Camino Me Mata

I just walked over 600 miles in about 40 days.

On one day, I walked 76,000 steps, starting around 7:30 AM and ending at 10 PM.

Why?

Well, when a cute girl tells you to do something, you do it. I was recommended Camino by a girl and it seemed like the sort of grueling physical and mental task I would like. And heck, who knows, maybe she’d come. (She didn’t.)

I didn’t really know much about Camino beforehand, intentionally so.

One of my favorite essays is “Loss of the Creature” by Walker Percy. You should read it and come back.

And now that you haven’t read it, I’ll just spoil it. Essentially you have two travelers and the Grand Canyon.

One traveler plans their trip meticulously, looking at pictures online of the canyon, wanting to see what everyone agrees is the best view of the canyon at what everyone agrees is the best time with what everyone agrees is the best lighting.

They go on their trip and it goes exactly to plan.

And it’s a good trip. They went to see the Mona Lisa and they saw the Mona Lisa.

Traveler two is just exploring the southwest. They then stumble upon a cliff. And as they walk up to the cliff, they are astonished by what they see over the edge. A giant valley that just never stops. It’s terrifying and awe-inspiring at the same time. They cannot believe what they are seeing.

The idea, let’s call it “stumble upon travel”, is that we need to keep our travel schedules flexible for magic moments and magic often happens in the unexpected.

But we tend to live expected lives. Because expected is comfortable. Expected doesn’t challenge us. Expected doesn’t scare us.

An expected moment, when it happens as we planned, doesn’t disappoint us. But at the same time, rarely does it excite us. Because after all, we knew it was coming.

This is all to say: do the unexpected, just book a ticket and start walking. Be open to the surprises that await. (I permit limited research on what you should bring and what route you should do. The longest you can do, the better.)

Still here? Not convinced yet? What can you get out of walking you say? I, too, didn’t really get it until I got it.

When I started walking, I would check how much time I had left in the walk. 6 hours. 5 hours 58 minutes. 5 hours 53 minutes. Wait a second why is it now 5 hours 55 minutes…

I was living in the future. I was living in the town I was going to, imagining what food I would eat, imagining what resting would feel like, and imagining how it would feel in 30 days when I reached Santiago (the city at the end of the journey).

But the problem with living in the future is that it’s impossible to live in the future.

It’s helpful sometimes. Our present can be so awful that the only way we persist is by imagining the future. It brings joy.

I remember being an intern at a fairly boring job and all the interns would spend time thinking and talking about what are we going to eat for dinner at a nearby restaurant, which we'd go to for their happy hour specials every Friday.

Oh how glorious it will be! Maybe I’ll get the roast beef sandwich with their famous barbecue sauce or actually I’ll get the gyro. Maybe I’ll get dessert this time too!

It’s hard to put this on yourself. Our culture is deeply embedded in the future.

Christianity is kind of the epitome of this idea. Life sucks because a woman was tricked by a serpent to eat forbidden fruit. But after this life, if you accept Jesus and don't do any gay stuff, we'll all be in heaven.

Eternal bliss.

In the future.

And when you’re a peasant in medieval times and your life is trash, I get the appeal. Or even now, if you can’t afford anything and you hate your job, God, I understand hoping the next life is better than this.

But the future isn’t now.

And that same good feeling is crushed by reality every moment when you realize you’re not actually eating that gyro, you’re sitting in an office doing a boring mindless job for hours on end and you have 300 more emails to go through, and you’re not actually in heaven and you have your whole life to go.

And you’re not in the next town. You’re on a walk and you have five more hours of this.

So what’s the next step?

Maybe a podcast or an audiobook. But for some reason, those aren’t working either. I know every episode of this podcast is 40 minutes. And therefore, I have to listen to 1, 2, 3, 4… oh I have to listen to 7 episodes and then the walk is over?! This is going to take forever…

It’s hard to explain how unbearably grueling the walk can become. And how utterly useless distractions can be.

The only way to know it is to feel it. So go on a mini Camino, maybe a four hour walk before you keep reading.

… I’m not kidding. If reading doesn’t provoke action, it’s not worth reading. Go outside and do the walk. Right now. Or tomorrow. Or next week when you have time.

If you don't do it and keep reading, I’m putting a mini curse on you so you randomly stub your toe in the future once. You have been warned.

Buen Camino! (a common greeting on the trail)

…

Done walking?

Sorry or you're welcome (whichever feels appropriate) for making you do that.

Maybe you tried various methods to distract yourself while walking and hopefully, they proved successful for you. But for me, distraction, although sometimes helpful, always failed.

Eventually, when nothing works, you try nothing.

And surprisingly, nothing works.

That’s a cool tree. Oh, that’s an interesting feeling in my left foot. Oh, the air here is quite nice. Oh, what’s happening? Everything goes silent. And then you’re just moving.

It’s hard to put into words the feeling but you feel the walk.

You are in the zone, that mental state where you're immersed in whatever you're doing.

I'll go further to label it as the "zone of presence". There is no past. And there is no future.

Sometimes in this zone, you think of others but you think of them in the present. You think of yourself in the present. Dynamic. Changing. Moving.

Sometimes you think of nothing.

And suddenly, the walk is over. What happened?

When we are in the zone of presence, time moves quickly. Or it doesn’t really move at all? I’m sure you’ll know what I’m talking about. Perhaps it’s making art for you. Or cooking. Or maybe just a really good hang. But my claim is this is a legitimate physical reality change. Time is literally moving differently.

And this should be a central aim of our lives. To be in the zone of presence as much as possible. It is where life lives.

But how do we get into the zone? The walk taught me a few tricks that I knew before but I didn’t feel it in my bones like I do now:

Whatever you’re doing, do that.

If you’re walking, walk.

If you’re eating, eat.

If you’re talking with a friend, talk with your friend.

Our society wants us to do three things at once. The problem is we can’t do three things at once. We can only do one thing at once.

And to get into the zone of presence, it requires sustained time on one thing. Switching kicks you out of the zone.

Go slowly at first.

The zone of presence has a sensitive barrier. It tends to not respond well to frenetic energy. I’m not sure why on this one.

Maybe it’s because when we rush, we’re trying to get done with something quickly and the zone can feel that pressure. That you’re not truly in it. Almost like you’re trying to stick your hands into the zone to complete some task but you’re not fully immersing yourself.

But really, just walk.

I could tell you these 'tricks' but I sadly think you still have to walk. Sorry. Because walking will teach your body and your body will teach your mind. To truly know the truth, you must feel the truth.

Also, there’s so much more to learn from Camino than just about presence. And it’s pretty fun. (I promise.) And horny. (But this is a wholesome essay.)

I actually so thoroughly believe you will not regret doing a Camino, that if you book a ticket after reading this essay and end up hating it, I will reimburse your airfare.

And if you’re not convinced yet, maybe I should tell you about the hospitality of the Spanish and French and all the incredible hosts along the way, how many special homemade meals I had and how multiple times I felt like if I asked to move in, they wouldn’t have batted an eye.

Or I could tell you about the magic of Camino. How one day I wished I hadn’t walked so far so I could continue talking with someone only for them to have walked to my same albergue (essentially hostels for people doing Camino) and for them to take the bed right across from mine.

Or how I didn’t walk quick enough and lost my Irish lads only to randomly bump into them in my final kilometer of the Camino and they joined me for that last stretch.

Or how every interaction with another pilgrim is imbued with that Camino sauce since this may be your first and last conversation with them.

Or how beautiful some of the hikes are. The rolling fog and the mysterious mountains. But I’ve never been good at talking about beauty. You can’t hear about beauty, you see it.

Or I can be vulnerable and tell you how painful Camino sometimes was for me. I had the honor of the biggest blisters any pilgrim had seen. The pain was so bad I got walking sticks for the sole purpose of helping me drag myself forward.

And emotionally? Not great. Remember the girl? She was never planning to come but for some reason, I had it in my head that maybe she would come at the last minute. I had shared my location with her and told her to surprise me. To not tell me whether or not she’d come and just show up.

And one day she switched the location sharing off. She started dating someone. It happened to be the day I was at the lowest part in the journey physically. I still had about 25 days of walking left.

Sometimes, despite the pain, I would think well, maybe in two weeks, I’d collapse and I’d look up and see her smile. It kept me going. I was, living in the future.

But now, that vision was dead. I had to reassess, why am I walking so long?

I frequently found myself in churches crying, as an agnostic, talking to the Universe/Jesus/God asking them to make sense of my pain and beyond the Camino, my life. How I thought sometimes I may not make it to Santiago. (This is a metaphor)

But then I’d have to tell you how I came to peace with the pain. How the pain became part of the journey. And the realization that I’ve never met an uphill that lasts forever. How the image of me dragging myself out of a city at 4:30 AM to walk 30 km is burned into my feet and brain. That yeah, I did get through that.

That when I told my story to another pilgrim, she laughed so hard at how pathetic it was, I couldn’t help but laugh too.

And somehow, pain became joy.

Now this is probably the time for excuses. You don’t have the time. You don’t have the money.

There is always somebody with less money than you doing what you wish you could do if you had more money.

There is always somebody with less time than you doing what you wish you could do if you had more time.

There is always somebody with more valid excuses than you doing what you wish you could do if only.

So when are you going to book a ticket?

I’m about to head out. I'm actually writing this sitting by the Cathedral, the end of the Camino, where you’ll be before you know it.

Santiago waits for you.

Oh, and one last thing.

When you feel like giving up, don’t.