In the late 1980s, my wife Susan, a Catholic convert, became fascinated with the idea of pilgrimage. She quickly discovered the ancient pilgrimage route of the Camino de Santiago in Spain.
Susan was not a woman who did things by halves. She began reading voluminously on the subject, and surprised me one day by appearing in a pilgrim costume, complete with staff, gourd, and shells on her pilgrim hat.
In 1999 we drove from Madrid, through Burgos, a major stop on the classic pilgrimage route, to Cantabria, then followed the coastal route west through Gijon and on to Santiago de Compostela, walking the last few hundred yards of the Camino.
En Route to Santiago, 1999
Gijon Waterfront, 1999
Santiago de Compostela, 1999
In 2001, starting in Barcelona, we drove up the French side of the Pyrenees, then crossed into Spain, spending the night in Roncesvalles, one of the historic starting places for the Camino. We walked the first several hundred yards with the pilgrims, then visited other stops along the route by car: Puente la Reina, Estella, Pamplona, etc.
In the years that followed, Susan repeatedly suggested we walk the route the way the pilgrims did. I would answer that people in their late 50s and early 60s don’t carry a heavy pack on their back for 500+ miles. I was wrong.
After Susan died from cancer in November 2011, I was devastated and without direction. At a January 2012 lecture by art historian Lee Sandstead on his Camino experience, complete with many slides, I realized I had to walk the Camino for Susan that year, and I had to walk it alone. I would bring locks of her thick, dark brown hair to leave at significant places along the Way, so that in a real sense she would become part of the Camino she loved. What follows is an account of that journey.
More than a year has passed since I walked the Way. The only written record I have consists of
emails I sent to family and friends. They appear here very much as
they appeared to my correspondents.
A special note of appreciation is due Stephen Bright, who laboriously resized the photos and converted the text to
HTML. Without Stephen's help, which
went way beyond the call of friendship, this account would never have appeared
as a viable link.
In my narrative, I refer frequently to my Camino guru. Before leaving Austin, uncertain that I could walk the whole distance carrying a full pack, I scoured the Camino de Santiago Forum about possibilities for having my pack transported from town to town. That is how I chanced upon Christine Meckley of Philadelphia, who had walked the Camino the year before with her 14-year-old daughter. She told me of her experience with baggage transport, but also sent me a richly annotated list of the albergues, hotels, and restaurants she patronized along the Way. It was highly useful, although I decided early on that as long as I could walk, I would carry a full pack.
NEXT: The way to Roncesvalles