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 was abused as a little girl. I need healing. I want to trust people again.”

The 33-year-old guy from Japan. “In Japan we are so strict, and we work too hard. My parents are good, honorable people, but they work so much they are missing their own lives. Not for me. I want to see everything and do everything and be—all the time—be smiling.”

The 29-year-old flight attendant from England. “I just got out of a bad relationship, and I need to believe that the real me is still someplace deep down inside. Somewhere.”

The older woman from the Netherlands. “I search and search for a way to find joy, but I have yet to find it. Out here I already have found it. Turns out, it was inside me all along.”

The 52-year-old Italian. “My father owned a small vineyard and he make the best wine. He was a happy man and my best friend. When he died, a piece of me died too. 

“I tried to take over his vineyard and run it, and make the wine like him, but I am not smart like him. I cannot do it. So we were forced to sell the vineyard. I walk for his memory. I drink to his beautiful life.”

The 21-year-old French woman. “I think my life is feeling so empty after college, and I hear some friends saying how full the Camino experience was. So far, it is great. Except I cannot feel my feet anymore.”

The 49-year-old woman from Oregon. “I came out here to escape politics. But the first week, walking, all I kept hearing pilgrims talk about was politics. I was so mad. A few days later, I finally discovered the reason everyone was talking politics. Because I KEPT BRINGING IT UP. I have not talked politics since.”

The 63-year-old Hungarian man. “I never realized how arrogant and pigheaded I was until my divorce. And I’m coming out here because I believe I can change. Out here, God is using Plantars fasciitis to change me.” 

Frank, and older Australian man from Melbourne. “Last night our albergue had no hot water, all the pilgrims were so angry. But not me. For some reason I was not bothered by it at all. That’s the Camino. Things that would normally aggravate you in real life don’t bother you here. When I get home, New Frank isn’t going to get bent out of shape about little things.”

The 69-year-old former priest from Italy. “I have done the Camino many times. Each walk is brand new for me. Each time I learn that the Camino is totally different than it was last time. 

Because it is not the path beneath our feet that matters. A path is just dirt and rock. Neither is the Camino a search for God, for God is not missing, God is everywhere. The Camino, just like life, is about loving people. Because you are one.”