Walking The Way again

“It may take days, weeks - and in my case, there were things that did not come clear to me, lessons learned that were not understood, for years after my first walk. Like The Way itself, the gifts of the Camino unfold slowly. I know this."

Andrew McCarthy is a name I might have heard in passing, until I read about his Camino with his son a year or so ago. He had first walked The Way twenty six years prior to this one, something that had changed his life. The similarity in experiences were uncanny. A book picked up at random was the pointer. If it was 'Off the Road' by Jack Hitt for McCarthy, David Downie's 'Paris to the Pyrenees' was the one for me.

I was at a point where the feeling of being lost, of having achieved nothing, beating myself up thinking I never finish anything I start; completing the Camino had given me an immense sense of achievement. And here was someone as accomplished as McCarthy saying,

"Not long before my journey it had dawned on me. at last, that I had great difficulty in finishing anything I started......Making it to Santiago altered that pattern. I became someone who saw things through."

The copious amounts of cafe` con leches from the simple eateries along the way, the tortilla Espanolas that were life saving on some days, the camaraderie with the ones that you see everyday that slowly turns into a sense of being a family, the wind on your face as you traverse the lonesome paths that wind up and down the hills, the village ways bordered by apple trees, even the smell of the manure mixed with earth - all the experiences from three years ago came to life again.

"I lie on my back and look up into the trees. This is the kind of tranquil respite the Camino provides at unexpected moments, one best taken advantage of when found."

The first few days are of doubts, anxieties, questioning one's motives, even berating one's self as McCarthy asks himself, "What the hell am I doing, anyway?"

After a few days, there comes a "point on the Camino in which people begin to discard what they can no longer abide," from anything extra in the luggage to your guilt, insecurities, sorrows and finally the heavy load that had been weighing your shoulders down. The person that reaches the Cathedral of St. James in Santiago can never go back to being the one that was at the start of the journey. Life gets split into before and after The Way.

McCarthy did his second Camino with his son. When I was planning my journey, the son had said, "amma, people invented wheels for a reason. And here you go walking." But I have extracted a promise from him, that he will travel with me some day.

Dare I dream of another Camino, this time with him?

Read about my Camino here :

https://ruminateatleisure.wordpress.com/2019/10/08/just-another-pilgrim/

History of the Camino:

https://ruminateatleisure.wordpress.com/2019/10/11/the-history-and-the-beginning-of-the-journey/