Thoughts after the Walk

I said to Brook, "The people making this walk seem so articulate."

¨They would need to be," she said, "to take a trip like this." She´s right. To make a trip like this, you need a story that imbues a 750k walk with meaning.

The camino is, literally, an extremely long path for walking. However, it also symbolizes a larger life path, and I think, because of the extreme physicality of the walk, it allows us to feel in our bodies what before was merely an unexamined thought.

One day I was resting on a bench at the side of the camino with Linda (from Canada), and as we sat, a number of pilgrims walked by. Linda made a comment about all of us being together on the path. For some reason, that rather cliched remark had a much deeper and more poignant meaning while sitting on such a very long path.

Insights about love, companionship, loneliness, hopefulness, and happiness also seem clearer and more visceral here. I have asked a few people here in Santiago what the walk has meant to them. One woman said, "Ask me in six months." Others have commented that it helped them understand themselves better (true for me as well). One woman told me she has left behind the last two years of suffering. I have realized that I complain too much about the ravages of war without doing enough for peace. When I get home, I want to do some work that contributes to peace.