Category: REM Reflections

Since my return, a number of people have asked me how the Camino experience has changed me. It’s really difficult to summarize a two-month journey and its impact. One American Lutheran minister I met towards the end of my journey told me that it took him a year to full process his first Camino. While that seemed long to me at the time, I am starting to understand what he meant. Like an onion, you just keep peeling back the layers and sometimes there are tears that come as a result. The short...

What is often described as the most beautiful Camino, and also one of the most challenging, is the Camino Primitivo. It starts in Oviedo, and cuts through the mountains between the Camino del Norte and the Camino Frances. For most people it is a 13 day walk to Santiago, with an extra two days if you start from the Camino del Norte at Villaviciosa. There are many things that make this particular path an interesting walk. It is the oldest and the one that is described as the path of the very...

There is a lot of wisdom along the path. One particularly long day, about three weeks into my journey, I encountered a seasoned walker who had done many different paths, but doing the Camino del Norte for the first time. He was an avid gardener. In fact, he was the gardener of a local monastery in his home town in Germany. He would stop frequently to admire various flowers, both in and out of the many gardens you would encounter along the journey. Many of the flowers in northern Spain were...

There are times when walking the Camino that the conditions were less than ideal. Walking the Camino del Norte from the Spanish/French border meant that my first day of walking included 32kms and 1000m of climbing and another 1000m of descending. It was a bit of a baptism by fire, not having been able to spend a lot of time climbing mountains in my part of the world. But my most difficult day wasn’t as a result of the mountains, it was related to the rain and mud. Climbing a muddy slope, I was...

As a pilgrimage, the Camino has been around for about 1200 years. When people were walking it, either by choice or by requirement for penance, they were doing so at great peril. While the path I walked wasn’t an easy one, I can only imagine what the early years must have been like… finding food, protection from the elements, getting lost, having shelter for the night… these are things that modern pilgrims may find challenging, but they are well cared for and benefit from many guides, arrows...

“Walk your own Camino” was a refrain I heard from many folks before I left for Spain. It didn’t take long for me to realize the importance of that. Some people naturally walked faster or slower than my natural pace. Sometimes I would adjust my speed in the interests of engaging with them, but walking at a pace that is not your own is uncomfortable, regardless of whether it is faster or slower. On the first day, I encountered two people walking together – Hans from Germany and José from Peru....