Every Great Idea Has a Beginning

For several years I have enjoyed monthly, then bi-monthly lunches with a small group of retirees from Texas Public Radio. The luncheons are currently on COVID hold, but in those earlier days the six of us would use the opportunity to get caught up, including recounting or previewing recent or fast approaching adventures, usually travel related. One might tell of a recent vacation to Vienna, another of two weeks in Maine. It always seemed everyone was going somewhere. Despite a yearly trip I make to Colorado, I began feeling a bit of vacation deficit. Sometime in 2017, it was suggested we go around the table with our plans for future adventure. When my turn came, I blurted out something about walking the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage. My proclamation was greeted mostly by blank stares. No one had much idea of what I was talking about, and at that point that included me.

The idea would come and go, though Google searches for “Camino de Santiago” became more numerous, followed by browsing air fares and other Camino related expenses. I’m frugal by nature, unless it is to do with buying books and recordings, so these searches both tempted and frightened me. One night I found a great air fare, the first one I thought was affordable. I bookmarked the offer as I considered the hoops that needed to be cleared before I could commit. Can my sister Kay house and dog sit for me? Will my supervisor at Texas Public Radio (I was and still am producing recurring freelance work for the station) be amenable to my being out of the country for seven weeks? I froze, then stepped back and punted, aka procrastination. Even though I still hadn’t cleared my homeside obligations, I went back to the bookmarked budget air fare. It had doubled. So much for the Camino de Santiago.

But by now this had become something of an obsession. I ran the idea past my sister Kay; she said yes, she would house and dog sit, but I still put off getting any further permissions . . . until one night I made the rounds again of Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, considering every itinerary I could imagine. Nothing, until one night I put together my own flight package using Google Travel and found something that seemed affordable. Bingo! I cleared the final homeside hurdles, then closed the deal with the click of a mouse. I had traveled to Europe twice previously, but always as part of a musical ensemble. A tour manager took care of the details, but now the burden was on my back. Could this itinerary really work? It involved several airport transfers in London and then, how in the world do I get from Bayonne, FR to St. Jean Pied de Port, the beginning of my walk. Bayonne was the end of the air roads. I would from there be on my own, making it up as I walked.

But first, I needed some equipment, and training. I hit the pavement in San Antonio, carrying increasingly heavy loads in my backpack, wondering what it would be like. I began to blog about the challenge ahead, piquing the curiosity of a wide range of friends. Now I’ve done it! There’s no way out but to put my feet to the ground and walk 500 miles, maybe more.

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.

It’s been a great 42 days I’ve spent in Spain, well, the first day was in France, walking the amazing Camino de Santiago. I started this odyssey months ago, searching for the appropriate adventure with which to celebrate my 70th birthday. Funny, no other decade crossing birthdays had ever compelled me to do something big, I mean really big. But this one felt different. Inspired by what I saw of others who were doing great trekking ventures, and challenged by what I began reading of the Camino de Santiago, French Way, I began dreaming of such a marker for the turn into my 8th decade.

I finally said it out loud a year ago as I vacationed with siblings in Colorado. No one seemed particularly stunned. I think they just thought it was a “thing” that I would forget about. And I almost did, until one of the every other month lunches with a group of friends, all of whom would come to the table with tales of their latest vacations to at times distant lands. It was my turn. I told them I was going to walk 500 miles to celebrate turning 70. That’s interesting, was the overall reaction, and nothing more was said.

The trip was almost aborted as I juggled air fares and other expenses and found my propensity for frugality was making it difficult to move forward. I became paralyzed at the thought of such expenses, not to mention finding a dog/housesitter and getting permission to be absent from other obligations for almost 7 weeks. In the end, I finally bit the bullet and started booking flights, usually getting to the point of entering credit card numbers, then back-peddling. One night, I finally pulled the trigger, loosing a flood of doubts, mostly whether it was within my physical means to walk 500 miles.

The early days of the Camino, starting with a strenuous day one up and over the Pyrenees, did nothing to allay my fears. Blisters rose on my heels, then the balls of my feet. My right knee reminded me of a previous running injury. My sister Kay, dogsitting my mutts, responded to my litany of injuries and doubts: “You’re not going to quit, are you?” The thought of a DNF (did not finish) prompted me to keep walking. I nursed the blisters, wrapped the bad knee in an ACE wrap, and kept going.

In the month or so before D-Day, I had wondered, often out loud to anyone who would listen, that nothing I had ever done prepared me for consecutive days of walking 12-20 miles per day. How would I feel at 50 miles, 100? On the Camino those answers were revealed. I kept walking, aimlessly lost a few times, but I kept going. One hundred miles became 250, a week became 3 weeks, I kept walking. Thanks to new made friends Pat and Margaret, I managed to stay mostly on the right track. Thanks to Pablo, I grew to respect the other walkers, everyone walking a different Camino. Thanks to Louise and Max for the many times we shared our varied intentions.

More than a few days on particularly rough trail reminded me that I was a twisted ankle or knee, or an inadvertent stumble, from the dreaded DNF. The only proof of mission accomplished would be arriving at Santiago de Compostela, perhaps even presenting my Pilgrim Passport as evidence I might be awarded the Compostela.

On the final day of the Camino de Santiago (I would go on to walk four days further to Finisterre) I walked a number of kilometers with Sami, a Canadian doctor. We were startled at one point to see an EasyJet descending just above our heads, landing at the Santiago airport. Today I came full circle, one of what I’m sure will eventually connect other completed circles. As my Ryanair jet to London taxied the Santiago runway for takeoff I looked out the window to see the Camino, the exact spot where EasyJet had startled on that final day to Santiago. Ryanair turned 180 degrees to make its powerful dash, then leap, into the space above. As we became airborne I said my farewell to Espana, at least for now. Thanks to St. James for his plentiful gifts.

This lacks the cinematic grandeur of the scene in “The Way” but it does show that specacle plays a part in the Pilgrims’ Mass at the magnificent Santiago Cathedral. And yes, it was thrilling to be there. Hope y’all enjoy this.

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I arrived early to get into the Santiago Cathedral for the noon Pilgrim’s Mass. 10:20 turned out to be plenty early and I suspect on this particular day even 11 am would have worked. I look around at 10:52 and there are still many places to sit. This cathedral, from the 13th Century, is on a grand scale. I posted pictures yesterday from the outside. Now inside, I still haven’t found any sort of bearing point in order to know how the interior relates to the exterior.

I wait in this magnificent space in awe of its antiquity and aware of the inseparable mix of myth, religion, history, and spiritual value found here and in so many of the other chuches and cathedrals I have seen in this journey of 34 days over a distance of 500 miles. The pews are now beginning to fill as a woman’s voice comes over the PA warning us against using flash on our cameras, but also shushing us with a “sssss” which overwhelms the murmering of the growing congregation of pilgrims.

Is it sacriligious to say within this cathedral, or even within the city of Santiago, that my pilgrimage has not been religious in nature? As I discussed yesterday with fellow pilgrim Sami, a doctor from Ontario, one does not have to proclaim religion if one’s reasons for walking the Camino are in fact spiritual. They are not the same, yet they do not exclude each other. I will stop at this point trying to form an argument one way or the other, but this has not gone unnoticed by the Pilgrim Office which issues the sought after (by many) Compostela. They offer a form to fill out which allows you to tic one of three boxes describing the nature of your pilgrimage: religious, spiritual, or neither. Both religious and spirtitual gets the Compestela in Latin, quite an impressive looking document, while the third group gets some lesser looking piece of paper.

I have ennumerated previously several reasons I can give for my pilgrimage. It started as a challenge – I wondered if I had within me the strength and will to walk 500 miles. The final answer came only upon my arrival yesterday in Santiago. But more importantly, I identified and distilled three reasons for this pilgrimage. I expressed them to many when I laid three small stones at the Cruz de Ferro, about 2/3 of the way to Santiago.

I. I am walking to remember family and friends, living and dead, who have contributed to who I am today. I am especially cognizant of my parents, who have both passed, my brother Mike who was taken by cancer much too young, and a great-nephew, Brody, who was still a young child when his life was lost. But I also intend to honor many others whom I have seen fall around me. Their lives are of value to me, just as the lives of the living contribute to my life in ways many might not realize.

II. For the many who cannot walk the Camino, or perhaps are looking for reason and encouragement to do so. I have shared this journey freely, glad to have so many following me. If the Camino de Santiago is on your bucket list, promote it to the top. Make the time. You don’t have to wait until retirement to take the journey, though advancing age should not discourage you either.

III. For having the health and fitness to make this journey as I quickly close on my 70th birthday, I am blessed.

My journey is not over. I intend to walk further beginning tomorrow, to what was believed by the first pilgrims of the Camino to be the end of the Earth. It will take 3-4 days to arrive at Finesterre, then one more day to reach the lighthouse at Muxia. I’ll certainly continue to share these further ventures within this blog and on Facebook.

I’ve had a few. Reality set in as I prepared for this adventure of a lifetime. What was I thinking? Walk 500 miles through a famous mountain pass in the Pyrenees, across a large swath of high plateau, over trails near a mile high, steep ascents and steeper descents? It was something I felt totally unprepared for. What would it feel like to get up every morning for almost 5 weeks, put on the hiking boots and walk – 14, 16, 20 miles every day? Would I know something about my abilities after 100 miles?

I took that 100 miles as the first test, actually extending it to 125 miles, the distance from San Antonio to my home town of Victoria, Texas. But the longest distance I had ever gone on foot was 31 miles in the several ultra-marathons I’ve run. 100, 125, 500! Those distances are a far cry from anything before.

It rained all day that first stage in the Pyrenees. By the third day I had blisters on my feet. My sister Kay asked: “You aren’t going to quit, are you?” No, I replied, as much out of pride as knowing. I got lost two days in a row, coming out of Pamplona and the following day. I was falling off my schedule. But by the second week, I found my confidence, something which I had totally lacked since announcing my intention to walk the Camino de Santiago.

Over the past 5 weeks I have faced challenges and kept going. The final 3 or 4 miles of every day is always a challenge, even in this final stage. I look at the daily mileages and try to prepare mentally for the day – 19 miles, tough day ahead. At mile 15 I’m wondering if I have the reserve I need. 14 miles? Same thing. At mile 11 I’m thinking: shouldn’t I be there by now?

Today I see on the mileage that I have a bit over 12 miles to go. How will it feel at mile 10? Will I wonder if it’s time to quit? Will I get another second wind when I see the Santiago Cathedral in the distance? I’m about to go out and see. Stage 33 of 33 begins in a few minutes when I hit “post” on this addition to my ill-kept blog. All things considered, I hope the next post will be postmarked Santiago, fin del Camino de Santiago.

I won’t pretend to speak with any authority about the Celtic presence in Northwestern Spain. I’ll leave that for Deirdre Saravia, especially regarding anything to do with Celtic music in Galicia, this place of forests, streams and mountains through with the Pilgrims of the Camino de Santiago pass. My curiosity was certainly tickled when I heard through Jack Morgan that some sources report there are more pipers in Galicia than in all of Scotland.

As the geography began to change 7 or 8 days ago, marking the transition from the vast Meseta region of long views and rolling high plateau to the green mountains of Galicia, my ears were keenly listening for Celtic sounds. I began hearing it first on the radios at various villages through which I passed. But then, just a few days ago, I heard the distant sound of pipes. Is that someone’s stereo, maybe music wafting from one of the interesting communes I’ve visited in the area, or is this a musician in the middle of an enchanted forest? It turned out to be the latter, and I was thrilled to find a piper in very interesting costume, playing for passing Pilgrims. I listened appreciatively and tossed several Euros into his open case. Whether there might be other pipers ready to emerge from the mist and the green of the mountains, or perhaps an Irish band, I certainly am hoping so.

But is that really swell? Sarria is the last place one can begin a pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago and still earn a compostela, the certificate which confirms you walked the Camino. The distance from Sarria to Santiago is 117.4 KM. The minimum distance allowed is 100 KM, so I suppose it’s possible to start at one of the villages we pass through in the next stage and still earn the compostela. It begins to sound a bit like a game, or maybe a quest for merit badges, but I can see on the faces of these newly arrived pilgrims a determination, a grit, and also the “why did I sign up for this?” frown.

Along the French Way, the route which begins at St. Jean Pied de Port, where I began four weeks ago, there are a number of alternate beginnings. This often depends on time available for achieving Santiago de Compostela, and in some cases the level of fitness and/or commitment. Thus the number of pilgrims has ebbed and flowed as some Peregrinos (another name for the pilgrims of the Camino) choose to do the walk in bits and pieces and others drop away due to injuries or the realization they are not quite up to the task. As those pilgrims head home, others have taken their place, joining in Pamplona, Burgos, and Leon. The latest influx joined in Astorga, the jumping off point for the moderately large group of Belgians I’ve watched and somewhat gotten to know over the last two or three days.

I have been forwarned by notations in John Brierley’s book, “The Pilgrim’s Guide to the Camino de Santiago – Camino Frances” that from Sarria onward beds can be scarce. I learned that the hard way when I had to rely on a last minute cancellation to get a room in a hotel, that at O’Cebreiro whose accommodations were overwhelmed by the new arrivals. I was lucky yesterday to get into an albergue, certainly the Frugal Pilgrim way to do the Camino, with a bed in a decidedly un-private setting running from four to ten Euros per night. Last night’s was still 6E, but tonight’s bed is costing me 9E. Still not bad, and I’m willing to pay a bit more in these final nights taking me into Santiago on Wednesday. Today, I phoned ahead an albergue in Sarria and grabbed a reservation. Some albergues will accept reservations, others are first come, first to get a bed.

I talked for some time last night with Howard, from New Zealand, and he had strong feelings about how far someone should have to walk in order to claim their compostela and, I assume, win points with God. His attitude was “start in St. Jean, or forget about it.” (This from a man who started in St. Jean, but is bicycling the 500 miles to Santiago. Does his two-wheeled traversal count?)

I have to admit that I came into the Camino adventure willing to negotiate along the way, maybe take a bus now and then to bypass a 14 or 20 mile stage or, as many do, skip the entire middle 150 miles or so, the part known as the Meseta. But once I endured the early blisters and doubts I took the attitude for myself that I really wanted to reach Santiago able to say that I had walked every step. I’m on track to do that, with now about 73 miles to go. But along with toughening my own standard I have learned from others on the Camino that it is not so much walking every step of the way (that’s fine if that’s “your” way) but realizing what the Camino means to you, how you intend to answer the challenge, and if that means a bus ride now and again, or hopping in a taxi on occasion, that’s fine. That’s YOUR way, and I have mine. We can still respect each other for meeting our intentions.

John Brierley says it succintly in his book, and I will do my best in the days ahead to observe his adage: “None of us can know the inner motivation or outer circumstances of another. A loving pilgrim welcomes all they meet along the path with an open mind and open heart . . . without judgement of any kind.”

Pilgriming on! The Frugal Pilgrim.