My private Camino

In 2022 I flew 5,300 miles to walk across northern Spain on the Camino Francés. In 2023 I flew 5,200 miles to walk up the spine of Portugal on the Camino Portuguese. I am right now planning my third, the Camino Primitivo. People who walk these caminos—there are 8 official ones and many others—often call these journeys “transformative.” That’s a big word. I am not sure I was transformed, but I learned a lot. I learned about challenge and privilege, about the power of silence and the slowness of time, about what we need and what we don’t need, about friendship, about resilience, about the glories of vino tinto and silk toe socks.

 Thousands of people who walk one Camino return to walk another, making up a significant portion of pilgrims on the trail. Maybe they want to recapture what they felt, to relive the experience. Maybe they realize that what they thought was “transformative” was only temporarily transformative. Those ah-ha moments about simplifying their lives…how could this insight withstand the onslaught of consumer capitalism that awaited them on their return? The connection to the divine that transcended belief or disbelief, that euphoria of walking alone at dawn…how to hold onto that when there are kids and work and bringing in the car for a tune-up and Zoom meetings and grocery shopping?

And so they—and, of course, I mean I—go back to relearn lessons too soon forgotten. Or to learn new lessons. Or just for the pure embodied (and out-of-body) pleasure of it. I will be one of those repeaters in September.

But right now, I have my own private Camino, my home-grown pilgrimage. It is up and back one of the Ridgeline Trails that start a scant two miles from my house. The trail is just demanding enough, up and down, to get the heart pounding with side trails where I can bushwhack through the forest. The scenery does not change as it does walking across Spain, but the seasons change. I’ve hiked in the fall when oak leaves carpet the trail. I’ve walked in winter after an ice storm that downed 40-foot trees. I’ve walked in the spring when the wildflowers bloom. And now I walk in the (almost) summer when everything is blindingly green, and the birds are singing.

I hike four times a week, maybe more, almost always solo. But as with the “real” Camino, I meet people along the way, and we have become a kind of pop-up community. We don’t plan to encounter each other on the trail. We just do.

It’s my Camino, and it’s right outside my door.