All things considered, I woke smoothly in the very early morn after a relatively sound night’s sleep (the latter despite being thrice woken in my slumber – once by a cat staring at me from nearby, once by a mouse in my bed – whose presence was probably inspired by the aforementioned cat, and once […]
There were few things finer on my pilgrimage* than walking The Road immersed in the thrumming peace of the pre-dawn darkness, though one of the things that made this particular morning even more contentment-laden was munching on the small bag of nuts & dried fruit that Shaun had left out for me to take along […]
The pilgrim ever remembers that there are the comforts of the body – cool droughts and hearty food and soothing rest-stops along the way – and then there are the Comforts of the Soul – smiling upon sour strangers and giving one’s last morsel to a fellow traveler who hungers and walking ever onward no […]
I found myself thinking that it’s really not how far we walk that determines our Success or Failure, but rather how we walk (i.e. for whom) while walking that counts. Similarly, it matter not how long we live at all, but rather only how (and for whom) we choose to Care while alive that matters. […]
“Walking as a pilgrim walks – unbound by the more common constraints of expected convention or concrete itinerary, inspires a fuller absorption of life – compelling one to take in through the pores both the height of the mountains & the shape of the hills; demanding that one completely appreciate the undulations of the river […]
“Yes, it is true that the ache for Home lives in all of us; that ever-safe place where we can ever go as we are and never be doubted or criticized or questioned. And yet just as ubiquitous is our latent desire to walk as a pilgrim; to set forth from the familiar boldly with […]
Soon thereafter I ambled into the lovely little hamelt of Boavista, where a pathside placard was posted asking for support from a Camino pilgrim photographer. Never one to turn down an opportunity to help another, I walked right into Michael’s makeshift studio and asked if he would like to add a portrait of a Peace […]
“In the end it is the essential spirit that animates those places that animate me. And if that spirit is God, then therein we find God. And if that spirit is Life, then therein we find life. And if that spirit is awe, then therein we find awe. The greater part of me suspects that […]
And so it was that I flowed easily onward, warmly blanketed in the re-remembered knowledge that the Walk was my sustenance, in that my Walk was my gift to the world. And so it was that I smoothly flowed into & through the small villages of Salceda & Cerceda, and so it was that I […]
The dance between exertion and recuperation in life is an intriguing one, and never more obvious than on a pilgrimage. There is nothing “wrong” or “better” about either of the two, of course. Rest is fine when it is time to rest, as long as one remembers to then continue onward when it is time […]
At some point thereafter I made it past the path’s turn off to O’Pedrouzo – the town where the majority of that leg’s pilgrims chose to stop for the day – and it was at that same point that the path was cleared for a time from the noise and frenzy of fellow walkers, and […]
;
