This past month, we walked the Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage route across northern Spain. I attempted to film a series of vlogs to explain a little more about what day-to-day looked like and our purpose behind the journey, but I haven’t been able to get any kind of video editing software (read: iMovie) to download. As of right now, it’s all just a jumbled mess of clips that need to be edited and strung together in some semblance of order before they can be posted, so I apologize for that, but I haven’t given up just yet.
That being said, we travel to Morocco at the end of this week, so without further ado (and with the hope that a Camino vlog is still forthcoming), I decided to go ahead and post my official list of eleven things I learned in month two:
1. Life is lived one step at a time. When you narrow your focus to the next step, and always just the next step, you’ll have walked over 375 km in just under three weeks, a little sore, but all the better for it. If you always look before you leap, you’ll hardly ever make the jump. Just walk.
2. If, as a dog owner, you ever find yourself living along the path of a major pilgrimage route, invest in a good leash. Your trusty canine companion will never be far from a friendly face helpless to stop them from tagging along on an impromptu morning walk to the next town over.
3. Celebrate the uphill. The downhill will be harder on your joints anyway.
4. Every pound counts when its strapped to your back for miles on end. Choose wisely, and be willing to let things go. You’ll probably need a little less than you thought in the first place.
5. You can estimate the expected quality of your experience in a hostel relatively quickly based on the noise its bunkbeds make when the casual sleeper makes the slightest movement.
6. Bed bugs. If you already have the bites, assume the whole operation has been compromised. Wash everything, and if you find yourself snacking on a half-clove of garlic each night based on the admittedly unsubstantiated advice of a friend, there’s always all those other health benefits… It couldn’t hurt, right?
7. Sometimes, you just need to trust the half-faded spray-paint arrow tagged to the side of that crumbling stone wall. When it’s all you have to follow, it’s really all you have.
8. Protect your feet… enough said.
9. It’s not the destination. For all you know, the famed cathedral will be almost entirely obscured by scaffolding. When you’re trying to find the meaning of it all in the spare quiet between tourist chatter and power saws, laugh it off. The real magic is back on the trail, in the hostels along the way, in the prayers, with the people you walked beside.
10. On the Camino, as in life, we’re all just doing our best to walk each other home.
11. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. (John 15:4-5)
I’m still in the process of fundraising for the rest of this journey. If you’d like to support me, please follow the “Donate Here!” link at the top of your screen. Thank you!
