This Could Be the Start of Something

There is something about this time of year that always makes me restless. Some call these the dog days of summer, others call this the month of August, but as the sky changes and the light takes on an anticipation . . . of something of which I am never certain, my soul yearns for that something. Some of my best adventures have begun this time of year. In a way, I’m always reminded of shipping off to band camp, my first experience living in a dormitory, on the campus of the Schreiner Institute, in Kerrville. It was regimented, yet very liberating, not my first time leaving home but certainly one which I looked forward to each August of my high school years.

It was August when I ran away and joined Carson and Barnes Circus in the early 1970s. The track was almost true north, picking up day one of K.L. King marches and the Grand Opening number of “Procession of the Sardar” from Ippolitov-Ivanov’s “Caucasian Sketches” in a little town somewhere in Illinois, or was it Indiana? I lived in a tent with my girlfriend Margaret, later to be my wife, a liberating experience which lasted for a month before we packed up and headed back to Austin. The change of the sky, the light of Northern Latitudes, had been intoxicating, and something of that followed us home and into the month of September, the promise of August.

August was also the month, under that same restless sky and distinctive angle of light, that Margaret and I ran away from Texas and joined an orchestra in Mexico City. It had a similar feel to joining the circus 10 years earlier. Yes, there’s something about this time of year which suggests to the inner me migration.

Two years ago, I was sitting at this same computer, agitated by the approach of an adventure long dreamed of but planned in what seemed a hasty manner. Was I doing the right thing? I say that the adventure had long been dreamed, but the specifics had only come to light a few months earlier as I wondered over my approaching 70^th birthday. Maybe I should do something special, out of the ordinary special, but what? I began to see clues which sent me googling “camino de santiago,” though I had no clear idea what that was. A plan began to form as I pored over Google Maps, trying to wrap my mind around walking from a small place in France, called Saint Jean Pied de Port, to an historic shrine 500 miles from St. Jean, the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela. One midsummer night in 2018 I finally clicked the mouse on an itinerary, replete with non-refundable flight reservations – Austin to Dallas to London to Bayonne, FR, and a similarly non-direct itinerary which would get me back to Austin, then San Antonio, in early October. The die was cast. I had committed to walking the Camino de Santiago, but really? Doubts almost immediately crowded me, a classic manic-depressive episode.