We leave for the Camino in two days. And I’ve been thinking about it.
We’ve been planning this trip for months. We’ve been doing six-hour training walks, eating healthy foods that taste like wet napkins, and gathering our outdoor gear.
This will be our second Camino.
People ask you about the Camino when they find out you’re doing it. Their main question is usually a version of: “Why?”
This question comes in different iterations. “Why are you doing this?” “Why are you doing this to YOURSELF?” Or in my case: “Why are you doing this AGAIN?”
And you always reply, “It’s the people.”
Whereupon, they look at you funny, then wait for you to explain. But you never can. There’s never enough time.
And even if you could choose adequate words, you still couldn’t explain something the heart feels. So, others naturally assume you’re going for the exotic experience, and for all the natural beauty. But you’re not.
It’s not the enormous sky. It’s not the arresting greenery found in craggy alpine valleys. It’s not the Pyrenees Mountains, capped with clouds, so you can’t tell where the sky begins and the earth ends.
Neither is it living out of a backpack, having nothing to your name except what you can cram inside—which in your case is two T-shirts, a change of shorts, and a Montgomery Ward fiddle.
It is the older Brazilian woman who walks beside you. Limping because of her bad hip. Who stops at every landmark to pray. Who finds a miracle in, literally, everything. In every flower. Every sparrow. Every stray cloud. Who kisses you whenever she hugs you even though you’re an uptight American who does not kiss strangers.
It was the group of teenage boys you expected to be typical junk-food-eating, girl-chasing teens. But who, instead, walked in contemplative prayer, trying to find clarity in life. They were reading books by Saint John of the Cross, and Brother Lawrence, and “The Cloud of Unknowing.”
And when these boys found out that you, too, had been the kind of teenage boy who once read those books, they felt kinship with you. They even—dare I say it?—liked you.
It was the older Australian man, who lost his backpack and all his belongings, midway through his Camino. So he walked the rest of the way without these things. He carried nothing. He simply depended on kindness to carry him through.
“I’ve always been too proud to let others help me,” he said to you one evening. “My father taught me to distrust people and to be self-sufficient. But the Camino is teaching me to trust.”
It was the way all pilgrims change after forty-odd days of wandering homeless through Spain. Pilgrims from different countries, different religions, with very different ideas.
You see them all the time. They started the trail with angst and overpreparedness. But when you reunite in Santiago, they all look leaner, lighter, and calmer. Like very little would bother them anymore.
As though they had just walked 500 miles only to discover that what they were looking for was in their pocket the whole time.
I believe life is not about success. It’s neither about financial security, nor about politics, nor fame, nor belonging to the right Sunday group. It’s not even about finding personal happiness.
Life is about people. It’s always been about people. Their love is the only thing you can take with you when you die, and it is therefore the only gift worth acquiring here on earth.
You are my gift. You are my Camino.