It was our first day off. 

We had been walking the Camino for three weeks, upwards of 18 miles per day, until our feet bear a striking resemblance to USDA-approved ground chuck. 

Each day, awaking before dawn. Each day, suiting up in hiking gear. Each day, strapping on heavy backpacks, rain ponchos, mummifying our bodies in blister bandages, slathering on handfuls of SPF-100, painting our feet with obscene amounts of petroleum jelly to prevent chafing.

Each day, wearing binding money belts beneath our clothing, sporting large sun hats, and donning high-tech footwear which costs more than a late-model Volkswagen. We move through Spain dressed like Batman. 

Three weeks.

Twenty-one days ago, our families and friends back home were excited for us to walk the Camino. During the initial stages of our hike, they were actually kind of interested. So, we were texting them important updates and photos every day. (“Just look at THIS croissant!”)

But now everyone back home could give a rip about our croissants. They don’t want any more

updates, they don’t want any more selfies in livestock pastures. They are tired of it all. 

And frankly, we are pretty tired too. Which is why when we arrived in León, we rented an Airbnb. 

It was an apartment, downtown. A much needed departure from our normal albergues and hostales. A break from communal living with other sweaty pilgrims. A break from the nightly bunk rooms, ravaged by non-stop gaseous expulsions. And, most importantly, a break from the albergue restrooms where we have all witnessed gastrointestinal horrors committed by pilgrims who, tragically, were never taught to properly use toilet paper. 

So our Airbnb apartment felt like walking into the White House. We were overcome with awe. Our own bed! Our own kitchen! Wait! We have an OVEN?! Oh…

He was a blind man, walking the highway toward El Burgo Ranero. If he wasn’t totally blind, the sunglasses meant he was low vision. Cars shot past him as he trudged along, seemingly unaware of the vehicles.

The old man walked bent at the waist, carrying a wooden walking stick. He was shuffling forward slowly on the old Spanish road, wearing a neon safety vest. He was using his stick to tap the ground, running his cane along the edge of the pavement for surety.

Another car sped by.

This car, faster than the others. I could feel the draft from the vehicle’s forward motion. It was enough to knock a person down. There are no posted speed limits on this highway. Each passing motorist drives like a proverbial bat out of Gatlinburg.

And still the man walked forward.

It had been one of those days when I didn’t feel like walking. My mood had dropped. I was thinking about certain problems in my life, and it was getting me down. Sometimes I

think too much about the past.

The silence of the Camino was weighing on me. My godforsaken backpack was weighing even heavier on my shoulders, like an overgrown toddler. My joints hurt. I was low on sleep.

Some days you walk the Camino; some days the Camino walks all over you.

My wife was half a mile ahead, walking with her friend and superhuman speed-walking Australian, Tracey. They were a long way ahead, in the distance, giving me space.

I could see both females ahead, gesticulating as they talked, flailing their hands about, like tiny animatronic silhouettes on the horizon. Whatever they were talking about, by the velocity of their hand movements, their conversation looked internationally important.

Tracey is our new friend and my…

DEAR SEAN: 

I don’t get why you’re doing the Camino. Can you explain why you feel it’s necessary to torture yourself for spiritual reasons? It all sounds like Catholic self-flagellation, very medieval to me. Pointless. 

DEAR FRIEND: 

You make a good point. 

When you’re out here on the Camino de Santiago, God knows, you’re tired of walking. Tired of moving your feet. You’re not tired physically. Your body feels okay, mostly, except for the fact that everything—even the gray matter of your brain—feels like it has been drop kicked by a 19-year-old NFL draftee. 

You’re tired mentally. You don’t WANT to walk. You are no longer excited by the idea of walking. Walking does nothing to thrill you, spiritually. 

At one time, walking was a beautiful act. A way of connecting you with your fellow human being. With nature. With life. But now walking is an offensive concept. Walking is a dirty word. 

Walking is this thing you do because you HAVE to. Because you signed up for this. It is almost like you are in

the military now. Except you’re not a marine; you are not serving your country. You’re paying good money to do this crap. 

You are in the wilds of far-flung rural Spain, walking by your own choosing. So there is no one to blame for your situation but yourself. 

Your mornings start EARLY. You have no choice because your albergue du jour has a checkout time of 7:30 a.m. and you must evacuate the premises immediately so that an overworked, middle-aged, moderately depressed, Spanish man carrying a backpack vacuum canister can fumigate the entire bunk room for bedbugs, lice, and flatulent fumes, all of which you still carry on your person, within the very fibers of your clothing, so that you may re-experience these…

A bar, somewhere in rural Spain. 

A rooster is crowing near the open door. Distant goats are bleating. Spanish farmers gather to chew the morning fat. 

There is a television in the corner of the bar, broadcasting the morning noticias. Beneath the television set is a lineup of heavy backpacks, belonging to pilgrims, loaded with the weight of the world, alongside a forest of telescopic hiking poles. 

A few old farmers at the bar are speaking rapid-fire Spanish, drinking tall beers with their morning croissants and breakfast cheesecake. 

These rural Europeans live too loosely, free from American evangelical rules, drinking beer with breakfast, wolfing down cheesecake at sunup, smoking cigars without remorse, napping away their precious afternoon hours. How sad to think of the multitudes in this beautiful country who have gone to their graves and never knew there was a hell. 

“Dime,” the bartender says to me. 

I order a cafè with milk. 

I am awaiting my coffee while watching the TV. The newscaster is talking about Spain’s nationwide power outage. 

Everyone in the bar is very interested in this newscast because this update affects us personally. We are pilgrims in a distant country. We are dependent on the kindness of each other. We are a family out here. 

Also, we have already heard horror stories about pilgrims who were stranded in bigger cities during the recent power outage. 

One young pilgrim in León slept on the street during the blackout. Other pilgrims found him, shivering against an alley wall. The high-school-age pilgrims joined him, all sleeping in a huddle to keep warm. 

Another large group of pilgrims were stuck on a train for an entire day. They had no food, so they all met together in the dining car and pooled their food…

We are walking the Camino de Santiago when the power goes out in Spain.

At first, we do not know the power is out, of course. The only thing we notice is that our phones have quit working. Which is not unusual on the Camino. Out here, your American-carrier phone service only works on days of the week beginning with R.

When we arrive in the hamlet of Carrión de los Condes, however, we realize something is indeed wrong. Our phones are in emergency mode, and we cannot pull up maps to find our hostel.

And so, we wander the serpentine route into town proper, where it seems all the locals are hanging out, outside their respective buildings.

Kids play fútbol in the street. People sit on the curbs, having animated conversations over midday wine. People play cards on tables outside cafés. No lights anywhere. And—here is the really weird part—not a single person playing on their phone.

I find a small older man, sitting on the stoop of his townhouse, sipping what looks like coffee from a thimble-glass.

“Excuse me, sir,” I ask. “Is there truly a nationwide power outage?” 

“Si,” he

replies.

“In all the country of Spain?”

“Si.”

“Heavens. You’re serious?”

“Si.”

“Do you happen to know the reason for the outage, or how long this will last?”

He shrugs.

“Has your power been off all day?”

“Si.”

“Would you mind, terribly, giving me some directions?”

He slowly points to a tiny elderly woman who is watering a flower box.

“Is that your wife?” I ask.

“Si.”

“What’s her name?”

“Sue.”

The wife tells me that her radio reported an…

Every day is the same. You wake up; you walk. Eat, sleep, walk. Repeat. 

Also, you look for cheesecake. You are always looking for cheesecake. You’ve learned that Spain has the best cheesecake in the known solar system. Burnt Basque cheesecake, they call it. And it’s everywhere. In every cafe and bar. And you can afford to eat all the cheesecake your little hindparts desire because you are walking 20 miles per day. 

You like walking. After the first few days, this walking is quite entertaining. It’s fun traveling to different villages expressly on foot. 

All this walking is vaguely reminiscent of your childhood, bringing back memories from when you used to walk to school. Back in the days when American grade-school students walked to school, through rain, sleet, and snow, uphill, both ways, while carrying their little brothers on their backs. 

But after a few weeks, the newness of walking wears off. And you realize you are basically a homeless person. 

You are always dirty. Always covered in dust. Always smelly. You are going to

the bathroom in places you never imagined, some of which do not feature a toilet at all but are in fact abandoned utility sheds with a single hole in the floor. 

The next parts of the Camino’s stages tax your mind. 

Sometimes, for example, you find yourself lost. Sometimes you are confused in a big city, so you resort to common begging. It’s beyond humbling to be helpless in a foreign place. You approach strangers in the streets with your hat, literally, in your hands. 

Other times you are sitting outside a church’s open doorway, hat off, resting your feet, half asleep, covered in mud. Then a family of sightseeing European tourists, wearing designer clothes, enters the church. They are speaking French. 

The…

It was a little church. Off the main path. And you don’t see many “little” churches on the Camino. Most churches here are Gothic monuments. Stone gargantuans, with bells, towering medieval doors, and golden altars. 

This wasn’t one of those. This was a small stone chapel, squatting by the roadside. It looked more like an old barn than a church. There were a few pilgrims inside. There was a nun by the door, smiling at visitors. 

I crossed myself and took a pew. 

After 8 hours of daily walking beneath a Spanish sun, you learn to love churches on a more human level; to appreciate them for exactly what they are. Shelter.

I sit before the altarpiece. I bow my head. 

Ironically, at this exact moment I am here, Pope Francis’s funeral is taking place, somewhere a million miles from this dusty pueblo. 

There are pilgrims on the trail who are watching the funeral via cellphone because this is a major world event. At the Vatican, there are kings, queens and presidents in attendance. There are 130

national delegations, 50 heads of state, and 4,000 journalists from around the world, scrupulously covering the event so they may report to you internationally important details such as, which outfits everyone wore. 

But these little nuns are not in Vatican City. They are here, in the tranquil village of Rabé de las Calzadas. And they are focused on the here and now. 

And right now, there is a goofy American sitting in their pew. A pilgrim. Me. 

I am dirty, weathered, and I don’t smell good because nobody smells good after walking for eight hours. I am staring at the altar and thinking about why I’m here. 

Why. 

Because I am the same age my father was when…

We arrive in the city of Burgos after a 14-mile walk. Although it feels like 14 million miles. Today is hot. We are sunburned, thirsty, and our skin is covered in a fine layer of crystalized salt from evaporated sweat. 

Most pilgrims have chosen to stay the night in the metropolis of Burgos because the city is big, magnificent, and teeming with energy. Plus, it’s just too hot to keep walking today. 

Burgos is a sprawling cosmopolitan world, with pedestrians all wearing designer clothes and nice shoes. Even school children, lingering in the streets, are better dressed than most modern-day Methodists at a Friday night wedding. 

This is an uppity place, we can tell. Namely, because a few pedestrians on the sidewalk—this is true—actually plug their noses and sneer when I pass by.

“Do I smell THAT bad?” I ask my wife. 

But my wife cannot hear me asking because she is 500 feet ahead to avoid being downwind. 

So the Burgos Vibe is not the friendly, “Anthony Quinn” vibe we

have been experiencing throughout Spain thus far. Burgos feels more like New York City’s upper west side during a funeral procession for the former CEO of Louis Vuitton. 

The cashiers in shops and cafès do not smile at us. Many employees will hardly speak to us, although I am speaking Spanish to them. One woman at a bakery actually ignores me until I finally leave.

I walk into a downtown bookstore to find a book to read since I finished my last book. The bell on the door dings. Overhead, the radio plays, of all things, Jerry Reed. I ask the cashier whether they have any “libros en Inglés.” 

The man behind the counter will not even look at me. He is dressed in a Gucci sweater, with…

You do three things on the Camino each day. You walk. You talk. You stop to pee. 

Then you walk some more. Nobody tells you that while you walk, you will talk a lot. You will talk like it is your full-time job. Sometimes, you will talk even more than you walk. Or pee. 

Everyone talks. Even the most silent among us. 

Somewhere outside the quiet Pueblo of Atapuerca, not far from the tall wooden cross, erected atop the mountain sheep pastures, there is a lot of talking going on. 

“My mom is terminally sick right now,” said the 30-year-old Mexican woman. “All my

mom has ever done in her life is work. Her life has had so very little joy. Work, work, work. I am walking to Santiago for the miracle of her healing. But also to celebrate her motherhood.” 

The 23-year-old Italian boy. “I recently renounced my infant baptism in the Catholic Church. I do this in front of my mother and father and all the people because I

do not like the hypocrisy. I stood and formally declared I am an atheist. My mother cried so hard. I think you call it being ‘debaptized’ in English. 

“I walk to Santiago because I believe the apostles did not seek power, but love. And right now, in my life, nobody loves me. I wish God were real. He would love me.”

A 19-year-old South Korean girl. “I want to see the whole world before I marry and do all the cooking and cleaning and make babies and get fat.”

The 64-year-old man from Poland. “I walk the Camino because my wife always wanted to do it, and now she is gone and she will never have that chance.”

The young woman from Nebraska. “I…

We all stand outside the small market in Villamayor. There are about twenty-five, maybe thirty of us hapless, fatigued pilgrims. Sweaty and covered in grit. All wearing the same clothes we were wearing two weeks ago. 

Same pants. Same shirt. Same boots. Same outfits, washed in the same communal showers and sinks, each evening, over and again, then hung to dry on the same far flung hostel balconies, spreading our deadly b.o. fumes across the breadth of Spain. 

The pilgrims form a haphazard line outside Villamayor’s one and only market as we wait for the shop owner to arrive so we can all buy our individual suppers. 

Pilgrims are getting fussy. 

Namely, because the market’s sign SAYS the store opens at 5:00 p.m. and yet it is already 5:32. This is Spain, however, we have already learned. There are no “set hours” for siesta. Despite what Spanish signs advertise regarding daily hours of operation, siesta officially ends whenever the hell it feels like ending. 

So we are all a little concerned. Because no market equals no supper. No supper equals

crappy sleep. No sleep equals a tired walk tomorrow. And we have 350 miles left to walk. 

Then. A car. 

Everyone holds their breath as a car swings into a nearby parking place. It is a minicar, the kind common to Europe, about the size of a toddler’s roller skate. 

The car idles for a bit. 

We are all staring at the car like we are trying to unlock the doors using only our eyeballs. 

A woman and her son crawl from the vehicle. The woman carries jangling keys in hand. She smiles. 

“We are now open!” the woman says with a thick Spanish accent. 

All pilgrims applaud. Some pilgrims are hugging each…