It’s been just about two months since I returned from one of the greatest adventures in my 70 years (and counting). After 34 days walking from St. Jean Pied de Port to Santiago de Compostela, taking a rest day, then another 4 days walking to Finesterre, you might think my adventure over. Yes, I began to disconnect once I boarded a plane to London (with a day and a half to spend in a city which really demands another couple of weeks). The flight back to Texas a few days later, cocooned into economy class, distanced me further from the Camino de Santiago.

Would this be like so many past vacations, fading away as everyday routine once again took over? I had been warned that the old would feel totally unfamiliar, and it did. Of course, certain routines came back without missing a beat. Driving the car, grocery shopping, feeding and coddling the dogs and, of course, producing my weekly radio show. These all grabbed me as though the previous 7 weeks had been just a dream.

I began to unpack the Osprey backback which had served me well, but the act seemed unnatural. I left it still half packed, thinking any day I would be back on the Camino, any camino, walking 12-14-20 miles. My body craved the activity, but it now seemed a luxury, to devote 5-10 hours every day with one purpose only, to get from point A to point B. How did I do that for the better part of two months? It still seems a different world, but one I can’t turn loose.

Thanks to friends and family who encourage me to tell my tales. Recall still seems sharp, even as the reality of what I did is challenged by my own wonder – did I really walk 500 miles? How is that possible? A day at a time, I answer, and in one of those aha moments I take inventory of what I know now that I didn’t know before. The lessons continue to resurface, as though I am once again finding them under the big Spanish sky, or within the dense Spanish forests. Does this road go on forever?

I’ve now unpacked most everything, though I am still finding notes, receipts from the many albergues I stayed in, some with a bed assignment number penciled in. The task of gathering into one place the almost 5000 pictures I took is still more often waylayed by my wanting to linger over so many of them. The same with audio captured along the way. I have just about identified all of the interviews, short and long, gathered from St. Jean to Finesterre. I fear a few have been lost. The recorder’s memory card hit full somewhere along the way though the recorder pretended it was still recording. It took me several days to realize this, dump everything into external storage, but with scant hope of ever sitting alongside the Camino and recording those conversations again. I must trust my own memory to recall those moments.

Bit by bit, I am devising ways to share pictures and video in creative ways. I have assembled no photo albums such as Pablo Valcarcel recently did, but will get it done some cold and rainy day when nothing else places demands on my attention. That said, I did just finish and publish to YouTube this little ditty. Perhaps you’ll enjoy the layering of a video of couples swing dancing in Pamplona’s Plaza del Castillo with a short excerpt from Ernest Hemingway’s breakout novel, “The Sun Also Rises.”

Check it out here and let me know what you think. If you like it, feel free to share it. Other memorbilia will begin to find spaces on the internet. I’ll also continue to write to this blog as a way of reliving the experience and to encourage anyone looking for a great adventure to at the very least think about placing the Camino de Santiago on their bucket list. Enough! Here’s the Pamplona video I promised.