About 20 years ago, I read a book about the Camino Santiago - the ancient pilgrimage to Santiago de la Compestella - that has such a great historical and spiritual legacy - and knew this was a journey/ challenge I wanted to take. In 2009, I got such an opportunity. Here is a short music video of my travels and thoughts along the Camino Santiago. It was one of the greatest adventures of my life and inspired me to continually seek out adventure in my life and work.
In 2014, I returned to the road on the Via Francigena,a pilgrimmage of 1200 miles from London to Rome. I walked the second two-thirds of this walk from besancon, France, over the Alps and onto Rome and captured my stories and pictures in a blog. This time two months of adventure and misadventure in the wonderful world of Italy.
In two weeks, I leave to begin my third adventure - back on the Camino Santiago, but beginning 500 miles before my starting point of 2009 - traveling along the Le Puy Route.I plan to walk from outside of LePuy to Roncevalles Spain, my last day will be retracing my first day of my first pilgrimmage - over the Pyrenees Mountains and into Spain. From there, I will travel to a well deserved month's rest in Munich.I find these trips full of adventure, weird coincidences (synchronicity), the making of new friends, a quiet inward journey and lessons that I think we can only get by "turning off" our normal world and walking into the unknown.
And the synchronicity began even before I thought to do this trip. A pilgrim I met along the via francigena, Sigrid, contacted me in March and asked me to join her on this trip. I said I'd think about it, and within an hour, a school I teach at called and asked me if I could teach a class this spring that would end in May. The payment for this course covered my plane ticket - so I felt this was good confirmation to go...and so I'm off - arriving in LePuy June 2nd.
Care to join me for this journey? Buen Camino!
