the southern summer is not personal: the onslaught of heat and humidity falls on the just and unjust the sacred and the sweaty gets under your skin refusing to relent in its drive to depletion as you dart from one cool remove to the next more afternoons than not the swirl and stack of clouds…
“Love seeks to close all distance.” — John Berger — And Our Faces, My Heart, As Brief As Photos Life has a certain centrifugal force. In both large and small ways we are thrown to the edges, away from one another. The companion force is one that draws us to one another, that compels us…
the scallop shell was still swinging from the side of my backpack as I walked from home to our coffee shop to drop off cookies and write still a pilgrim I suppose this time in my own town broken sidewalks instead of trails sites made sacred by our stacks of stones and stories the best…
Though we stood on the stone with the shell engraved on Saturday afternoon, we got up Sunday morning and kept walking. There was much to do. We tramped up and down the old stone streets to get our certificate of completion at the Credentialing Office and then to get a second certificate at the Church…
We woke this morning to a perfect day for walking. The sun was shining, a few cotton ball clouds were scattered across the sky as though they had been painted in, and a cool breeze blew across our path as we wandered through farms and forests once again. We walked at a relaxed pace, enjoying…
Each day of our walk on the Camino de Santiago has had its own personality. Day One was an adventure: we were starting out on something new in a place we did not know. Day Two was a climb: the first nine miles of our day were uphill and presented quite a challenge. Day Three…
Today was our third day walking on the Camino de Santiago. We have now walked more days than we have left to walk; we have spent more days in Spain than we have left to spend. The mist that traveled with us yesterday turned into rain overnight and stayed with us as we began the…
We began our second morning walking down the hill from our hotel in Portamarin to cross the river and continue our trek towards Santiago de Compostela. It was the last time we went downhill for several hours. The rain clouds above us felt more impending than threatening. The cool mist of the morning was made…
We left Sarria this morning with out much sense of where we were going. Yes, we had a map. Yes, we knew our destination was Portomarin. But neither offered a reference point that connected to our lives beyond we were setting out on the first leg of our journey on the Camino de Santiago. We…
Over the past few couple of weeks, I’ve taken two long plane rides — one to California and one to Spain. In the process of trying to find some sense of place in the midst of my time travel, I wondered (out loud, I think) if we were meant for such things, if we lose…