I haven’t posted in a while, not since I returned from my Camino trip. And while it’s been a terrific summer, I wish I could report that the lessons I learned on my trip have fully taken root and are in abundant and full flower. That would be a lie. There’s been a bud here and there—I haven’t forgotten everything I learned. Like the importance of community. Expressing gratitude for everything I have. Recognizing the overwhelming beauty of the world. The joy of travel. But unfortunately, the lessons I learned haven’t been as front-and-center and practiced on a daily basis

We were standing on a busy street corner, cars whizzing past us as we desperately searched for even one of the many yellow arrows that had been painted on buildings or cobblestone streets in every town we walked through, no matter how small. They had been with us during our entire six-day journey, helping us to navigate the Camino de Santiago. But not anymore. The arrows seemed to have disappeared the moment we entered our final destination, the City of Santiago. When we’d first arrived, we discovered that Santiago wasn’t what either of us had expected. Much larger by far

Our longest day yet. We were exhausted when we got to our hotel. But so very happy. Some highlights: We met another herd of las vacas on the trail. This time, they were close enough to touch. So close, that we had to move over or be trampled. The farmer herding them was not impressed with the fact that we were peregrinos on the Camino, grunting a curt reply to our “buenos dias,” one of the very few times that we’ve not been welcomed or happily greeted by locals along the way. And the locals who greet us with the

I hit the wall this day, mentally and physically. Kent, too. And it wasn’t like it was our longest day, either. But this day, in addition to our standard “tired,” we added sore and crabby. To add insult to injury, our inn was off the trail by another kilometer, and when we finally had it in our sights, we saw that it was at the top of a hill, and we were standing at the bottom, with at least the length of a football field left to climb. The inn looked cool from afar. It had been built as a

First, I think it’s only fair to point out that our daily mileage count comes from Kent’s pedometer (and if you know Kent, you know it’s been accurately calculated to the nth degree). As such, our mileage includes the “extra” meandering we do at various points, like ducking into a shop, or checking out a cemetery, or the exploration we do when we reach our final destination for the day. But honestly, our “meandering” and “exploration” is fairly limited, given that we’re muy cansada* (very tired) by the end of the day. Anyway, on Tuesday, because we were feeling cocky

We were the only people in the hotel dining room at 8:00pm on the eve of our Camino, having decided on an “early” dinner since we wanted to get a good night’s rest in anticipation of a very long hike. An older woman entered the dining room, sat down and ordered. She was at least a decade older than us, and when she finished her meal and got up to leave, we assumed she was a local, or a tourist who most definitely wasn’t going to be walking the Camino. Her gait was unsteady, stiff and tentative, like a colt

Our first day on the Camino began like an Edgar Allan Poe poem, or something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. A chill permeated the morning air and dense and heavy fog, like wet cotton, obscured the morning light. We set out alone; one backpack between us, the damp settling onto our shoulders as we hiked down the murky path. And then, she appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, dark hair, pale face, a young woman alone on the trail. “Hey, are you from Milwaukee?” she said, falling in beside us. Damn, I thought. Is our Midwestern accent giving us away

Why is our train going backwards? The announcement over the PA system provided no clues. The rapido delivery of the announcer was no match for my college Spanish. Even when she switched to heavily-accented English, the only words I could make out were “train,” “flood,” and “bus.” Thankfully, a young, bilingual British woman sitting across the aisle filled us in. “The train can’t go all the way to Sarria,” she said brightly, as if this unexpected wrench in our travel plans had won each of us a lottery ticket. “They’re putting us on a bus to get us there.” She