Shadow of a Pilgrim: An Apostate Walks Two Caminos in Spain

By Thomas F. Connell

What happens when a classics-trained, half-a-century-lapsed Irish-American Catholic sets out to walk not one, but two Caminos, the thousand-year-old pilgrimage routes that lead through a  vast arc of European history and culture to culminate in the revered burial place of the Apostle St. James in Santiago de Compostela, Spain?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shadow of a Pilgrim Press
• Release date: Feb 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9781732377417

Book preview

T H O M A S   F.   C O N N E L L

Shadow

OF A

Pilgrim

An Apostate Walks Two Caminos in Spain

Copyrighted Material

Shadow of a Pilgrim: An Apostate Walks Two Caminos in Spain

Copyright © 2018 by Thomas F. Connell. All Rights Reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise—without prior written permission from the publisher, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

For further information about this book, contact the publisher:

Thomas F. Connell

Shadow of a Pilgrim Press

shadowofapilgrim.com

Email address:

[e-mail]

ISBNs:

Hardcover: 978-1-7323774-0-0

Softcover: 978-1-7323774-2-4

eBook: 978-1-7323774-1-7

Printed in the United States of America

Cover and Interior design: 1106 Design

To the Three Graces, who inspired my steps, and my life. You know who you are.

And to my three sons, Brendan, Shawn and Gaelan, without whom I would have no life—and there would be no book. This is my memento to you.

CONTENTS

SYMBOLS

INTRODUCTION

My Long Road to the Camino

The First Seed

Opening a New Chapter

Retirement

Walking and Training (2012–2014)

About Religion

This Book

JOURNEY ONE

The Camino Francés

THE PREQUEL

September 1, 2014 • Final Preparations: The Things I Carried

FURTHER PREQUEL

September 2–3, 2014 • Washington, DC, to Paris, France

FINAL PREQUEL

September 4, 2014 • Paris to St. Jean Pied-de-Port

AT THE STARTING LINE

September 4, 2014 • In St. Jean Pied-de-Port

DAY 1:

September 5, 2014 • St. Jean Pied-de-Port, France, to Roncesvalles, Spain

DAY 2:

September 6, 2014 • Roncesvalles to Zubiri

DAY 3:

September 7, 2014 • Zubiri to Pamplona

DAY 4:

September 8, 2014 • Pamplona to Puente la Reina

DAY 5:

September 9, 2014 • Puente la Reina to Estella

DAY 6:

September 10, 2014 • Estella to Los Arcos

DAY 7:

September 11, 2014 • Los Arcos to Logroño

DAY 8:

September 12, 2014 • Logroño to Nájera

DAY 9:

September 13, 2014 • Nájera to Santo Domingo de la Calzada

DAY 10:

September 14, 2014 • Santo Domingo de la Calzada to Belorado

DAY 11:

September 15, 2014 • Belorado to San Juan de Ortega

DAY 12:

September 16, 2014 • San Juan de Ortega to Burgos

DAY 13:

September 17, 2014 • In Burgos (rest and exploration day)

DAY 14:

September 18, 2014 • Burgos to Hornillos del Camino

DAY 15:

September 19, 2014 • Hornillos del Camino to Castrojeriz

DAY 16:

September 20, 2014 • Castrojeriz to Frómista

DAY 17:

September 21, 2014 • Frómista to Carrión de los Condes

DAY 18:

September 22, 2014 • Carrión de los Condes to Moratinos

DAY 19:

September 23, 2014 • Moratinos to El Burgo Ranero

DAY 20:

September 24, 2014 • El Burgo Ranero to Mansilla de las Mulas

DAYS 21–22:

September 25, 2014 • Mansilla de las Mulas to León

September 26, 2014 • In León (rest and exploration day)

DAY 23:

September 27, 2014 • León to Villar de Mazarife

DAY 24:

September 28, 2014 • Villar de Mazarife to Astorga

DAY 25:

September 29, 2014 • Astorga to Rabanal del Camino

DAY 26:

September 30, 2014 • Rabanal del Camino to Molinaseca

DAY 27:

October 1, 2014 • Molinaseca to Villafranca del Bierzo

DAY 28:

October 2, 2014 • Villafranca del Bierzo to O’Cebreiro

DAY 29:

October 3, 2014 • O’Cebreiro to Triacastela

DAY 30:

October 4, 2014 • Triacastela to Sarria

DAY 31:

October 5, 2014 • Sarria to Portomarín

DAY 32:

October 6, 2014 • Portomarín to Palas de Rei

DAY 33:

October 7, 2014 • Palas de Rei to Arzúa

DAY 34:

October 8, 2014 • Arzúa to O Pedrouzo

DAY 35:

October 9, 2014 • O Pedrouzo to Santiago

DAYS 36–37:

October 10–11, 2014 • In Santiago (rest and exploration days)

DAY 38:

October 12, 2014 • Santiago to Negreira

DAY 39:

October 13, 2014 • Negreira to A Picota

DAY 40:

October 14, 2014 • A Picota to Finisterre

DAY 41:

October 15, 2014 • Finisterre to Cabo Fisterra and back

DAY 42:

October 16, 2014 • Finisterre to Muxía

DAYS 43–46:

October 17–20, 2014 • In Santiago Again

EPILOGUE

Pilgrim Art

JOURNEY TWO

The Camino del Norte

THE PREQUEL

August 2015 • Planning, Preparing, and Packing

FURTHER PREQUEL

August 27–August 30, 2015 • Washington, DC, to Madrid, Spain

AT THE STARTING LINE

August 31, 2015 • Train from Madrid to Irún, Spain

DAY 1:

September 1, 2015 • Irún to San Sebastián

DAY 2:

September 2, 2015 • In San Sebastián (rest and exploration day)

DAY 3:

September 3, 2015 • San Sebastián to Getaria

DAY 4:

September 4, 2015 • Getaria to Deba

DAY 5:

September 5, 2015 • Deba to Markina-Xemein

DAY 6:

September 6, 2015 • Markina-Xemein to Guernica

DAY 7:

September 7, 2015 • Guernica to Lezama

DAY 8:

September 8, 2015 • Lezama to Bilbao

DAY 9:

September 9, 2015 • In Bilbao (rest and exploration day)

DAY 10:

September 10, 2015 • Bilbao to Portugalete

DAY 11:

September 11, 2015 • Portugalete to Islares (via Baltezana)

DAY 12:

September 12, 2015 • Islares to Laredo

DAY 13:

September 13, 2015 • Laredo to Escalante (via Barrio de Castillo)

DAY 14:

September 14, 2015 • Escalante to Santander

DAY 15:

September 15, 2015 • In Santander (rest and exploration day)

DAY 16:

September 16, 2015 • Santander to Barcena de Cudón

DAY 17:

September 17, 2015 • Barcena de Cudón to Santillana del Mar

DAY 18:

September 18, 2015 • Santillana del Mar to Comillas

DAY 19:

September 19, 2015 • Comillas to Unquera

DAY 20:

September 20, 2015 • Unquera to Llanes

DAY 21:

September 21, 2015 • Llanes to Ribadesella

DAY 22:

September 22, 2015 • Ribadesella to Colunga

DAY 23:

September 23, 2015 • Colunga to Villaviciosa

DAY 24:

September 24, 2015 • Villaviciosa to Gijón

DAY 25:

September 25, 2015 • In Gijón (rest and exploration day)

DAY 26:

September 26, 2015 • Gijón to Avilés

DAY 27:

September 27, 2015 • Avilés to El Pito

Houses in Asturias

Hórreos in Asturias

Hórreos in Galicia

DAY 28:

September 28, 2015 • El Pito to Ballota

DAY 29:

September 29, 2015 • Ballota to Luarca

DAY 30:

September 30, 2015 • Luarca to Navia

DAY 31:

October 1, 2015 • Navia to Ribadeo

DAY 32:

October 2, 2015 • Ribadeo to Vilanova de Lourenzá

DAY 33:

October 3, 2015 • Vilanova de Lourenzá to Abadín

DAY 34:

October 4, 2015 • Abadín to Vilalba

DAY 35:

October 5, 2015 • Vilalba to Baamonde

DAY 36:

October 6, 2015 • Baamonde to A Roxica

DAY 37:

October 7, 2015 • A Roxica to Sobrado dos Monxes

DAY 38:

October 8, 2015 • Sobrado dos Monxes to Arzúa

DAY 39:

October 9, 2015 • Arzúa to Rúa

DAY 40:

October 10, 2015 • Rúa to Santiago

EPILOGUE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

SYMBOLS

There are three major sections in this book—the Introduction, Journey One (The Camino Francés), and Journey Two (The Camino del Norte).

Each of those sections is marked with the ancient Celtic symbol called a triskelion (also called a triskele). It consists of three conjoined spirals, said sometimes to represent three legs. Versions of that symbol have been found in cave and rock paintings both in Ireland and in Galicia, Spain, dating back over 5,000 years. Although later adopted by the Christians in Ireland and associated with the Christian trinity, for thousands of years before the Christian era it was a symbol of eternity.

Each of the chapters in Journey One and Journey Two begins with a scallop shell symbol. The scallop shell has been closely associated with the Camino almost from the beginning. The lines on the shell converge into a single point in the same way, it is said, that all roads lead to Santiago de Compestela, in Galicia, Spain. More generally, the scallop shell’s converging rays represent the union of all people, in one common destiny, in one place, at one time. Apart from its Christian symbolism, the scallop shell is also a reminder that all life originated in the sea, the amniotic sac that once encompassed all of us. The power of the sea to create and destroy is an idea fundamental to the Celtic soul.

INTRODUCTION

My Long Road to the Camino

The First Seed

I remember the exact moment when the seed of a Camino trip was first planted in my brain. It was on October 17, 2011. I was sitting in my apartment in the suburbs of Maryland with my second son, Shawn. We had just come back from a week-long trip to Vancouver, British Columbia, to visit Shawn’s brother Gaelan, my third son. Gaelan is a professional actor and filmmaker, who had spent two years in Vancouver starring in a tv show being filmed there.

At some point, apparently on the plane ride home and after too many drinks, it must have slipped out that I was thinking of retiring from the relentlessly high-pressure job that had enchained me for the last 31 years. In truth, I had already decided to leave; but I did not want to tell anyone, even my sons, until it was final, final, and I had given notice. But as a far greater author than I (and nearly everyone else) could ever be, once wrote: The sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue of Dedalus. I’m no Dedalus; but it must have been the sacred pint—in my case, about a pint of gin—on the transcontinental flight home that unbound my tongue, and let the words slip out.

Shawn is a man of prodigious thought, filled with ideas that do not fit easily into anyone’s box. He stayed that night at my place, before heading home the next morning, and we talked almost until dawn. He sat me down and scoured his brain for ideas about what I should do once I retired. I protested that I had not even decided for sure to retire, and that even if I did, there would be a massive amount of work to do before I could walk out the door on December 31, 2011—so I could not even think now about what to do after that.

Undeterred, he went through many scenarios, including cross-country road trips, exotic cities to visit, walks to take in the great urban centers of America, and other things. He knew that I liked to walk in my spare time (which was not much), and that it was one of the few safe ways that I have used over the years (with only limited success) to retain a small bit of my sanity. So, he mentioned this thing in Spain that he called the Camino. Huh? I said. I had never heard of it.

Shawn explained that it was a sort of pilgrimage—I winced!—across 500 miles of northern Spain. Having heard over the years my endless rants against religion, and particularly the Catholic religion in which I was raised, he hastened to add that many people who do the walk are not part of any organized church, or even religious at all. He said that a number of his college friends had done the walk, and some of their parents had as well; and all of them reported that it was a marvelous, life-altering experience.

No f’ing way, I was thinking. I am not doing any fecking pilgrimage anywhere. But he urged me to keep an open mind and consider it, perhaps some time in the future. Then he went home.

Less than a week later, I read in the newspaper a review of a movie with Martin Sheen called The Way that had just opened in the DC area. It tells the story of a grieving father, a recently widowed doctor whose aimless adult son dies in the Pyrenees mountains while starting the Camino Francés journey from southern France to Santiago, Spain. The heartbroken father flies to France to retrieve his son’s body, but then decides instead—against all his nature and training—to put his job on hold and finish the trip his son had just started. He carries the ashes of his son for 550 miles along the Camino, and in the end, scatters them into the sea in Finisterre, the final stop on the journey. (Finisterre, the name given to that town by the Romans in the first century, means in Latin the end of the world.)

The plot of The Way does not sound like it would make a great story, but in fact it does. It is a wonderful and wondrous movie—a sad, humorous and touching story about a father, a son beyond his reach, and life and death. All of it is shot on the Camino Francés, against a backdrop of spectacular scenery. In a quiet and understated way, it is a most moving story, beautifully written, acted and filmed.

Naturally, after seeing it, I thought immediately of Shawn and surmised that it was the movie, and not his friends, that had put the idea of the Camino into his head. But he told me that that was wrong; he had never heard of the movie or seen it. In fact, The Way had not yet been released in the United States when Shawn and I first spoke about the Camino. Quite a coincidence. Kismet, you might say.

Opening a New Chapter

A few days after watching The Way, I turned 62 years old. Since the age of 12, birthdays have meant very little to me; but this one did. I knew that at age 62, I had spent exactly half of my years on this planet—31, to be precise—practicing law at what is sometimes called the highest level, at one of the most prestigious law firms in the United States, if not the world.

Law practice was exhilarating in many ways; but it was also a terrifying creature that dominated, and ultimately devoured, every corner of my life. I can say with cold-eyed realism, and little vanity, that I was very good at what I did professionally; but I was very bad, and I mean VERY bad, at balancing my work life with my personal life. My family life suffered enormously, and I did too. Among other things (of which there were many), my marriage became carrion. By October 2011, there was no cure for history; but I was determined to write a new and different chapter.

Two days after my birthday, I resigned from my partnership, effective December 31. My partners were stunned. I was three years away from mandatory retirement (at age 65); I had just come off a two-year string of victories in cases of huge importance to clients; and I was at the height of my earning power. Until the moment of my resignation letter, none of my colleagues saw it coming.

My partners and colleagues were even more surprised when I told them that I had no intention of practicing law again, or doing anything related to the law. There were some partners who had left the firm for early retirement, and some who had been nudged out the door, either at age 65 or earlier. But almost all of them eagerly continued to work in or around the law—practicing at smaller or boutique law firms, or hanging out their own shingles, or teaching law or publishing in the field. Few if any did what I intended—an early departure, with a full break forever from the field that had nurtured (and in some ways broken) me for more than three decades.

I was not always a prisoner of the law. I started life after college with two years of teaching English literature to exceptional students in a high school in suburban Maryland. During that time, I married a kind and lovely woman, filled with an adventurous spirit and daring. She is the first grace of the dedication. Whenever I thought of her, or think of her now, I remember this line from Yeats: One man loved the pilgrim soul in you, and loved the sorrows of your changing face.

She was the original pilgrim, the one in my life with the pilgrim soul. She took me on many journeys, geographic and spiritual. When we were married in 1972, she insisted that we spend the entire summer in Europe, where I had never been. It was rich and eye-opening.

A year later, in 1973, she came home one day and said that we should join the Peace Corps. That was something that we had never discussed, and had never entered my brain. I could not have been more surprised if she had said, Let’s go to the asteroid belt for the next two years.

But I was in love, and willing to follow her to the ends of the earth. Which is where we went. We spent three years as Peace Corps volunteers in Afghanistan, at a time when most Americans happily had never heard of the place. We lived in a mud house, with no plumbing or electricity or running water, in a tiny village 20 miles south of the border of what was then called the Soviet Union (which you could actually see from a mountain behind our house). There were no other westerners living in our village. According to legend, the last foreigner who had lived there was in the 1500s; and he died young, under mysterious circumstances. We learned (very good) Dari, the local form of Persian, because there was no alternative, and we taught at the local schools.

Some said it was a hardship post; the dropout rate for Peace Corps volunteers in Afghanistan was very high. We were completely isolated from the western world, except for a transistor radio that captured the BBC in English at night. But it was without question the most remarkable, enlightening and fulfilling experience of my life. We liked it so much that we stayed a third year, something quite rare in the Peace Corps.

After that, it was 35 years as a slave to the law—three years of law school, a year of working for a distinguished federal judge, and 31 years before the mast of practice. Throughout that time, I lived in a legal bubble, with overwhelming amounts of work, and little time for friends or family. Those were years with little sunlight or oxygen.

To be sure, it was not all unmitigated gloom. In fact, I was able to take two 6-month fully-paid sabbaticals from the firm. That time was wonderful, and worth more than gold. We were able to take our three sons on trips that rivaled the grand voyages of the Victorians. We traipsed across western Europe, dragging the little guys to museums and cathedrals and forts, forcing them to learn French, and forcing myself to learn the beautiful language of Italy. Our boys loved all the croissants and gelatos; and years later, they admitted that they had actually learned and remembered a few more serious things from those trips.

In short, we were internationalists, decades before I ever heard of the Camino. Later, when my bride and I made our sad journeys to separate ways, I lived and worked for three years in London. Though swamped with work, I still found time to savor, almost always on foot, every museum and alleyway and morsel of that marvelous city. And when my sons visited, I dragged them everywhere by foot with me, to see everything.

So, long before the Camino, I knew that there were two immutable traits in my DNA: walking, and doing it on foreign soil. That was my preparation.

Retirement

For the last two months of 2011, I worked slavishly, like a rat in heat, to tie up every last thread of my practice and my professional life. It was a mind-numbing task, especially because it involved sorting through hundreds of thousands of emails that I had collected and read, since receiving my first-ever email in 1989, but had never properly filed into client folders, where they belonged. For a time, I thought it would take until mandatory retirement at age 65 for me to finish this project.

But on a Friday night, January 6, 2012, at 10:02 PM, I turned off my computer, locked my door, dropped off the keys, and walked into the calm night air. I never looked back.

What followed were almost three years of trips, mostly around the United States, with a couple to Europe. I drove for months to and from the West Coast and western Canada, stopping to see all those marvelous national parks that I had flown over dozens, if not hundreds, of times while on business trips. I did the same with maritime Canada, which is soothing and beautiful. (Hint: If you are driving there, the Gaspé peninsula is the best part!) And I spent lots of time visiting my sons, who were variously living in Chicago, New York City, Vermont, San Francisco, and other places.

All this time, the idea of the Camino was still tucked away in a small corner of my diminishing brain. I knew it was still there, in the same way that I knew Brussels sprouts were likely in the grocery store; I just didn’t go there very much.

What I did do was to develop a sustained program of walking.

Walking and Training, 2012–2014

Immediately after retiring, I decided that I wanted and needed to walk every day. Before then, I used to occasionally take one great walk—sometimes 5, sometimes 10, and sometimes even 15 miles during a day. That would leave me exhausted, especially the longer walks. The next day, I would go back to work, and not find the time to take another walk for another month or so.

When I retired, I plunged into walking. I walked a minimum of five miles a day, every day, but supplemented that with some much longer walks. It wasn’t long before my feet rebelled. I got plantar fasciitis, or some such ailment in one foot. That foot did a sit-down strike on me; it would not support weight, and would not walk at all. I was sidelined for months, and going stark raving mad. I had never before experienced life on one foot alone. It felt like a death sentence.

Very gradually, and over many months, I recovered and began walking again. Gingerly, patiently, one small step at a time. Gradually, my stamina and ability increased. And that is a good thing, because I had come to realize that my sanity depended on the daily ritual of walking.

Once recovered, I told people that walking was my new work. At the end of a lunch with friends, for example, I would say, Good-bye, I have to go back to work. When I walked away, they knew what I meant.

And I certainly did work at walking. I meticulously recorded every day how far I had walked. I didn’t use pedometers or fitbits, which are inaccurate because they are based on one’s so-called average stride, which translates only to the average truth, not the real truth. Instead, at the end of each day, I remembered exactly where I had walked and then went online to a program that measures, to the one-hundredth of a mile, how far I had actually walked.

Neurotic I am, that’s for sure. I decided for some reason that the ideal distance to walk is 6.5 miles per day, 365 days per year (and 366 during leap years!). If I missed a day (for bad weather, or any other reason, including travel by car or plane), I made it up later. Over the years since I retired (and recovered from the foot injury), I have been clocking in at about 6.5 miles per day. My lowest year was 2016, when I did a mere 6.25 miles per day; and my highest, 2015, was when I did the Camino del Norte, and ended up the year with a little over 7.8 miles per day—a mark that still amazes me. (I keep wondering, why didn’t I use some of that time reading a book or doing something more useful?)

I was a speed demon walker in my youth, passing everyone on the road, but I am no speedster now. On flat terrain, and carrying a light bag (mostly with water, a snack, and some rain gear), I walk at almost exactly three miles per hour—one mile every 20 minutes. My brain seems to have an autopilot program for that speed. On the uneven terrain of the Camino, and with a full backpack, however, I moved slightly slower. The result is that when I walk these days, many people pass me. That used to irritate me to no end, until I realized that few of those people have the stamina to continue as long as I do. It’s the hare and the tortoise. Now I’m the one with the hard shell.

All this walking is what finally led me, three years into retirement, back to the Camino. The idea just kept bubbling up in the ooze of my brain. Every time it did, I would dismiss it. But for unknown reasons, it stubbornly snuck back into consciousness, again and again.

The main reason I dismissed the Camino idea for three years was simple: fear. I was not afraid of physical danger. I have lived and traveled in some rather remote places, and more than once have been in dangerous situations. That included a couple weeks years ago in a war zone (during the Cyprus war of 1974); traveling overland across Pakistan, including through some of the tribal areas (teeth gritted all the way); some visits alone to death row to interview, one on one in their cells, clients who were there for a reason; and the prickly experience of being robbed (in DC) by a guy who insisted on putting the barrel of a gun against my stomach. (He was later caught, prosecuted and jailed.) So, I had some experience with danger. I was not worried in the least about bodily harm on the Camino (despite what happened to the son in the movie The Way).

My fear was the fear of failure. I did not really think that I would be able to walk 550 miles, up and down hills and even mountains, with a full pack on my back. I knew I could do that for a few days. But could I do it day after day, for more than a month, going more than twice the distance that I normally walked, and a lot of it under brutal sun and drenching rains? I just did not know. I was afraid that my feet would give way, or worse, that my will would be defeated by the daunting task before me. Though I fancied myself as having ferocious willpower, I feared that I might not make it, and would have to leave in the middle with my tail between my legs.

So, I started doing test runs. In April 2014, I sent an email to my sons, full of exclamation points, announcing that I had just walked the entire Camino, doing all 550 miles from St. Jean Pied-de-Port in France, to Finisterre, on the coast of Spain. They were astonished, since they didn’t even know that I was in Spain, much less on the Camino. In fact, I was not in Spain; I was at home all that time. As I later explained to them, it was a bit of a joke. What I had actually done was to walk around DC where I lived, while calculating each day how far I would have gotten if I had been walking in Spain on the Camino. That exercise, which gave me some comfort, was also misleading. I was on mostly flat terrain, and sleeping at home at night. Still, it took me almost three months to go the 550-mile distance—which was about two months longer than I wanted it to be.

I then started filling my backpack with old law books—tomes that are the weight of stone, and equally useful—and doing wilderness hikes of about 15 miles each. That wasn’t easy, and I didn’t do many of them, but I learned that I could survive the distances and the weight, at least for a few days in a row.

Still, with no idea whether I could sustain that pace, with that weight, for the 36 days of walking that it would take to reach Finisterre, I decided to gamble and go forward. That’s when I started buying the right equipment, the right shoes, and finally, the plane tickets. The nonrefundable plane tickets were the Rubicon moment.

About Religion

Religion, and the idea of it, permeates the Camino. It is, after all, described as a "pilgrimage"; and the walkers are uniformly referred to as "peregrinos" in Spanish, i.e., "pilgrims." So, I don’t think I can talk about my two pilgrimages in Spain without saying something about religion.

Religion and I have had a rocky relationship for most of my life. I was raised in a home with two loving parents and five siblings. It was for the most part a stable, nurturing environment. We were Irish Catholics. The Irish part was by heritage and immutable; the Catholic part was by directive, not choice. Both my parents were raised as Catholics and never deviated an inch from the dogma or the practice that it entailed.

After my father graduated from high school in 1934, he studied for the priesthood. He was a kind, gentle, and learned man, with no vanity whatsoever, and with a mischievous sense of humor, often self-deprecating. He would have made the kind of priest that even I would have respected. But he had battled lung disease from childhood (from multiple bouts of pneumonia, before there was penicillin); it left him ill through much of his life, often gasping for more oxygen than his damaged lungs could absorb.

At some point, when he was about age 21, the seminary where my father was training asked him to leave. They didn’t want to invest any more resources in a sickling, who they thought would not be around for very long. From their perspective, he was a loss they could afford to cut. Given no choice, my father reluctantly re-entered the secular world; but he proved all the priests wrong by living, with courage and fearless determination, to age 67. It was a human miracle that a man so afflicted could maintain his sense of humor and live decades longer than anyone, including his doctors, had predicted. Though I sometimes fluctuate on this point, I am usually glad that he did not remain in the seminary and become a priest.

My mother grew up about a mile or so from where my father did. But they didn’t know each other until, shortly after he left the seminary, he showed up as a patient in the hospital where she worked as a nurse. She helped keep him alive then, and for decades after that.

My parents embodied the best of Catholicism. They had a great faith that sustained them, but without any need to show it as an ornament. They never proselytized or preached. They were never holier than thou; and they never deviated from their belief in truth, fairness, and redemption in the afterlife. I respected that in them, and I respected their need to follow the dictates of their faith, with weekly attendance at mass, celebration of the sacraments, and the rest of it.

But none of that was for me. For me, the church and its dogma were loathsome. Every week, we children were lectured and sometimes screamed at by nuns and priests, some of them drunkards, and threatened with a catechism of rigidity and fear. To me, there was no love, no kindness, no human touch in the inflexible doctrines and mandates. It was, to steal a phrase, fear and loathing at every step.

After I left to go to college, at age 17, I never voluntarily went to mass again. Yes, when I visited my parents, I would accompany them to church, but only because I did not want to flaunt my apostasy before their eyes (though they heard at home on occasion some of my milder rants on the subject). But outside their presence, I never attended a church service again—other than for weddings and funerals, where my attendance was more or less obligatory.

With each passing year, I became more virulent about the church. It was not just the horrors inflicted by ignorant sadists during the Inquisition, or at the Magdalene asylums in Ireland and elsewhere, or the insane fixation of male prelates on regulating the sex lives of ordinary people, or even the recent and devastating stories of clerical pederasty and cover-ups. I grew to believe that the central message of the religion was flawed, and even abhorrent. The older I grew, the more I rejected the notion that this world is a virulent abyss in which men chose to crucify their god, and that the only world that matters is a different one, the so-called kingdom of god, that is hidden somewhere in the sky.

What kind of a religion, I asked myself (and still do), could have as its central symbol the torture and slow execution of a supposed man-god, while demanding that its adherents honor that episode by eating his flesh and drinking his blood? It is cannibalism, pure and simple. How macabre, and ghoulish. And how is it that a religion whose core mandate is love thy neighbor could have profited for centuries through endless and slaughtering wars over territory and lucre, while torturing and murdering all opponents and dissidents (e.g., in the Inquisition, whose most brutal form flourished in Spain), and silencing through fear and intimidation those who used their god-given brains to see the world in a different and more truthful way (e.g., Galileo)?

I saw no love, no humility, not even simple kindness in that so-called faith. To me, the entire fabric of the Catholic church is steeped in the blood of innocents. With little exception, it has been a history of tyranny, falsehood, and malice. And misogyny too.

So, why in the world would I do a Camino, much less two of them? I ask that and still wonder myself.

All I can say is that I have been drawn since my earliest days to some spiritual dimension—knowing all the while that it may be nothing but an ephemeral delusion. Even as a child, I always believed that under the surface of the world in front of us, as well as in the farthest reaches of the universe, there is—or should be—some explanation, or vision, or meaning. Not that we will ever see or know such things, or experience them, or prove them. But we are driven nonetheless to contemplate and seek them, and not to surrender to the temptation to ignore or pretend that that dimension is not there. This is something that we know we can never find, but we feel compelled to look for it nonetheless.

In college, I studied a number of other religions and was, like many of my contemporaries, drawn to the mysticism of the Eastern religions, especially Buddhism. I have thought that if there is a god—whatever in the world that word may mean, other than dog spelled backwards—it consists of some sort of life force all around us, a power that makes this world possible, and that teaches us to explore and glorify it, not to trash it in favor of some other hidden spiritual place. To me, the notion that my kingdom is not of this world is rank nonsense. This world is our only kingdom. It is the place that we must explore, while seeking to understand its deeper meaning.

But I digress . . .

One final point on religion: I am drawn to ancient places that men and women long before us have touched and shaped to express their higher aspirations. That includes churches. Despite my anathema for most religious doctrine and dogma, I seek out churches, especially the old ones. (If you ever finish reading this Introduction, you will see that in the text of this book, and many of the photos.) I do that because they are the places that people before us have built for silent contemplation and reflection about our role in the universe, and as sanctuaries for some sort of inner spiritual sustenance.

Like the narrator in Phillip Larkin’s marvelous poem Churchgoing (you can read it online), I keep returning to churches, wherever I travel. But always when they are empty. Never when there are services. In every city I have been to, I seek out the great cathedrals, and sometimes the smaller chapels, to stand silently in awe of human history, and the human hands that built these monuments to the human spirit, and the need to find something deeper. I feel an almost mystical connection to, and appreciation for, all those nameless craftsmen who expressed the deepest feelings of their lives by carving stone or staining glass which speaks of their wonder and awe before the unfathomable darkness that surrounds us. But, no, I will never again kneel in those places. Not literally, and not figuratively.

These are the things that brought me to the Camino. This is the prism through which I saw and experienced it.

This Book

This book began as a series of lengthy emails that I typed on my tiny cellphone to my sons each night after a long day of walking, and often while having a so-called pilgrim dinner, complete with a full bottle of vino tinto (red wine). It was never intended to be any more than that—some electronic letters home to the ones I love most.

Months after I returned home from the Camino Francés, my sons surprised me at Christmas with a little travel book that they had put together that recounted my journey with excerpts from my emails to them, plus some of the photos I had sent. I thought that the book looked pretty good. They, and later a few others, urged me to write a fuller account of my travels. But I had no interest in doing so. It was already in my head, and that, I thought, is where it should stay.

After I did the Camino del Norte in the fall of 2015, which involved another batch of email letters home, I was told the same thing: Get off your lazy butt and make it into a book! Life, I thought, was too short to spend time regurgitating it all. I should be taking new trips, doing other things. So, I sat on the idea for two years.

At some point, it occurred to me that I had it all backwards. Life is too short; and for precisely that reason, I should put some of it down on a page. If the Argonauts are remembered by the oars that marked their graves, I may be remembered (or not) by the words I leave on paper about two relatively brief journeys. Why not?

There have been many books (and even more internet blogs) written about the Camino and those who walked it. Most, I am sure, are far better written than this one, and with much more spice in the plot. This one, I regret to say, mostly is comprised of the musings of one small, insignificant, conflicted and often cranky old man, attempting faithfully to record what he saw and heard and thought about during one tiny slice of his life (about 96 days, to be precise). Its significance is personal to me—though I hope that some readers will find something new and interesting here, some good stories, perhaps a little insight, or at least some humor. I will settle for anything that isn’t a yawn.

Here’s one small warning about my journey: Sorry to disappoint, but this book is not about sex, drugs, or rock and roll. For me, those days are long gone (if they ever existed). And certainly, if there were any stories of that kind to tell, you wouldn’t hear them from me. I know how to keep a secret. (And by the way, for that reason, most of the names of the people described in this book have been changed.)

Of course, I have heard the famous adage about the Camino, dating back to perhaps a millennium ago: Go a pilgrim, return a whore. But I didn’t see much evidence of that while there; and that life is not for me.

However, if you want a taste of that, you can buy the book of a famous Hollywood diva who walked the Camino Francés for 30 days in the 1990s. While she was there, she claims that she found time to have sex with Charlemagne, the Frankish king whose armies invaded northern Spain near the Camino in the year 778, before being forced to retreat. Never mind the fact that most historians believe that Charlemagne was only briefly in Spain, and that he died in Germany in 814. Anything is possible when a Hollywood starlet with a head full of fiction walks the Camino.

Mine will not be that kind of book.

JOURNEY ONE

The Camino Francés

I walked the Camino Francés in September and October 2014. I started in St. Jean Pied-de-Port, France; walked to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain; and then walked to Finisterre (also called Fisterra), Spain.

I spent two days traveling (by plane and train) to St. Jean; 35 days walking from St. Jean to Santiago (two of those days were rest days of sightseeing in the cities of Burgos and León); two days in Santiago sightseeing and relaxing; and three more days walking from Santiago to Finisterre. In all, the journey from St. Jean to Finisterre took 40 days, including 36 days of walking. After reaching Finisterre, I spent another day (Day 41) there walking to the lighthouse at the farthest corner of the town, at the end of the land and on the lip of the sea.

My route on the Camino, and the stops I made at the end of each day, closely followed the recommendations of an English writer, John Brierley, who has written two indispensable books for these journeys: A Pilgrim’s Guide to the Camino de Santiago, and A Pilgrim’s Guide to the Camino Finisterre. Mr. Brierley’s books divide the journey into stages, with each stage representing a day of walking—with 33 recommended stages from St. Jean to Santiago, and three more stages from Santiago to Finisterre. I followed these stages almost to the letter. Virtually every native English speaker I met on the Camino had one or both of these books; and most tried, if they were able, to follow the Brierley stages. (Not surprisingly, the majority of these English-speaking people had also seen the movie The Way, and had enjoyed it immensely.) Mr. Brierley’s books are pocket-sized and wonderful. I could not imagine walking the Camino without them.

From beginning to end, from St. Jean to the lighthouse at the far end of Finisterre, I spent 41 days on my journey. After that, I went by taxi to Muxía, a small fishing village near Finisterre for a day and a night; and then took a bus back to Santiago, where I stayed another four days. I left Santiago by plane on October 21, 2014. In all, from my first steps on the Camino to my final departure from Santiago, I spent a total of 46 days on the Camino.

What follows is the record of what I saw, heard, felt, and experienced preparing for the journey, and during those days of walking and exploring. It is written in the present tense, because that is how I experienced things, as they were occurring.

THE PREQUEL

September 1, 2014

Final Preparations: The Things I Carried

Washington, DC

September has arrived, and this crazy journey of discovery and endurance is about to start. One month from turning 65, I strap on a backpack, like a college hitchhiker from the ’60s in some weird time warp, and get ready for tomorrow’s flight from Dulles Airport in DC, to Paris, and then to El Camino.

I have prepared and weighed that pack for days now, squeezing things in, dumping them out, changing and rechanging the contents and their placement, always with the view of eliminating things, cutting the weight, paring everything to the bare essentials. As if you needed any more than the bare essentials to hike through a First World country on a marked route, with 200,000 other pilgrims passing through every year, and villages, hamlets and towns sprinkled across the landscape—and even local buses to take the tired, the lazy, the defeated and the indifferent to the next town, or the final town, or any town in between.

In the end, I carried 24 pounds, including the weight of an ultralight backpack called an Osprey—though no bird of that name or any other could fly (or even walk) with that amount of weight (excluding perhaps some birds in Australia).

What was stuffed inside the bird on my back? Everything that the various guidebooks recommended and that could be found in REI, Hudson Trail Outfitters, Patagonia, and similar stores. And they call this a pilgrimage? Is the Pope a pilgrim when he drives around in his gas-powered, bullet-proof, glass-enclosed golf cart? Whatever . . .

What I had in there included:

1 sleeping bag and a bag compressor (which squeezes the bag into an impossibly small space)

1 blow-up air mattress

1 tiny emergency tent consisting of a plastic sheet to hang over tree limbs (I included this based on the tale of a travel writer with good Spanish who managed to get hopelessly lost in the Pyrenees on his first day on the Camino, and then was forced to spend a night outside, because everyone he sought help from spoke only Basque, not Spanish.)

2 ultralight pairs of pants, with legs that unzip and can be discarded

1 pair of blazing black plastic rain pants

1 huge and ridiculously red pull-over poncho, for rain, that made me look like a crazed human cardinal, mad as a bird

3 pairs of ultralight underwear brought to you by the upscale company called Patagonia (That’s me: The pilgrim from Patagonia.)

4 shirts, two long-sleeved, and two short-sleeved

1 sweat shirt, a bloated stone among its featherweight companions

a flashlight with a headband (indispensable for early-morning starts, or short-term employment in a coal mine)

toiletries and a few drugs (legal)

4 small books (the two Brierley guidebooks, a pocket dictionary of Spanish, and the complete poetry of Dylan Thomas)

the indispensable and ubiquitous cellphone and charger, with an adapter plug for Spain

2 passports (one national passport, and one pilgrim passport, without which the kindly spiritual gatekeepers at the pilgrim hostels along the way, called albergues, will close the door in your face)

two large plastic bottles for a lot of water, without which, you will be toast.

With all those things, my pack weighed 26 pounds. When the water bottles were full, it was 28 pounds—which was two pounds over my self-imposed weight limit. So, I jettisoned a pound of something in the last few days, and shed the poetry book. (As it turned out, the book was available online on my phone.)

That’s how I started. A blathering, bearded old guy with a head full of prejudices and preconceptions, and 24 pounds on his back (plus 2 pounds of water, when the bottles were full).

I carried one other thing that weighed less than an osprey feather: Determination. For whatever inexplicable reason, I was determined to finish every last step of that f’ing walk. I was going to walk all the way from St. Jean Pied-de-Port to Santiago, and then to Finisterre.

And by god, I did.

FURTHER PREQUEL

September 2–3, 2014

Washington, DC, to Paris, France, by Overnight Airplane;

One Night (September 3) in Paris

I arrive at Dulles airport more than three hours early for my overnight, nonstop flight to Paris. I have one great fear; and no, it does not relate to terrorist murderers, or bumbling airline mechanics, or pilot error. It is about the luggage. They will not let me carry the backpack onboard, it must be checked in. So, the success of my entire trip turns on baggage handlers. Are they awake and focused today? Are they feeling serious about their jobs? Will they know that the CDG sticker on my backpack means Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, not CGD (Changde) in China? Do they play little tricks, thinking that anyone who wants to go to Paris should pick up his luggage in Marrakesh?

My fear of flying is that when I arrive in France, the luggage will be somewhere else, somewhere unknowable. It has happened before. (If you have ever been to a business meeting dressed in shorts and sneakers, while your suit is a continent away at the wrong airport, you will know what I mean.) Paris may have a lot of couture clothes from the runway, but it is not known for high-tech, ultralight hiking gear. If the pack gets lost, the trip goes with it. So, I arrive at the airport hours early, hoping that United Airlines will put my pack firmly in the belly of the beast that takes us to Paris. I do not want