered hungrily around the food truck could easily look over the wall and see me using these “facilities.”

I cringe, drop my trousers at the edge of the pool, hold my breath, and go anyway.

Last night, in the Borda hostel, I remained awake after everyone else went to bed. Then I became the least-favorite pilgrim in the albergue when, while adjusting my phone alarm, the marimba ring tone went off at full volume. I winced as I heard the others toss and moan in their beds and prayed I wouldn’t be identified as the culprit in the morning.

I woke up feeling embarrassed and abashed, but those feelings dissipated as soon as I stepped out of the albergue.

There was the sunrise, bathing the Pyrenees in pink and golden light.

I caught my breath and remembered my realization the previous night: I live in this landscape now.

Tonight, I’ll be in a different albergue, and everything around me will change. Even the people I tormented with my blaring alarm.

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It’s just after 7 am, and Lorenzo, the proprietor of the Borda hostel, has prepared us a breakfast of fresh bread, coffee, fruits, juice and yogurt.

He’s also giving us a bagged lunch of jambon-beurre — a ham and cheese sandwich, upgraded the French way, with rich butter, seasoned ham, and Gruyère cheese. “There is no place to get food on the Way today, otherwise,” Lorenzo says.

“Except for a food truck,” he adds with a dubious expression.

Lynn and I set off together. Anne, the other member of our first-day trio, stayed at one of the other mountain albergues last night, but I am hoping she will catch up with us later. This is my “Camino family,” after all! I’m already counting on walking into Santiago with these two in about six weeks.

The incline is nearly constant, and we walk upward into winds between 25 and 30 miles an hour. We need to yell to be heard. Not to be disgusting, but the wind is actually whipping the snot out of my nose.

But the sky is gloriously clear, and the views are jaw-dropping … as is the sheer drop-off at the edge of the Camino path. And aside from some fences and outbuildings, there are almost no other signs of human civilization on today’s walk.

I can’t help but think that, had this route been in the US, you would be seeing vendors hawking food, beverages, and “merch” every 100 yards or so. But this path seems rough and untraveled, surprisingly so, given that tens of thousands of pilgrims walk it each year.

We pass shrines, statues, and a monument that heralds our arrival in Spain. The hills ring with the tinkling of the bells on the wild horses who inhabit these mountains.

Vultures are soaring overhead, graceful in their spirals as they ride the thermals. I am a little unnerved by their persistent presence — will they pick me off if I stop for a rest or go too slowly?

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Lynn and I join up with Eileen, a friendly and curious peregrina from New Jersey who is also walking on her own. And then we reconnect with the Australian trio of Karen, Steve (the diabetic), and Gai.

Suddenly, there’s a whole crew of us. I feel the warmth of companionship settle around me like a blanket. It’s an unfamiliar feeling for me but it feels so good.

I’ve never been comfortable in groups. As a child, I felt the sting of exclusion even within my own family, where silence was the preferred form of discipline. And as a teenager, I was repeatedly ostracized by cliques when I couldn’t crack their social code. Even as an adult, I have preferred one-on-one friendships, where the rules seem easier to understand.

But I feel fully accepted by these people. Everyone seems to want to help and support each other. There doesn’t seem to be any judgment here.

It feels novel. And amazing. I wish I could feel this way more often back home.

I have been guzzling water out of my 3-liter hydration pack all day, and all that water now has to go somewhere. I don’t want to veer off the side of the mountain to relieve myself. But soon that food truck that Lorenzo mentioned appears.

I join the hungry and thirsty walkers thronging the truck and buy myself a couple of hard-boiled eggs. I follow the WC sign — relief!

And nearly step into the pool of golden urine.

Oh dear lord.

I do my business and realize I don’t really want to eat those hard-boiled eggs, after all.

It seems like we will never crest the mountain, but then we do … and then we are going down, and down, and down. We pass a large stone memorial to a battle that took place here 1,100 years ago. Soon we reach the Roncesvalles monastery

The members of my little group are all staying in different places tonight, including the ancient monastery itself. I go a little further and aim for the next Spanish town on the Camino, Burgete, which was mentioned in The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, who celebrated the fishing in its fine stream.

Suddenly, I’m walking on my own. But after only two days in a Camino bubble, the solitude feels lonely. And strange.

And then I find Anne again. And Anne is chatting easily with Crystal from Wisconsin, and I’m already laughing at Crystal’s dry sense of humor. And then we meet Renata, a mysteriously enigmatic young woman from Romania.

The four of us head into town to get dinner and I again find myself talking and laughing with strangers who feel like long-lost friends.

When we leave the restaurant at 9 pm, the little town is almost completely silent. I maneuver myself into my top bunk, trying not to disturb the person snoring below me. I pop in my earplugs and set my alarm for 6 am … this time, without waking the entire albergue.

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My feet are sore. My legs are throbbing. My lower back is aching from the burden of the backpack.

But after just 48 hours, I am struck by how natural and right this rhythm is starting to feel, despite the pain. I’m doing just four things every day: Walking. Talking. Eating. Sleeping.

All four things feel equally necessary. And in that order.

What’s been missing from my life at home is the talking. Walking in step with others who are feeling the same aches, asking similar questions, moving in the same direction.

In the past two days, I’ve taken so many of these fellow walkers into my heart. And then I’ve said goodbye to them just a few hours later.

But the Camino seems to be binding us together even as we meet, then part, then meet again.

And somehow I feel more rooted in motion here than I do standing in one place.

—April 19, 2023

Continue to Day 9: Captain Obvious gets the memo

This post is part of a weekly series following my walk on the
Camino de Santiago, a 500-mile pilgrimage route across northern Spain.

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Day 1: Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Borda, 5.5 miles

There are days in your life, a precious few, that you wake with a sense of destiny.

The day you leave home. Your wedding day. The day you begin life as a parent.

I know, instantly upon awakening, that today — the day I take my first steps on the Camino de Santiago — is one of those days.

The communal dinner at the Beilari hostel in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port last night turned strangers into friends. Around me sat pilgrims from around the world: Canada, Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom, the US and France. One pilgrim had already walked 1,000 kilometers across Europe … after recovering from cancer!

Joseph, the hostel proprietor, had prepared a sumptuous vegan feast: lentil soup, two kinds of salads, and a vegetable bolognese. As the wine and conversation flowed, he sat down with us to enjoy the meal.

“If a song were to be written for your Camino,” he asked us, “what would the title be?”

I struggled with this; how to capture so much in a single phrase?

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I thought about the past three years, lost to the COVID pandemic that had begun in 2020. At first, the quarantine had felt like a reprieve. I was 55, had just sent my last child off to college, and had just been relieved of my job.

I wasn’t sure what came next, and I was grateful to have the option to burrow inward rather than think about the future. I felt oddly suspended in time.

But the space within me felt unsettled as well.

As I peered ahead to my late 50s, I still felt small and constrained, long past the time when I should have “stepped into my power.” I realized that I had been living inside an invisible box.

Not just since the beginning of COVID, but for most of my adult life.

I had grown up in a tidy suburban home that had looked perfect from the outside, but had concealed so much pain. Alcoholism. Eating disorders. Unprocessed rage and shame. Intergenerational trauma that was spawning more hurt people who felt like they didn’t matter.

People who believed that if they silenced themselves, they could avoid the worst of it. People who desperately sought safety amid the fray.

“People.” Right. I mean “me.”

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I’d been the girl who made my family look good, and as an adult, I had gone on to do the same. I had quieted my voice so that others could feel seen and heard. I kept my head down.

If I had creative leanings, I signed my children up for art classes. If I sought to express myself, I wrote marketing copy instead.

I worked to ensure that others were happy, because, of course, wasn’t their happiness mine as well?

And some of it was. Anything that made my children happy also filled me with joy. But I was too busy, or too tired, or too frightened of the ache within, to respond to my own longings as well.

The pilgrims around the table were smiling kindly at me. I knew very little about them; they knew very little about me. But I could see the spark of humanity within each of them. And I knew from their expressions that they could also see mine.

“‘Emergence,’” I replied to Joseph’s question. If there were a name for the song the Camino was stirring within me, that would be it.

Maybe the person I’d become wasn’t the entirety of who I was.

Maybe I was about to find out.

The next morning I wake at 6:30 am to the sound of ecclesiastical chants and the glow of early-morning light.

The other pilgrims in the room are already up and quietly gathering their things. My heart quickens. Am I already running late?

I climb out of bed and join the momentum. I am already mostly dressed, having slept in the garb that I’m going to wear today. I brush my teeth and dry my face with my barely-absorbent microfiber towel.

As I enter the dining room for breakfast, there’s a purposeful energy in the room. A few pilgrims are finishing their last bites of fruit and bread, while others have already departed for the Way.

Most of them, I realize, are attempting to walk the 15.5 miles up and over the Pyrenees today, to the Roncesvalles monastery on the other side of the mountains.

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For many, it’s a herculean effort that must begin at dawn. There’s a nearly 5,000-foot ascent to the highest point on the pass … an exhaustingly steep climb.

I am not doing that. There are just a couple of small hostels midway over the Pyrenees, and if you have the obsessive foresight to book one of them months in advance, as I did, you can break that arduous first day into two.

I look over at the two American women who remain in the dining room with me: Anne from California, and Lynn from Virginia. They’re both staying on the mountain tonight too.

We draw together in the way that solo female travelers do when we find each other in the wild. “You’re walking with me,” Lynn says, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

As we step out of the albergue, Joseph takes a moment to adjust my pack. I am astonished at the difference he just made: my Osprey Lumina suddenly feels almost melded to my body.

Lynn, Anne and I share an exhilarated glance. And just like that, we are walking down the cobblestone street and through the Gate of Saint James, and onto the Camino itself.

The moment is both ordinary — and magical.

We march out of town, our hiking poles clicking, the three of us conversing easily, as if we’ve known each other for years. Almost immediately, we are striding up a gently ascending road, past red-and-white Basque homes on the edge of town. Soon, we are high in the hills as the sounds of civilization begin to fade. Sunlight spills into the valley; birdsong fills the air.

Just a few days earlier, it had been pouring rain in this area. Today, we reap the reward of those downpours: the hillsides are iridescent green and dotted with wildflowers. It is fairytale-lovely.

We pass horses, sheep, and well-tended cottages, and soon we are above the low clouds. I glance upward: there are paragliders in the sky, flying over the Pyrenees! My heart soars upward to meet them.

“We are really doing this,” my new friends and I remind each other. “We made it; we are here. We are on the Way!”

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Eventually the road turns into a footpath and we follow the signs to the Borda albergue. We walk past a herd of wild horses; the tinkling bells around their necks are meant to help pilgrims avoid them in the fog. We finally reach the hostel, a restored shepherds’ hut powered by solar panels.

Lorenzo, the former pilgrim who renovated the century-old building himself, welcomes us and shows us to our sleeping pods. As more pilgrims arrive, I notice a few familiar faces, including an Australian trio who had also stayed in Belairi: married couple Karen and Steve, and their sister-in-law Gai, Steve’s brother’s widow.

Ah, I recall. Steve is the diabetic who is traveling with a refrigerated case of insulin all the way to Santiago.

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As I haul my belongings into my pod, I gaze at the mountain peaks and plunging valley just steps away from my window. Tomorrow, we ascend another 600 meters to one of the highest points on the Camino, and then down into Spain.

The sun is low in the sky, and it’s time to head over to dinner in the restored barn. Lorenzo, a former chef, has prepared for us a hearty meal of lamb stew, potatoes, cheese, bread and a Basque gâteau.

I don’t skimp on dessert. I decide that from here to Santiago, I am going to enjoy every delicacy placed before me. It seems only right, given that I have another 772 kilometers to go.

As night falls, I pause outside and gaze out over the valley. The sky is glowing. The birds have quieted, the stars are starting to shimmer, and the mountain air is cold, crisp and clear.

For the next two months, this landscape will be my home. I will sleep indoors, but I will live in this expanse all day, every day.

The Way is the only home big enough for my spirit right now — these mountains, this wind, this path that goes on and on.

Maybe this is what emergence feels like. Coming home. — April 18, 2023

Continue to Day 8: No bathrooms, no privacy, and no ‘merch’

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After so many years of reading, planning, dreaming, and then resurrecting thwarted dreams, the thrill of arriving in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port today is indescribable.

It’s like stepping into a fairytale, but the magic is real. It’s the magic of hope, humanity, possibility, joy, adventure.

I can’t do justice to this place in words. The images capture some of the physical beauty. But standing here, surrounded by pilgrims from around the world as they prepare to ascend a sacred path into the mountains, I feel the energy of rebirth. It’s emanating from every pilgrim I see.

The bus ride from Biarritz offered a hint of the beauty ahead: soaring green mountains, rushing rivers, ancient family farms and misty verdant hillsides, all alive with the joy of spring. But when I disembark at the medieval gate — the same gate through which I will be setting off tomorrow — I am almost speechless with wonder.

There it is, the footbridge over the River Nive, that I have seen in so many pictures! And ahead of me is the Rue de la Citadelle, the town’s cobblestoned main street, ascending so far up the hill that I cannot see where it ends.

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Pilgrims fill the streets, their hiking poles clicking over the age-old stones. As I step into the town, I am met with the pealing of bells, the sound of music, and the murmur of conversations in different languages.

I may have had a few bonbons in Biarritz, but arriving in Saint-Jean feels like I have been presented with an entire box of chocolates and been given permission to eat every last one.

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I join the line outside the official pilgrims’ office to get my credencial, the passport-like booklet that will allow me to stay at the pilgrim-only hostels on the route.

Everyone in line is buzzing with excitement. I meet a plumber from Sweden, a doctor from Mexico, an accountant from Germany, and Dave and Jeannie, a young couple from Arkansas.

“We only have two weeks, so we’re going to walk to Logroño and come back next year to do more,” Dave said.

“My parents are watching our kids,” Jeannie added. “We didn’t want to wait until they were older to do this!”

That’s what I had done — waited until my kids were grown to do my Camino. But now I realize I really hadn’t had to wait so long. Don’t wait until everyone else is taken care of to do what you really want to do, I silently tell myself.

Eventually, I reach the front of the line. The ancient French gentleman at the desk smiles. “What is the purpose of your Camino?” he asks. “Spiritual, or adventure?”

“A little of both, I think!” I reply.

And then, with a twinkling “Buen Camino!”, he delivers my credential’s momentous first stamp.

I step out of the office and realize I’ve crossed a threshold. My Camino is finally happening, and I am truly a pilgrim now.

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I check into my albergue, Gite Beilari, and pass through the tiled front hallway. The guesthouse is already pungent with the aroma of tonight’s communal dinner. Joseph, the proprietor, tells me to leave my backpack downstairs and bring only the items I’ll be using overnight upstairs with me. “To guard against bedbugs,” he said.

My eyes widen. Bedbugs? I obediently place my toiletries in a tray and take it up to my assigned room.

As I come back down, I pause to read the sign at the foot of the stairs.

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Joseph tells me there are 12 of us staying here tonight. Tonight we’ll all meet at the long farmhouse table for dinner. I suddenly feel shy, captured by that schoolgirl’s fear … will they like me? I hope at least some of them will. Maybe I will meet my “Camino family” here!

I then head to the pilgrims supply store just a few doors down to pick up a rain poncho and a pair of walking poles. With a couple of hours to kill before the 7:30 pm dinner, I traipse around town and over the ramparts that surround the village.

I continue to pinch myself. I also wonder: Do I really deserve this experience? Shouldn’t I be putting somebody else forward to have it instead? What about those at home who are fearful for me? Is it OK that I am pursuing this experience despite their anxiety?

A small, tiny voice inside of me is trying to say “yes.”

Tomorrow, I start walking. Those mountains in the picture are the ones I will be crossing tomorrow. The weather looks to be beautiful.

And I can’t wait to take that first step. —April 17, 2023

Continue to Day 7: I didn’t know how small I’d become until I began the Way

This post is part of a weekly series following my walk on the
Camino de Santiago, a 500-mile pilgrimage route across northern Spain.

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Well, the French train strike didn’t strike me! I have made it to Biarritz, an impossibly elegant little beach town on the southwest coast of France.

As I step out of the train station, I take in the palm trees, the Atlantic breeze, the salty sea air. I’m imagining an era of 1920s glamour: European royalty flocking to seaside casinos. Stage and screen stars exchanging sophisticated banter. Champagne flutes clinking over baccarat tables.

I glance down at my Patagonia jacket and trail runners. I’m a little underdressed.

I watch the station empty as my fellow passengers board cabs bound for Biarritz proper. I’m tempted to call a cab myself, but I remember that I am a pilgrim now … une pèlerine.

No taxicab for me. I’ll be walking the two miles into town.

Just beyond the train station, I pass a vending machine selling condoms by the side of the road. I marvel at the many varieties on offer. It is France, I think to myself.

My Camino starts in just two days. But right now my backpack is feeling increasingly heavy as I trudge into Biarritz, from where I’ll catch my bus to Saint-Jean tomorrow. Is there anything I can do to lighten it? It’s a warm afternoon — can I send the merino leggings and the puffy vest back home? Maybe as spring progresses, those cold-weather items will become superfluous.

I can only hope. I packed as scrupulously as I could for this Camino, counting ounces the way others count carbs. I even cut my soap bar in half and (no joke) trimmed the tags off my clothes. My pack weighs just 15 pounds, but the straps are already cutting into my shoulders, and I am not even carrying any water. And I’m not even walking uphill … yet.

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I set those thoughts (and my pack) aside upon my arrival at my lovely little hotel, Le Maison du Lierre. The courtyard is overflowing with rosebushes and tropical plants. I sink into an indulgent papasan chair and close my eyes. I don’t really want to get up, let alone put my pack back on.

Eventually, though, I do drag myself (and my pack) up the hotel’s gracious stairway into the old-world lobby. The clerk gives me an unexpectedly warm smile, and offers me an upgraded top-floor room and a small box of chocolates. Bonbons? Pour moi?

The bonbons are consumed before I make it to the first landing.

Eventually the pack and I make it up the stairs, and I open the door to a sun-swept, spacious room … well beyond anything a humble pélerine should expect. I am delighted with my orange-accented quarters, the well-appointed bathroom, the view outside my window! I pour myself a cup of tea and drink in the view of the town and the deep-blue sea.

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I then head out to explore the area. I am a scant 15 minutes from the coast.

Biarritz is lovely. Ornate pastel-colored buildings line the winding streets. The exteriors are finessed with wrought-iron balconies and fanciful trim. Biarritz was once the summer retreat of Napoleon III and his wife, the Princess Eugénie, and the town still exudes a casually regal air. Putting the “ritz” in Biarritz, if you will.

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I join the pedestrians as they stroll past surfing boutiques, gourmet food shops, and high-end fashion stores. The cafe terraces are open, despite the still-cool April breeze. The town seems to be shedding its winter skin.

Eventually I reach the Plage Port-Vieux de Biarritz, a beach tucked into a cove just outside the town center. I follow the steps down to the sea. I take off my shoes and dip my toes in the cool, crystal-clear water. I notice a middle-aged woman sunbathing topless near me.

The coastline is gorgeous. Stunning rock formations have been sculpted into a beautiful promenade that extends for miles. I walk as far as I can, taking in the sparkling surf, the turquoise-blue waters, the seagulls swirling against the sky.

I walk and walk, casting my eyes westward, where the Pyrenees glow blue in the fading light. Two days from now, I will climb up and over them as I begin my Camino.

I am a little intimidated. Those mountains are bigger than I expected, and they will test every ounce in my pack. I try to calculate the difficulty: the elevation, the miles, the weight on my legs and back.

But mountains do not care about concerns and trepidations.

They simply wait for us to begin.

— April 16, 2023

Continue to Day 6: Standing at the gateway
to the Field of Stars

This post is part of a weekly series following my walk on the
Camino de Santiago, a 500-mile pilgrimage route across northern Spain.

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I’m facing a choice: starve, or be humiliated.

Humiliated, as in withering into the floorboards while my cheeks turn cherry-red.

Humiliated, in a way I haven’t been since middle school.

Such is my fear of speaking French ... in Paris.

I never studied French, and my accent is execrable. And I have a completely irrational fear of the disdain the French reportedly heap upon those who cannot speak their cherished language properly.

But I am hungry, and all I’ve had to eat since I arrived in Paris yesterday is a pastry and a crepe that I bought from a fast-food restaurant last night. The shop seemed low-risk: I figured I wouldn’t have to talk much, if at all. And if I did have to speak, I wouldn’t be in there long enough to leave a lasting negative impression.

To my relief, the guy behind the counter spoke Greek, my mother’s native tongue. I’m not afraid of getting yelled at in Greek because in my experience, that’s how Greeks express love.

So I pointed at a crepe and thanked him, in Greek. He didn’t yell, and I emerged from the shop with my dignity intact.

But I have a whole additional day in Paris before I catch my train to Biarritz tomorrow to begin the Camino de Santiago.

And at some point, I’m going to have to ask for food.

It’s time. If I am going to die of embarrassment, I might as well do so with a croissant in my stomach.

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I look out the window of my hotel room and peer at the plaza below. There are awnings set up across the street. And I realize it’s Saturday, and that it must be a market ... a French market! Right outside my hotel door!

I step outside and follow the locals as they file under the awnings. And what I discover is indeed a market … but it is NOTHING like the local farmers’ markets in the US.

A million kinds of cheeses. Fresh, gorgeous fillets of salmon. Sausages. Mushrooms of all kinds. Artisanal breads.

I walk up and down the aisle at least three times, my head swiveling from vendor to vendor. My eyes are as big as the little street urchin’s from Les Miserables.

But asking for a sandwich, or anything of any substance, feels far too risky. What if they give me tripe instead of ham? Better to keep it simple.

I spot a small basket of raspberries, bursting ripe and red. I point impulsively at the fruit and smile apologetically at the vendor.

Of course, he is thrilled to sell me these berries. And it’s clear that he couldn’t care less whether I speak French. Nor does the cheese sommelier, the artisanal truffle maker, or the blood-sausage purveyor.

Munching on my eclectic lunch, I’m hit with the obvious realization: a Euro nets a smile in any language.

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With my stomach full, I find other things to be nervous about. There’s an ongoing rail strike. Will my train even leave the Montparnasse train station tomorrow? And can I even find the train station?

I can easily picture myself bumbling around Paris, wearing my huge backpack, afraid to ask for directions to the station, and missing my train. Assuming there is a train.

If I’m going to get lost, better to get lost today.

Monsieur Google helps me find the station. But it’s overwhelming and enormous, with trains departing to all corners of France and travelers rushing about. It’s just like Grand Central Station in New York City ... except that everything is in French.

I open up Google Translate and give myself a quick French lesson. I memorize the words, take a deep breath, and approach a ticket window.

“Bonjour, je ne parle pas français,” I stammer to the middle-aged ticket taker. “Parlez-vous anglais s’il vous plaît?” I don’t speak French. Do you speak English?

I hold my breath.

The ticket taker raises her eyebrows and smiles at my attempted French. “Not so bad!” she replies in English.

Seriously? “Not so bad?” I bask in this completely unexpected praise as she explains tomorrow’s route.

Well, look at me, I think. I’ve bought food for myself AND I just navigated one of Paris’s biggest train stations. I am grinning like I just got a wink from a secret crush.

Maybe I should push myself a little farther. Maybe ... I should try (mon dieu!) to take the Paris Metro.

That is, if I want to see anything else in Paris besides my hotel and the train station.

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It’s getting to be a bit too late in the day to tackle the Louvre or stand in line for the Eiffel Tower. But I’ve always been fascinated by the Montmartre area of Paris, that wild bohemian district featured in the film Moulin Rouge. And Sacre-Coeur, that domelike cathedral that hovers like an apparition on a hill overlooking all of Paris.

But getting there will require either a cab (the easy but expensive way) or the Metro. I am suddenly resolved: I’m taking the Metro. I ask Madame Ticket-Taker for more directions and she pleasantly sends me on my way.

Disembarking in Montmartre, I encounter yet another cinematic scene: a carousel thronging with laughing children, artists selling their creations, vendors hawking souvenirs and all sorts of treats. I wander along ancient cobble-stoned streets, turning into little alleyways left and right.

Finally before me is Sacre-Coeur, not an apparition at all but a gleaming monumental wedding cake of domes and arches, perched at the highest spot in Paris.

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Inside, the basilica is just as impressive, vast and serene, filled with sculptures and light. But I want more. I want all of Paris now. So I climb to the top of the building, nearly 300 steps up a tiny winding staircase.

The way is lined with amusing signage in both French and English: “Good luck for the rise! 236 more steps!” “Courage! Only 160 more steps!” (Merci! More courage, s’il vous plaît!)

I emerge from the winding staircase into the light and I see it: all of Paris spread before me. I am nearly overwhelmed by the view, and that is not actually a good thing, because the only thing standing between me and a 300-foot fall to the ground is a mere half-height wall.

My head spins, and I feel my knees buckle. I press my back against the wall to manage the vertigo.

Going down is even more disconcerting. I climb down a duplicate of the same narrow staircase, but this time without railings. I make it to the bottom without falling down the stairs.

The day is getting long, and I remember: I have to get up early tomorrow to catch that train to Biarritz. I make my way back to my hotel (again via the Metro!) as the sun sets.

But first, I buy a myself a huge pistachio-encrusted chocolate ice cream cone … this time, without fear. — April 15, 2023

Continue to Day 5: But first, bonbons in Biarritz

This post is part of a weekly series following my walk on the
Camino de Santiago, a 500-mile pilgrimage route across northern Spain.

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This post is part of a series following my 500-mile walk on the
Camino de Santiago. Start on Day 1 here.

For so long, my life had felt like a sealed room.

Then I turned the doorknob and found it unlocked. And just like that, here I am — in Paris.

It has been so long since I have traveled like this: backpack on my back, for months on end, relying solely on myself for support and company. “This,” I remember thinking back then. “This is how I want to live.”

But that was when I was 23. Before graduate school, career, kids, taxes, college bills, aging parents, mortgages, car and home repairs …. all the endless things that drain the spirit, year by year and drip by drip. Until you look in the mirror one day and see a tight, wistful face and a distant look of longing in your eyes. Who am I? Where did I go?

I am now 57. And there is still longing.

But now, there is also light.

As my plane lands at Charles de Gaulle Airport, I gaze out at the horizon. It’s a rainy day in Paris. Even so, this white sky feels open and expansive, rather than oppressive.

I am thinking about a poem by Charles Bukowski that I recently discovered: The Laughing Heart.

your life is your life
don't let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can't beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

And today, the gods’ wait is over.

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I’m no stranger to travel. I’ve taken plenty of trips with my family and for work. But this journey — to Paris, and then to southwest France to begin walking the 500-mile Camino de Santiago — feels uniquely giddy and electrifying.

I summon my inner 23-year-old as I head to the baggage claim to retrieve my backpack. (It made it! What a relief!). I pass through customs (They let me in! I’m really here!). I head into the airport bathroom to clean up. (Do the locals think I’m weird for brushing my teeth in public?)

I’m also remembering my terror of the Parisians’ disdain toward those with a lousy French accent. (That would be me.) So there is some part of me that is afraid to even open my mouth, even to ask “Parlez-vous anglaise?” I wait to be punished.

And yet … here is a friendly airport worker, telling me (in English, without a hint of disapproval) how to take the Metro from the airport to my hotel. Merci! I make my way to the airport station and get on the correct train. As I board, I’m careful not to let my bulky backpack brush against the fashionably dressed Parisians. When I disembark at Gare Montparnasse, I feel a French frisson of achievement.

I have to walk forever underground to find the exit to the street. I climb the steps and emerge above ground … and I am dumbstruck at the kaleidoscopic scene at the top.

Tiny European cars are whirling around the roundabout. Young people are whizzing by on their scooters. Stylish brasseries and bistros anchor the street corners, beckoning guests to their outdoor tables. Buckets of cut flowers, dripping after the fresh rain, spill out of small grocery shops. Tiny patisseries tempt me to stop and savor their macarons, eclairs, and tarts. I feel like I have been dropped into a scene from the movie Amélie.

And the people: they are speaking French. And they have these faces that are so … French. And they wear beautiful, idiosyncratic scarves, flung around their necks, just like people who are … French! And their little dogs wear puffer jackets.

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I walk down side streets, my head swiveling as I look for my hotel, the Odessa Montparnasse. There’s some sort of ungodly wonderful aroma emanating from a corner boulangerie. My mouth waters, but I am a bit anxious to find the hotel. There it is, on a corner with an outdoor cafe. I have made it! Another frisson of pride.

The guy at the front desk isn’t rude at all and I breathe a sigh of relief. He checks me in and points me toward the stairs. I hike up to the third floor and open the door to a small, crisp room that is all mine. I peer out the window to see the café down below. Maybe I’ll have my breakfast out there tomorrow morning: coffee, jam and croissants. My petit déjeuner!

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I drop my backpack and head out to explore the city. I point myself in the direction of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, a couple of miles away. (What’s a few miles? I’ll soon be walking 500 of them … better start now!).

There’s no getting into the cathedral, since it is still being repaired after the fire that nearly gutted it in 2019. The amount of scaffolding around Our Lady is truly a sight to behold.

But there’s a fascinating exhibit outside the church about the restoration work. I’m intrigued to learn that robots are being used not only to clear the rubble from the cathedral, but to determine the exact location from which it fell.

After absorbing all I can, I look down and notice something strange.

A shell symbol embedded in the pavement. No other markers, no other signs. Just this little medallion with the symbol of the Camino de Santiago. What is it doing, HERE? I feel a prickle go up my neck.

It turns out that there is a Camino route that begins in Paris, right outside the cathedral. I had no idea.

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Back in my hotel room, I empty the contents of my backpack onto the floor as I root around for what I will need for the night. I am still a little confused as to how I will use these items. I have brought only two changes of clothes, and I am wearing one of them.

So I’ll sleep in the clothes that I will wear tomorrow. I’ll rinse out my underwear in the sink, and I’ll use a shampoo bar for laundry, hair and body.

The amount of gear that I have brought feels scanty. And even so, I worry that it will be too much.

Falling into bed, I marvel at the miracle of travel, and also at the miracle of simply being here.

And then I realize: it isn’t just that I have made it to Paris.

It’s that I’ve stepped into a version of myself that, in all the tasking of adulthood, I thought had irrevocably slipped away.

It turns out she’s been there all along. A little uncertain. A little scared. But fully awake as to who, and where, she is.

It’s no longer a dream. Because tomorrow, I get to do it all over again … in Paris.
—April 14. 2023

Continue to Day 4: I went to Paris and I was too afraid to eat

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This post is part of a weekly series following my walk on the
Camino de Santiago, a 500-mile pilgrimage route across northern Spain.

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It is surreal to be traveling internationally again. Especially taking this sort of journey. I have not really done anything like this since I was 23, before marriage, career, and children: Traveling for months. Carrying all my necessities on my back. Moving as the spirit moves me, and only me.

My mind reels with questions and anxieties.

I am 57 years old. Can I still do this? Am I too old? Or am I just in time?

We will find out.

For now, there is just the next thing: and that is to board that plane.

I'll fly into Paris and make my way to the Montparnasse district, where I’ve booked a tiny room in a small hotel. There, I will spend two days getting over jet lag. I will explore Paris a little, then catch a train to the southwestern coastal city of Biarritz.

Then I will catch a shuttle to the tiny French village of Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, the official start of the Camino.

And then I shall begin walking nearly 500 miles to the coast of northwest Spain, on foot. — April 13, 2023

Continue to Day 3: At 57, I stepped out of my ‘settled’ life
— and found myself in Paris

This post is part of a weekly series following my walk on the
Camino de Santiago, a 500-mile pilgrimage route across northern Spain.

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