Magic on the Camino

Suddenly my feet had no traction and I was beginning to fall. My hiking pole bent nearly ninety degrees and I almost went down when a young man from Turkey grabbed my arm and saved me from landing in the mud. Such is the Camino de Santiago in Spain. Whether it be the thousands of …

Another Night on the Camino

A kilometer, it turns out, is not a very good measure of a walk. It does not account for incline or decline, footing, stairs, wind, weather and unfortunately distance. On the Camino, one of the first things that you realize is that all distances are "as the bird flies" and do not take into consideration …

The Camino Walk

The Camino walk is characterized by a tightening of the legs and upper body in reaction to the pain generated from moving your legs and putting weight on your feet. This cramped gait is the way that you can identify someone in town that has been walking on the Camino. Several towns have specialists that …

Camino de Santiago

I am amazed at how many different aspects there are to the allure of the Camino de Santiago trail in Spain. Many religious figures and celebrities have travelled this route, across the top of Spain, and been buried along the way  -- the religious figures, not the celebrities. In addition to that, it was once …

Hiking Poles for the Camino

Snapping my hiking pole into place and having the segments line up and become rock hard is only part of the thrill of using two poles. The rhythmic arm movements force you to twist across your abdomen using muscles that are not normally worked while walking and give a feeling of great power. The power …

Via Francigena

The day that I lost my will to live, is one of my favourite Camino de Santiago stories. My feet were blistered, making walking painful, and every time that I entered a small town it was "closed". This is an admirable way of life, I mean the Spanish way, not the fact that I was …

The Juice of Life

While watching Ben Saunders describe walking across the frozen Arctic Ocean in a TED talk, I understood something I had not been able to articulate before. He likened his love of adventure to having a crack habit. He admitted that all of his money got sucked into his endeavors and that it had caused the …

I’m Back

If you have ever used a hammer to open a walnut, you know how the force it takes to break through the hard shell sends the soft, edible bits flying in many directions. (This was originally posted October 2012.) Walking the Camino did this to me. I have spent the last several weeks collecting up the …

Meseta

Pilgrims are dropping like flies. The stretch of the Camino that precedes Leon is a long straight path that runs beside the highway. The heat, sun and monotonous flatness is seen by some as meditative. The cold reality (or hot!) is that a couple of people have been hospitalized for heat stroke, many more have …

Changing Landscapes of the Camino

A church bell is sounding off the time of day while a dog barks and a flurry of swallows chirp and dive in the plaza. Every small town has the same assortment of wild cats, often of a Siamese or calico descent. A rooster just crowed to remind me that this constant reminder of the …