So many stories

With so many stories to tell, where do I start? What do I choose?

Maybe I will tell you about the 80-year-old French couple, tiny, wizened, nimble, with not a word of English, who walked every kilometer from Porto to Santiago, spooning each night in a narrow single bunk bed.

Or the Venezuelan man with the big career who had lived all over the world, who started off bragging and three days later sat on a rock next to me and cried because he missed his 7-year-old daughter.

Or the Australian couple I met under a big umbrella at an outdoor café in torrential rains in Ponte de Lima. We never saw each other on the trail. We never stayed in the same albergue. Still, we encountered each other so many times during the following 9 days that there had to be reason. There was.  

And the chatty New Zealand ladies, a naturopath, a butchers’ wife, a teacher, an artist, who loved their country as much as I love Oregon, which is A LOT, who described hut-to-hut hikes for me with such passion that I think I must go.

And Amy, of course Amy, who walked 120 kilometers with a baby strapped to her front, and not just any baby—Sasha, a big-cheeked, chunky-thighed 5-month-old--who nursed and slept and nursed and slept and gave toothless grins to every pilgrim who stopped to coo over him. Which was pretty much everyone. Amy, with a soft heart and a sturdy soul, part proper British, part neo-hippie. We walked well together.

And all the single women, all ages, from everywhere, walking for all the reasons people venture forth on the Camino: to walk away, to walk toward, to test themselves, to navigate stormy waters, to have the time to ask the questions that need to be asked and the silence to contemplate the answers.

So yes, this Camino—the Portuguese—and the much longer Francés I walked last fall offer glorious landscapes and ancient villages, a chance to truly see the country, one kilometer at a time, and daily (hourly) challenges to strength, stamina and perseverance.  And yes, there is the hefting of the backpack that holds all you need, and the sleeping among strangers on (if you are unlucky) paper sheets. But the power of the Camino is in the people who walk it. And what you learn from them. And what you learn about yourself.