Camino de Santiago

Modern day Camino de Santiago ("Camino")

Why walk with us?

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Many books and blogs have been written, several movies, documentaries, and podcasts have been inspired by the Camino.  ​Less than one-third of pilgrims walk for religious or spiritual reasons. Some walk it as a physical or mental challenge, a bucket list item or an adventure, or as a cultural experience.  One common unifying motivation is the opportunity to disconnect from daily life and reconnect with nature and with oneself.  Most pilgrims walk solo and find serendipitous company along the way. 

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Intentionally or not, pilgrims are walking in between realms- the dying past and the emerging to-be, the material world and the intangible world, the false self and the true self. It is no surprise that walking the Camino changes a person.  The more intentional and conscious one is, the greater and often more difficult the change.   

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At a certain point, a pilgrim realizes that the Camino is about people and the tender stories that connects us together.  Each pilgrim, each human and non-human encounter, teaches us about ourselves and invites us to bare naked our humanity and the pains we carry around in order to see the common thread that weaves us together.   One may meet oneself embodied in another pilgrim- a past, present, or a future mirror; one may find a parent figure- an ideal or quite the opposite. In any case, the Camino invites us into deep inquiry about our perceptions, our ideals, our pains, our true selves.  It invites us to risk our wounds, as a genuine way of healing oneself and in the process healing others we meet. 

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The "Camino blues" maybe attributed to missing the simplicity of the Camino daily life and missing the genuine human connections.  However, the "Camino blues" is a deeper manifestation of an unfinished ceremony or marking.  The Camino awakens parts of oneself and the person that started the walk is not the same person that ends.  To go back to one's old life is akin to putting the new self into the dark closet, denying them to be fully and wholly alive.   After walking the Camino, most pilgrims wake up to find that the best way to live is to walk towards what is next in life.