Camino de Santiago

If the Camino teaches you nothing else, it teaches you that there is a big difference between real needs versus wants.

• You need a good backpack that fits well and carries the weight on your hips instead of shoulders.
• You need a good pair of shoes, boots or sandals that you have broken in prior to the Camino and support your feet without blisters.
• You need food and water as you walk.  If there aren’t villages during your walk for the day, you need to prepare for it by bringing water and food with you.
• You need a place to lay your head at night to get the rest you’ll need to continue on The Way.

Just about everything else falls into what we want – an extra sweater or pair of pants, a particular food we are craving, a decent Internet connection.

The Camino erases the consumer mind filled with all the wants that dance across the media driven lives we lead waving at us, “Surely, you want me!” and helps us to realize that we need very little to be happy.  Once stripped away from the barrage of ‘buy me’ messages, the sheer pleasure of living each day fully simply unfolds with very little needed in the way of worldly possessions.

I saw this list in a Camino Facebook Group that they noted had been published from a blog called “The Greenery”.  If you’ve walked the Camino, you will surely smile.  If you haven’t yet, make sure to bookmark this list and read it when you return.

45 Ways to Identify a Post-Camino Peregrino in Withdrawal

1. Goodwill will not accept your used hiking boots.
2. You carry toilet paper, extra-powered Ibuprofen, and Compeed with you at all times.
3. You wash your socks, and underwear with shampoo.
4. You have a fantastic tan…but only on your left side.
5. You have seen Pablito‘s special rock.
6. You fear cyclists.
7. You can say “hello” in Spanish, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, English, Dutch, Korean, Japanese.
8. You have either gotten or contemplated getting a scallop-shell tattoo.
9. Starbucks or Peet’s just doesn’t cut it anymore.
10. You can pee anywhere, and you don’t really care who sees.
11. You can pack everything you need for a 6 week trip in 10 minutes or less.
12. Your most prized possessions are field-tested socks and underwear.
13. The yellow arrow is your GPS.
14. Whenever you go to a restaurant, you look for the Menu de Peregrino, and you can’t understand why the wine isn’t included.
15. You can take a shower in 4 minutes…using only shampoo.
16. You can dry yourself off completely using a tiny ShamWow towel.
17. You’ve whittled your wardrobe down to 2 of everything.
18. You know how to say “medicated wipes,” “blister,” and “hemorrhoid” in Spanish.
19. You know and understand the many varieties of jamón.
20. You measure distances in K.
21. You only own clothing that dries really fast.
22. You walk into bars and ask for a stamp.
23. You’re not in a hurry.
24. You know to avoid the ensaladilla rusa.
25. You wash your dishes with shampoo.
26. You do not bother to ask for tomato, mayonnaise, or lettuce on your sandwich.
27. You don’t care much about “things,” but if anything happened to your framed compostela, you’d freak out.
28. You’ve had the best conversations of your life with people who walked beside you for a single hour.
29. You love pulpo, but only a la gallega.
30. You feel like a winner when you find a free electrical outlet at bedtime.
31. After telling yourself you will never eat another tortilla española as long as you live, now it’s all you want…as long as it isrecién hecho.
32. When you check into a hotel, you ask if there is “weefee” (WIFI).
33. You do not underestimate elderly Aussies, ever.
34. You want to hug John Brierley. You want to punch John Brierley.
35. The love you feel for your hiking boots is not natural.
36. You got a hug from The David. And then another one.
37. You are astonished when restaurants open for dinner at 5pm.
38. You know the difference between tapas and pintxos.
39. When you rinse out your Pilgrim wear, the water turns black.
40. When you sit down to lunch, you immediately take off your shoes.
41. You keep turning up the “C” knob in your home shower, but the water does not seem to be getting any more caliente.
42. You can really hold your vino tinto.
43. You wave your hands around in dark bathrooms and wait for the lights to come on.
44. You’ve been to the “end of the world.”
45. You know that anywhere is within walking distance, as long as you have the time.

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~ David Whyte

Walking the Camino there is such a sense of freedom!  Yes, initially we might be concerned about “Will I have a roof over my head tonight?” or “How will my feet hold up today?” but overall we only need to walk, eat and sleep having left our daily to-do list back home.  There is freedom on the Camino.

While I carried my cell phone which I used to write my daily blog posts at the end of each day’s walk, and stayed connected to fellow pilgrims who were ahead or behind me on The Way, the digital disruption of mass email exchanges and social media postings that consume so much of my work life here at home were placed on Pause.  I felt freedom.

I love David Whyte’s poem especially because it reminds me that the Camino makes me feel alive.  Every moment I walked I felt alive with the world around me.  Now that I have returned, I keep that feeling awake by maintaining connections with my fellow pilgrims, taking long walks here at home, and staying in a place of wonder and being – especially when my work or life begins to show the effects of stress.  I remind myself with David’s words:  “Anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.”

With those words in mind, I have an awareness now to participate more with what keeps the camino feeling of freedom close and makes me feel alive.  It’s so easy to shut down that awareness when we get in our To Do mode rather than To Be mode.  It’s natural, it’s what can become normal.  The shift to Camino Freedom is a daily ritual that takes both practice and awareness.  While I wish I were back on the Camino right now, the reality is that’s not possible.  Yes, it will happen again – and hopefully soon – but I want to live each day until with Camino freedom right here at home.

When like-minded pilgrims connect along The Way, hearts beaming with positive intention for self and each other, it creates a rippling effect……And that rippling effect gracefully carries forth on the Camino.  I find now that new individuals are being attracted into my life, while others fall away.  Life seems to be shifting before my eyes.

While walking the Camino there can often be two paths to our next destination.  One path might be longer than the other; or, more visually pleasing.   We have a choice which one to take.

I’m not sure that I’ve ever played small in my life here on planet Earth – but, I remind myself how much bigger and richer my life can be when I let go of what our 21st century life and society makes normal.  The Camino teaches true freedom and living.  I’m listening and making daily decisions about what path to take as I look out over the horizon of each day.

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I want to start off by saying that if you have walked The Way, you know you have been forever changed in a mysterious and hard-to-describe kind of way.  It’s a good thing.  It happens on its own and you don’t need to think about it.  There is something about being given a break from daily life, feeling the reverence of communing with nature and God, combined with the rhythm of walking and sharing the path with other pilgrims that opens us to a natural place of being.  Even after returning home, the experience lives on forever.  You’ve been connected to something timeless and essential, more real.

Several months before I left for my Camino, I joined the local chapter of American Pilgrims.  They provide an informal monthly coffee get-together where people who have walked the Camino and those who are considering or getting ready to walk the Camino can meet one another.  Additionally, they conduct organized walks around the Seattle area.  I was so busy with my own training schedule and work that I did not attend or meet anyone from this group before walking the Camino; but, I do receive their monthly email of events.  This organization is also how I received my Pilgrim Passport which is needed to gather the required stamps along the way.  Pilgrim Passports can be attained several places and on the Camino, but I received mine in the mail from the American Pilgrims’ organization.

Each year, the Seattle chapter holds a St. James Day walk through the Capital Hill area of Seattle ending at St. James Cathedral and I decided to attend it as part of keeping the Camino alive in my heart, mind and soul.  Imagine my surprise when I find that there are over 100 ‘pilgrims’ on this walk and the Seattle chapter has over 600 people on their email list receiving the monthly newsletter.  I also learned that the Seattle chapter was the first local group formed and was started in 2008.  Since then 32 local chapters have formed across the United States.  Additionally, the Puget Sound Chapter is participating in a pilot program as the first Albergue Partner project at the Albergue Parroquial de Santa Maria in Carrion de los Condes.  This organization is committed!  Who knew that there were so many local people interested in and walking the Camino, many of them doing it multiple times and on different paths leading to Santiago?!  I loved having the shared experience once again in our short Camino reenactment right here in Seattle.

St. James Cathedral is beautiful.  Just as in Santiago, not being Catholic, I wouldn’t have attended mass at either location without my new connection to St. James.  Our priest talked about pilgrimage in his sermon and at the end of mass, noted our attendance at the mass as those who had walked The Way.  I felt honored, renewed, and reinvigorated with the mysterious Camino.

After the mass, we all returned to the building where we had begun our walk and enjoyed a pot luck dinner together, during which there was more swapping of Camino stories and experiences of places we had stayed along The Way.  I know I will walk the Camino again and have considered choosing the Del Norte (northern coast of Spain) route next time.  Several attendees had either done that walk or would put me in touch with other pilgrims they knew who had.  Those who will walk the Camino for the first time in the coming year were gifted a single shell on a string that will accompany them when that time arrives.

If you live anywhere near one of the American Pilgrim local chapters, I encourage you to reach out and participate.  Pilgrims who have walked The Way are available to answer questions posed by soon to be pilgrims.  Seasoned pilgrims gather and keep the Camino alive through their storytelling and sharing.

Pilgrims helping pilgrims.

It’s a good thing.

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When I was training for the Camino, my thoughts on long walks were often questions:

Would I be able to do the full Camino Frances, a 500 mile pilgrimage?

Would be able to find places to stay each night?

Of all the possible side affects – blisters, tendonitis, hip and knee pain – which would I experience?

What sections of the Camino would I find the hardest – the meseta, the mountains, the downhills?

On and on, the questions popped up in my thoughts.  They weren’t thoughts based on fear – I wasn’t worried.  I felt capable of making decisions along The Way.  They were just questions that I wondered about.

[Read more…] about Walking Thoughts

One month ago I walked into Santiago, the final stop on the Camino de Santiago and my 500th mile.  In many ways it seems like yesterday and in others like its been much longer ago. Funny how time can be elusive.  Who knew how much my perspective about what makes a happy life could change from the time I exited the St. Jean Pied de Port train station, which was my last form of motored transportation, until I walked into the final city after 39 calendar days and 37 days of walking.

[Read more…] about One Month Ago I Walked Into Santiago

The Camino is very giving.  

The Camino gives in unexpected ways.

The Camino continues to give long after you reach Santiago.

The Camino is a teacher who opens up new areas of awareness not available in the busy doingness of our everyday lives.

I learned about gifts from the Camino slowly over the thirty-seven days of walking the path even though they began appearing immediately.  I am still learning, seeing and receiving.

[Read more…] about Gifts from the Camino